To expand your brand, you need to expand your ideas. Any piece of content you create can be turned into multiple pieces of content.
You can turn a blog post into a video, take parts of that video and turn them into blog posts, and take parts of those blog posts and turn them into videos.
That’s part of the reason Gary Vaynerchuk can create so much content. He expands upon his existing ideas.
However, there’s more to this model than expanding your free content into other forms of free content.
You can use your free content as inspiration for your products. Various authors first conceived of their book ideas by creating free content.
One free piece of content stuck, and these soon-to-be authors realized that they had a book worthy message in their popular pieces of content.
While the association from free content to book or lengthy course may seem more clear, you can create short SkillShare courses based off individual pieces of content.
Why SkillShare?
SkillShare is the Netflix of learning. Students pay monthly to get access to a wide range of training courses.
Instructors get paid around five cents for each minute watched. This is a significantly greater payout rate than YouTube which gives you around $1 for every thousand views.
You can also put your training courses on a site like Udemy, but SkillShare’s key advantage is that short courses rock.
Short courses tend to attract more students. Once students finish watching one of your short courses, they may decide to watch more of your courses due to the dopamine rush associated with the gratification of completion.
That means more money for you.
And when I say short, I mean very short. SkillShare only requires a minimum of 10 minutes for each training course.
Some of my training courses barely fit that bill with some of them at the 11 minute marker.
The idea is for students to get into the habit of watching several of my courses instead of stopping at one.
And many of these courses are expanded versions of my free content.
Expanding On Your Free Content
When you choose any free piece of content to expand upon, you must start by choosing the right content.
The right content is the content that you can actively discuss in a video format. You also want to ensure you choose a lengthy piece of content that feels incomplete upon a second analysis.
Most of the content I create feels incomplete when I give it a second look. When I finish writing this blog post, it will feel complete in my eyes. However, even a few days later, this blog post will feel incomplete. That’s how it goes even after I publish a new piece of content.
I’ll look at it a few days later and it will feel incomplete. While I do go back and occasionally update blog posts, lately I’ve been completing them by turning them into micro courses on SkillShare that are 10-20 minutes long.
I will ask myself the question “What did I miss here?” until I have some answers. I’ll sometimes think of additional ideas as I do videos for the course.
The idea is to stack a few 1-2 minute videos together into a final product. This workflow and small length of courses makes it very easy for me to produce at least one new training course every day.
You’ll make $1 for every 20 minutes people spend watching your courses. Those minutes will accumulate over time as you create more courses. Creating more courses will attract more students, and your new students will then go through your older courses.
Remember, SkillShare is Netflix for learning. If your courses are short and impactful, some of your students will binge watch them. The increase in minutes will increase the revenue you generate from SkillShare.
No New Content Ideas With This Strategy
All of the revenue you make from SkillShare following this model is based on existing content. I’m not asking you to create anything new. You just take some of your old ideas and give them a different twist.
In some cases, there may be very few differences between your free content and your SkillShare courses.
Of course, if you think of an entirely new idea and want to turn it into a SkillShare course, then by all means go for it. This strategy is meant to expand your existing ideas, but if you tap into new ideas to expand your range, that’s great too.
Starting
Starting is always more difficult than doing the actual task. Most of the fuel in a rocket is used during liftoff to get a few inches off the ground. Once you start implementing this concept, it will be easier for you to create SkillShare courses based on your existing content.
One way to make starting easier is to change the starting point. Instead of thinking about starting videos, I just focus on getting dressed up for the video.
Once I get dressed up, I’ve already started. I can’t get out of my clothing for videos until I do the videos.
You can apply this same principle if you find it difficult to get started. But I guarantee that once you start doing videos for SkillShare courses, the actual action of doing all of those videos is much easier.
In Conclusion
You can take a single piece of content and turn it into several. While most strategies approach turning free content into more free content, you can take some of your free content and creates products.
One of the blog posts you recently wrote can become a 10-20 minute SkillShare course. That same blog post can also be turned into a much longer course or even a book.
I prefer SkillShare right now due to the overall ease and leverage the SkillShare itself provides. I don’t have to worry as much about promoting my course as I would if I decided to host it on my own site.
With that said, I’ve benefitted greatly from hosting some courses on my own sites such as the Content Marketing Plaza.
In the end, you should pick what works best for you. But regardless of what works for you, make sure you spread the idea of your existing content into future content and paid products.
What are your thoughts on turning your free content into SkillShare courses? Do you have any advice on finding that free content or creating more SkillShare courses? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.
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