- Hey everybody.
This is Roberto Blake of RobertoBlake.com,
helping you create something awesome today
with my friend Cielo.
- Hey there.
- Yeah, so, we have something interesting for you today,
we're gonna be talking about selling online courses
with Teachable, it's another great way to monetize,
it's a great source of passive income,
something I've talked about here on this channel
a couple of times, and Teachable is one of the best
online course platforms that you can develop,
it also is great for actually just selling information parks
in general, and so you've actually recently developed
your first Teachable course and it's around something
that's near and dear to my heart,
it's around photography and videography.
- [Cielo] Yes.
- But it's also about doing it with just your smartphone.
- Yes.
- Something I've been talking about a lot more.
- Yes, you have.
I really believe in it, so, why don't you tell
everybody just a little bit about your background,
how you got started, and then let's get into some questions
about how to start and launch an online course
with Teachable.
- Sure.
So, I got started with smartphone photography, actually,
when the iPhone 6 first came out.
I was prolific.
I loved the phone, I loved the tool,
and what happened was Apple actually found
some of my work online and so, I became part of
the shot on iPhone ad campaign for Apple,
so, I had photos and videos as well
that were included in the campaign.
- [Roberto] Nice.
I actually remember that campaign.
- Yeah, it's still going on,
so it's a really great campaign.
So, what happened was I just became known
for using the iPhone for photos and videos
and I really got into creating videos
with just the iPhone and with the technology now,
I feel like it's really come a long way
and more and more people like you are recommending it
to use it for if you're just getting started with video
and so, I decided to create a course,
teaching exactly how to do that.
- Do you feel like, coming from a background of photography
and video, that you're more limited by using a smartphone
like the iPhone?
Or do you feel like you have just as much creative freedom?
- Honestly, with the phones that we have now
and with the new phones that are coming out,
I think there is less and less of a limitation now.
The only thing that I say that the phones cannot do
just yet is that really nice bokeh blur background
but now you actually--
- The newest phones are getting that.
- The newest phones are totally getting that
but with video, it's still not quite there yet
but otherwise, I think you can do so much more
with your phone and almost just as much
as you can with your DSLR and even more, I'd have to say,
'cause you can actually edit on your phone.
- That's true. - And not on your DSLR.
- That's true and there are a lot of great mobile apps
for editing.
We talked about one of my favorite simple ones being
Premiere Clip but you actually brought up something
that I've been hearing a lot more about, LumaFusion.
- Yes, LumaFusion is great.
It is the pros editing tool for the iPhone
and it's a little bit pricey but you can seriously do
some serious editing using LumaFusion.
- Well, you know that I'm a big fan of serious editing,
so that's definitely what I like to hear.
So, now we're gonna get into a little bit about
what you guys need to know about selling online courses
and, in this case, we're gonna be talking about
the context of Teachable but you could probably apply this
to any online course platform that you wanna use
or if you're using your own website, but like,
why don't you tell us what made you,
out of all the options out there,
there are things like Kajabi
and there are things like Think Get Fit
and I'm getting ready to actually use all of these platforms
for one thing or another, what made you specifically
pick Teachable?
'Cause I know you had to have looked at the other platforms.
- I did look at the other platforms
but I would have to say, I personally experienced
Teachable from a student's perspective first
whereas the other ones I did not experience it
from a student's perspective, so,
maybe that's why I was biased.
- So, what you mean is that you actually took a course?
- That was taught on the Teachable platform.
- Which course did you end up taking?
- I took a course that was for how to make online courses
which is, it was so meta.
- No, that's practical.
That's very practical.
- Yes.
Yeah, and it was a really easy course
and I found it was very easy to go through each
of the modules and when I started looking at
the different platforms, I really liked the fact
that I could try out Teachable for free
and put my course, my whole course, on there for free
and not have to pay anything.
- So you were able to outline your entire course,
your lesson plan, build and develop everything free
and was it a trial period or was it free until you
just decided that you're gonna upgrade?
- Yes, it was free until I decided to upgrade
and the upgrade allowed me to have things such as
giving out coupons for students who enrolled early
and for me to do a lot more with my email list
and connecting to a lot of other third party platforms.
- So, as someone who's never built an online course
and it being new for you, Teachable was really practical
'cause you didn't have to take any upfront risk.
- Correct.
- You could build everything out,
you could get a feel for it.
- Yes. - And then you could actually
start selling and making money before going up
to the next tier so you could justify it.
So, for an absolute beginner, if you're nervous about it,
then Teachable is really a good platform to start
if you've never marketed or sold anything before?
- Yes.
- And that's kind of the background you were coming from?
- Correct.
- Okay. - Yes.
- That's super interesting.
Besides the free option and the minimal risk,
what were some other unique features
that you saw in Teachable that you didn't see
in the other platforms?
- I honestly liked the community that was around Teachable,
I felt like there was a lot of support
and, to be honest with you,
I knew other people that were using Teachable
and so, we tend to use what other people recommend to us.
- Well, I know that Pat Flynn and Seth Godin,
two mentors of mine from afar, use Teachable
as the platform that they sell their online courses from
and who were some mentors that you were seeing
that encouraged you to use the platform?
- Well, one that I'm a really big fan of, Mariah Coz,
so, she's great and I felt like she knew exactly
what she was talking about and she knew--
- For those of you who are not familiar,
tell us a little bit about Mariah.
- So, Mariah Coz, oh, she's a great marketer, entrepreneur,
she has, her website's called Femtrepreneur.co,
so definitely check that out.
I learned a lot from her in terms of how to use Squarespace,
marketing, how to build up your list,
and so, she's just a really great mentor.
- What did you end up using,
you've brought up list building and your email list
a couple of times, what platform did you end up using
to build your email list?
- That's a good question. - 'Cause I think one of the
things that people need to understand is that
when you're getting ready to sell an online course,
one of the ways you get traction if you don't have
a big social media following, in your case,
you have about 3,000 Instagram followers,
600 YouTube subscribers, and you have some people
in Twitter as well, but it's not like a huge group of people
but I've always said that, I've learned this from,
I believe the founder of ConvertKit, if I'm not mistaken,
- That's so funny.
- That there's such thing as a minimal bible audience,
even 2,000 people is more than enough
and if you have the right price point,
converting even 10% of them is a six or seven
figure business, so, when it came time to build
your email list, what were the challenges there
and what platform did you go with?
- So, I actually started out on MailChimp
and I think a lot of people start with MailChimp
because it is free.
- Gary B. Still uses MailChimp.
- Yeah.
So, I was using the free version.
I decided to actually go and use ConvertKit
because I felt limited by MailChimp
with some of the things that I wanted to do with my list,
such as create--
- Lead magnets. - Lead magnets is a big one.
So, I have a lot lead magnets on my blog
and then also, being able to easily create sequences,
I mean, so if you sign up from my list,
then you get a sequence of emails from me.
So, I thought, it was really easy to create that
on ConvertKit.
- Now, actually, I have two affiliate links,
I have one for MailChimp, if you wanted to start there,
even if you wanna start with the free
because that does make it acceptable.
- Yes, definitely. - And then added all
of their automation tools to that but I will say that
what I did, even though you guys know,
if you're in the Create Awesome community newsletter,
that I started with MailChimp but I've been moving slowly,
completely over to ConvertKit,
I actually think I'm gonna hold onto some things
in MailChimp, possibly even keep the primary stuff
even for the newsletter, for the people already on there,
and just duplicate until I'm fully comfortable
to get them over but for lead magnets, for everything
that I'm developing now, I've been moving completely
over to ConvertKit and for my free email sequence courses.
- Nice. - I've been moving over
to ConvertKit for all the reasons that you said,
so, that's super practical, so, I'm gonna link
to both of those, MailChimp and ConvertKit,
pick whatever one you think is best
for where you're at right now.
There are limitations with MailChimp,
it's a good place to start.
- It's a great place to start.
- When you're ready, I think it's time to move over
to ConvertKit and the best thing about ConvertKit for me
is it stops the duplication of email addresses
which means you're not paying over and over
'cause like when you decide to go into the paid MailChimp,
you'll end up paying more in the long run.
- Yes, that's the one thing I really love about it,
actually, you don't get those duplicates.
- Exactly.
So, no, that was very practical.
So, tell us some of the things that we need to know
before we start putting together our online course,
what does that look like?
- That is a good question.
I think you have to really plan it out.
You really have to plan out your outline.
Even before you get onto any kind of platform,
it's best to do your outline.
Create your modules, really outline in each module
what are you going to talk about
and to figure out the media that you want to use
for those modules.
So, for me, I decided to have video,
my whole class is video but other people have,
it's just a written course, do you read it
and then there are links out to different resources.
- Now, are yours with you on camera
or are they slide presentations?
'Cause I've seen a lot of people who do online courses
as slide presentations.
- Right, right.
So, mine are just me on camera.
- Okay.
That's more my style.
I have both coming up in my courses on personal branding
and then my YouTube development course
but you have to do what's comfortable for you.
For me, what I found is that I'm, obviously,
very comfortable on camera, not everyone might be,
and then from an editing and practicality standpoint,
it might be easier to use slides and people are fine
with that too and sometimes it helps for them to see
a visual diagram or see a list of things, so,
you know, don't be overly concerned
about whether or not you have to be on camera
and able to make an online course.
If you feel you're good at teaching something,
maybe you're a podcaster or maybe you're more comfortable
with audio and then you just put slides over it.
So, you know.
- Yeah and I say feel free to mix it up
'cause you can do that, definitely on Teachable
you can have one module be video,
another module be slides if you want,
so you can really get creative with it.
- Yep.
So, one of the things you mentioned after the outlining
and that process, you talked about the email sequences,
you talked about your list, what did you do initially
to market your online course or are you at that stage yet?
- I'm at that stage right now.
So, well, before releasing the course,
I did try to build up my list and the way you do that
is you reach out to other bloggers
and you try to get featured, you reach out to publications
and have them talk about your course
and then once, if you feel like you've done enough of that,
I'm actually going into starting to figure out ads,
advertising on Facebook and on--
- Instagram. - Instagram, yeah,
like you recommended.
So, I'm going into that phase of it right now.
- Eventually you might even want to look at
YouTube advertising, that's something
I'm starting to talk a lot about more.
The AdWords for video product is actually really good
at a cost-per-view standpoint.
- Huh, okay. - It could be as little
as a penny per view to up to three to five cents per view
and for something if you're targeting right,
especially since you can target by topic
in YouTube ads, you can target my age, location,
language, all of these things, it makes real practical sense
and it can be cheap to throw $100 dollars, $150 dollars
for the month at that and get some real traction
and that audience is also very likely to convert
but I would say that between Facebook, Instagram,
and YouTube, that that's strong for a marketing mix
even if your budget is only like $500 dollars.
If you do advertising in the first month to get some sales
and then I would say take those initial sales
and dump that back into a little bit more advertising
- More market, right.
- and once you figure out how to get the cost
per sale down, or cost per acquisition, so.
- Yeah, that's really good
and that's where I am right now,
trying to figure that out,
I'll definitely check out YouTube.
- Yeah, absolutely.
So, with selling your online courses,
for the people that you've already sold to,
has the feedback been positive?
- Yes.
Yes, definitely.
I have taught this class before on a smaller scale,
so I already knew that it was going to do well,
so I kind of vetted out the class
but yeah, I've had people asking,
when's your next course?
- How did you know and how did you qualify
that you had a course that people were willing to buy?
- That is a great question because I felt like
this is something that people always ask me about in person
'cause I personally create videos on my smartphone
and people are like, how did you do that?
Could you tell me?
What app?
Just to, like, you know,
things that people ask you then think, oh, maybe I should
put something together, try and answer
all of these questions.
- Right.
I think one of the challenges
for creating an online course
is figuring out how long everything is going to take.
A lot of people don't want to over commit
and make a huge investment of time and money.
How long did it really take you
to put together your online course?
- So, I would say the filming and the editing part
because I did do a video course, it took me about 20 hours
to get that all done but then I did it all myself.
- And that was for two hours of content?
- For two hours of content, yes.
- So, in general, I've heard things like that
and I think the rule of thumb is for every hour of content
that's gonna be, it's gonna take 10 hours of production
and editing behind that and I think that you prove that out,
so just kind of keep that in mind and that's why
initially doing a smaller course and keeping it short
is very practical.
- Yeah, definitely.
I think if it's your first time,
I wouldn't overwhelm myself with--
- Especially doing it by yourself.
- Especially doing it by yourself,
a five hour course.
I mean, that's 50 hours of work right there.
So, two hours was a really good amount.
- Yeah, two to four hours, I think,
is very practical because then doing your course
is like a regular workweek, so, there's that.
How long did it take you to put together
the outline for your course?
- For me, 'cause I already knew a lot of the content,
it was something that I have been asked about a lot,
so it took me about half a day, I would say,
to just sit down and really outline what I wanted to say.
- Okay.
No, that makes sense.
And so, you did all video.
If you were going to add some written material a little bit
to that, how much longer would that have taken?
- I would say after putting in videos,
I would say another half a day or maybe two thirds of a day,
so, total--
- So, really not that long at all.
- No, not that long at all but I think
the reason why it was, I think, for me,
so quick to put it all together was something
that I have already been asked about,
I already knew the questions,
I already knew what people wanted to know,
so it made it a little bit easier.
- No, that makes perfect sense
and so, how long to put it together on Teachable?
- Teachable was really easy, actually,
and it didn't even take a day,
it's just because I'm just uploading my videos,
I didn't have written content, so, that's what made it
a little bit faster.
- But even if you did, plugging that in is copy and paste.
- Yeah, it's copy and paste what you already wrote
and so, the Teachable part was the quickest part,
to be honest.
- Okay.
So, again, not an overwhelming investment.
You could put something together like this
with a regular workweek of time
and so, I think that even in less than 30 days,
someone could put together their first online course.
- Oh yeah, absolutely. - And, again,
I mean we're primarily talking about Teachable
'cause that's what you have experience with
but I'd imagine it's pretty much going to be
just that straightforward in any platform that you choose
for doing your online course, so, you know,
that's just something to keep in mind.
So, just good to know that this doesn't have to be
overwhelming, it doesn't have to take a long time.
- No, not at all.
- So, Cielo, thank you so much for talking with us
about how you started your online course
for the first time with Teachable.
In fact, we're gonna link to that down in the description
below if you guys wanna check it out
and where else can people find you on social media?
- I am on YouTube, my channel is The Storyographist.
I'm also an Instagramer, of course,
being a photographer you can't not be at Cielodlp.
So, those are where the places where I hang out most.
- Alright, awesome.
So, all of that will be linked
down in the description below.
Thank you, again, so much for coming on the channel.
- Yeah, this was fun.
- Yeah.
Alright you guys, so, go ahead and ask us your questions
in the comment section around any topics you have
about selling and building your first online courses,
definitely make sure you check out Teachable.com,
we'll have a link for you in the description down below.
Like this video if you like it,
don't forget to subscribe,
check out the other awesome stuff on both of our channels.
As always you guys, thanks so much for watching
and don't forget, create something awesome today.
Especially if it's your first online course.
Take care.
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