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Marc Guberti

5 Ways To Sell More Training Courses

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Training courses are a common element of many influencers’ content monetization strategies. You can teach people how to develop a desirable skill and scale your revenue over time. Create the training course once, add some updates from time to time, and you can continue selling it.

Selling the training course is where the challenge resides. Most people think the hard part is creating the course, but marketing is always the most challenging of the two to pull off. If you want to give your training course sales a boost, follow these 5 strategies.

Co-Create Courses With Multiple Instructors

When you create a training course on your own, you alone are responsible for the marketing. That dynamic changes if you create training courses with other instructors. Not only does the work get cut in half since someone else is creating the videos with you, but the other instructor is just as responsible for marketing the course.

Partnering up with enough instructors can significantly grow your audience over time. You should only partner up with 1-2 additional instructors per course. This is the perfect blend to ensure communication is smooth and you’re still getting a large piece of the pie.

If you create a course with 4 other instructors, you’ll only get 20% of the royalties and communication becomes more difficult as you add more people to the group. You can reach out to multiple instructors and partner with them for individual courses rather than all of you contributing to a single course together. With this set-up, you’ll be working on multiple training courses at the same time.

[Want to learn how to profit from your content? Enroll into the How To Make Money With Your Content training course to find out how]

Publish Your Courses On Multiple Platforms

Most of my courses get published on both Udemy and SkillShare. If you only publish your courses on one of those platforms, you are missing out on all of the potential revenue from the other platform. In my case, turning away from one of those platforms would have resulted in thousands of dollars in unrealized income because of narrow-mindedness. 

Publishing your courses across multiple platforms is one of the easiest way to boost your earnings. You’re taking the same exact content and distributing it across other platforms. If I publish a course on Teachable or through my own website, it’s exclusive to those platforms because those are different from platforms like Udemy and SkillShare where it’s hard to sell a training course for more than $10 (the most I currently charge for a training course off Udemy and SkillShare is $197).

Create A Training Course Series

The best product launches and TV shows are done in series. You enjoy the first part of the series so much that you absolutely need the second part of the series. You can create a similar effect with your training courses by creating courses that line up with each other.

People who want to learn how to use Facebook advertising to grow your business may also be interested in learning how they can grow a Facebook Group. These course ideas complement each other and can result in returning customers.

A large percentage of your customers will not buy any of your offers. It’s a small group of your customers who will buy the majority of the products and services you provide.

If you decide to create a training course series, map out different series before you create training courses. Each 3-part training course series can go a long way in boosting your sales. 

Create Free Content That Leads To Your Courses

Students will only buy your course if they trust you. Creating free content gives you the chance to demonstrate your expertise and show your audience you know the topic well. Almost no one will become a customer just from reading a single blog post or watching a single video. 

Some people will binge through your free content for years before deciding to buy anything from you. That’s why you have to keep showing up and producing as much free content as you can. It only takes 30 minutes to produce an 800-1,200 word blog post. If you can publish new content each day and use that content to promote your courses, you’ll put yourself in a solid position to boost your course sales.

Prioritize Email List Growth

Your email list is your most valuable asset. You have full control over your ability to communicate with this audience. While a social media algorithm change can dramatically affect the number of people your content reaches, you can reach all of your email subscribers by sending out an email.

Most instructors sell their courses through email rather than through social media and other platforms. For instructors, social media is best utilized to attract followers to your opt-in pages and offer a freebie in exchange for receiving emails from you moving forward. 

Every top instructors prioritizes email list growth, and you should too.

Those are the strategies you can use to sell more training courses. There are plenty of additional ways you can make money through your content.

How To Produce Daily Content With Ease

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Creating new content each day allows you to stay top of mind with your audience. It’s one of the best things you can do to grow your content brand. Not only do you stay top of mind in that moment, but daily content gives you plenty of assets you can promote for years to come.

The blog posts I’ve written years ago continued to get shared across my social networks to this day because they are evergreen content. 

But producing daily content isn’t seen as an easy adventure. It’s one that requires enough ideas and time to create said content. I’ve adopted a variety of content creation schedules over the years, but I’m always at my best when I’m producing daily content or something very close to that amount. 

Coming Up With The Ideas

To produce daily content, you need to come up with at least 7 new ideas each week. The way I see it, that means coming up with either 2 new ideas each day or 10 ideas each week. Having excess content ideas is an important part of the process because not all of your ideas will click in your mind upon a closer look.

Sometimes you’ll feel good about an idea only to then not feel it when it comes time to creating the content. This is why it’s important to come up with more ideas than you need. There are plenty of places you can go for ideas. A book’s table of contents, a YouTube channel, and podcast are some of the many places you can go for new content ideas. If you are looking for additional ways to come up with content ideas, consider these 30 ways to come up with more content ideas.

Creating The Content

Once you have the ideas in place, the next step is to flesh out the content. Before you start creating the content, come up with an outline. The outline acts as your guiding compass so you know the direction of your piece before you get to work. It’s the equivalent of wanting to share 3 steps to achieve a certain result and knowing what those 3 steps are before you start working on the content. 

The content won’t create itself even if you have the outline. Schedule a time each day to produce new content. I like to write blog posts in the morning, create videos in the afternoon, and interview podcast guests in the evening. Each of these activities takes me close to 30-45 minutes per day on average.

When you think in terms of writing 1,000 words per day rather than writing a blog post each day, it doesn’t sound as bad. Writing 1,000 words for most people will take just 30 minutes. As you write more content, you can write the same amount of words in a shorter amount of time.

Post Production Work

Part of publishing daily content is going through all of the post-production work. This includes editing, uploading your work, finding the right picture(s), optimizing your content, and hitting the publish button among other things.

I do the post-production work away from content creation so I’m able to fully focus on content creation when that’s what I’m supposed to do.

I don’t create a YouTube video and then immediately proceed to edit it, optimize it, create the thumbnail, and publish my work. I create multiple videos in one sitting and then walk away. I then pick a time later in the day to complete all of the post-production related tasks. 

You can make the post production work as detailed or minimal as you desire. I prefer to keep it to a minimum (i.e. no music in my podcast) so I can sustainably produce more content. 

The reason most people don’t produce daily content is because they don’t break down what type of work daily content entails. Most people can produce daily content on a single platform with less than an hour of effort per day. When you break down any goal, it instantly becomes easier to achieve.

Want to learn the secrets to content marketing that lead to more growth and revenue? Grab your copy of Content Marketing Secrets today.

7 Ways To Come Up With Content Ideas

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Content brands live and die based on your ability to come up with content ideas. The more ideas you come up with, the easier it is to create content uninterrupted. However, as we create more pieces of content, it becomes more difficult to think of additional content ideas.

Many content creators don’t want to talk about the same thing twice, and as they cover more ground, there are fewer unique topics left to cover. If you always have more than enough ideas, you’ll avoid the stress associated with a lack of content ideas and rushing content so you maintain consistent.

Once a week, you should pick a day to come up enough content ideas to cover an entire month. As you think about new content ideas, here are some resources you can seek out to fuel your idea generation.

#1: Listen To Podcasts

Not only can you learn a lot by listening to podcasts, but you can also come up with great content ideas. Any part of the conversation can spark a new idea, and in longer episodes, you’re bound to come across multiple content ideas.

Every part of the conversation has the potential to yield great content ideas. Whether the guest is sharing strategies or the host is sharing a personal story, each conversation presents the opportunity to come up with your next blog post, video, or episode.

#2: Read Books

The most successful authors tend to be voracious readers. Similar to a podcast episode, books provide an array of ideas and concepts. The great thing about a book is that you can look at the table of contents to get an idea of what will get covered. 

Sometimes, I’ll browse on Amazon and read through the table of contents rather than actually buy the book. This helps me come up with additional content ideas. If I like the table of contents, I’ll get the book through Kindle Unlimited and start reading through it.

Each page has a new content idea waiting to be discovered. If you think like a content creator rather than just as a reader, it will be easier for you to find those ideas. Don’t be afraid to underline or write in the book you’re reading so you can go back to the notes later.

As a bonus, if you’re browning for books on Amazon, read through the book reviews. You’ll get a better idea of what readers like and don’t like about the book, and these reviews can help you come up with better content ideas.

#3: Watch Videos

While this is similar to the other two strategies, video is the most engaging form of content. Furthermore, if you’re watching videos on a place like YouTube, you can read through the comments for additional ideas.

On some websites, the comments are actually better than the original content (I personally learn a lot from Seeking Alpha comments). Some people prefer to watch videos while others prefer reading content or listening to it. You can incorporate multiple content formats when coming up with ideas or choose the one that best works for you.

#4: Browse Through Quora

Quora is a site where people ask questions they want the answers to. While this sounds simplistic, the entire concept of this platform presents a gold mine for content creators. You can search “social media marketing” on Quora and see what questions people are currently asking about the topic. These questions can form the baseline for your next piece of content.

If you already have an audience, you can similarly ask them what they want you to create content about next. I use a combination of an open ended question and a poll to figure out what my audience wants.

Regardless of whether you have an audience or not, Quora is a great place to find potential content ideas because people asking questions on that platform are telling you exactly what they want.

#5: Look At Your Popular Pieces 

Coming up with content ideas isn’t just about writing a list of ideas. It’s about writing a list of ideas that have a shot at gaining traction and resonating with your audience.

Looking at your most successful pieces will help you come up with ideas that can have similar success. When I saw that my most popular YouTube videos were about investing, I decided to take the leap and create more investing videos on my channel.

That decision significantly accelerated the channel’s growth and I am excited to see what it will look like a year from now. The more content you produce, the better understanding you’ll have of which topics resonate with your audience the most.

#6: Write About Personal Experiences

When you include personal experiences in your writing, your potential content ideas greatly multiplies. Personal experiences also help you build a deeper relationship between you and your audience.

When someone shares a personal experience, it more deeply connects that person with the people who hear their story. Not all personal experiences are enjoyable to write about. This doesn’t mean writing a list of all of the traumatic experiences in your life and turning them all into blog posts.

You can most certainly some of those experiences and turn them into blog posts, but even a mundane day can hold exciting content ideas if you know where to look and how to present your ideas.

#7: Use The Socratic Questioning Method

You can get ideas from the previous content you published. View each piece of content you published (or are working on) as a beginner. What questions would you ask? What would you want to know about the topic if you were starting fresh?

Content creators often forget their audiences don’t know as much as them. It’s easy to believe that as you level up your knowledge, your audience has leveled up their knowledge at the same pace.

Just because you know something that you see as obvious doesn’t mean most people in your audience will see it in the same way. In my investing videos, I often talk about the P/S ratio because that’s a metric for growth investors to determine if a stock is overvalued or undervalued.

However, I say the entire word (price-to-sales ratio) rather than just saying P/S ratio because not everyone in my audience knows about that ratio. 

When you act like a beginner, you’ll find new content ideas. This goes well beyond just saying the entire word rather than an acronym. The more questions you ask, the more ideas you’ll end up with.

Why You Should Never Use Social Media Bots

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Social media bots are seen as an attractive strategy to artificially inflate your social media numbers. The logic goes that no one would take you seriously if you only had 10 followers, so why not buy 1,000 followers. You can buy your way to clout.

Many business owners know better than to buy followers, but what about social media bots? Why not let AI handle your social media growth instead of you putting in that work? You could then focus on other areas of your business. Here are some reasons you might want to hold back on using social media bots.

The Bots Will Affect Your Engagement Rates

If a social media bot helps you get more followers, but those followers don’t engage with your content, it will negatively affect your reach. Social networks thrive on attention. They’ll only put content in front of users if they believe it will get and keep their attention.

If you have 1,000 followers and average 100 likes per post, that’s a great engagement rate. However, if you have 10,000 followers but still get 100 likes per post, that’s not a good signal to the social networks you’re trying to grow on.

These types of bots can negatively impact your engagement rates and your ability to reach real people through your content. 

ROI Concerns

Let’s say you find a bot that helps you grow your audience and boost your engagement too. While this type of bot will puff up your follower and engagement numbers, the numbers that matter the most for your business are revenue and expenses.

If you aren’t making revenue from your social media marketing strategy or taking people to your website, then what’s the point? If you’re spending $20/mo on a bot that brings in $0/mo, then you’re losing money.

The most successful social media strategies revolve around connections and relationship building. You don’t need to get thousands of likes for everything you post to thrive on social media. You just need enough followers who appreciate your content and are willing to pay for your products and services.

Perceived Relevance VS Actual Relevance

It’s no secret that influencers want higher numbers. Some are willing to juice their numbers via buying followers or enlisting the help of a social media bot. This is the wrong focus. Rather than build up a perceived relevance, build up actual relevance.

Actual relevance takes more work and time to build, but it is far more rewarding. I’m all for finding shortcuts and achieving success sooner, but if a solution promises to take away all of the work, it’s a red flag.

It’s not about how many people follow you or engage with your content. It’s about how many people actually care about your work.

E633: Dissecting A Successful Book Launch With Wendy Silveira

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Wendy Silveira is an avid gardener and amateur horticulturalist. She has been a contributor to a leading South African gardening magazine. Her recent book Container and Raised Bed Gardening for Beginners and Beyond is A Guide to Growing your own Vegetables, Herbs, Fruit and Cut Flowers.

 

Here are the key links from the episode:

Get your copy of Wendy’s book Container And Raised Gardening For Beginners And Beyond

Wendy’s Garden Store

E345: Becoming A Bestselling Author Is The Key To Becoming A Highly Paid Authority In Your Space With Michelle Kulp

 

Marc’s Links

5 Day Podcast Launch Mini Course

From $0 To $100K+ With Content Marketing

Schedule a free strategy call

 

Why I Don’t Care About Blog Post Length

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I’ve written about this topic several times. Most bloggers aim for a perfect blog post length. They believe that writing a certain number of words will help them gain more traction. Many experts peg it at 2,000+ words for a blog post to rank well on search engines.

It’s with this mentality where it’s easy to craft long blog posts thinking that’s what it takes to become successful. However, this frame of thinking prevents bloggers from looking at the bigger picture.

If you want to turn your blog into a business, you must treat it like a business. Each blog post you produce is an asset. They all take up your time and some of them require an investment too (you might hire someone to write the blog post or use a paid tool like Canva Pro for your pictures).

Some blog posts will provide higher returns than others, but the amount of time and money you put into each blog post determines your ROI.

Not every blog post is a winner. In fact, most of them fall flat. 90% of your blog traffic is going to come from 10% of your blog posts. You’ll get a spike in traffic if you promote it when it comes out, but most blog posts die out soon after.

The goal of each blog post is to build trust with your existing audience and reach new people in the process. If you can achieve the same goal with a 500 word blog post as you would with a 2,000 word blog post, why write the extra 1,500 words when you could end up with 4 blog posts instead?

If the next blog post you publish doesn’t do well, it would feel better if it were a 1,000 word blog post rather than a 5,000 word blog post with detailed research.

The blog is just one step in the relationship. You need enough time to cater to your readers while developing the other stages of the relationship building process that eventually result in sales and revenue.

If you can fulfill the promise of your blog post in 300 concise words rather than 1,000 words of filler, why write the extra 700 words? You already accomplished your mission.

Most of my blog posts are around 1,000 words but I don’t follow that rule for everything I write. The length of your blog posts isn’t the important part. The frequency of your blog posts and the value you provide are the two key areas that matter. The more you show up, the more people will come back to your blog again and again.