Okay, so if you have been listening to the episode, so we've been talking about all of the month of August, then it's going to come as no surprise to you that today, we're talking again about making money with your podcast with a digital course. And I've really been trying to break up a lot of the information because as you can see, I have a month's worth of content, if not more related to how you can monetize your show with a digital course. So I've been trying to break it up into pieces that were tangible as opposed to a three hour long episode because I know we all you don't want to sit down and listen to me talk for three hours. I get it, I totally understand and so much can get lost in giving you way too much information at one time. So that's really why I have broken things up over the last few episodes, but I am going to be going back and referencing some of the previous episodes that we've just done. So if you haven't listened to starting in about Episode 175, we're actually on episode 179 right now. So over the last four episodes, they've really been all compounding on top of one another, as far as my own personal story of how I created my first course what that's looked like. And today, I'm going to walk you through kind of taking you that next step further on how I actually sat down and wrote out my entire course. So that's what we're going to talk about today. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the Proffitt P9odcast where we teach entrepreneurs how to start launch and market their podcast. I'm your host, Krystal Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging Let's meet today because if you've been trying to figure out the world of podcasting, think of this show as the time saving shortcut you've been looking for. So let's get right to it, shall we?
So like we talked about in the beginning, I am talking about how I actually created my first digital course. And I'm going to reference my experience of what this actually looked like for me. But I'm also going to give you a lot of tools and resources that I utilized in the beginning. And I'm going to go ahead and tell you some of these worked out fantastic if you are on a very tight budget, and some of them were terrible ideas, but you know, in hindsight is the only way that I can see that it was an awful idea. So I'm glad that I tried it because it eventually led me to trying something better. So kind of take everything with a grain of salt depending on where you are in your podcasting journey or creating your online business. Some of these things may work for you. And this may not work for you at all if you don't have the same kind of creativity in thinking about what you what it is that you talk about on your podcast and how you actually come up with ideas. And this actually brings me to my point is, I've talked many times about the episode of nine ways to brainstorm podcast ideas, and I'm gonna link to that in the show notes. But you can actually apply that concept. Sorry, that concept. There's nine concepts in there. But there's nine different ways that I lay out how I come up with my content. You could do the same thing for your digital course. So I'm going to link to that in the show notes. KrystalProffitt.com/Episode179. go listen to that episode. If you're struggling to find a way to kind of pull your ideas out of yourself. I know this is something a lot of podcasters struggle with in the beginning and I feel like about that. Episode 10 to 15, you start to really hit your stride and you realize what's working what's not. And I feel like the ideas just flow a lot easier. But for those of you that are just starting, or if you haven't launched, it is a little bit harder in the beginning, but I can promise you after doing this for 179 episodes, it does get a lot easier. So just wanted to throw that out there. But I wanted to talk about so an episode 177. Right, that was podcast monetization. And I talked about how I developed my first idea. That was more of the story of how the idea came to me to create a course. So if you haven't listened to that, it's really just a story. I'd be happy for you to go back and listen to how it actually went down and how it all happen. It has to do with me breaking the rules, if you listen to it, you know, but I mentioned that because what happened was I sat down and I was in a place where I could actually think Very clearly about so many things and it just so happened that the course topic and the course idea of what I needed to create came to me very, very clearly, all of the major steps came out in these post it notes...
Which was really funny because I put a video out on Instagram recently and I found these post it notes. It's so funny. Okay, so I'm kind of a paper hoarder. I don't always hoard a lot of things. And I actually prefer to declutter my house and clean out my closets. And like our garage is just full to the brim with a whole bunch of stuff. I just, I can't stand clutter, but I do tend to hang on to paper way longer than I should. And I blame this on my dad. So dad, if you're listening, I love you, but this is totally your fault. So he had his own construction business for a very long time. He had a plumbing business, and he always kept receipts right? Because it bookkeeping, they needed to know for tax purposes and expenses and all these things. So I would always see my dad hanging on to receipts and he would throw them into this like bin where he kept all these papers. And this is the reason why I tend to hang on to paper way too long, which drives my husband who works in technology. And once there's no paper needs to exist at all, drives him up the wall. So for me to open up a drawer the other day and find these post it notes that had my original course on it. I was just like, Oh my gosh, this is incredible. Don't worry, I'm going to share the picture on social media, you will absolutely see it. I'll put it in the show notes here too, because that's all I did is I wrote all of my ideas out on a course or out on a course I wrote my course idea out on post it notes.
And I'm a big fan of the who, what when where and why. When you don't know where to start with brainstorming and trying to come up with what you're doing. I love the idea of starting with who, what, when, where and why? Because it just seems so elementary, and it's very simple. That's why I like it. It's not overly complex. It's not super complicated. And my brain can handle that. So that's what I did with my course outline. I just wrote out like, Who is this for? What is it? When am I going to create it? Like, how long is this going to take somebody to do it? And why would they need to do this? Who, what when, where? Oh, I guess and how, right the How is the checklist? And the checklist is important because if you've listened to the episode about the ultimate podcast checklist, I'm gonna link to that in the show notes as well. But that is like my original podcast checklist on steroids. Okay. This is not What my checklists look like when I first got started, okay, if you don't know this about me already, I love a good checklist. I love Asana. It's my project management system. I am looking at my content calendar that's in a Google Sheet right now like I love organization, and checklist and just knowing like Okay, do a then B, then C, then D, don't you jump down to K yet we're not to k, you go in the right order. Okay. This is how I feel about things. So I knew way back when before my course was ever even a thing. I had a checklist. And I want to say it was around 13 steps total from this is how you turn on your microphone. This is how you plan your content. You need to have a title you need to record it and edit and upload like all the things that had to do with podcasting. So if you have a topic for your podcast or Whatever it is that you're talking about thinking about creating your course around, then I want you to ask yourself, Is there some sort of checklist because if there is, there's a good chance that you have the outline for a course there as well.
And here's another fun thing. And this is I'm kind of adding this I'm looking at my notes for this episode. I'm adding this in last minute because I just saw someone post about this yesterday and I thought it was so genius. So I am in a Facebook group that is related to Amy Porterfield digital course Academy, and someone was talking about a great idea for coming up with an outline for your course. And he said, go to Amazon, and look up books that are related to your course topic, and then go down to where you can look at the electronic version of the book. And then you can download a sample of what the book is. So once you download the sample Or you could just look at it sometimes you can just preview the first probably 10 to 20 pages of a book on Amazon, you can look at what the Books table of contents are. And you can see what the outline would be if this book were to be translated into a course. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so genius. It is actually, I'm sure you know, but in case you didn't, I'm, I have a book coming out in October of this year, October 20 2020. Started binge worthy podcast will be available for you to order. But it's the same thing. If you were to look at my book, you could see so much of it is related to how my course is outlined. And I was just blown away. It's a fantastic idea. So if you have a topic, where there's lots of books published about it, then go do this on Amazon and start to get some ideas. It's not going and copying someone's information, I don't want you to do that, right, we're above that we are legit podcasters. And we are not trying to steal anybody's idea. But I do like the idea of sourcing what other people are doing and seeing if that sparks some of your creativity and how you can come up with your own ways of showcasing the processes or the strategies or whatever it is that you talk about on your podcast, and putting that into a digital course. So I just wanted to throw that in there. That was like a fun thing that I just saw the other day, and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so genius. So go to Amazon, look at the table of contents and check out some of the books that are related to your topic.
Okay, now, I want to actually go into the story of how I did all the things that I did. So I told you like all the major steps came to me. I had my checklist already, then what do I do? Right? It's not like you have an outline. And then you have a course automatically, I couldn't just take my outline and put it up on a website or on a web page somewhere and charge people for it. There was no value, they would look at it and say, okay, Krystal, those are the steps. But how do you actually do these things? What is this look like? So it was on and I'm trying to remember, if this was, I want to say it was our Thanksgiving trip to Austin. We have family that lives in Austin. And where we are, it is about two and a half hours. So it's about a two and a half hour drive from Houston to Austin. And this is where my brother in law and sister in law live. And we were going to their house. And I remember having my post it notes and I had taken my notebook. And this is again, going back to the hoarding. I know I have this notebook somewhere in this house and I could probably find it. I'm gonna find For this episode, I'm going to go find it. And I'm going to show you the original outline of my course because I have it. I know I have it somewhere. I mean, of course, I have the digital copy, but that's no fun. I want to show you the paper, copy the swipe, keep all these papers. I'm not just some crazy lady that has a closet full of notebooks. I do have that. But let's just take off the crazy lady part. Okay. But I took out my notebook. Y'all know if you watch me on videos, and you've seen I have these just little I don't even know what brand This is. Let me let me give a little shout out to the mead company, right? It's office supplies, everybody knows made pins, papers, all the things. When school time comes around and office supplies, school supplies go on sale. I usually buy these at Walmart or Target whenever they're like 25 cents apiece and I just stock up for the year I'll end up buying 20 or even more because they end up being so cheap and I use them Everything. So I had one of my notebooks I took it with me. I wrote out the outline. And then I asked myself on each point, how can I elaborate on this? What can I add to this? And then I literally added everything I could think of before I got too choosy about what I really wanted to include. And that's what I'm going to encourage you to do is, how can you write out your outline, look at your checklist, and then ask yourself, How can I elaborate on this? What can I add or because at this point, I had only been podcasting for about four months. I don't know if you heard that part of the story in the last episode, but I hadn't been podcasting for years and years, and I have this whole stock of podcast episodes that were related to my topic. I had been podcasting about a totally different topic for four months. And then I just decided to take all of my processes and my systems Write them down on paper. So if you've been podcasting for a while, you can actually go back into your stockpile of podcast episodes, blog posts, YouTube videos, your social media, your emails, you can go back through all of your previous content and ask yourself, can I add this into my digital course? And then we get into the gray lines, right?
The Blurred Lines of well, if it's free, should I actually put that into my paid course? I don't know. This is a question I had so much whenever I was first starting, I just was very unsure on how much to give away, and how much to hold on to. And I love this one podcast episode that Amy Porterfield has on the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast and it's all about free versus paid content. intent. And I want you to go listen to this episode. So KrystalProffitt.com/Episode179. I'm gonna link to this episode in the show notes. But I want you to go listen to this. If this is something that you've been thinking you want to use your existing content and put it into a paid program, but you don't know where to start. You're like, all of this is out there. Why would anybody pay for it? Like why? That doesn't even seem smart, right? If someone listens to every single episode of my podcast, or watches me on YouTube, or reads all my emails, they're gonna know everything that I do anyway. Well, spoiler alert, right? That's not true. That is absolutely not the case. Because I have people that listen to this podcast that don't watch me on YouTube and vice versa. I have people that watch me on YouTube that don't listen to this podcast and have people on my email that don't listen to it. Cast or watch anything on YouTube, and I have people on my email that aren't on social media. So you can't just assume that one person is following your every single mood, right mood move is what I meant to say. They're not following your every single move, right? People have so much going on in their own lives. They are not constantly watching every single thing that you do. So I want you to kind of take that assumption back in believing that people are just they've digested every single thing you've ever put out because I know that's not the case for me and the people that I follow. I there's just there's too many people. There's not enough time. I have three kids to feed, it is still summertime where we are because the school doesn't start until later. So I don't have time to look ateverybody else's stuff all of the time. So I want that to be like a deep, deeply seated thing in your mind that Just because you put something out on a podcast episode doesn't mean you cannot include it in your digital course, I think it's actually very smart to lead a little bit with what your podcast content is, and then go even deeper in your digital course about that topic. And if you are part of profit podcasting, which is my course, then you're gonna see the overlap of something I talked about in a podcast episode, but you got like the behind the scenes scoop or you got the deep dive on, you know, something going deeper into podcast marketing, or how I talk even more about the step by step in social media strategy. I talked about that in the course. On the podcast, I stay a little bit more general, and I give you tips and strategies that all podcasters can follow. But in the course I go very, very specific with the people that are in there. And I know that they have a certain agenda that they want to use their podcast as a marketing arm of their business. So I know how to talk to them in a little bit different way than how I would whenever I show up on the podcast and on the YouTube channel. So I hope that that makes sense. If you have any questions about it, I really do want you to go listen to this episode that Amy for Amy Porterfield did about free versus paid content. So again, I'm going to link to that in the show notes. KrystalProffittcom/Episode179. But that's really what I wanted to talk about is just take out a notebook. Go listen to the episode about brainstorming if you're struggling to come up with ideas on what your podcast can be about.
And I'm going to encourage you if you're listening to this in real time, go get inside Amy Porterfield Bootcamp Kickstarter. It's her course Kickstarter. It's a 30 day boot camp. It's a Facebook community where she is walking you through so many of the steps that we've been talking about. Hear, there's a link in the show notes for you to join, I will make sure and have a beautiful big button that you can see exactly where to go to sign up for this boot camp because there are 12,000 people in there. This totally blew me away. And it's really cool to see. I think that they said that their goal was to have about 5000 people in the group. They totally believe that out of the water. But there are around 12,000 entrepreneurs that are trying to figure out how they could create a digital course and what that would look like. So it's a fantastic place to go ask your questions and get them answered and hear from different people who may be in the same field that you're in. Even if they don't have a podcast, they may have a different perspective. You may find someone that you could collaborate with or you could ask them to come be on your podcast or there's just a lot of magic that is happening inside this group. So if you're listening at a later date, the group may already be closed down because It is only a 30 day course Kickstarter. But I encourage you to go join this group if you are listening to this in real time.
But I want to talk about platforms because this is something that I was very careful in choosing which platforms I was gonna use when I first started because I like many of you had been watching other people who had million dollar companies, or they had a whole team of people that did their blog post or did their transcripts. And they did all of these things on the back end, who knew? Like they probably had 10 or 20 different virtual assistants or project managers that handled different facets of their business while they just created content, right. That's the dream. But it was just me. It was just me. No virtual assistants, nobody else like it was me bootstrapping every single thing that I did. Okay, my Business two years ago looks nothing like my business does today. Like I was literally watching every single penny that went in and out of my business. So I wanted to share with you the platforms that I use, even though I know some of these programs have changed a little bit in, they used to offer free plans now they offer free trials. So I'm not up to speed on, you know, which one does which and how much they cost. But I'm just going to tell you my experience. So for my course, what I did is after I did the outline, I wrote out video scripts, and I'm not saying that you have to do that. This is what worked for me. I wrote up video scripts and then I worked with what I had. I did not have a webcam at this time. I just had my iPhone and I turned it in selfie mode. And I had this small ring light. I don't even know what brand it is. It's one of the kinds. I think I got it from Target actually. It's one that you clip on top of your phone. So I had that plugged in. And then I have this like small tripod stand for my phone. So I plug this ring light, I have my phone, and then I have my outline in front of me or my script. And I was oh my gosh, it took me forever to edit these videos, because I would look at the camera. totally forget what I was going to say, look down, then I'd look back up and I'd have to start over and then I'd stumble over my words and then I'd have to look down again and then I would look back up. It literally took forever. I want to say it took me about a week to record all of these. I don't remember how many like version 1.0 of my course. I can't even remember how many videos there were maybe 20 and they were too long. I rambled in so many of them. And I don't even know where I was looking but I was not looking at the camera lens. So, I'm actually going to talk about that in the next episode, I'm going to give you 10 ways that I totally messed up. When I first started my digital course like that that's gonna be a fun one. Do not miss the next episode, because I'm just gonna give you all of my mistakes. But I would look down and I would look back up, but it's what I had, I did what I had with what I got, you know, and it worked. Right? That's the whole point behind all of this. I made it work. And the other platform or the other thing that I used is I'm trying to think of the editing software. I use the video editor, but it was on a different computer. And I want to say it was something that came with my HP computer, but I cannot think of what the name of it was. What is it like Windows moviemaker, it wasn't that it was something else but it was something that was standard on most desktop computers. I use a free one. I literally took forever to edit all of them. And then I would keep messing up. And it was like a crash course video editing, I highly recommend it if you can afford it, outsource your video editing, it is a pain in the butt. It's not worth your time if you can help it and outsource it, but I couldn't. So I did it. I learned it and I wanted to pull my hair out. I think it took me about a month to edit all 20 videos. But I did it. And lesson learned, right lesson learned I can't wait till I can outsource all of those things one day and I don't have to deal with it. Okay, so that's what I did to actually record my course.
Then I used the free version of teachable, now teachable. I don't know that they offer the same package because I've recently moved on to a different platform altogether, but teachable, has been doing some really cool things. I still get their emails and I've signed into that account every once in a while to kind of see I actually I'm putting together a A really cool bonus and I'll tell you about very shortly, very soon it's coming up. I'm putting together a fun bonus where I go through all of my digital course journey like the stats, all the emails, I sent all the sales that I made, how many students I had, how many people I had on my email list when I made those cells. I'm compiling this whole like really just launched debrief of all of my launches, and I log into teachable and I like, oh, they've like spruced it up in here. It's like they're, they're doing a home makeover while they're on fixer upper teachable edition, changed a bunch of things in here. So I can't tell you what the trial version or free version looks like today because I no longer use it. But that's what I used when I first got started. And I want to say it was up to like 10 people I got 10 students for free. Well, I didn't have but a few people sign up the first time so I didn't even go over the 10 students Again, we're going to talk about the ways that I messed up in the beginning okay, but I started with teachable, and then I created a very basic sales page within the teachable platform. It wasn't my favorite because I was really used to WordPress and WordPress gives you the customization you can do whatever you want on WordPress, which is fantastic. But in teachable, I was a little bit more limited and I wanted to do some other fun things and I wasn't able to do but that's a platform that I used and it was great. It worked out fantastic actually made sales I sold a few of my courses and that was just so incredible because when you work so hard to put something together and you hope that it's valuable, you hope that people want to purchase right, what you've created, then it makes it all worth it whenever it actually works.
So the other thing that I did in conjunction with these videos that I uploaded into teachable is I created these PDFs, which were the assignments that went to each lesson within the course, these were very, very basic, I created them in Word. And all I did was take the outline, you know, I went through and uploaded all of the outline to make sure I covered everything. And then I went back in and I just kind of put in some filler text that was like, okay, like this is, this is what we're going to talk about in this lesson. And I put the lesson number and then I did a checklist because again, I love a good checklist. That way people knew that you are finished with this assignment when you've done X, Y, and Z. So I thought that that was really important. And I had actually taken a course back in 2018, that had their syllabus syllabus kind of set up that way and I thought it was very helpful. So I was kind of modeling my course after what that course was about and it was Very helpful. But I wanted to just show you what one of my very first course videos looks like. So I'm gonna put it in the show notes. And I hope that this works out. I am pretty sure I have this in the archives. So if I find it, I'm gonna put one of my very first course videos up in the show notes for you to see it. Because if you're just starting out and you're like Krystal, you sound so confident behind the microphone and you like you look so confident on camera. I've been doing this for a while. I didn't start yesterday. We are on episode 179 of this podcast. I have been doing live videos for more than two years now. I do feel confident I feel great. I feel like I could sit down, turn on the camera and boom, I'm ready to go. I feel comfortable. I don't get all sweaty and nervous like I used to but I want you to see this video. I'm gonna find it. I'm not even saying if I find it. I'm Going to find this I'm pretty sure I have it backed up in my Google Drive. I've got to go find it because you have to see one of my very first course videos because I wanted to change your perspective on the perception that you have to have everything figured out and all of all that put together and it's got to be on this thousand dollar platform. It has to look so fancy and shiny. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't not even!
And if you are used to seeing my mentor, right, Amy Porterfield, she teaches you do webinars to help you sell your digital course. I'm going to tell you some, I didn't even use a webinar software. I used YouTube and a chat box and I'm pretty sure gave my computer a virus because I don't think it was a trusted source that I got this from but a downloaded and I used it because it was free and I had one person, one person that wasn't my mom show up to one of my webinars, I had four. Okay, I had four webinars that I did on one of my launches. And one person, one person besides my mother, the other times, no one showed up. And, yeah, we'll talk about what we're really talking about this more and some of the some of the mistakes that I made, how I just totally messed up when I first started, but I want to throw these out there and let you know that this is not something that happens like just by snapping your fingers and saying, hey, I want to have a digital course business. It's been a process for me. But I do want to make sure that you have your hands on some of the things that can make your life so much easier and even just to make sure that a digital course is right for you and your business. So go to the shownotes KrystalProffitt.com/Episode179. And if you have not taken Amy's quiz, go take her quiz. It's right there in the middle of the show notes. And it is all about finding your path to podcast success. And she's going to tell you whether a profitable digital course business is even right for you. And then from there, I want you to grab if a course is right for you, and it's in your future. Grab the ultimate course creation starter kit. This is something else I'm going to link to in the show notes. And Amy and her team did such a fantastic job putting this together. Because what this is, it's a PDF guide that helps you make three key decisions. The first is what would your podcast be about if you created one? The second is what would you name your podcast and how to name it. And the third one is, what are you going to stop doing once your podcast or excuse me once your digital Course is up and running and successful. And that is the one my friends, I really, really want you to consider and talk about. What would you stop doing? If you were making consistent revenue from a digital course in your business? Think about it. Say it out loud if you're by yourself or even if you're with somebody else, what would you stop doing? Mine? Stop cleaning my shower. Okay, stop folding my laundry stop cleaning this whole house, because my digital course business is so successful. Yeah, I said that out loud. I said it out loud. And I will say it again until the day that it happens. But that is my dream. Right? I don't have high hopes for millions of dollars to happen tomorrow. I just want someone to come clean. My house has had so much to ask. Okay, I feel like I'm whining. Now. I don't want to get into a whiny voice whining mode, but I want you to go check out the show notes KrystalProffitt.com/Episode179 go grab all these amazing resources. Go listen to the podcast episodes because I know that these can help you, especially the one where Amy talks about the free versus paid content because if you have questions about what your podcast content can be inside a digital course, most of those questions will be answered in this podcast episode. And if you're struggling to brainstorm podcast content, or think about a digital course, I want you to go listen to that episode all about brainstorming.
But that's all I have for you today. So I am just so grateful that you are here friends, I am just have been having so much fun talking about monetizing a podcast this month and I hope that you are having some awesome takeaways and you're thinking about your podcast content in a different way. Because I've said it before, I'm going to say it again. You do not have to have thousands of listeners and millions Have downloads before you can start making money with your show. I'm gonna keep saying it because I really want that to sink in. But as always, I'm gonna say this to keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.