Do you know what the difference is between bloggers who don’t earn money and those who make thousands of euros a month in sales? The product! Bloggers create and provide information.
So why not sell it? I give you the techniques to create a training without screwing up.
I often repeat on the site that the best way to make money with your blog is to sell your own products. That’s what’s going to get you to the higher speed.
Finding the right product, creating it, then selling it at a high price, you can do it.
But you may fail completely. Follow these steps and you’re pretty sure you’ll make a hit.
1. Ask your readers what they want
Imagine you have a great idea. You’re sure people will want to pay for that.
You spend 1 month creating this revolutionary product, without telling anyone, you spend money on its design, and hours of work. After a month, you launch it with great pomp and circumstance, like Steve Jobs unveiling the first iPhone, and wait patiently to receive hundreds of orders from enthusiastic customers.
But you realize that no one is interested in your product. You are not Steve Jobs and you have not just created a revolutionary device. You screwed up, and you wasted a month’s work, money, and dreams of success.
Don’t worry about it. This catastrophic scenario can be completely avoided with this simple rule. Ask your customers what they want. They will not give you the ready-made plan of your training, but at least you will have the basics, with the certainty of going in the right direction.
How to do this?
Create a free form with Google Drive, asking your readers what their biggest frustration is, what difficulties they know and what they expect from you. List your readers’ main difficulties and create the product that will solve them. It’s as simple as that.
2. Write a global plan
Before creating a training course, write a plan in several main parts, each of which meets one of your readers’ needs, or which is necessary to achieve the final objective, and then add sub-parts. The plan must be consistent and follow a guideline that will result in the achievement of the objective.
For example, if your training is in running, here is what the plan might look like:
I/ The lifestyle to be adopted
- The food supply
- The sleep
- etc.
II/ Training sessions
III/ The 1st Marathon
- Preparation
- Equipment
- etc.
The final objective is to run a marathon, the first 2 parts are necessary to reach it.
3. Multiply the supports
How can you sell a training course for 200€, when a book, which can contain more content, or a DVD, costs 10 times less? Because the perceived value of a training course can be 10 times higher than that of a book. How? How? The solution is simple: the multiplication of supports.
Your training will be in the form of a pack, which itself will contain modules. The modules can be videos, podcasts (audio), fact sheets, PDFs, task lists, tools (Excel tables, etc.), midmaps (what is it?), ebooks, services (coaching by webcam…), software..
There is no shortage of supports. It is up to you to select those that best match your pedagogy. For my first training, I used 15 video modules of 10 minutes each, provided with a mindmap for each module, a task list and the same modules in audio version.
Remember this: selling a pack is much more interesting for the customer than a simple ebook.
4. Write a sales page that rocks
Creating a formation is good. Selling it is better. I will soon publish an article dedicated exclusively to writing a converting sales page. In the meantime, here are some “tips” to create an effective sales page.
Start with a catchy title that makes you want to read on. Then start the argument by listing the main difficulties of your readers (that you will have collected during your survey), then tell a story (if possible your own), before presenting your product as the hero, the one who will solve all the difficulties mentioned above.
If you have the opportunity to make a good video, it’s even better, because the reader will know who they’re dealing with.
To help you, here are 9 attributes that give value to consumers, which I have drawn from The Personal MBA. Try to satisfy most of them, and the price will be justified:
- Efficiency and effectiveness
- Speed (will I get results quickly?)
- Confidence (can I count on this product to provide me with what I need?)
- Ease of use (how much effort will it take?)
- Flexibility (how many things does it do?)
- Status (what will it bring me socially?)
- Aesthetic (is it pleasant to look at?)
- Emotion (how will I feel after this training?)
- Cost (is it worth its price?)
Note that there is no price too high for a training course, because it is a result you sell.
The more value the result has (gain in money, esteem, better professional or personal situation…), the higher the perceived value for your training will be and the more clients will be willing to pay. 200€ is not that expensive when you consider that other bloggers charge several thousand euros for their programs.
Finally, I strongly recommend that you offer a “satisfied or refunded” guarantee. This is a huge selling point (security), and it can save you a lot of trouble in case of a dissatisfied customer, provided of course that you give him the refund without discussion.
If your product is good, the rate of claims will remain low. If you offer a 30 or 60-day guarantee, I advise you to deliver the content of the training over several weeks to avoid that smart guys download everything and ask for a refund immediately.
In this case, you can even afford to sell the training before you create it, which is great to know if the product will work or not! If you make very few sales, you just have to reimburse your customers and review your strategy.
Maybe you lack traffic, subscribers to your email list or you didn’t take care of a survey. If you make enough sales, design your modules as you deliver them to your customers. Clever, isn’t it?
5. Create the irresistible offer with these 2 ingredients
This very simple technique will allow you to sell up to 5 times more. You don’t believe me?
Then test the irresistible offer technique:
If you want to sell your product, you will have to make your offer exclusive and urgent. In short, irresistible. Otherwise, most people will think, “Well, this product looks good, but I don’t need it right away, I’ll see later”. And they’ll never buy it. It’s a shame for them, who have once again postponed something that could have brought them a lot, and it’s a shame for you, who are losing customers.
To make your offer urgent, you have 2 choices:
- Make a launch for a limited time
- Establish a major promotion for a limited period of time
In the first case, you launch your product over 1 or 2 weeks, email your prospects several times, reminding them that they only have a short time left to seize this opportunity, before the training closes its doors.
In the second case, you offer a unique and significant price reduction (for example 97€ or 127€ instead of 197€) over a few days by relaunching your prospects by email.
This is the technique I used for my first training and it worked very well, since I made 500€ of turnover in 3 days with a product at 47€ instead of 87€. At the end of the promotion, of course the sales decrease, but nothing prevents you from making other flash sales regularly.
6. Collect feedback
This step is very important, since it will help you to improve your offer and build your authority in your field, your reputation as an expert.
A few weeks after your launch, send an email to your customers to ask them for feedback, i.e. feedback on your training. If they are satisfied, ask them if they can write a built feedback, or better still, make a video, to tell them how much your product has helped them.
You can integrate these precious testimonies into your sales page, which will give you a lot of credibility (especially if it is a video, which cannot be a fake).
If the feedback is more mixed, use it to improve. Take into account constructive criticism and try to correct small defects for the next time.
Feedback is very valuable. Feel free to ask your readers/customers for some and keep them, in an Evernote note for example.
7. Take stock, improve and relaunch
Based on your survey, results and feedback, take stock. Have you made enough sales? Have you met all your customers’ needs? How could you improve your training, or attract more customers?
Above all, don’t stop at a success. Your current customers will be willing to buy your next training sessions because they know you are quality.
You could launch a second session of your first enriched and improved training, or a new complementary training of the first. Adapt your business model. There are plenty of possibilities, so don’t stop there.
When I launched my first successful training, I made the mistake of not continuing on my path. I rested on my laurels, left my blog aside to focus on other things for almost a year and lost a lot of readers.
I am sure that if I had continued, and created other products, I would have had a good progression. Don’t make the same mistake I did, when it works, keep going!