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Hey, hey. You're listening to the Level Up creators podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help digital creators build thriving, sustainable businesses they love. And we're so glad you're here. Welcome. I am joined again today by our head of revenue strategy, Natalie Williams, to help me continue breaking down all the ways that creators can make money online. Welcome back, Natalie. Thanks, Amanda. Always happy to be here. Yeah. Today is the third of part series breaking down the type of one off digital products creators can offer as part of their product suite. Yeah, and we went into this three part series intending to cover all eight categories of product creators could make. But this is actually the third episode, just covering the first category, or bucket, if you will. We'll pick up on the other categories in a few weeks, most of which don't require this level of coverage. So make sure you follow us on YouTube or subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app to get notifications when those are published. Yeah, turns out we have a lot to say about this stuff. And this is really just the tip of the iceberg. Of the tip of the iceberg. So hope it's all making sense. But today we're going to cover ebooks, printables, graphics and photos, and most importantly, single engagement, one on one coaching, consulting and group coaching cohorts. We're going to kick it off with ebooks. So ebooks, of course, are digital books, so there's not necessarily a printed version. And many books that do go to print are also, of course, available as ebooks or audiobooks. And just a quick tip, you can always record and publish an audio version of your ebook as well. It's actually not that complicated of a process on Audible.com. Right? And something that's been on the rise in recent years is authors writing full size books and only making them available in digital format. This is a really popular way. This is really popular in the self published fiction space, because when the author has a following, they get to keep the lion's share of that money. So there's no middleman publisher and no printing cost. So that's definitely an option to consider no matter what type of book you're writing. Let's talk word count. If your ebook is less than, say, like 5000 words, it should probably be leveraged as a lead magnet. But if it's more than a 10,000 5000 word range, you can definitely sell it. And for reference, the average nonfiction full size book is actually just about 50,000 words. I got curious and started poking around my own bookshelf to see what the longest nonfiction books I own are. Ray Dalio's book Principles Clocks In at 148,000 Words. And then Warren Buffett's biography the snowball is 208,000 words. Now, granted, that man is 93 and his life and career are certainly worth 200,000 plus words, but whoa. Same thing with Ray Dalio. He built and ran Bridgewater Hedge funds, like the most successful hedge fund in the world for many, many years and more recently retired. I love his book. He actually has a children's book of the same name. I think it's called Principles for Success by Ray Dalio. D-A-L-I-O-I got it for my son and it's great. Easy to read. I'll definitely link that in the show notes. That's a complete aside, shifting gears here, back to this, though these books are many thousands or hundreds thousands of words, these actually pale in comparison to some of the science fiction and fantasy books that my husband and son read, which, I mean, I look this up, right? Because I'm super curious about this kind of stuff. I'm actually writing my first book right now and so trying to kind of think toward word count and stuff like that. But those fiction and fantasy books are frequently over a quarter of a million words long and like the Harry Potter series we're all familiar with is about 1.1 million words. Brandon Sanderson, a super prolific fantasy writer, regularly hits over 300,000 words and going up to like 450,000. I can't imagine having that much to say, but truly incredible. But all that to say, please don't feel any pressure to write something this long. Seriously, I've read excellent ebooks that are straight into the point, really valuable, no fluff actionable with 10,000 or fewer words. So maybe shoot for that if you're going to sell your book. Yeah, and in any case, ebooks typically don't sell for much. But if you remember what we've said about pricing up to this point in previous episodes, the more niche your audience is, the bigger the problem your ebook will solve, the more unique it is, the higher the price you can get for it. Also factor in the affinity that your community has for you. If this is one of your first products and your audience is really engaged and loyal, they likely won't mind shelling out $15 instead of five for your ebook, and in some cases, even more. Yeah, definitely. I wrote an ebook on membership marketing years ago and it was a great thought leadership piece. Just kind of like a point of validation that I had that for companies considering hiring me for consulting or to be an executive at their company and worked really well. Yeah. So now let's cover what kind of creator writing an ebook might work best for. If you're wanting to increase the perception of your authority in your area of expertise, writing an ebook is an effective way for you to do that. And a 10,000 to 20,000 word ebook is far less intimidating than writing a full blown book. Although if your short form ebook sells well and people offer really positive feedback, that's definitely a strong signal that you might consider writing a full size book, maybe with a print version in the near future. If you do consider a print version, think about using something like Kickstarter or just work toward getting your audience members to preorder them to fund your print expenses so you don't have to foot a giant bill for that. Go ahead and get people excited, build momentum, and pay for it in advance. Yeah, and if you do decide to write one, I recommend writing your ebook in a purpose built tool. For ebooks like Kindle, Create, Atticus, and even Canva has great templated and well formatted options to choose from that can be really customized based on your branding. This is especially great for highly visual and colorful ebooks with lots of images or illustrations. Yeah, those are great tool recommendations. If you feel intimidated by using a tool like that and happen to start with Microsoft Word or even Google Docs, you might run into page formatting issues when you go through the editing and publishing process. Unless you're just looking to export a doc into a PDF and call it done, which is a perfectly valid sort of MVP minimum viable product to do and will be great for your first ebook. Yeah, definitely. And in terms of marketing your ebook, just like we talked about in episode four, start sharing that you're going to publish one just as soon as you have your idea down in an outline. Make sure that what you're writing is a topic your audience is very interested in and willing to pull their credit card out for. That is if you plan to sell it rather than offer it for free as a lead magnet. Yes, thank you. Good point. And just a quick reminder remember that a lead magnet is something you offer of value to your audience in exchange for their email address. So you can build your email list and then market and sell products through your email marketing system. Okay, definitely to build on Natalie's point, leverage your social media presence and email newsletter to hype your audience up about your ebook. And actually, regardless of if you're going to do a print run, take pre orders, whatever, build momentum towards your launch. You can do sneak previews of sections as you get them written, have a launch countdown, and regularly talk about what you're writing. Definitely have your book for sale on your website and get it up on Amazon as well. It's a relatively easy process, actually to get your ebook on there and again, if you do create an audio version, get that up for sale on Audible.com, Amazon's Audiobook Hub. Yep love audible. And as with your entire product lineup, incorporate your book into your evergreen marketing machine. Ebooks, in addition to guides, workbooks workshops, et cetera, are all great to use as tripwire products, which are low cost of entry items that usually serve as your customer's first purchase with you, and they often lead to larger purchases. And if you nail your product quality and marketing automation, you'll be successful with this. Yeah, those are really good prerequisites for sure. And speaking of tripwires, we're going to quickly cover printables and then graphics and photos. So examples of printables would be like coloring books or pages for kids or adults. I mean, I'm sure we've all heard about the benefits of adult coloring books at this point and how effective of a stress reduction tool and technique that can be. I mean it's up there with meditation which is super interesting. There's actually a creator I read about recently, she's not selling a printable but she's selling some kind of coloring cube or something like that and she is pulling in $200,000 a month in sales off of a coloring cube. And this is a creator just like you person listening. So if you don't think you can get there, you absolutely can. How incredible is that? I think that's such a good example too of just kind of like ideas that you might not think are going to generate a ton of money. It's like just those small things. It doesn't have to be overly complex or complicated. Simple ideas like that can be, like you just mentioned, incredibly lucrative. Yes. Other examples would be charts, graphics with inspirational quotes, industry report summaries, kind of anything along those lines that someone might be able to literally just print out a PDF. It's been well designed on Canva or whatever tool makes the most sense for what you're creating. Put it on the wall, put it on their desk, put it on their mirror. Again, lots of applications there and there is definitely some crossover between potentially between templates which we talked about in the previous episode, and printables with like charts and graphs. But that's okay, you can call it what you want for whatever works for your audience. Yeah, there's also things like quotes and affirmations and reminders. These can be done for any niche too, so they're really agnostic. Think about classroom posters, framed prints of quotes sold on Etsy, things that hang on office walls and kitchens, et cetera. The limits are pretty limitless. Yeah, totally. Goal tracking sheets is another one, habit trackers is another one. So again, we've talked about so many examples of different challenges and templates and all those kinds of things and so just know that this is another option you can overlay onto whatever the topic of your community is. Yeah, definitely. And printables aren't too much of a lift to create, especially if you're using a tool like Canva to create them from readymade templates. Now if you're a professional designer, you might sell a pack of graphics, some media Kit templates, a brand guide, or even licenses to use your photos. Yeah, that's a good idea. And you can also offer these types of digital products in an off the shelf way, meaning anyone can buy them and start using them immediately 24 7365 without any intervention from you. And or you can couple an offer like a Media Kit template with an add on where you actually have the customer fill out the questionnaire online and then you designer, populate and design the Media Kit for them. This actually turns an off the shelf product into a bespoke or custom solution for one of your customers. And similarly, you could actually sell a pack of graphics in an off the shelf offering, again, just that can be picked up and purchased anytime. But then you can also offer an upsell to customize the graphics with the customers brand colors and other unique design elements. And it would be great actually, if you sold a media kit, upsold them to fill in the media kit with their particular brand information, and then upsold them again to a pack of graphics to include in their media kit and for their graphic suite to be used in all of their marketing materials. So again, we're working toward creating a product suite that makes the most sense for what you can do creator and what provides the most value for your community members and leading them on this amazing journey where they buy everything that you sell that would be valuable to them. And we try and do that through marketing automation, which I'm not going to go into right now because you all are tired of hearing about that. All right, I'm excited about our next topic because it actually holds the potential to unlock serious revenue for creators. Usually more than any one thing can be sold for in the digital space. So let's talk about one off coaching and consulting packages and group coaching and course cohorts. All right, Natalie, kick us off. Let's break down this stuff. Yeah. So first of all, we'll talk about coaching and consulting on retainers or ongoing payment models like memberships later on in this series. Keep in mind that on today's episode, we're strictly talking about one time coaching or consulting sessions or packages or one time group coaching or course cohorts. So under this kind of arrangement with your customers, they're signing up for a very specific service with a set start and end date, not an open ended engagement that's intended to produce recurring revenue. Yeah, that's a really important point. Yeah. And one off coaching or consulting sessions are great lead magnets if you're just getting started and trying to sell a larger, more expensive package. But today we're going to mainly focus on sessions that are available for sale, not offered for free as a lead magnet. And an interesting chess move you might consider making with one off paid sessions like this is to leverage them to try and upsell your single session customers to a larger coaching or consulting package like a group cohort. Now, if you do this, your number one job and absolute focus is to provide the most value you can during that single session. Remember that your customer did not pay for that call to be sold. Something else. They paid to capture the value you advertised and if you use this chess maneuver, if you will, this is doing what's called using a loss leader, where you sell this one off session for a set price. It's a one to one call. There's a limit to what you can charge based on any industry. I mean, whatever industry you're in, you can only charge so much for a single call, even if that's $5,000. Okay, it might be $50, I don't know. But if you're leveraging that single call again as a loss leader, you know, going in that you're not going to make sort of your maximum potential with that customer through this one call, but you're doing such an excellent job driving value solving problems live on that call and even with follow ups afterward that your customer is asking for more. And so you want to be ready to offer the next thing. But always, first things first. Deliver what you promised and over deliver, if possible, delight your customer to the point where they actually ask what else they can buy from you. And if you have the privilege of being asked that magic question, or if there's a natural kind of in to a conversation about working together more, that's your opportunity to gently present the value, outcomes and benefits of buying the bigger package you have to offer. Again, this process I talked about this quite a bit just a minute ago with graphic designer offering upsells. This is also called an upsell, and it's a fantastic way to maximize any customer's LTV. LTV stands for Customer Lifetime Value, which simply means the average amount of money your customers pay you over time. Yeah. And to maximize not only revenue, but bottom line profitability, you need a strategy that will earn you the most customers who end up paying you quite a lot of money over the years in exchange for the amazing high value products and services that you offer. Yes. And it's key here to if you're obviously purposely using a one off call as a loss leader, that you have the next thing ready to sell and in the back of your mind and have kind of rehearsed the value outcomes and things that you can present very informally and in a non pushy, non sleazy way to your customer if, again, that moment arises. And I have a little anecdote, as usual, from my own life where I was successfully upsold, and I'm so glad that I was. So, several years ago, I hired an amazing creator designer named Michelle Dew hi, Michelle. To remotely design my office, which in turn has led me to use her other design services throughout our house. And I've referred a ton of business to her for my neighbors and friends. She's even flown up to Colorado to do projects on our house and on our neighbors houses. But here's how that happened. She had a really thorough and efficient intake process where she got me to take pictures, measurements, and video of my office space, this room. She took into account my budget style preferences and all those other things that designers do and are amazing at, and came back to me with a very thoughtful, well organized plan and like a graphic representation of what the end result of my office should look like. She included links to buy everything that I needed to complete the look she recommended, and then she capped off the engagement with a wrap up, like a FaceTime call where I showed her my implementation of her designs. And, yeah, she gave me any further recommendations for Tweaks, answered all my outstanding questions to that point. And overall, it was a great experience. I was skeptical about remote design services, really, but it was really effective, super easy to follow, and not necessarily something that was commonly done remotely before 2020. And what Michelle actually did for my office is an example of a productized service. And we didn't hit on productized services earlier, did we? Yeah, I think we mentioned it at some point. Okay, well, a productized service is exactly what I just described with Michelle. And so she is taking me on this journey. I'm a person who needs my office designed, and she's going to get me to where I need to go, and she's doing it in a very formulaic way. So I'm sure on her end of things, she's got checklists and probably a template to help facilitate her work to deliver really consistent and excellent results for how she designs things remotely. And so if you're not creating again, those bespoke solutions for each and every one of your clients, you can have some packages that are productized services. And so you've got kind of a set offering and you inject some unique elements, but it's kind of the same thing. It's a rinse and repeat situation. So she could have used that same methodology, that same checklist for My office as she did for my neighbor's kitchen. Right. It's just for a different space in someone else's house, but same thing. Pictures, video, measurements. And then she turned around and gave me instructions, graphic representation links I implemented. We had a FaceTime call, and then she upsold me. Right. That is a great example of a product I service as is what we were talking about earlier. If you're a graphic designer selling something that can be picked up off the shelf without any intervention or additional work from you, but that's just what that's called. And so I would heavily encourage you, if you want to do a little bit more high touch involved service within your community, if that makes sense, based on your niche and area of expertise, do it. Make standard operating procedures, make checklists. It's not cheating. It's not shisty or shady or anything like that. It's a tool to help you deliver consistent, excellent results to your customers. So think about productized services as well. Helps you scale. Yes, it does big time and also teach other people. You can bring more people on to execute those services. You don't have to be the only one, which is really neat. So anyway, I hope this little story helps you see that there are creative applications of all these digital products. Please don't think that just because you're in a certain industry or if it's never been done this way by others, that you can't pull it off. And although the pandemic was awful and tragic and devastating and all around horrible, that's indisputable. We can at least now see that previously held geographic boundaries for service providers like creators really no longer exist. We can do so much more remotely than we ever thought possible. And of course, this doesn't apply to hands on required services if you are a plumber or a carpenter or doing landscaping, et cetera, for obvious reasons. But if you're a landscape designer, on the other hand, there's no reason you can't be doing designs for homes and businesses across the country from wherever you're at right now, using the process I just described that Michelle does. And to circle back to this whole idea of upselling your customers, please consider if running a group coaching cohort and or a course cohort could work in your product mix. Yeah, and both group coaching and course cohorts typically include a series of live virtual group events on Zoom or something similar, alongside supplemental materials like videos and emails over some number of weeks, which together creates some sort of transformation for your students. So how that works is someone in your community would sign up for your cohort because they have the problem that your unique cohort is able to solve. You've built the trust and demonstrated your knowledge through your social media content newsletters and probably also through other lower cost products and services. Remember we talked about tripwires and loss leaders to the point where someone is willing to make a significant investment with you. And if you've got the clout and if your niche is ripe for it, you can also offer a certification for completion of your cohort. That's going to be more the exception than the rule, but a certificate can be a really meaningful thing to offer in the right circumstances, so at least consider if that might be a worthwhile endeavor for your particular community. Yeah, people always love that little proof of accomplishment too. So that's just kind of a fun thing to always include. And then cohort pricing varies quite drastically depending on your area of expertise and what you have to offer. But we've seen creators make solidly in the six figures for three month cohorts. You could potentially run one or two cohorts per year and make your entire living that way. But don't get me wrong, though. There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into producing a successful cohort. From a content and curriculum perspective, for sure. But selling seats for your first and second ones requires tremendous time, attention, and know how. Yes, you totally hit the nail on the head on that one. And we won't get into all of those specifics today. Instead, if this really piques your interest and you have already successfully sold a few products or services to your community, reach out to us and we'll walk you through it in a coaching or consulting capacity. But we also get our hands dirty and produce cohorts like this while letting the creator do what they love most create content and talk to their communities about it. In cases like this, we can help develop curriculum, supplemental materials, the entire marketing strategy, and then execute the marketing strategy, sales, customer service, customer success, all the technology, finances, everything. And before we shut it down for today's episode, I want to reiterate that things like group coaching cohorts are a big deal. They are a significant level up from your typical off the shelf, one off digital product. They are a way to, like I said earlier, start to really unlock your revenue potential as a creator. These one to many services that are high ticket, I mean, you do the math on it, right? So if you can charge $1,000 for a group coaching program and get 100 people to participate, that's $100,000. So that's your six figures right there. If that sounds right for you, we definitely look forward to hearing from you and walking you through that process. And with that, this is a beast of a topic to tackle over the four episodes, four through six. And this is just the beginning in terms of ways that creators can make money online and to quickly recap your one off digital product options are courses, workshops, webinars master classes, summits, challenges, workbooks guides, printables templates, graphics, photos, ebooks, single session coaching or consulting, and of course, group coaching or course Cohorts. We will pick back up on the series soon to cover the other seven big buckets of monetization pathways for creators. So don't miss out. The good news is there are so many ways for you to make money. We're going to find the right mix for you and maximize your revenue and impact as a creator. And with that, that's it for today. We know that your time is precious. Thank you for sharing yours with us. Level Up Creators exist to amplify the voice, reach and impact of creators making a positive impact in the world. With your expertise as our focus, our team of strategists, marketers sales, pros, product developers, administrators, and tech gurus handle the heavy lifting of building and optimizing a profitable business that will transform your life for good. Subscribe to the show and check out We Level Up Creators.com for more info and resources for creators just like you. See you next time on the Level Up Creators podcast.