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Almost everyone I talk to who is moving to selling a skill online, gets hung up on the technology.
They're going round and round the same circle.
"I need to choose teh right technology so I don't get overwhelmed as I grow."
But:
"I'm not sure if this is going to work, so I don't want to take on expensive subscriptions in case I only make a few sales and I'm stuck paying more than I'm earning."
Here's what I've discovered from working with several people who made the leap to selling millions in online courses.
They all had to unpick something to grow, and most of them went too complex, too soon.
Let's stop and take a look at the customer journey of someone buying a course:
1) They see an ad or a social post.
No tech needed, just an account on your chosen platform
2) They click on the post or your profile and arrive on a landing page for something free.
This will be part of your newsletter tool
3) They sign up and get a PDF, or a video.
Both of these are free. Make PDF's with Google docs, or if you're using a video, host it "unlisted" un YouTube.
4) You send some emails promoting your first paid product
This will be part of your newsletter tool
5) They click and arrive on a sales page
Here's where we get to our course platform
6) They pay for the content
Again, part of the course platform
7) They watch or read your content
Again, part of the course platform
8) Optional - you add them to a community for support
You can easily do this on a few social platforms, maybe the one they came from.
That's it.
1. A social platform to publish content and build a community
2. An email tool to gather email addresses and send email messages in bulk
3. A course platform for your first content.
Here's what I'm using to build Selling Skills:
1) A few different platforms for posting content. Mostly Twitter, LinkedIn and Medium because they're text-based and I'm better at writing than video.
2) ConvertKit for the email platform.
I fought this for ages. I'm an email guy and I build some really fancy automations for clients who are getting towards the 7 figure mark, but I wasn't following my own advice. I made it too hard to get started and spent time building systems when I should have been creating content.
Convertkit gives me a load of free tools:
This whole site is built on Convertkit's free plan. It has
- An ok looking homepage
- My own domain name, so if I move things later I won't lose my brand
- Blog posts with email signups
- Landing pages for specific lead magnets
- A payment page
- Email broadcasts
- A basic automation (that I can extend with the paid plan later)
I get 1,000 free contacts which is plenty to see if this is a niche that can make me some money
3) Gumroad for course sales
Again, I fought this for too long. There's a lot I can dislike about Gumroad, but here's the bottom line.
I can host video courses and only pay when I make a sale.
I can host FREE video courses as lead magnets.
It's dead simple for people to sign up, and on Twitter in particular it's very familiar.
4) The last piece of the jigsaw is the community.
It's not essential, but it can make a big difference to people's experience of the course content.
Just use Facebook when you get started. Yes I know it's. getting harder to reach your audience there, but that's why you build an email list BEFORE you send them to the community.
I know some people don't like mixing business and social media, but those aren't my people. They're the ones who confuse "professional" with "formal" and write "this isn't facebook" when you put a personal moment on LinkedIn
They're the ones who never get started.
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