How to Create An Online Course to Market and Sell

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How do you create an online course? It’s funny to hear your inner monologue asking that question when it seems like yesterday you first discovered that there is an entire world of online courses.

If you’re reading this chances are you have been presented with an offer to purchase an online course. The first time you discover the world of online courses it almost seems like it’s a “make sense” way of learning that you can’t believe it took you so long to discover. From that point, it feels like everyone and their brother has an online course.

And that’s not to say that online courses are bad. On the contrary. The variety of teachers out there covering a variety of subjects means not only can you find instruction on the topic you’re most interested in learning, but you can most likely find it being taught by someone you really enjoy learning from.

Now You Are Ready to Create Your Online Course

As you’ve learned and grown you now are ready to create your online course and that’s where this blog post picks up.

Creating an online course could not be more simple. All you have to do is write down a desired outcome and then walk backwards, cataloguing each step necessary to achieve that desired outcome.

A Demonstration of How to Create An Online Course

The video above is a very basic, yet detailed, demonstration of how to create an online course. Using the very core concept outline I developed the Online Platform Launch Course which is my fourth course and in 2016 generated $25,000 in sales for my business.

As you watch the video you may ask yourself, “Is it really this simple?” and the answer is yes, it is that simple.

Follow the steps as closely as possible, don’t overcomplicate it and don’t second guess yourself during the framework building process and you’ll very quickly and easily create that initial blueprint for your online course.

As easy as this portion of the process is, there are two areas of the online course building process that will slow you down: self-doubt and tools.

Overcoming Self-Doubt Syndrome to Create An Online Course

Going from the student to teacher is a natural progression for many and no matter how you feel about your ability to teach, you wouldn’t be reading this right now if there weren’t a desire in you to share what you’ve learned in a teaching format.

Self-doubt is essentially the fear that comes with putting yourself ‘out there’ for public commentary and consumption. When it is just you and a friend at a coffee shop and you’re teaching your craft it’s easy because all they did was buy you a coffee and now the bar is low for what you need to provide.

Now that you want to start charging $1000 for your content you start hearing voices calling you out on all sorts of fears embedded deep down inside your head and heart.

Overcome Shiny Object Tool Syndrome to Create An Online Course

As you overcome self-doubt and begin to create your course, you will move into the world of “online marketing” and begin looking to emulate much of what you’ve seen other online course creators do by way of what tools they’ve used.

In full shiny object syndrome fashion you will sign up for course software, email marketing programs, download multiple WordPress plugins, and install dozens of WordPress themes trying to achieve a look that you have inside your brain.

The tools are important, how ever, the tools will only amplify the chaos or clarity of your product so right now it is important to put all of the tool talk to the side and focus solely on your actual course content.

Start Creating An Online Course Today

Watch the video above and truly, in a few minutes, you’ll have the core framework for your course written down on a piece of paper and can begin putting together the individual training sections.

If you want to go more in depth, there are lots of resources available with a simple Google search – for instance, here is another way how to create an online course.

It’s so easy to do that it’s even easier to overthink. Don’t. Just let it come naturally to you and if you get stuck, feel free to contact me and I’d love to help you get unstuck.

Entrepreneurs Pursuing Goals vs Shiny Objects

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When you don’t have a goal you are aiming for in your online business shiny objects will win.

Why?

Because they don’t have any competition.

Without goals you’ll get a good idea, and pursue that idea and leave that idea.

You’ll have another good idea, pursue that idea and leave that idea.

And yet another good idea, you’ll pursue that idea and then leave that idea.

Goals keep you focused on pursuing the right ideas vs good ideas.

A Breakthrough Strategy for Writing Sales Page Copy

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You have your ideal client identified, you have a product ready to go and all that is left is writing your your sales page.

You haven’t been able to crack the sales page cookie and you are never satisfied with anything you write.

I have been in that spot and it is no fun.

Writing Sales Page Copy Made Easy

This short Periscope video captures the moment that writing sales page copy changed for me and has impacted the way I write my sales copy ever since. It’s not perfect, it is not a scientific formula but it has given me the clear starting point that I need when I sit down to craft that first draft of any sales page.

Why You Should Delete Nearly Every Social Media Profile

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Mark Shaw had over 40k followers on Periscope and his shows averaged easily over 100 viewers… usually it was nearly 200. As a matter of fact, there were many broadcasts that wouldn’t allow new commenters because it was already packed with people sharing and engaging.

In summer of 2016 Mark deleted Periscope, along with nearly every other social media profile he had created, washing away years of work as well as, presumably, hundreds of thousands of potential connections.

Why?

That’s the subject of this conversation wth Mark Shaw.

Mark Shaw jumped on Twitter, Day 1, and has become a go-to for many who want to unlock the power of Twitter as well as learn about the inner relational workings of social media. With over 30k followers on Twitter, when Mark moves, people listen and as a result he built several highly successful social media platforms, engineering a strong community of like-minded people.

In this conversation I talk with Mark about the thought process behind deleting nearly every social media profile he had created (in the conversation he mentions he now only uses Facebook Messenger and Twitter) and we discuss many of the objections one would have before doing the exact same thing.

You can find Mark on Twitter as well as read his work on his website, markshaw.biz.

The #1 Thing You Want on “My Website Homepage”

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Your website homepage is cluttered. I don’t even need to look at your website to know that it’s cluttered. You may think that this doesn’t apply to you because your website home page is very simple. It’s true that your website may not be cluttered with content but is it cluttered with competing ideas?

What should I have on my website homepage?

Most online entrepreneurs and individuals looking to make online income use their website to try and communicate everything. Either they will add to their latest idea or shiny object to the homepage or they will replace the last shiny object or idea… never giving any thought whether or now their content is actually helping them achieve their mission.

By putting everything on the homepage, you are compensating for a lack of strategy of getting the right information in front of the right eyes.Click To Tweet

When you throw everything on your homepage, maybe on a rotating banner or series of images, you are trying to make up for a lack of planning in your business. By

By putting everything on the homepage, you are compensating for a lack of strategy of getting the right information in front of the right eyes.Click To Tweet.

Are You Making the #1 Mistake On Your Homepage?

Your website audience is different than your social media audience and different than your email audience. The #1 mistake made on a website homepage is posting content that is not mission critical and assuming that the information is relevant to everyone arriving on your site.

Answering the question “What should be on my website homepage?”

If you haven’t asked “What should be on my website homepage?” now is a good time to start. In this video I go into greater detail covering the issue with throwing everything on your homepage and give a starting point strategy for how to immediately transform your homepage strategy and tips on how to optimize it going forward.

Social Warfare: The #1 Social Share Button Plugin for WordPress

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UPDATED AUGUST 27, 2016 – Social Warfare released the 2.0 version of the plugin and it is packed full of new features, updated options and faster than ever. This is a demonstration of version 2.0.

Are you using a WordPress website? Are you looking for a social media plugin that gives you a gorgeous social share button that lets you pick which social networks to display and shows how many times your article has been shared?

Have you downloaded and deleted multiple social share button plugins, always frustrated by the hideous appearance, lack of options, limited customizations and clunky code that slows down your website?

In this article you will learn about the Social Warfare 2.0 Plugin for WordPress, the options it provides each user, the many customizations available and how you can integrate this gorgeous social share button plugin into your website immediately.

Get Social Warfare Now

The Visual Appeal of the Social Warfare Social Share Button

If you use self-hosted WordPress, the Social Warfare 2.0 Plugin allows you to control how your social sharing options appear on your website and how your website content appears on individual social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Social Warfare is designed with your brand in mind, giving you visual customizations once made only available to companies with big web development budgets who could create their own code to generate a social share button that suits their specific tastes.

Social Warfare Social Share Button Shape Options

Part of the problem you have encountered with other social sharing buttons is they are ugly. Whoever developed the buttons had someone other than you in mind. Social Warfare gives you a core rectangular design with six variations of that core shape.

social share button gif displaying the six different variations of the social warfare social share button design

Social Warfare 2.0 for WordPress gives you six variations of the core rectangular design.

Social Warfare Social Share Button Color Options

I finished developing a website for a client, installed a social share button plugin and received an email back stating, “These buttons are hideous! Can’t they look more like my website?”

Spend any time trying to find social share buttons and you’ll either find one of two options (never both). You’ll find a button shape, size and style you like without the ability to brand them with your colors or you’ll find one that you can brand with your colors but are unable to control the shape, size and style.

Get Social Warfare Now

As we saw above, you have control over the variations of the core rectangular design. Social Warfare also gives you the ability to change the colors of the individual buttons.

a screen capture of the color options for social share button through social warfare

The only item not demonstrated in the gif above is the custom colors. If the none of the preloaded options suit your taste, you can style the buttons with a color that matches your website or your brand. Check out the gif below.

gif of the social share button color options from social warfare

Social Warfare gives you the ability to create your own custom color social share button

The Comprehensive Feature Set of the Social Warfare Social Share Button Plugin

A beautiful social share button is important but you also will want a wide variety of networks integrated into the button. The team behind Social Warfare gets it and they have added a share button for every major social network you could want – and some you’ve probably never heard of.

Get Social Warfare Now

At the time of this writing Social Warfare gives you a selection of 15 different networks and setting your default set of buttons and then ordering them in the order you want them to appear is easier than ever. It’s a drag and drop action that will be familiar for anyone. Check out the gif below.

Gif showing social warfare social share button configuration

With 15 sharing networks to choose from and a simple drag and drop interface, you can set your network sharing buttons in a matter of seconds.

There are plenty of other social share button plugins that will give you the same variety of sharing option and along with it a clunky and time consuming configuration process. Not only can you easily choose and order your default set of buttons, you can create custom configurations for a specific page.

Say you’re doing an invitation to a webinar and you want to use social warfare buttons – but you only want the Facebook and Twitter share buttons available. Social Warfare allows you to use the visual editor on any page or post to add this special configuration. Check out the screen shot below.

screen shot of the special configuration mode for the social warfare social share button

You can type the name of the individual networks separated by comma.

Once you’ve added this special shortcode, you proceed down to the Social Warfare Custom Options and turn off the default placement and the only buttons that will now appear on this page are the ones in your special configuration.

Screen shot of social share button social warfare

You can turn off the Social Warfare buttons on any page, regardless of your master settings.

The best way to become acquainted with the display options in Social Warfare is to actually interact with them. There are additional display options including share counts, built-in Pinterest button (which I turn off, I don’t like it) along with the option to turn on Twitter Cards.

Get Social Warfare Now

A quick note on Twitter Cards. These confused me for quite a while. Eventually I learned how to program my own Twitter Cards using the code Twitter provide. Here is a screen shot of what I was adding to the header code of each blog post:

screen shot of twitter card with large image and summary meta code

When Twitter Cards launched the only way to get them to appear for your website was to configure this code on every page. It wasn’t fun.

Social Warfare has the code for Twitter Cards built right into the software and the same meta descriptions that you write for Facebook will be used for Twitter as well. From someone who was doing everything manually, this is awesome!

The Social Media Title and Social Media Description fields (referenced in the previous paragraph) allow you to control what text appears when you share your content on social media. Look at the graphic below.

Twitter and Facecbook social sharing preview

You can designate what text you want to appear in the social media generated preview using the Social Warfare Plugin.

In addition to title and description, Social Warfare gives you a place to upload the image you want to associated with your shared link. You can see this one with a picture of me and Mark Shaw and our video interview about deleting your social media accounts.

Additional Amazing Features in the Social Warfare Social Share Button Plugin

There are several other amazing features in Social Warfare and those additional features are covered in the video available at the top of the article. That video below covers other features such as Bit.ly integration, frame buster, analytic tracking through UTM, share recovery and social media profile integration. Each of these additional features is the icing on top of this perfect social sharing plugin and the advanced functionality not found in any other plugin.

Social Warfare is available to buy, download and install on any self-hosted WordPress blog and you can purchase your license by clicking here.

If you are getting caught up on the fact that Social Warfare is not free allow me to help put the cost of the license into perspective for you. Consider how much your time is worth. Would you spend $116 for a social sharing plugin? Most likely not however, that’s exactly what you do when you spend 3-4 hours searching, downloading, configuring, deleting and searching for another social share button plugin.

I know this to be true because it has been my experience. Since purchasing Social Warfare nearly two years ago I haven’t even looked at any additional social share button plugins because there is no need.

Get your copy of Social Warfare, put an end to the endless cycle of searching for new social share button plugins and outfit your blog with a pro social share button that will satisfy your every requirement.

Get Social Warfare for WordPress by clicking here.

*Links provided are affiliate links which, at no additional cost to you, provides me a small commission when you make a purchase. That said, I would promote this plugin commission or not and I use it on my websites and recommend it for nearly all of my clients.

Charging What You Are Worth and Be Willing to Say No

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The struggle you feel when confronted with landing your first client – it’s real. You’re not the only one battling through the, “I want to land the client but I also need to make money.” When you believe that this issue is unique to you it’s embarrassing to think that you’ve discounted your value, but what were you supposed to do? You needed income.

Your problem is not what you are charging. Your problem is your inability to say no.Click To Tweet

Not all value is monetary. Truthfully, there are situations where you will want to discount your rates to make certain you land the gig because you need the experience. You want to break into the restaurant marketing business so in effort to gain experience working with restaurants, you discount your monthly services so you can land that first store. No shame in that.

Your problem is not what you’re charging, your problem is not being willing to say no to opportunity.

In this Periscope replay we will cover the opportunity cost that exists with every client that comes your way. The temptation to lower your value to get a yes means that down the road you will be unable to say yes to a HIGH PAYING CLIENT because of your eagerness to land ANY CLIENT.

Periscope Replay Videos

This video comes from a full length live stream broadcast on Periscope. You don’t have time to be watching Periscope all day – sign up to receive replays just like this one edited from the full length to the core message of each scope. It’s free and you can unsubscribe at any point.

Why Ryan Bilello Launched “The Inside Scope” Podcast

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Periscope was first released in March of 2015 and it only took a short while for pockets of communities to spring up around inspirational figures that had never before had a significant platform.

Ryan Bilello launched a podcast in the fall of 2015 specifically to interview these new “Peri-celebrities” and discover more of the story behind each scope.

In this short clip from #dactalk episode 15 Ryan shares what inspired the podcast and why he chose to make a podcast one of his first ventures into the world of online business.

Click the button below to watch the entire interview.

Watch Episode 15