I Need Your Advice! Want to Slowly Gain More C in CENTS

[Gepi]

Ok peeps.
I need your advice.

I have been slowly but steadily building an online presence with 3D design courses on Skillshare and Youtube tutorials over the past few years.
Also see progress thread here.

The topic of this thread:
Now that I published my latest Blender 3D sculpting class and the first students enrolled, I want to set the future course for my courses
Eventually, I'd like to uncouple my teaching audience from Skillshare, because it violates the C in CENTS.

For some time in the past few months I tried hosting my courses on Teachable. Which kinda worked, I made a few sales here and there. But it was too little to justify the monthly fee for hosting my personal school (which is pretty high end on Teachable I have to admit with tons of functionality). So I quit the paid plan again and continued focusing on Skillshare. Which isn't all bad, lots of resources and community etc., but still at one point I need to go my own way with my audience, or at least grow it sufficiently large outside of Skillshare.

I tried Google Ads and that lead to sales, but it was still too little to justify the expense.

What would you recommend for someone like me to uncouple from Skillshare and grow their audience and their content with as much C as possible?

Please feel free to point me to anything I am missing and could improve!

PS: I also have a newsletter but it is basically just getting started.

 

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[ensoniq2k]

I'm not a successful course creator (since I haven't even started yet) but I have read a lot of things about the topic so I'm trying to convey a few steps that I found and sound logical to me.

First of all the consent seems to be that having people sign up for your e-mail list is a crucial step. It demonstrates real interes in what you are selling from the customer side. To get people to sign up you need some kind of "lead magnet" which you give out for free if they sign up (something like "the 5 biggest mistakes people make in Blender" for example). People that signed up get an initial sales funnel sent with something like 7 e-mails in 7 days. But not in a salesy way but rather with more tipps and tricks and of course a hint to the course which contains a lot more of those great tipps (duh!). Other than that it's also a great way to inform people about any new content without relying on any platforms algorithm.

Many people advocate putting out free content on YouTube to demonstrate your knowledge while never forgetting the call to action "get my free pdf, the 5 biggest mistakes people make in Blender with the link below!". You can also use those videos to ask for input, what people want to see so you never run out of ideas what to create. Just never forget the call to action, people literally need to be told what to do, otherwise they won't do anything.

In your situation I guess it could be helpful to host your courses on Udemy, which charges per bought course and therefore is a great indicator if you reached a level of sales where hosting your own plattform is financially viable. Also my 2 cents is your course is way too cheap. You could easily sell it for $49 if not even $99 (just tell me beforehand so I can still buy it at the current price ;-) ).

Also check out Graham Cochrane, he has so much free and very helpful stuff on his channel. He's selling courses like crazy nonetheless and they're not cheap either. Hope that helps!

 

[Gepi]

Hi @ensoniq2k!
The newsletter nurturing sequence is something I had eyed for a while! Great tip. I just need to make it happen.

Thanks for the reminder for the CTA and asking for ideas for topics! I will try both more explicitly in my next YT video.

Haha, and thanks for your thoughts on pricing. Maybe they are too cheap, but aren't people used to the huge discounts that are constantly advertised on Udemy anyways? And that is a clever insight, the thing with Udemy as an indicator!

Thanks so much! I will definitely keep your tips and ideas in mind for my next steps!