There is nothing I love more than attending YouTuber events around the world. This is not only a superb place to create network opportunities, but a space to learn from the best-of-the-best!

One event I always look forward to is VidCon, a global content creator event that really does expose how creators are able to grow their audiences and monetize their various platforms.

Of course, Check these out and BUT make sure you pick the right service for you and your channel.

Also don't forget to check out more info about 

Next up listen to this episode which is about 

TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Don't foprget to 

 on your favorite podcast application so you never miss an episode!

You can also find the complete list of all the 

YouTubers can earn money both on and off the platform - find out how!

5 YouTube Monetization Services You've NEVER heard of with Jim Louderback, VidCon GM

YouTube is an amazing platform for viewers to find entertainment and information resources. It’s also an amazing platform for creators to earn revenue from ads run against the entertaining and educational content they upload. But what if revenue from AdSense isn’t an option?

, a fitness instructor with over 2.3M subscribers on YouTube. Caleb is passionate about the content he makes - hugely popular workouts set to some of the biggest tracks around.

, he can’t generate revenue from AdSense against those videos, but instead uses YouTube to earn money from other successful business ventures built around his brand. In this podcast you will learn:

How you can turn any hobby into YouTube content

How to make a business out of that hobby on YouTube

How to grow your business away from YouTube

How to leverage your YouTube brand to grow other successful ventures

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

How to Make Money With YouTube When AdSense is Not an Option: Podcast Snapshot

Liron Segev: Tell us how you got started. What happened when you picked up your camera and you decided, okay, YouTube is the place for me. How did that journey start?

Caleb Marshall: It was really by accident. I wish I could say that it wasn't but before I started my channel. I didn't watch YouTube, I didn't know anything about YouTube. I had just grown up playing with cameras and iMovie and I loved making little home videos but I really was never immersed in the YouTube culture.

However, I was teaching these dance fitness classes at my college as a hobby, and I recorded myself. I just had a lot of fun in the creative process and I threw those videos up on YouTube and I just kept doing that every couple of weeks or so. Within eight months I had 100,000 subscribers. It was then I decided to get more serious.

I was happy with my content, but I didn't know exactly how I wanted to shoot it or present it. But I did have a brand behind it and a vision and I think having that vision is what allowed me to keep going. Because it was less about the little details and having every shot perfect or having multiple cameras. It was just using what I had in the moment and just having a vision of where I kind of wanted it to go.

Liron Segev: The whole thing with YouTube is that yes, a lot of people do this as a hobby and at a certain point you tend to go, Oh, hold on, this is actually a thing. I'm actually getting some traction. People are loving what I'm doing. You went in with a vision, you had an idea and you said, "Well, it doesn't have to be perfect. I just want to produce my content, put it online and see where this leads and then turn it into a business. Get it out there."

Caleb Marshall: I've been doing the same format of videos for five years but always improving on the production values. The goal is to get everybody up and moving, no matter what level you are, you should be able to play the video and follow along.

You should laugh, you should be having fun. It should be something that adds value to your day or takes the stress away. That's my goal is really just to bring joy into people's lives through easy to follow along with the dances.

Making the move from Indiana to LA was the smartest thing I've ever done for YouTube. I know you can really do it anywhere but with me not monetizing any of my videos, I really had to count on making those connections and real relationships out in the industry.

Liron Segev: Okay, Whoa. You have videos with millions of views, like this one where you do a routine to Meghan Trainor’s “Me Too” but you don’t earn revenue from them?

Caleb Marshall: I haven't made a dime off those videos. Actually I've had to pay.

Liron Segev: Okay, you're going to have to break it down for us. Why is that? We know that we want to make videos on YouTube and hopefully and that's going to bring us money. You have 26 million views on a video and you're not making a cent? What's going on?

Caleb Marshall: No, and that's the problem. I started the channel but just out of passion. It was never started as a business and when it became something that I could leverage, something I really wanted to invest all my time in.

Then I had to get creative and figure out how I could do what I love and make money because everyone's first suggestion to me is, just don't use copyrighted music but that wouldn't make me happy and therefore I wouldn't want to be doing this.

As I've gone on, I've had to find a balance and now we do like YouTube memberships and that's been really awesome because I can give people hour long workouts instead of just one song at a time and I can find a way to monetize my audience there. We can go on tour but I've had to get really creative and it's been an uphill battle.

Four months ago we had a label contact us and we had to remove almost 50 videos. The Megan Trainor one, the Sia one. I mean those were all gone. All my views were gone and I mean the labels were just coming for us really hard and were upset that we were using their songs.

It's confusing because then I have other record labels coming to me and saying, "Hey, will you please use my music? We'll pay you to use my music." It's very confusing but monetization isn’t turned on for any of my videos unless there's been a deal with the record label.

Liron Segev: Copyright music is obviously quite a big pain at this stage because it makes sense you to use the latest and the greatest tracks that are out there, but now you have a problem because the labels are saying forget it. They are either they're telling you to take it off or that telling you that if you are monetizing, we going to earn that revenue.

Caleb Marshall: I don't want to work with labels who don't support me. I don't want to support people who don't support creators and so I've just made a choice that I'm never using music from that label again, whether they want me to or not, I just want to focus on working with people who see me as a value, see me as a marketing tool because really that's what my YouTube channel is. It's a marketing tool for music.

Liron Segev: You've mentioned you do memberships, which is your one form of revenue but then you did also say that you go on tour. Tell me about the tour part.

Caleb Marshall: Yes. Well that's my favorite thing. That's what I started doing in college was teaching live classes. YouTube was always just a way to kind of get out there what I was already doing. Doing the YouTube videos allows me to sell tickets for basically a “cardio concert” and we rent out concert venues.

It started out like local YMCAs, your local gym but now we're renting out concert venues and doing live shows there. We have lights and sound and we'll have little skits in between.

There's like a 15 song playlist and it's all the songs from our channel and so people know that dance is kind of already when they come but I'm instructing and everyone's following along and it's like a big sweaty, sexy church service. It's amazing.

Liron Segev: How do you use your social media?

Caleb Marshall: I really think it changes. I love Instagram - I feel like that's kind of my homepage. I feel like Facebook used to be that for me. Facebook used to drive all of our ticket sales. It was our driving factor of our business model and then when the algorithm shifted overnight, we just stopped selling tickets to tours.

People stopped seeing my content. It was crazy and immediately you internalize all that and you go, Oh my God, people hate me now. But then I talked to other people and everyone's like, no. The same thing happened to me. I use TikTok but that's just to make me smile.

Liron Segev: You understand when things are going right and you understand when things are going wrong. Almost like it's a real business. That's the message I'm trying to drive a lot home into people that your channel is a business and whether you started out that way or you didn't start out that way.

At a certain point you realize that your channel has expenses, you have to travel to events, you have to buy equipment, that things cost money and as soon as you start making that conversion from how it's a hobby too, oh wow, this is actually a business. That's exactly what you've done consciously, which is great and therefore you're able to stay that are one step ahead.

Caleb Marshall: I also think it's also a unique place for me since I am not monetizing the videos, I'm more conscious about how I use this to help my other business models that are making money, or how to use this to direct people to my YouTube memberships. It's a weird blessing that I don't have to be so concerned with monetizing a quick viral video.

It’s also a myth that a viral video will take a creator and carry them to the promised land. That’s just not the case.

Liron Segev: You'll get your bump, you'll get your exposure but it's your channel that delivers and that's what I love about your channel is that you don't rest on the one video. Every video is you putting your heart and soul into it. You can see the energy jumping off the screen and I dig that. It’s awesome that you're appealing to such a wide community and that's the power of the internet.

If people want to find you, they want to follow you, they want to get into everything that you have to offer, where can they track you down?

Caleb Marshall: They can track me down on YouTube at 

. Most importantly I just launched a new podcast with one of my now best friends and ex-girlfriend, Hayley. It's called 

 is a podcast and we talk every week and it's very funny and exciting and a new adventure so go check it out.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

If generating AdSense revenue from your content isn't an option, there are still plenty of ways you can use YouTube to build a successful and lucrative career. Find out more on this episode of TubeTalk.

How to Make Money With YouTube When AdSense is Not an Option: TubeTalk 206 with Caleb Marshall

Raise your hand if you want to be a full-time YouTuber. If you’re listening to this podcast or reading this post, the odds are pretty good that you're trying to monetize your content on the platform and make being a YouTuber your career.

But did you know there's more than one way of becoming a full-time YouTuber? As creators, we acquire a whole set of skills over the years, like how to research the right content to make, how to edit the footage we film, and how to optimize the videos we publish. Those skills are transferable and can help bring in the extra revenue you want.

In this week’s episode, I’m joined by Owen Hemsath or 

 as he's known all around the interwebs. Owen helps business leaders grow their influence and their authority on YouTube, and he’s an established and successful online video creator himself. He hosts two very successful 

 talk shows each week that attract thousands of views, and is very active on 

Why all the big YouTube creators treat their channels as a business

How you need to do the same so you can generate real revenue

What separates the business YouTube creator from the hobby YouTube creator

How to make your talents and skills available to the marketplace to help grow your channel

Why you can’t rely on Adsense income to make you rich

How working off-platform can generate a living income

How you can still generate revenue even though you’re not as big as Mr Beast

How to build your channel to get those brand sponsorship deals

Going Full-Time on YouTube: Podcast Snapshot

__* Liron Segev: What kind of critical mistakes are creators making by not treating their YouTube channel as a business?* __

 They are not measuring to see what needs to be improved. Do you think Mr. Beast doesn't treat his channel a business? Of course he does. Where do you think he gets the $10,000 to throw off a bridge. What separates the business creator from the casual creator is that the business creator thinks "Okay, well what can I do better next time? What am I not doing, and who can I be listening to, to grow my own channel?"

YouTube revenue generation takes some time to build and to grow. What I see happening a lot is creators with all of these talents and skills, and they are not actually making their talents and skills available to the marketplace to help grow their channel.

Here's what I mean by that. If you're a great editor, and you want to make money being on YouTube, then reach out to other YouTubers, and offer to do their editing for a fee. For a fee, you're not going to do this for free.

Liron Segev: Many people think that being a full-time YouTube means that you're earning 100% of your income from AdSense. But’s that a huge myth.

But many creators have skills that revolve around YouTube, like the ability to edit, or do the keyword research, or create custom thumbnails, etc. If you can get other creators to pay for that, then that’s the way into making it full-time as a creator.

 You also don't have to have a large number of subscribers to be an expert and offer your skills to other creators, businesses or brands.

I never thought that I would be where I am today where I'm widely respected in the industry, working on television shows. I have a regular recurring news segment that I do in our local news channel, out here in San Diego. I never would have thought that that would have been the case, but I immersed myself in the industry.

I picked myself up by my bootstraps, which some people want to say is impossible. It is not impossible. You just keep going. You just publish again. I've got to make a hashtag, #publishagain.

We have glamorized what it means to have success on YouTube. Success on YouTube only counts if you're T-Series, or Cocomelon, but that’s not true at all.

My point is this, is that knowing where your channel is, and what your channel is, and then creating your own success for what you do, that's the miracle of YouTube. Where we get upset is where we say, "Oh, here's a channel with a strong, charismatic, male personality who has a pretty face, and then here's me. I have a faceless video in a very niche industry, but I want his type of success." You are setting yourself up for failure.

Instead, you've got to look at like, "Hey, what can you do?" Maybe your channels would be great for sponsorships, right?

Do you love being a YouTuber so much that want to make it your full-time career? In this week's episode of TubeTalk, we show you how to make that dream a reality.

How to Make YouTube Your Full Time Career: TubeTalk 202 with Owen Video

Let's be honest. Running a YouTube channel takes a lot of work, a lot of effort, and can actually 

 you money. You have equipment to buy, you have business trips that you need to get to, plus all sorts of other expenses. What can you do to generate revenue beyond the brand deals, beyond the affiliate links, and beyond YouTube AdSense?

My guest on this episode of TubeTalk is Jess Catorc from 

, who's got an amazing option that we should all be exploring. In this podcast you will learn:

How to create courses for your YouTube audience

How to make the most of your expertise and skills via selling an online course

To take advantage of your considerable content creations skills

Why creating and selling an online course could be a major revenue stream

Why you don't need to be a teacher or educator to create a course - entertainment works too!

How to Make Money as a YouTuber by Creating Courses: Full Transcript

Jess Catorc: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Liron Segev: Let's start with the beginning. What do you do? What is teachable.com for people who don't know?

Jess Catorc: Teachable is an online course hosting platform, so it's really a platform that allows anyone to sell courses, accept students, enroll students, and share their knowledge. I lead partnerships on the Teachable team, but I've also created courses myself. I've kind of been on both sides of the aisle.

I'm really excited to talk about courses because it's crazy to see just how much this industry has grown and how people are not just becoming course creators, but they're incorporating this concept of sharing their knowledge and diversifying what they're doing in their business with their existing model.

Liron Segev: This is why I love this because one of the common questions that we get is about monetization. As you know, content creators on YouTube, they get monetized based on ad revenue. Maybe they'll do some brand deals, but they've got the skills. We know how to shoot, we know how to edit, we know how to cut scenes, we know how to produce an outline for a shot list for the way that we produce content. Surely, there's a different way that we can take the same skills and then rehome that elsewhere.

Jess Catorc: The nice thing is that I'm not here to say like everyone needs to stop doing brand deals and stop monetize with the way that you're currently doing it.

The nice thing with courses is that you can do it in addition. Really, the whole concept of it is you're diversifying your income because we know when we're searching for brand deals that you're constantly looking for the next deal, you're constantly looking for the next package that you're going to be able to offer, or you're reliant on the algorithm to show your videos, or even for YouTube to determine if your video is ad-friendly or not.

Sometimes videos get demonetized for the wrong reasons and then they put it back up again. Really, this is just creating like a holistic approach to your business that you don't just rely on one or two streams of income, you have more and you're also giving value to your audience.

Liron Segev: You're speaking our language because everything you've just mentioned is pretty hard-hitting. The algorithm makes a change, views take a dive, ad revenue takes a dive. You're constantly on the hunt for that next brand deal, as opposed to just being able to have something that's more reliable, something that you can actually base some prediction on. Is this where a course would maybe come into play?

Jess Catorc: Yeah, absolutely. The other thing with YouTube, and I'm a huge fan of YouTube as a platform, but it is no different to any other social platform, which is that you also don't have direct access to your audience.

I have a friend who had quite a large following on YouTube, and for some reason, something happened where she deleted her account and she lost her entire channel. There was absolutely no way for her to get it back. It's nice too, in addition to what you're doing on YouTube, when you incorporate courses, you're also growing an email list, so you have direct access to your audience. You can even contact them with your new videos. It just expands what you're currently doing.

When it comes to courses, the nice thing is that you can really give a clear cut outcome to your audience. You can say like, "In this course, I'm going to show you how to do X", and you can deliver on a set outcome or a transformation. It's really great for building a relationship with your audience too because you're helping them get to an outcome or to overcome a pain point that they currently have, in addition to the videos that you're currently releasing on your channel.

Liron Segev: Trying to build my relationship with my community, but on the other platforms, I may not have a way to press the button and send my subscribers a message. I don't have that at all. At best, I can rely on YouTube notifications, which are, let's be honest, not as reliable as they need to be. Mailing lists are always a priority. We've been teaching mailing lists for a long time. They just need it to happen.

Let's move to the course itself. Now you convinced me. I have an opportunity. I have my YouTube channel, that doesn't stop, but I'm doing this in addition to that. The first question that comes to mind is, can anyone create a course? In other words, if my channel maybe isn't a teaching channel, I don't teach how to get more views on YouTube, I don't teach a specific skill, I am more of entertainment, can I convert that into a course? Can I think along those lines?

Jess Catorc: Absolutely. The interesting thing is even people who have channels where they're teaching a specific topic or a specific thing, we all have very different skills or unique skill sets. For example, let's say that you are a travel blogger and you're like, "I'm not really showing people how to travel. I'm just documenting my journey and people love following me in the process."

There are a lot of skills that you are consciously or unconsciously or subconsciously using, which is like you're great at video, you're great at maybe traveling on a budget, or maybe you're great at taking beautiful Instagram photos.

What I would say though is rather than just kind of picking a topic that you think people will want a course on, open up the conversation with your audience. I would say this even if you are 99% sure you know what your topic is going to be. It's so important to validate that before you go in and spend all this time creating your videos and marketing your course. Some things that you can do is you can look at certain videos if you're getting more engagement when you're discussing certain topics or there's certain things that people seem to engage with more.

Other things that you can do is just like hop on the phone in a Zoom call with people or do a survey and ask people like, "You follow my channel. You seem to really enjoy the videos I'm making, but I'm curious, is there anything that you're currently struggling with that you think I might be able to help you with, or something you've seen me do that you would love to learn how to do yourself?"

It's the best way because you're taking the guesswork out. Also, you want to have people along for the journey. I don't know if you followed the Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star series but it's such a great example of the power of taking your audience along for the journey before you launch a product. The very first point is deciding on what do people want to know. It's like they feel like they're a part of creating that course with you, and then when you launch, it's like they feel like they've already been there.

Liron Segev: And they've helped you craft it, so of course they're going to jump on that because it's a part of their journey too now.

Liron Segev: I also love the point that you made, even though you're a travel blogger, you don't have to think of a course to do with the travel per se, but you may be able to work things around it, like how to travel on a budget. Maybe you're really good at that. Maybe that's what your audience wants to know. Your course is related to your YouTube channel, but it isn't the top five places to visit in Cancun, for example.

Liron Segev: Okay. I like it. Now I have a topic. I have an idea that I want to do, but then I kind of asked myself the question, "Why would someone pay for a course when I'm giving them all this amazing value on my channel for free?"

Jess Catorc: Yes. This is probably the most common thought or the common thing that holds people back, which is like, "I'm already delivering all this value. Why would people ... " They're worried that people will be upset that they're now asking for money for a product.

Now, what I would say is if anyone has ever tried to learn a new skill on the internet for free by Googling and YouTubing, what you'll find is that when you're looking for a solution to a pain point, there's a very specific outcome that you're looking for. A lot of the times, when you try to learn it yourself or you're looking at someone's channel and they have millions, not millions, hundreds of videos on their channel, the thing is that you have to sort through all the different videos.

You have to figure out what order you learn the skill in. You maybe learn too much or it's overwhelming. The value and why people purchase and invest in online courses is they want the shortcut to an outcome. Even if you have a channel and you're showing people all these different skills, when you're selling your course, and this is actually going to tie into when you come up with your topic, it's important that you have a very clear outcome.

For example, if your course was how to live your best life, that's a very vague, very big outcome or transformation. It's going to be very hard to deliver on that, but if you get very specific on what you're going to be providing people in this course, it's going to be a lot easier for people to justify investing in it because they know exactly one, what they're going to learn, what they can expect at the end of it, but also they know that they're going to learn it in the shortest amount of time.

Liron Segev: Yes, yes, yes. Even though YouTube clips are very short, they're a little bit all over the place because the creator needs to cover so many topics, and realistically, there's no way to deep dive into every single one of those just by putting out on your channel. Maybe you're left a little bit frustrated, saying, "Look, I kind of get it, but I really wish there was more." This is when a course kind of fills in that gap beautifully.

Jess Catorc: Exactly. There's so many great YouTubers that are incorporating courses in that. I've followed some people's channels for years and I've gotten so much free value, but then they share like, "Oh, I have a course on this specific topic", or, for example, if there's like a baker who has a baking channel and they have a course on a specific decoration skill, like decorating your cakes so it looks like a beach or something like that, and you're like, "I want to learn that specific thing." It's easy to be like, "Okay. Of course I'm going to learn it from the course."

Liron Segev: Because they've built in some trust with you over the years anyway because you've been watching them and they'd been delivering all this amazing value, giving them money for something, it just makes sense. You're supporting them. Plus, you know you're going to get something out of it, as you have up until that point.

Jess Catorc: Yeah, and actually you bring up a really great point, which is that if you are a YouTuber and you are already delivering value upfront, you actually have a bit of an advantage to people who are maybe just starting out from scratch because you have established this relationship with your audience and you've already proven that you can provide value, you can help them with whatever it is that they're looking for because they're seeing your videos.

It's a lot easier to take them to the next step of, "Okay. They also have products that I can dive deeper into this topic."

Liron Segev: Which makes a trust relationship. You build on that, and then it's an easier sell. Do you find that there's a fine line between giving everything away for free and then asking for money because then people get upset, or do you not find that to be an issue?

Jess Catorc: It really depends on I think how you position it. You give a lot of content, but I think really what people are looking for is the guidance, the step by step plan of like, "This is what I do here. This is how long it should take. This is what I should do in this order."

I think really when it comes to creating the content, you can show people what to do. You can tell them what to do, and that might be enough for a segment of your audience. That video might be all that they needed but there's always going to be a group of people that want more or they might even like a community to learn about that.

Liron Segev: Okay. Then I suppose in your course you go deeper dives. You maybe have more tips. You have a downloadable PDF to save you a whole bunch of time for trying to work the stuff on your own. It does kind of make sense transferring them from the free to the paid, but you show them lots of value on the paid. How do I know how much to charge for a course? Some of them are free, some of them are $5, and some of them are $1,000, if not more.

Jess Catorc: Yeah. Pricing is one of those things that I think makes a lot of people even a little bit uncomfortable because it's this like, "I have to charge for this. Who am I to be charging this amount of money?" Now, this is just based on our data, what we see our top-performing creators do. I really would encourage people to use the premium pricing model. What I mean by that is the average price of our top 10 selling instructors on Teachable is around $272.

I'm not in any way saying that everyone should charge $272. What I am saying though is you want to look at similar products or courses or offerings that your audience may be purchasing or that are in your niche and see what the average prices and then be on the higher end of that.

Now, this isn't just to charge more money for the sake of it, but there is a thing for like perception of value. I think if people undercharge what they're offering, no matter how amazing your course is, a lot of the times you'll find that people ... We see this all the time when people buy things that are on sale or like $10 online products and then we just don't follow through because it wasn't much of an investment. You want to use some type of premium pricing so your audience values the product that you're offering, but also that you know that they're going to be engaged and they're actually going to go through the content.

Liron Segev: Yeah. That's key because if you put in $1 into something, you'll probably never sign in and use it, but if you spend $300 into something, you got to make sure that you complete the entire thing. It's a big investment. You want to get value out of your $300.

Jess Catorc: Yeah. It really brings up also a larger point, which is that there's this huge focus I find in this industry where people are focused on the marketing and getting new students and really just like the outward-facing marketing, but one of my favorite quotes, and I don't know who said this, but I'm not claiming that it is mine, which was that, "Happy students don't recommend your products. Successful ones do."

Jess Catorc: It really encapsulates all of this because you see a lot of people who have really big course launches the first time because they have great marketing and they did a really great job like selling the course, but then it doesn't necessarily continue like that. That is why it is so important not just to have a great idea and have really flashy videos, but ensuring that your students are going through it, they're really actually getting results because those are going to be your biggest advocates after.

Liron Segev: I've spoken to a lot of people who have said, "I have got my course and the good news is most people don't even take the entire thing and I'm still getting all this money." That is so the wrong attitude to have because first of all, they're never going to advocate for your course. They're never going to sell you, and word of mouth is the best tool, as we know, to sell a course.

Also, you can never come up with course number two or number three or number four because they haven't even finished your first one. They didn't find enough value. I know with my kids' school, like a teacher will say, "Hey, free lessons after school if you want to catch up before the exams." Nobody signs up. $50 a lesson, there's a queue and a waiting list.

Liron Segev: It's weird. Same person, same instructor, but one you've placed value and people want that value. Don't undervalue that. Do you see that? Do you see like really successful, really amazing courses which wow, should have been priced a lot higher?

Jess Catorc: Rule of thumb, I think most people probably could be charging more for their courses because I think naturally we, especially if we're new to this world, we tend to undercharge because that feels safer. You don't want to just charge a lot of money for the sake of it. It's really just looking at the value and the outcome that you're providing people, looking at the average prices for similar products, and then using that to decide what you're going to charge. There are so many things that you can look at for what is the value that I'm providing.

Are people going to save money because they've done my course? Is it going to add value to their life? What would that be deemed as for value? There's so many ways to look at it, but a lot of people definitely do undercharge when really they don't have to.

Liron Segev: They don't need to. People would pay more, but of course, they're not going to own up to that. If you're charging me much less, of course I'm going to take that. A word that you used earlier which I want to go back to is transformation. I think a successful course is a course that takes you from point A to point B. How do I know that my person is going to sign up for this course and I know that by the time they leave, I am confident that they're going to feel that something has changed, they have won?

Jess Catorc: Such a good question. Two things. The first thing I would say is when it comes to coming up with your curriculum, we always say like creating a course outline. Start with the transformation or the outcome. Really, a transformation needs to be, like you were saying, it needs to be specific. We need to know when we have hit this transformation. Feeling great is too big of a transformation. Feeling more confident at dinner parties and talking to new people, boom, this is something that we can deliver on.

Now working backwards, you want to think through like, what does someone need to do step by step to get to the desired outcome that your course provides? Then from there, that's when you can add in your sections and the lectures and the videos. That's kind of like the overarching idea.

When it comes to your videos, I encourage people to always answer three questions, which is, what the person is about to learn, why is it important ... Now, this is key and a lot of people miss this step. They just think that if they go in right into the tutorial or right into the how-to that people are going to learn, but you really want to ensure that the people watching the video are engaged and they understand why this is important. You have to sell them on the idea of like, "Look, we're going to cover this and this is why you should be excited that you're about to learn this topic." Then you show them how to do it.

Liron Segev: And then the how, so the what, why, and how.

Jess Catorc: Yes. You can rinse and repeat every single video. It should follow that. Now as far as do you know if people are going to hit this outcome, it's really tough, especially if you're teaching a topic that you are really close to or you are really knowledgeable in, because sometimes we overestimate or underestimate what people actually need to learn.

What I would encourage doing is a beta launch. A beta launch is really just like a teaser or like a test run of your course where you offer it at a lower price point or offer it for free, but I think you can definitely charge a lower price point with the understanding that this launch is your first launch. You're really going to be working with the students. You're going to be getting their feedback. You're going to be seeing where they're stumbling, where they're struggling, what can be improved.

Honestly, I would recommend this even if you were like launching your fifth course because we can never anticipate what people might be struggling with until you actually go through that launch, and then you can adjust your content accordingly.

Liron Segev: Okay. This is great. A little closed group, definitely not just friends and family because they'll tell you what you want to hear. You want to open it up to the community just to get that real feedback. That is vital, vital, vital. Do we create the entire course outline like right off the bat or do you find that maybe it's better to create module one, two, and three and then build it as the course is developing?

Jess Catorc: Great question. My answer is like each to their own and you know which ways that you work best, but what I have found and just looking at what a lot of our top instructors are doing is you want to first validate the idea. I would definitely have your outline, clear on what your outline is and the topics you want to talk about, but something that people have been doing lately, and I think this is a really interesting idea, is running live courses so you can like teach the content live and get feedback. This is especially great if you're doing a beta launch, but it depends on your personality.

If you're launching a course and you say, "Hey, the start date is going to be in two weeks", and you have no content, but you're confident that if you pre-sell this, enough people buy, you'll be able just to like whip out those videos and you're great. Not everyone is like that.

Liron Segev: That's way too much pressure, way too much pressure.

Jess Catorc: Yes, but that's why I think it's important to do a beta launch because you don't have to create all of your content up front. You can create the outline. You can teach it live, like doing like a Zoom call and teach it and then get feedback. Then once you know that people are interested because they have invested in this course already, they're going through it, then you feel confident to record the videos and do it like that.

Jess Catorc: Yeah, yeah. You just have to be really confident in you know what your talking points are, you know that maybe you've taught this topic in person so you know how to deliver on the outcome. Yeah.

Liron Segev: That actually leads to an interesting question. We've got a lot of people who attend events. We speak on stages and we teach the stuff. Is this still a good opportunity? Could we still package everything that we teach on a stage in front of a large group of people, but package it into something that's consumable, maybe something that we charge for and people can do it at their leisure when they get back to their homes and they're in front of their computers and they can get that rich, rich value, as opposed to a keynote speech for 45 minutes?

Jess Catorc: Oh, absolutely. There are some people that I know that their entire sales process is they don't even really do email marketing. It's just from the stage. That is how they sell and enroll people in their courses.

Yeah. I think really like the interesting thing is when you're doing a 45-minute keynote or you're doing a workshop at a conference, that's great, but you have to take really quick notes. You might have further questions. It is a great way to get people interested in the topic, to show that you can provide some type of value because you know what you're talking about, but then the course is really the way that you can go deeper on the concepts, if you want to have like some type of community where you're answering questions.

I've also seen, depending on who your listeners are, but some people might have conferences that they hold themselves. I've actually seen people record their conferences, and I've actually purchased a few courses, record their conference, break up the videos, and provide that as a course. It's like you're there live, but it's the recorded sessions. Those do very well as well.

Liron Segev: You repackage what you've already shot, what you've already filmed. It's available to you. It's your content. Why not reuse it somewhere else?

Liron Segev: I think one other big thing that's holding people back is this whole notion of failing. I've spent this effort, I spent this time, I've launched the course, and then crickets. Nobody's buying anything. Is there anything we can do to prevent that oh my gosh moment?

Jess Catorc: Yeah. Actually, there's two things. The first thing is leading up to your launch, you shouldn't be wondering if there is interest in your course topic. This goes back to what we discussed earlier about validating your topic, having people engaged, even doing like behind the scenes videos as you're creating your content and getting people to vote on like which video cover do you like the best or image cover do you like the best, and getting people excited so they know that when you launch your course, it's not a surprise.

The other thing though is that it's hard to really predict how a launch is going to go. In fact, it's impossible. What I would say though, and this is even if you hit your goals, let's say you had a crazy big goal that you wanted to enroll, like so many students, and you hit that, I would say for every single person listening that launches a course or any product, at the end of that sequence, email everyone that didn't join and ask them why.

You want to make it clear that you're not going to be selling to them. You're like, "This is just so I can better understand my audience and understand why you thought it wasn't the right fit for you."

I've even personally done this, and you'll find that the responses are very interesting. You'll have people that say, "Oh, I didn't know that the cart was closing. Can I still join?" You'll have people that say, "It was too expensive for me." People that just say, "It wasn't for me." If you can hop on the phone with them as well, I would highly encourage that because sometimes you'll find that the way that we see ourselves is different to how the public sees us.

What I mean by that is if your course was on organization, like organizing your home, and on your sales page you say like, "Is your life a hot mess? Are you all over the place? This course is going to help you with A, B, and C", your target audience might not perceive their reality and their life like that. They might read that and be like, "I'm a little bit messy, but I'm not all over the place."

Even though the outcome that you're providing, the transformation, is for them, it is exactly what they are looking for, the language that you're using, the way that you're communicating the value, isn't resonating. That's why it's so important to speak to the people and like hop on the phone and just get them to describe how are they feeling now. "What do you feel about this problem? What is the pain point? How would you describe this in your own words?"

Maybe you start to see a trend in certain words that people are using or how they're describing it. Even if it isn't like proper grammar, but you see that everyone is describing it in the same way, using that on your sales page, you're going to resonate with more people. Then you can relaunch the same product but just using those tweaks.

Liron Segev: Oh, so it's okay to relaunch something that wasn't as successful as you wanted it to be? You can give another spin and do a second launch?

Jess Catorc: Absolutely. People launch the same course every single year or they'll do launches every couple of months. It's just like the thing is that you're selling or you're providing an outcome, and some people who might be a good fit for it might not realize it, so there's absolutely no problem in relaunching a course. In fact, I think it's very standard to do that. It's always improving. You're always tweaking. You're copying the way that you're positioning yourself.

Liron Segev: And the same question, could you launch the exact same course because maybe it's seasonal and you might want to have a January one and then you might want to have a June one or might want to have one towards the end of the year? Another little push for the course, but it's the exact same course. Is that okay to do?

Jess Catorc: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think creating genuine scarcity is very important because for some reason, it's human nature to procrastinate. When we know something is available all the time, we always just kind of wait to actually take action on it. I might be projecting, but it's important to have scarcity so people have a reason to make a decision. It's not to force people to join your course. It's for them to take action on a certain date, whether that is a yes or it's a no or a not now, but you want to give them some type of deadline.

Liron Segev: As we're kind of wrapping up, the one thing that we kept on mentioning is people that have already got an audience, people that have already got a YouTube channel, people that are already speaking on stage, that really have some sort of a presence out there. Could you still create a course and be successful even if you don't have an existing audience?

Generating revenue from your content is one of the biggest goals for most YouTubers. But how do you monetize beyond AdSense or brand deals? If you've asked yourself that question, we have a solution for you on this week's TubeTalk

Posts tagged with "Monetization"