How to turn your knowledge into cash that pays you over and over

I want to share my passion for building digital courses with you and give you some tips on how to get started or even just get curious.

Digital courses are great because you can use your knowledge (even if you know 20% more than the average person on a topic) and there will be people who will pay you to help them get to the next few steps.

The cool thing is that once you create the content, you can sell them over and over again and create passive income. Plus they can be scaled into the millions!

I actually know a 2nd grade teacher that created a course that helped other 2nd grade teachers (yes you read that correctly, other 2nd grade teachers....not teachers of any grade) with student material) who has scaled her course into the high 6 figures.

Additionally digital courses can be created while you have a full time job, they don't require much overhead or storing products, it isn't a race to the bottom like competing with Amazon or Ebay (been there) and all the tools you need are accessible to nearly anyone.

There are also many types of courses:

Signature course: everything you can pack into the course about a given topic (like my Leveraging LinkedIn course, V3 is coming in October by the way and it is going to be mind blowing). This is a comprehensive multiple week course with plenty of downloads, worksheets and enough information for you to go on and teach it.

Workshops: short 1-2 hour live workshops that can be recorded and sold for $37-199 over and over.

Challenges: 3 day, 5 day, 30 day challenges a hot item these days, great for building your following, fun to do and also great email list builder.

Mini Course: Hallie and I did one in May and turned the content/lessons into a value packed $37 course that people can buy at any time (Badass Activation Mini Course). The content was already created, we just made it accessible outside of the challenge.

Spotlight Course: dive deeper into one area of a topic or your expertise instead a broad training, go super niche. This could be a course on how to build email lists, or how to do Facebook ads, Intermittent Fasting, etc.

Membership groups: create an ongoing program where you deliver content to a group each week or month and have a monthly or yearly subscription. These can be small and low cost ($29 per month) on up to a mastermind (the one I am currently a part of is $2k per month).

Live group coaching: super easy to put together, in fact I encouraged one of my best friends to launch a live group training using only Zoom, Gmail and Facebook.

All in one coaching: This is a group coaching with some recorded lessons in an archive and some individual coaching.

Digital courses with some type of a 'live' component have a much better rate of engagement, and higher prices often create more involvement (I can't help but to think of the $10 Udemy Neuroscience courses that I've bought but never watched). I've heard that most digital courses without a live component only have a 4% completion rate.

"What's the deal with the $37 course? I keep seeing these but how do you even make any money with them?" The $37 dollar course (like the Badass Activation Essentials and a LinkedIn mini-training are not big money makers, but they do give you an opportunity to overdeliver and build trust and create future clients.

And a little spare change here and there never hurt!

So I want to learn more, where do I start? here are 3 podcasts that I've listened to for a long time that have really helped me learn about digital courses:

• Online Marketing Made Easy (Amy Porterfield)
• Marketing Your Business (Stu McLaren)
• The Marketing Secrets Show (Russell Brunson)

How about Software?

There are many platforms and it's getting competitive. When I was learning about building courses, a lot of people recommended Kajabi, which is what I use and I'm glad I made that choice.

I started my first course in January and since then have used it for 3 products, plus my email marketing (built in email service provider) and to schedule events like webinars.

The customer service is absolutely top notch. The design, well you've probably seen some of my courses or my sites and I think they look great.

What is even cooler is the upcoming features like being able to create a podcast directly from the platform (or transition an existing one), and you can charge a premium for higher quality content. They will also be releasing a newsletter function that will also have a paid or upgrade option.

They are even creating a feature to help coaches manage one on one clients.

What I like about Kajabi is I have seen a ton of upgrades in the short time that I have used it and I can see them developing an 'ecosystem' of teaching products and options that fit almost any knowledge broker.

I started with a 30 day trial and am including a link for you to use if you want to try them out. I haven't used other platforms but so many other course creators swear by this platform and I can't say they were wrong!

I hope you enjoyed this rundown on the digital course world and hope to see you launch something in the future that you are passionate about!