Have you ever wanted to create a course to teach others about a topic you are knowledgeable about but aren’t sure where to start or even whether it would be worth your time and effort?
Creating a course is a fantastic business model but you need to evaluate the niche/topic/subject first to ensure that your efforts would be profitable! After all, you are in business to make money, right?
And the truth is, there are few other opportunities quite as profitable as creating an online course on a hot topic.
People crave knowledge, and they’re willing to pay for it.
Think about just how many tutorials you’ve read or watched over the last year.
How many times have you searched YouTube for video tutorials on different topics?
How many books or reports have you read in the hopes of learning a new skill or empowering yourself?
Course creators and instructors put themselves in a very powerful position.
And think about just how powerful THAT can be.
So for today, I want you to think about the different courses you could create for your market.
Begin by digging deep into your niche or industry so you’re able to identify hot topics that people are interested in learning more about.
If you aren’t sure where to start, begin where courses are already proven to sell!
Udemy.com, Teachable.com and SkillShare.com are all fantastic places to begin your research.
Pay attention to the number of students enrolled in each course as it’s a clear indicator as to the overall popularity of the topic.
This could be a great entry point for your own course, and help you stand out from the crowd.
And finally, browse through the course outlines. These trainers have given you everything you need to come up with a solid outline for your own course!
The summaries and course descriptions can give you an unlimited number of ideas for your own modules as well as help you shape the foundation for your content.
When it comes to creating outstanding courses that attract attention and outsell the competition, you’ll want to make sure to pay attention to 3 main things:
Don’t stick with just one main format!
So obviously the more content formats you offer to students, the easier it will be to provide everyone with the type of training they’re most interested in.
A lot of course creators overlook the power of a killer title. In reality, your course title can help make or break the success of your course.
Don’t be afraid to play around with different titles.
The same goes for the description and summary of your course. You want to give people enough information to get them excited so they sign up, but you don’t want to bog them down with TOO much information.
Look to strike a healthy balance of giving them the details they need while using summary titles that provide a sense of mystery and intrigue.
Don’t underprice your course trying to compete with existing programs. Instead, consider how many people equate a higher price with a superior product.
You can always lower it later on, but it is definitely worth testing at a higher price point.
One of the things that can drive in sales and help you stand out in the market is being able to get those review numbers up.
You’ve likely experienced the different a ton of reviews can make yourself when you’re considering what products or services to buy.
It removes buyers concerns by reassuring them that their decision to purchase will be one they won’t regret.
So, how can you bump up the number of reviews you have so your course stands out?
Ask for them!
The key is to prompt your students to leave reviews throughout the learning process rather than just at the end.
That way they’re reminded several times without being bombarded. If you only ask them to leave a review once, at the end of the training, you may never have the opportunity to ask them again.
You want your reviews to demonstrate the quality of your course and how useful your information is.
So, place your review requests at key points during the training after your student’s have completed a goal.
If you really want to ramp up reviews, consider offering something extra to those who leave them.
Here are a couple of easy ways to do that:
This is a common strategy used by course instructors who don’t yet have a large following.
You could also try YouTube too; why not do a video of an overview of the course and encourage your viewers to sign up for a free review copy in return for honest feedback?
You can increase the value of your course to those who take the time to leave reviews by offering additional content or modules in exchange for their time.
Can you think of other ways to encourage your students to leave reviews? Leave a comment and let me know!
If you want to know more about creating a profitable online course, check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊
It’s safe to say that we all want more success in our lives, and that success may take many different forms.
Whatever you are striving for, hopefully this post will help on the way to achieving it.
Want to give your mind a kick up the backside and put it into 5th gear? Well, these ten tips will help you shift your paradigm into a success mindset.
Here goes…
Don’t view failure as a crushing defeat but rather as a chance to learn and to come back stronger!
Fail forward and fail fast; don’t dwell on your past mistakes as these don’t define your future.
Likewise, try to view problems as challenges to be overcome. This will just make your victory all the sweeter.
Remember that nobody grows in their comfort zone; you must be pushed to grow and this is the type of opportunity that obstacles will give you.
When trying to choose between two things that you really want, the best answer is always to find a way that you can make them both happen.
Don’t try to multitask and tackle multiple goals as this is a recipe for failure; multitasking is a myth and NOT for the success minded person.
Too many of us have one set view of what success looks like and we struggle to see it in any other way.
Like I said in the beginning, what you want for success can vary wildly and will probably change during various stages of your life so don’t be constrained by other people’s idea of success.
Determine what you want to achieve ad really go for it.
Investing in yourself is the most important way to start achieving more.
If you are buying training to learn a new skill and you put your new skills into action, then what initially looked like an expense has turned into an investment and should more than pay for itself in the long run.
Acting like you’ve already won is the best way to empower yourself to be stronger and more successful.
When you do this, you give off an aura of success that makes others gravitate to you!
Always have your eye on the end goal but don’t forget to enjoy the journey too!
This can be tough, but you really need to do this.
By doing this, you can focus your efforts on what you do best. If you need help in another area to reach your goals, consider outsourcing to experts in that area so it won’t hold you back.
Avoid the people in your life who are constantly telling you what you can’t do, who are making you feel bad about your dreams.
This can be especially difficult if the people concerned are close family or friends.
As you start to achieve success people will become jealous of you and try to pull you back down to their level because you are exposing their flaws, and this makes them uncomfortable.
Find people who encourage you and celebrate your success with you.
Likewise, surround yourself with positive people and surround yourself with people who share your vision and can help it grow!
You can also find online forums of likeminded people who are all there for the same reason and will all help to support and encourage each other; don’t underestimate the online community.
The simplest way to be successful in life, is to put more effort it. That means being willing to get up earlier, to work harder and to work smarter toward that goal.
But this shouldn’t feel like work. Why? Because it should be something that you absolutely love.
So, there are ten tips to help you to increase your success mindset.
Another tool you can use to increase your chances of success is to adopt habits of other successful people…
What do positive people have in common? Lots of things. And in fact, if you look at the most successful people across every different discipline, you’ll often find that they have more in common than they have differences.
And when we recognize these habits, we can often break them down and work backward to discover some of the most important traits and habits we need to adopt in order to join them. Here are some of those positive habits…
On his podcast, author Tim Ferriss interviews some of the most successful people in the world ranging from actors, to singers, to athletes to programmers.
What does this tell us? It tells us that the successful mindset involves being willing to work on yourself and get better. When you do that, you have no limitations and you can keep on getting stronger and better!
Another thing that you’ll find without exception when speaking with successful people is that they have one singular passion that they follow in every single aspect of their lives.
It makes sense too – because when we have a real passion, it gives us the drive, focus and determination to work harder and smarter than everyone else.
Something else that all of the most successful people in the world share is the willingness to break the mold – to walk the path less trodden.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was certainly unique for deciding he wanted to become a bodybuilder (he came from a small village in Austria). He certainly raised eyebrows when he moved to America. But he had the courage to know what he wanted and to go after it – even if it was a bit unusual.
Don’t be afraid to be you and to go the way you want to go. Rules are there to be broken – that’s why they’re called breakthroughs!
As you can see, having a strong mindset is critical to any attempt to achieve success in anything in life, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset that compliments this post perfectly. Download, it read and take action 😊
One of the ways a business builds its brand is to tug at the emotions of their audience.
The way a customer and client work together and communicate can build long-lasting, meaningful relationships that turn clients into fans, and fans into clients.
You can actually set out to build these relationships by using emotional marketing techniques.
The more research you do into the needs and desires of your target audience, the more your audience will be able to tell that you’re interested in them.
When you discover something about your audience, let them know through your content and your actions.
So many times business owners have sales and special events to get new clients.
Do something special for your existing client base or fan base that shows them that you care about them. Give them a discount, or a special freebie, or something else that attaches them to you in a special way.
One way to endear yourself to your audience is to always be transparent and honest.
Doing so will endear you to your audience and make you appear so much more trustworthy to them.
While you do things to help promote your business, it’s important to keep your morals and remember that people are more important than numbers.
The more people trust you, the more they’ll buy from you.
No one wants to feel as if they’re communicating with a robot or someone who is not real.
Your humanness will shine through when you add some humor and fun to posts, emails, and even sales pages.
Your customers expect to get an answer when they have a problem, and they expect it to be quickly.
Explain to your audience at each method how long they can expect to wait for a response. Then follow up and do what you said you’d do.
Find ways to engage with your audience. Ask for their advice or ideas when it comes to a new product or service you’re going to launch.
Your audience can also be your best source of word-of-mouth marketing.
Also, it’s important to try to get an understanding of how people communicate within their environment.
Communication online in chat, instant message, Twitter, or a blog, is far different from communicating on the telephone or in person.
Building customer relationships that last is part of the goal of emotional marketing. When you’ve formed an attachment with the consumer, they will stick with you for years – through price increases, trials and tribulations, and more. You can’t go wrong with building relationships.
And talking of relationships, do you network with other marketers to try to grow your influence and reach?
If you do, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this and if you get it wrong it can seriously hamper your growth so, just like your customer relationships, it’s important to build a network that lasts, so let’s look at the most common networking mistakes and how to avoid them.
When it comes to networking, you always want to make sure you do it right so you can grow your business. However, knowing what to do is one thing; knowing what not to do is something else entirely.
Here are some common networking mistakes and how you can avoid making them in the future.
Many people have a hard time asking other for help. Networking is all about making connections, though. People don’t know what you need unless you ask them.
The more people you have getting the word out about you, the better, so don’t be afraid to ask for help.
It’s very easy to fall out of touch with people. Maintaining contact with your current network and all of the people in it is going to help you grow.
Keep them up to date on you as well. Remember, don’t make it all about you; you will want them to know what you’re up to while also finding out what they’ve been up to.
We live in a day and time where networking is really everything we do every single day.
Start using LinkedIn to make professional connections. This isn’t the only social media platform you should be using, but it’s a great place to start and a way to get your name out there.
Yes, we are in a day and time where social media is super-important to networking, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop meeting people in person.
If your online connection is not local to you, then use a multitude of different technologies like Skype which are at your fingertips, to make the world a much smaller place and meet up with people on the other side of it.
Gratitude goes a long way. When someone helps you in whatever way, being grateful will go a long way.
It’s a small thing, but letting people know they are appreciated will go a long way and encourage them to want to speak with you again.
When someone helps you out and makes a positive connection for you, then you have to be sure that you give back in some way.
You especially can’t keep going back and asking for help without giving back in return.
All this networking and customer relationship building can leave you exhausted and you need to ensure you have enough energy. Click on the featured resource below to help you with that and grab a free report, How To Energize Your Life; download, read it and take action 🙂
This post is a continuation of looking into the common elements present in highly converting sales copy (you can see the first post here). In it we looked at the headline, storyline, sub-headlines, testimonials, and statistics to increase confidence.
Now lets’s continue and firstly let’s look at using media such as video and images.
Sticking to text alone in your sales copy will be a big turn off for most prospective customers. Big, long blocks of text look boring and overwhelming. People have short attention spans now, so you need to break that text up with images and videos.
You can use stock photo sites like iStockPhoto or DepositPhotos to break up the text. If you want to use free stock photo sites you can check out Pixabay, Pexels or Unsplash, but if you can afford to pay for your images ,they will be better and more unique.
For example, if you’re in a section where the sub-headline and storyline are discussion frustration for diet failures, you might want to use an image of a man or woman feeling frustrated in front of a plate of food or on a weight scale.
With video, keep it short if you’re using it to break up the text sales copy. You don’t want to have five 20-minute videos on the page. Just keep it under 3 minutes each. Sometimes, it might require more, such as if it’s a demo of a software.
Don’t have the videos auto-play. Some marketers do prefer this, but most consumers don’t. If they have their volume up and they’re at work or somewhere quiet, and suddenly your sales page starts blaring, they’ll leave quickly.
When you host your video, make sure you eliminate as many click out options as possible. For example, if you host on Vimeo, it automatically defaults to make the Vimeo logo clickable, your name, the title of the video, and more clickable – all taking your customer away from the sales copy.
Bullet points are a blessing to most consumers who are short on time and who want to just get a quick rundown of what your product can do for them. The benefits are what many marketers focus on with their bullet points.
But you can also include pain points as bullet points. For example, you might have a sentence that says, “Wouldn’t you love to…” and then have bullet points addressing their pain points – stop having to shop in plus sized stores, avoid the shame and embarrassment of swimsuit season, etc.
Another way to strategically use bullet points is to have a rundown of what all is included in your product. You can say, “In this bundle, you’ll get…” and then go into detail about what all is included, such as – a 38-page PDF guide, 10 checklists, 5 videos you can refer to whenever you need them, and so on.
A guarantee can be both an image and text explanation. You can get stock photos that say “Money Back Guarantee 100%” or instead of 100%, they may say 7 days, 30 days, 90 days and so on.
You can use bold text and a note that simply explains your guarantee (or lack thereof if you decide not to offer one). The main thing you need to do is remember which guarantee you chose and abide by it.
Don’t offer a 60-day no questions asked guarantee if you’re going to harass your customer about why they want a refund and then refuse to give it to them. When you do this, word gets around and it could even put your accounts on various platforms at risk.
Authentic urgency is lacking in the online marketing industry. Too many unethical sellers use false urgency to try to get a sale. Instead, create real urgency and scarcity because in future launches, people will know not to wait.
Never expect people to automatically know to click the buy button, download now, and get started. You have to state it and guide the customer through every step along the way.
With buy buttons, you have the option to use a button that a platform provides for you – like PayPal, Warrior Plus or JVZoo. But you can also download and use a button of your choosing.
For example, on JVZoo, there’s a button option that says 100% satisfaction guaranteed, so it would need to match what you want to stand behind.
If you want to have a bit more freedom, you can use a payment processor such as Thrivecart and this is probably more advantageous in the long run.
As far as placement, some people only put one buy button at the very bottom of the page, while others place them throughout the sales copy. You may want to have it at the bottom with a countdown timer right above it, showing when the launch pricing or sale ends.
Somewhere at the bottom, make sure you have a digital signature along with your image. People like to know who they’re buying from. You can either upload your real signature or create one from a variety of fonts online.
A good way to craft them is to use the first P.S. to restate the main benefits and what’s included. Use the second P.S. to reiterate the sense of urgency and what happens if they miss out on this great deal.
OK, so there you have the most common elements in highly converting sales copy. Add these to your sales pages and you should see immediate results!
And remember, if you want to have great results writing highly converting copy, you need to understand that this is difficult for many people as there are so many mistakes that can have a dramatic effect on conversions.
To help you avoid these mistakes, take a look at the featured resource below where you can download a copy of a free report, Copywriting Blunders, so you will be forewarned. Download, read it and take action 😊
When you’re new to writing sales copy, it can feel a bit daunting trying to remember what all needs to go on the page to convert a visitor into a buyer. But once you learn the fundamental elements that help inform and sway your audience, you’ll be able to utilize them repeatedly to grow your business.
The great thing is, you get to decide, based on what you’ve seen in the marketplace and what you feel comfortable with, what to put in your own copy. You can even split test the page to see what works best – one headline versus another or three testimonials versus zero, for example.
When you’re working with your primary (larger) headlines, you’ll often see certain strategies being implemented in niche marketing. For example, one common starter headline used to be “Who else wants to…?”
Another thing you can do is ask a question or discuss the biggest benefit or pain point that a person viewing your page might have. You can find books on Amazon and elsewhere that do nothing but teach you the strategy of writing persuasive headlines, and many will have built in swipes for you to use when tailoring them to your own niche.
You can also find free swipe files online that you can tweak.
After your major headline(s), you’ll typically have your main storyline. This is where you introduce the slant and tone of your sales letter. You might be all hype talking about money or pounds lost.
You might have the demeanor of a drill sergeant or that of a coddling, kumbaya leader. This is where the prospective customer will gain some insight about what kind of product (and person) they’re about to encounter.
With storyline, you’re making that connection that builds trust between you and the consumer. You’re letting them know you understand their problem and that you have enough empathy to help them through it.
While your main headline will discuss the biggest issue, like earning money or losing weight, your sub-headlines can dig down into some of the other aspects of their pain points.
Think about the benefits, for example. Earning more money does many things – gives them peace of mind, helps them live the life they want with vacations, cars, homes, etc. It allows them to be their own boss.
When you have sub-headlines talking about different things, the consumer can scroll past items they don’t care about and find the ones they do. It may also give them insight into things they hadn’t considered yet.
Make sure that in your sub-headlines, you’re giving everything away. You want it to plant a seed or an idea in their minds of what they’ll gain by buying your product. Some marketers go too far and say too much in their copy.
Testimonials are not necessary to your sales copy, but real ones probably do help to convince buyers that you and your products are legitimate and worthy of consideration. If you don’t have any natural testimonials, you can solicit them.
If possible, ask them to provide a video testimonial, because those are always more effective. Don’t use phony stock photos and make up testimonials. This almost always gets found out and then you ruin your reputation because customers won’t trust you anymore.
Statistics and numbers can be very convincing when it comes to strengthening your sales copy. It verifies your information and advice from outside sources and supports your recommendations.
For example, you might find a statistic that says 8 out of 10 people succeed with one diet while only 4 out of 10 succeed long-term with another. That’s a fact that would give the consumer more certainty that they’re choosing the right one.
Failure statistics are also effective. If you can say that 70% of people fail when they do something, it’s a warning to readers that they need to avoid that and do something else (whatever it is you’re recommending).
One statistic you can look up is the number of sufferers or people in the same boat as someone else. For example, over 300 million people worldwide have diabetes. Talk about if the problem is growing or if it’s getting under control.
We’ll continue this in part 2, but in the meantime if you want to have great results writing highly converting copy , you need to understand that this is difficult for many people as there are so many mistakes that can have a dramatic effect on conversions.
To help you avoid these mistakes, take a look at the featured resource below where you can download a copy of a free report, Copywriting Blunders, so you will be forewarned. Download, read it and take action 😊
