How Dorie Clark built an online course that earned six figures within just five months
Through the years I've had a desire to create an online course. I believed it was the most effective method to increase the effectiveness of my work, connect with more people, and generate revenue without jumping on airplanes.
In 2015, I wrote my debut publication, a book called "Stand Out": The Best Way to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Create an following for it.
After one year of research, I decided to leverage my research in writing the book. I also decided to develop an instructional course to the website. It's the course I'm calling " Recognized Expert." In only 5 months I earned $118,010 in sales and created an entirely new revenue stream in six figures for my company.
This is how I got it done. You can too.
1. Make sure you are using a strong lead magnet
If you're offering an excellent training program (let's suppose it's more than $150 or $100) It's unlikely to appeal to buyers that find your program and immediately click to buy. In the end, they must learn about your program so that they can trust you and your approach. It is essential that they be aware that your investment is a solid one. Make sure to contact the business prior to offering.
You can begin the procedure by creating an excellent "lead magnet" that is composed more content. It could be an assortment of videos, workbooks, an electronic book with tips, a resource guide and so on. The recipient will get a response from you by way of an email address that they supply. Few people would like an additional e-newsletter because most electronic newsletters (let's admit it) tend to be dull. The majority of people will engage with you if you're offering content that they will find valuable and interesting.
You can examine the lead magnet that I created to make my personal list of leads over the past two years from 3,500-30,000 here.
2. Survey your audience
The majority times we're not certain of our vision of what our public would want. When I first started pitching propositions for books to publishing houses a while ago, I was obsessed with the idea of writing a book on communications tips for professionals that was based on the most successful techniques used by prominent politicians. As a former president's campaign spokesperson previously, this was within my realm and I was intrigued by it.
Although the idea was not bad the idea wasn't the most appealing one. Nobody else seemed to be enthusiastic about the concept. Instead, I read the latest news stories on the internet (in the format of an article published on the most popular blogs) and when I suggested a fresh idea about the possibility of an e-book about the process of reinventing professional the way we work, it was born.
For more information on how surveys are conducted, Ryan Levesque's guidebook "Ask is very helpful..
3. Run a pilot
The cost, which I explained to participants would be the requirement for them to sign a contract to give me lotsof feedback. I suggested that they conduct a survey after each course to find out what they enjoyed and didn't like and what kind of material they would want to know more about. This process was invaluable as it helped me design my content based on the needs of my students and what they wanted to learn rather than what I believed they might.
4. Give the reason for the value
In September 2016 I launched my online course. An online course isn't an essential like food or shelter but there's plenty of affordable products on the marketplace. If you want to persuade the person to take my course in the same way you would invest in an event or graduate level professional development , you need provide context and help them understand the way your course will benefit them, particularly. The goal is to create videos or audiothat frame things properly. How important is your education? What impact will it have on their life? How has it helped others who are the same as their own?
I designed a set of emails, often with the links to YouTube videos for more information, which I distributed to my subscribers over a interval of 3 weeks. In each one, I deepened the conversation. I shared my experience of establishing my business as well as learning from my own experience and also writing how to stand Out and become a recognized professional.
Make sure the audience can understand why the issue the training addresses is pertinent and important to the audience (in this case, because being regarded as an expert will help sales considerably and will increase the amount you earn) as well as that you're an authority source for the information; and your training will be beneficial to others who are similar to you. If you can accomplish those things, you're on your path to creating an excellent relationship with your customer.
The process of creating a course worth six figures like the process of becoming a renowned expert doesn't occur in a single day. But if you can be attentive to your target audience and build a product they want to purchase it is possible to generate enormous value for yourself as well.
Dorie Clark is an expert in market research and a professional speaker. She is also a professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. She is the writer of Reinventing You as well as Stand Out. You can download her free 42-page Stand Out Self-Assessment Workbook.
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