Online training courses are essential for entrepreneurs. All entrepreneurs want to provide the best products so that they can sell them effortlessly, but the problem is they don’t know how to start creating one or, they have started creating, and they're having a hard time finishing it because they want it to be perfect. In this talk with Bob Bly, one of the best in the field of copywriting and Internet marketers, Bob shares steps on how to create your product and the different modes of delivering them to your target audience. One of the ways is audio which provides a more natural and less polished product, this is what the audience likes better.
Key Takeaways
The Process of creating online training courses
Define the topic or problem. It could be a problem that needs to be solved or a skill set you possess.
Publishing newsletters will make people talk to you and ask questions. Those questions tell you what they want to learn.
Creating mp3 and the recording
Be invited to some venue, such as an internet marketing conference or a trainee association meeting, to speak on your topic where it's a big event and they're recording it.
Deliver live in front of groups, it has the energy of the live audience feedback.
Work with a partner who can be either be the interviewer or a fellow subject matter expert. and essentially to have the interview or conversation which is much more dynamic
Packaging an audio
Sell as a stand-alone product.
Bundle it with your other products, it can be sold for a higher price since it has a higher perceived value.
Not editing your audio/video may keep its spontaneity and help you finish the product in a much faster time.
Luis Congdon:
Today, you're going to be meeting copywriter extraordinaire Bob Bly. He has published over 89 books all under well established publishing companies. He has written for over hundred different clients. He has given seminars all over for the US army. He's been on national TV multiple times. This guy is truly a legend. His brain is just packed full of so much knowledge and we're so excited to have him here to give us some lessons about how to create a product.
All right! We're here with Bob Bly. It's so great to have you on the show. Are you ready to launch Bob?
Bob Bly:
I'm very happy to be here and I am ready.
Luis Congdon:
It's really awesome to have you here. I've read some of your copywriting books. There was one that's like a handbook of online training courses for copywriters. I have been following your stuff on Facebook and what's really interesting is that we've had Ben Settle on the show who is one of my friends. I love his stuff.
As I've been following you, I noticed that you both have two different methods for using email. I found that this was really cool because this kind of spurred this whole conversation that went from Facebook to the Warrior Forum.
Tell me how you and your work with online training courses differs.
Sell your reputation, not your online training course Bob Bly:
I worked with a lot of the more mainstream internet marketers, such as Health Sciences Institute's, Newsmax, Agora Publishing, and Dr. Sears. What these guys found, is that if all your messages are sales messages people will be turned off. They will unsubscribe and your sales rate will actually go down.
If you make a percentage of the messages pure content with useful information, they will appreciate it more. They will become more loyal, bigger fans and they will buy more.
I think slightly over half of your emails should be pure content and the other half should be pure sales messages. It has been a difficult choice, but based on the economy and a lot of personal experience and observation, by me and my clients that this is what works the best.
Luis Congdon:
Booyah Ben! I hope you're listening because you just got beaten in the email game.
Bob Bly:
Nobody beats Ben in the email game. What I would say is maybe he misrepresents himself because he says, "Every message should sell". And yes, he does sell at the end of a lot of messages, but when reading them it's obvious that there's a lesson, some great content, and a story. They're really not pure sales messages.
So I think, whether he admits it or not, he sort of follows this rule.
Selling your product or online training courses First, you decide whether the product should be audio or video.
Then think about the method you'll use to teach your online training courses. There's four different learning modes which are, audio-listening, video-watching, reading, and experiencing it. Different subjects demand different media.
For example, if you're playing golf, you pretty much have to do a video. People have to see the swing. Like there is a guy out there named Bill Dewees who teaches people how to do voice overs. It's got to be done through audio. You need to hear him do it.
For other topics to put in your online training courses, it's really your choice. The reason I mix it up is two-fold. first, you do have some customers for whom the audio method of learning is their preferred mode. They don't want to read a book or watch a video.
Luis Congdon:
What?! People don't want to read books?
Bob Bly:
Yeah! Can you imagine that? It's actually upsetting to me as a book addict.
Luis Congdon:
You know what we should try doing Bob, is we should try splintering a book and posting it on Facebook. Just do short versions of the book, like parts of it. Maybe people would read it that way.
Kamala Chambers:
It’s like one paragraph of your book at a time. And I think you have 85 books or something, Bob. That would take a long time.
So when you're putting out content, are you talking about selling them on amazon? Are you selling audio products or online training courses on any membership sites? Where's your preferred place to sell your information?
Using audio for your online training courses Bob Bly:
Well I have published 89 paper bound books with major publishers in the industry.
One reason I do audio is because some of my customers want that. It never fails. I'll send out an email advertising a new e-book and I'll get people asking, "Don't you have this on audio?" Or I'll send out an email advertising a product through audio and the person will say, "I don't want to listen to it. Do you have it in book?"
You can't please everybody all the time which is why you mix up and make things in different media. - Bob Bly
I know you guys are too young to remember Howard Shenson, who was very big in information and consulting in the 70s and 80s, but he made the statement, "People will pay over and over again for essentially the same content in different formats.” So that's why it pays to have your content in multiple formats. That's why I like audio.
The other reason I recommend audios to other people, is that a lot of people approach me say they want to get into information marketing, but they either can't or don't want to write. They find it an exhausting mental chore to needs be avoided at all cost.
And I say to them that they could put together any informational product without writing a word and of course ironically, an audio is much easier and quicker to do as well.
I do have products on Amazon. I do have a membership site as well, but really, my preferred method of selling online training courses is to generate hot traffic and send emails from my lists and my affiliates' lists to my landing pages.
Some people prefer the Agora Publishing model. The model works the same way, by building a responsive house list, making deals with affiliates who have also done responsive house lists reaching to the same audience, and market your products by sending emails. This will drive the traffic to your product's landing pages.
Kamala Chambers:
Fantastic.
So, how do you go about creating these products and online training courses? This is something that I teach also, so I'd love to hear your perspective. The big thing about it is really deciding what you're trying to sell to your audience.
Through whatever it is that you're creating, what's the problem you're trying to solve or are you really aiming to support people through that process?
So, I'd love to hear a little about your process when creating an audio products and online training courses.
Creating audio products and online training courses
Bob Bly:
First, I define the topic or problem to be covered in the online training courses. Sometimes there is a problem that needs to be solved. Sometimes there is a skill set they want to master, but it's normally one of those two things.
And so I open up a word file. In all caps I write the problem, trying to make it sound a little bit like a title. Don't really worry about it too much if the title isn't finished yet. Then I make an outline listing all the key points that I think someone would want to know.
Let's say I was doing online training courses about book publishing, one of my key points would be, "How to write a book proposal" and other one would be, "Where and how to find a literary agent.” So, I make an outline that has these two key points.
And then once you have that outline, you have several options for recording and producing the audio. I could get into what those are if you wish, but I always start with an outline. You can either just use bullet points or have list of questions.
Luis Congdon:
You know, a method that I've really loved is using Facebook as a way to create the outline and to figure out what should go inside of the copywriting.
The first digital product I ever made was about podcasting. I created a Facebook group, that was completely free, for podcasters teaching them all about podcasting. Everything related to podcasting was posted inside this group. The podcasting aficionados, the fans, and the people that do it every day, joined this group. They started asking questions and I started taking note of the questions that came up repeatedly. Sometimes, I would create polls or I would go in there and ask a question to see what kind of feedback I would get. Or if I didn't know an answer but I saw this question being asked a lot, I'd go and ask it. I would find out what the answer was from other experts and then later, once I had all the content and knew what everybody wanted because I'd been checking out this market for a while inside of Facebook, I had a program put together and my outline was pretty much pre-made for me by the people who needed the product itself. So this makes it very easy to sell it back to them and you can feel confident when you say, "This is what you guys have been asking for. So here it is." You can do the same for online training courses as well.
Getting feedback is essential to improve the quality of your online training courses
Bob Bly:
That's a smart method that people will love. There's another method where you put up your own little survey page, but not using SurveyMonkey. It’s just a little landing page where you ask questions and list topics about how you can increase the quality of online training courses.
Let's say, the topic was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. The questions are:
Do you want to know what gear you need?
What's the best way to get to the mountain?
What kind of guides would you hire?
You ask them to say, "This is important, can you drive? There is a lot of traffic there.” Then you can reward them by saying, “If you fill in the form and click submit, we'll give you a book that will tell you more.” That's another way to do it, but I like what you suggested even better.
I have a medium to a medium small list of 65,000 subscribers. So when I publish my newsletters, I get a lot of white mail. I get a lot of people replying to these emails. I find out from what they say, what they want to know. People ask me questions by phone also, but mainly by email. Those questions tell me what they want to know about and what will go into your online training courses.
Surveys to understand the market to sell your online training courses Kamala Chambers:
Well, surveys are so powerful and I just want to reiterate that we should never underestimate the power of a survey and understanding your market. You could put out audio products all day long, but if people don't want it if they're uninterested in it and they're not hot to buy it, then what's the point?
I think it's just absolutely important and necessary to first survey your audience. Find out what they want in your online training courses or track your audience, just like you were saying Luis.
Another thing to note, is that when I've created my first info product I was a coach and I'd find myself repeating the questions to clients and getting the same answers over and over again. So I said, "Well, I'm just going to record this." Then, it was so much easier that I could just get passive income from online training courses, rather than having to be a one-on-one coach.
Bob Bly:
Well first, if you don't mind, I don't think we should talk about how to create online training courses, because the outline and the questions are the raw materials for it. But how do you actually create the mp3 file and the recording? Well, there are a couple of options for doing it.
The two best methods to sell your online training courses One of the best ways is to be invited to some venue, to an internet marketing conference or a trainee association meeting, to speak on your topic where it's a big event that they're recording, you make a deal with them. Normally, they have you sign something that says they make all the money from the event and they keep the recording. I say to them, "You can do all that, but I also get a copy of the mp3 and I co-own the rights."
A lot of my informational products are audio and video files that I've delivered in front of live groups. The advantage of that, is that it has the same energy and feedback of a live audience. So that's one method.
My favorite method is to work with a partner who can be either just the interviewer or a fellow subject matter expert and essentially to have the interview or conversation. This is much more dynamic than just you sitting in a studio by yourself, reading the bullet points and questions and then answering then them. This is very monotone and won't keep the listener interested.
Those are 2 of my favorite ways to sell them.
Luis Congdon:
Sounds like podcasting to me; in its early days.
You know, one of the things that I see a lot of people do that is really powerful, is link to do a podcast. This is a subject that I'm passionate about. I'm very passionate about using podcasting to sell online training courses. I'm known as the podcast guy. I'm known for being Facebook organic and building a business on Facebook that is all organic. However, whenever I tackle these subjects, I'm kind of like a technician and I spend a lot of time with it and it's not what most people will do. And so the product that needed to be created is answering the question, "How to do these things?" And they're very specific. And people wouldn't really want to pay a lot of money for it or only a few people would end up buying it. And by so surveying the audience, I was able to find out more of the global stuff. I mean, that's really what you're getting out there. Right Bob?
Bob Bly:
Yeah. I'm not used to podcasting, although my younger son is a podcasting addict. So those are couple of the ways that we create online training courses.
Market your online training courses - Define your demographic
In terms of selling them, different people will use different mechanisms, but I will either take an audio and sell it as a stand-alone product or I’ll bundle it with other stuff I have. When you do something that's bundled in multimedia, you can charge a higher price as it has a higher perceived value.
So those are the two ways I packaged an audio product. I still offer them both as a downloadable mp3 and in a CD format, which a lot of people do not do anymore.
Kamala Chambers:
The new thing is flash drive. You can just drop ship them a flash drive. Do you ever do that for your online training courses?
Bob Bly:
No. We either let them download the mp3s for the online training courses or we send them a CD album. My demographic is older and lot of them like to put a CD in the radio of the car and listen that way. The younger people will tend to want a digital form of the online training courses for one of their devices like a laptop or an iPad or they’ll download it to their iPod.
Kamala Chambers:
Yes. It's really important to know your demographic and how you deliver your products including online training courses. That's another reason to do a survey. That's one thing that I ask when I put out a new product. I always ask, "How do you want your information delivered to you?" I'm really surprised sometimes. Some audience, they just want videos, some want the flash drives, some want the audio, and then its blend for others. So I think it's important to appeal to your audience and mix it up too. Really great stuff!
So I want to throw this in there. This could be really easy. The first time I put out a product I had a headset and I had whatever recording software came with my computer. I have a Mac so it was garage band style. Just open it up and started recording. It can be as easy as you want it to be or you can make it complex. You just and your friend like Bob was talking about. Have your friend in the room with you and then have someone who's also an expert. You guys can banter about it and get stuff out that way.
So Bob, anything else about creating online training courses before we get into selling it?
Bob Bly:
What I do when I'm doing it, with a friend who's really a pure colleague and also knowledgeable in the topic, we tend to sit at a table with a nice high quality digital recorder. Each of us has a nice high quality digital microphone. And we have a conversation about it. And one thing that shocks people, we don't edit it. It is pure raw, right off the first draft and it has the spontaneity that a lot of editing will take away from it. And also we can do it in much faster time.
And just to give you an idea of the numbers, one of the early programs I did with my partner Fred Gleek, I think we were recorded it for maybe 5 hours. That was our complete labor in it, no editing. That time, there were no mp3s. We gave it to our fulfillment house to do CD's and we sold well over $120,000 in sales worth of those online training courses. So in an hourly rate, that's pretty good.
Luis Congdon:
You know, that's awesome and I can't believe you just told us that you don't edit your stuff. I mean, Bob, shouldn't everything be edited these days? We want to look perfect in front of everybody.
Market your online training courses - Consider audience preferences Bob Bly:
It's funny and I worked in the corporate world in the late 70s. We were taught if you're going to do a marketing video, it has to be as close to broadcast quality as possible, but today that's not true. People do videos on their smartphones with their webcams.
In the current state of business, people have come to like things that are a little more raw, natural, and less polished. - Bob Bly
It's very strange to me but that's the way it is.
Luis Congdon:
Yeah. I want to agree with you on that because it totally reminds me of when we launched a program and there was this big global thing that was happening with podcasting, and I was wearing a blazer a button up shirt. The way it was received was not as great as I wanted it to be. And the team that was producing this and helping us put this thing on came back and said, "Luis, I think you should wear either just a button up shirt or a Henley so it's just a shirt with 3 buttons and long sleeves And I did that and the reception was phenomenal. They really stressed, just bring them in your living room not in your office.
Bob Bly:
Now, I remember the first time I gave a talk recently without a suit and tie, I was in shock. I said, "How could I be doing this?" But that's how all the speakers dress. The formal is gone and the only medium where I think a higher professional level of production is demanded is ironically, books.
Luis Congdon:
Yeah that's true. I get angry anytime I see a letter that shouldn't be there.
It's true though. If I'm reading a book, I'm like, "Why did this person misspell that word? Do they not know that "there" should be spelled that way? I'm going to write it up. I don't know if I trust this guy anymore."
Bob Bly:
That is the problem. In writing the standard is higher. I had someone called me up and complain about one of my books.
Luis Congdon:
They called you?
Bob Bly:
Yeah. They said on page 3 and 33, you misspelled whatever. I said, "Not for nothing but that book is a hundred thousand words long. You know what error rate that is to have one misspelled word out of a hundred thousand?" And I did the math for him but yet, when people see a typo, they have a very negative reaction.
If you noticed, none of us wants a regular job on this callI. If you're looking for a job and you have one typo on your LinkedIn profile or your resume, that's it.
Luis Congdon:
Done. So now, if I go back to this book Bob, how you corrected or --
Bob Bly:
No because it was not an eBook. It was a paperback book published by my regular publisher and there were 5,000 copies in the warehouse.
Kamala Chambers:
Of course.
Bob Bly:
So I wrote them a letter and said, "On the next printing, could you fix this?" Whether they actually will remember to do that is another story.
Kamala Chambers:
Well, before we wind up, any pro level tips you want to give to sell your audio products?
Luis Congdon:
Any last tips that people should know about the How to be a copywriter.
Bob Bly:
I have found that with video and audio, if you can find one or if you have one, putting a really good 2-minute excerpt as an autoplay video on the landing page really helps. Give them a little sample. And we do that with a lot of our audio and video files.
Kamala Chambers:
Awesome.
Well, it's been so great to have you on the show.
Luis Congdon:
It’s our pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for your time Bob.
Bob Bly:
I really enjoyed it.
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