Are eBooks still worth it in 2022? Should you just focus on Online courses instead? Can you do both?
Press play to enjoy this episode, as I am going to help you finally make a decision on which one of these educational digital products you should focus on.
Yes eBooks are still definitely bringing in the coins online and my guess is they will always remain one of the most popular digital products, but are they right for you? Should everyone create an eBook or should we create a course or both?
I help you answer these questions in this episode and give you insights on the best approach for growing your online business and turning your knowledge into income online!
Subscribe and tune in now from fresh episodes every single week!
Can you make money on Instagram with just 1000 followers or less?
The honest, short answer is Yes! But there is a method to the madness of making money on Instagram and this is what I break down, step by step in this new episode of the Knowledge into Income Podcast
When I started my brand new Instagram page in 2020, I knew I was going to monetize Instagram with digital products. So the very first thing I did was create a lead magnet funnel to attract potential customers. I did this even before I knew what I was going to sell or what products I’d eventually create.
I went head-on first on growing my email list because this is the very first step to converting followers into buyers online.
It is important to keep in mind that Instagram is still a Social media platform before it is a tool that can be leveraged for business. With this in mind you understand that your efforts must first begin as social networking, growing a fanbase, getting people to consume your content and buy into your ideas and values.
To make money on Instagram by going in first to sell will be very futile and ultimate detrimental to your business /personal brand.
Listen to this episode now to learn my exact strategy for turning a small Instagram page into a money making page for you!
And if you enjoyed it, please do LEAVE A REVIEW as it helps me help you some more with more free content!
Making money online is simple. You just have to get creative.
I speak with hundreds of content creators and online coaches monthly and every time we talk about the money making process, there’s often always someone who complains about not having capital to start.
Capital?
I do not believe you need any money to start making money online.
You need to get creative instead and figure out what people need help with so you can provide a solution you can get paid for. The only thing bridging you between delivering the service and getting paid is a great idea and a good software or app to help you deliver your ideas.
That’s why, a little over a year ago when my brother and I first sat down to build out the concept for Kobocourse.com, our initial reason was to create a simple to use course hosting platform that helped African creators earn money online with ease.
At the time, I was simply frustrated because all other course hosting platforms simply could not work for me, being African, living in Africa and having no access to Paypal or Stripe to receive my payments.
This one issue has been the pain and frustration for most content creators from Africa and I was determined to put an end to it. So we built Kobocourse.com
At first, this little experiment was to enable Africans host and sell their own online courses but now, it has evolved and grown beyond that. Right now,I use Kobocourse for everything in my online business and have no need for any other platform.
Here are 6 Creative ways to make money online with no money, using Kobocourse as your main platform
1. Make money online with Coaching
There are people all over the world who need your help and are happy to pay you to coach them. The question for you is, ‘What do you know right now that you are so proficient at and can teach someone else?’
When I started making money online, my first offer was a 1 hour coaching call to help my followers audit and optimize their Instagram profiles. Silly right? But it worked because I knew how to grow an Instagram page fast and I had proven that I had this knowledge.
In the very beginning, coaching was the easiest way to earn money and I was doing this successfully with less than 3,000 followers.
To make this work for you, you simply need to find out exactly what your followers need help with and create a coaching gig from your Kobocourse dashboard.
Next, start posting about your offer in your stories, your content on social media, in your emails and even talking about it when you go Live.
Remember, you don’t sell the offer, you sell the benefits and results your offer will give to people.
Elohor E. Alordiah
2. Sell Tickets to Webinars, Whatsapp classes, Masterclasses and Live Events
One of my favorite ways to earn money online anytime, is to host Live classes and webinars.
These live webinars and masterclasses can be free or paid classes, but if you want to make money, then you have to put a price on it.
You are going to need a Virtual Ticket that your followers can buy to get access to your class/ event and Kobocourse makes it very easy to do just that in under 5 minutes.
If you do not teach, then you can think of creative ways to host a Live event that your audience may be interested in, mouse over to your dashboard in Kobocourse and select TICKETS to create a virtual ticket you can sell.
3. Make money online with video courses on Kobocourse
Creating a video course is possibly one of the best ways we will be making money online in the future.
You only need a video editing app on your phone or computer, the camera on your phone, a great idea to make a video course about and a course hosting platform to keep your video files secure and your students organized.
Some online video courses do not even require you to show your face, so if you are the shy type, simple screen recordings to demonstrate your points, record your slides and deliver a presentation are also great ways to put a comprehensive video course together.
When I started my online business as a content creator, I knew I was going to eventually earn money by teaching what I know, but I also needed an online course hosting platform that helped me do everything in one place.
Kobocourse is the easiest and most affordable course hosting platform today and I use it for everything.
4. Make money online with Membership sites and closed Communities
A membership site is a closed community that keeps all your resources and coaching files behind a monthly / quarterly / yearly paywall.
Think of the Netflix model. You don’t pay for every single movie you watch on Netflix, instead Netflix charges you a tiny monthly fee and you have instant access to all the movies.
Membership sites are exactly the same.
Imagine getting paid monthly, every single month from your members and all you have to do is create an offer with your Membership site that is hard to refuse.
The question for you then would be, ‘What should I offer in a Membership site?’
This will depend largely on your audience and their needs. The most successful membership sites are very specific in what they offer and the end result they are giving to their subscribers.
My first membership site on Kobocourse was dedicated to helping women grow and audience on Instagram and begin monetizing with digital products. Now I have a new Membership that is strictly helping people write, create and sell their ebooks.
Creating your own subscription based membership site on Kobocourse is easy but you must be also be able to retain your subscribers by providing and offering value in your membership content. People are not going to want to pay you monthly if your content is bad.
5. Make money online with Affiliate Marketing on Kobocourse
One of the simplest money making models online that is as old as the internet itself, is affiliate marketing. As an affiliate marketer for trusted brands and products, you earn a tiny commission on every sale that is made through your unique link.
The good news is, you can become an affiliate marketer for as many products or brands as you can manage.
What is even more cool is all you have to do, is link to the products you swear by and drive traffic to that link.
As a Kobocourse affiliate, when you tell your audience, content creators, coaches, entrepreneurs, about Kobocourse and they sign up as premium members, you earn a whooping 50%!
Imagine getting 10 people to sign up to use Kobocourse to sell their own online courses weekly.
Chances are you already have an audience or followers who need a platform for their coaching business so what are you waiting for?
Sign up now to claim your free account on Kobocourse, grab your affiliate link from your dashboard and begin to spread your links! The easiest way to earn money as an affiliate for any product is to provide valuable content around the benefits of that product so you can link to it.
6. Make money online selling eBooks
eBooks will probably always be one of the products I sell in my business. People love to download them, and many more love to pay the tiny fee to get them.
If you do not know how to create and sell eBooks, it will do you great help to learn now because these tiny little money makers are not going anywhere as long as the world is digital.
Your eBook can be on just about anything and as long as people need the information you are sharing, you are positioned to earn money.
Don’t wait. Start Monetizing and making Money online now!
If you already know something useful that others do not know, you can earn money online teaching what you know. This is what I live by because this simple belief was what helped me pick myself up when I was broke and depressed about my life.
I just knew it in my heart that if people were already asking me for my help with one thing or the other, then I was destined to earn money by offering my services and sharing my knowledge.
There is no waiting either. This is nothing to keel over and waste time on. If you have an idea, you must allow yourself to get to work now.
Which of these methods of making money without money are you going to experiment with?
Share with me in the comments and let me know how this post has helped you!
I don’t believe I have ever created an offer that I wasn’t afraid of selling. Just like you, I have dealt with a fair share of being frightened to death at the thought of showing up to sell. It is precisely because of this fear of selling that I push myself head-first into telling people about my product and getting them to pay me even before I have ever created the thing. It could be an eBook, an online course, a new coaching idea or offer that I am literally just mapping out.
I never wait to be ready to sell the thing.
If I got a really good idea for a new workshop or webinar, an eBook, online course or group coaching offer, I simply would shift into mapping out a sales strategy that I needed to implement within a week and I’ll begin my marketing campaign to sell the thing.
Has it worked every time? Yes. Do I absolutely, 100% sell out my offers? No. But I make sales.
I pretty much get paid for the digital product by real people before I set down to create the product fully.
Here’s why this is important and why it works.
Perhaps the biggest win for me is that I am able to validate that I have a working, profitable idea. If my digital product is going to do well, then it has to do well with a tiny group of people in the initial sales process. I have come to understand that if people are not willing to pay for your digital product even without seeing proof of it’s existence, then chances are you have chosen the wrong product or idea.
I have had several conversations with creators and coaches that always go something like this, “Eva, I have created my eBook but selling it has been difficult, nobody wants to buy.”
Or..
“I spent three months creating this course and I believe it has a lot of value but my followers are not buying.”
I know what this is like because I have been there myself with my first online course.
Thinking that when you create the product, the buyers will come, is a thought that has thwarted the entrepreneurial dreams of so many digital creators.
Selling the idea before the product is ready, and possibly getting people to buy into that idea by putting their money down for it, will not only motivate you to create a great product, it will also earn you some income in the start.
And earning is important. The reason you are creating a digital product in the first place is to turn your knowledge into income and spread your ideas to educate and inspire people. If your idea is a profitable one, it has to make you money before it becomes a real thing.
Depending on your offer and what the actual product is, the sales strategy that you employ will vary.
When I am selling an eBook for instance, one of the easiest ways to sell an book before I ever put a word down is to first, create the eBook cover in a simple app like Canva.
This cover does not have to be the final cover but it does have to be good enough as a first cover. Next I’ll create all the digital mockups and graphics for the cover so I can share it on Instagram, or via email. I show you this entire process in The Profitable Digital Product workshop which you can watch here.
In a very quick post in my stories or on my feed, I’ll then announce the eBook using this dummy book cover I created in Canva and I’ll make a call to action to my audience for any one of these:
Get the first chapter free (using this to grow a waitlist)
Announce the book and ask to get on a waitlist
Announce an initial offering for a discounted pre-order
Announce that I am writing the book and the first 100 people to pre-order can get it for $1 or something ridiculous
Announce a QnA relating to the eBook title and engage my audience
How to Sell a Masterclass
/before it’s ready
If I were selling a workshop or live masterclass, it gets even easier to sell before the slides are ready.
I simply would create a banner image with the title of the workshop, create the sales page very quickly in wordpress, set up the tickets for sale on Kobocourse and begin to tell my audience to buy tickets.
If I don’t get any ticket sales or enquiries in my DMs about the workshop, then I know something is wrong. Usually it could be the title or headline of the class, or the topic generally just doesn’t work for my audience.
This is why being able to uncover exactly what your audience needs help with and what they want to pay for is important before you ever create the digital product or coaching offer. In The Digital Product Workshop, I share 4 Powerful tactics you must follow in order to find out what your audience want, plus I also break down strategies to help you sell and make money before you create the product.
This class is not free but you’ll get approximately 2 Hours to watch the Training for free instantly when you follow this link.
How to Sell an Online Course
/before it’s ready
Usually I’ll sell an online course with a webinar, and that webinar could be Live or automated. Also, depending on the price of the course, if it is above $300, I would very easily opt to sell it with a Live webinar /workshop presentation. The very first time I test out a new course idea or begin the process of creating the course, I will host a live webinar and get people to register for it.
Next, just like in the case of an eBook or Masterclass, I would create the banners and mockups and all digital images for the course and the course content and this would be my sales assets during my presentation.
For a pre-sale like this, it is important that your audience know that the release date of your course is far ahead into the future, preferably one month or more ahead but they can possibly get access to some bonus material or free offers in the meantime.
Many coaches choose to teach their courses live in the beginning. They test out their methodologies and concepts with Live training participants and students, host the course Live through the period of a few weeks and very often, later down the line the course is then packaged as an instant access course.
Whatever you choose to create, you can sell it all before it is ready and you should aim to do that.
The very first step however is to invest time towards creating products that people need, not just products you think sound great on paper.
Now, here’s the hard part and why this may be a bad or horrible idea for you
If you are unable to handle the sudden rush of anxiety from jumping straight into something you haven’t fully planned and mapped out, the resulting spike in your anxiety levels may trip you up.
In simple terms, this is not for the faint hearted.
For many people, it is easy to go crazy and begin to rush to complete a product haphazardly because you don’t have enough time. If this is you, then you want to make sure you have at least gotten the product /idea to at least 40% completion before you try to announce it.
Selling an idea, literally air to people and having only your own word to keep you accountable is quite a task. You can either use the resulting fear and the warming of your hands as your nerves race, as a confidence booster.
Confidence in your own independent ideas. Confidence in the fact that yes indeed you really can sell this thing. Confidence in knowing that even one single person paying for your idea before you create it is proof that your knowledge is worth getting paid for.
And knowing exactly how to get people to pay you for what you know is what I am about and that’s what I aim to help you do.
If you are ready to finally put your ideas into the world and get paid for what you know, go watch The Profitable Digital Product workshop to learn how to come up with the best ideas for products that people need and want to pay for.
Here’s what students who attended this class Live are saying 👇🏽
