Intro: Why Chose eCourses and can You Make Money with them?
by Domain Sam
Having paid products to offer your customers is a key part of any online business. Traditionally, these have been in the form of eBooks – digital books that can be downloaded and read at leisure. Often the eBooks are in the form of a PDF.
However, if you’re trying to teach something, the eBook isn’t always the most popular format. This is where eCourses come in – they are simply digital versions of courses that will deliver information and training in bite-sized, step-by-step chunks.
ECourses are easy to send out because they can be delivered directly via email. By going directly into your customer’s inbox makes it much more likely that your information will be read.
Traditionally eCourses have been seen as an excellent freebie – an incentive to get people to sign up to your mailing list. But eCourses can be products in their own right, and extremely profitable ones at that!
Going Beyond Standard Information Products
When you are trying to think of ways to make more money in your business it’s likely that the idea of having a membership website has come up. The volume of money to be made is unlimited, and it comes in month after month. However, the sheer volume of work to do to get that started can easily stop you dead in your tracks. It is not as easy as it may sound as is typical of many things, especially software or online related activities.
You’d have to build a secure website with a message board, and a learning center, and then you’d have to monitor it constantly. You don’t have that much knowledge of technology so maybe you went to someone who quoted you a hefty price tag to build it for you. Money you don’t have, especially if you are just starting out or need to conserve your capital. The costs of entry into the membership market it just too high for many people.
But, what if I told you that you could make membership kinds of money without having a membership site. Instead, you can create paid eCourses that are delivered automatically to the person who has paid for them. Your main job is to create the eCourse which amounts to writing some articles, loading them into your email list software like Aweber, and setting up a Pay Now button with PayPal. Would you be interested then? We recommend Aweber because I’ve used them and their delivery rates are one of, if not the best, in the business. However, there are other similar autoresponder services that one could use.
Aweber + PayPal = Dollars
Offering paid eCourses to your audience is truly a lot less hassle than other membership or subscription models. They’re an excellent choice if you’re limited on time, if you don’t want to deal with the techy side of memberships, or if you simply want to work smarter.
All you’ll need is two key ingredients: a payment processor and an autoresponder service. It’s likely you already have these, but if not, we recommend Aweber and PayPal.
PayPal:
Unless you want to write free eCourses, you’re going to need a way for people to send you money to sign up. PayPal is, without a doubt, the top payment processor. Nearly everyone has used it before, and your customers will trust it. You can either create one-time payment buttons, or recurring subscription payments. We’ll show you how to do this.
Aweber:
Aweber is an email marketing service that makes it easy for your customers to subscribe to your mailing lists (you can have as many mailing lists and you’d like). You can then set up a sequence of emails to be delivered at an interval you set. You might think you can do this all yourself on your computer, but using an email marketing provider means it’s all 100% automated. You will definitely want an automated system to send out your eCourses.
What will it Cost You?
If you’re worried about the cost of these two services, don’t be! PayPal charges a small fee per transaction, and Aweber starts at about $19 per month (with a 1 month trial for $1). That’s far cheaper than setting up complicated membership software, or hiring people to do everything manually!
How Much Money Can You Make?
That is really a question only you can answer. Everyone can do this, but some will take it and run with it while others may give it a feeble try. Nonetheless here is an example of what’s possible.
Think about it: If you built a 12-week course you could charge as little as $20 a week and if you get 10 people to sign up you’ll be making $200 a week. That’s $200 dollars per week! This is additional revenue that you simply set up and forget about. A one-time effort to make a couple of hundred dollars is nothing to sneeze ta, especially considering that income stream can go on for a long time. Also more promotion usually means more people will respond, thus raising the amount you could conceivably make.
If you set up the course right, and market it efficiently you’re likely to get more than 10 members in any given week. If you write and compile a compelling eCourse it’s likely that most of your members will stick with it through the 12 weeks, and there will always be new sign ups because you don’t have to start it over. It all runs automatically and you can have any number of people on lesson 1 while some are on lesson 7 or other lessons.
You don’t have to have a lot of technical knowledge to start an eCourse membership or subscription. If you currently know how to use your WordPress website, Aweber, and PayPal you can have a membership site set up within a couple of hours. This is what I’ll explain to you in the next few articles. No fuss, no muss, and the bottom line is you’ll be able to set up a profitable eCourse for your business, whether it’s an online or offline business.
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