268 - Digital Business Strategy Q&A 1 of 2 (Courses, Memberships and Podcasting)

I wanted to take some time to do kind of a live style Q&A about digital marketing and digital strategy , specifically to those of you who are webpreneurs , or those of you who are interested in branching outside of just offering websites , and maybe you're interested in building your own course one day .

Or maybe you're interested in creating a membership for your clients or for different types of community building . Maybe you're interested in starting a podcast , maybe you have a podcast , maybe you're interested in YouTube A lot of those of you who are webpreneurs .

I wanted to answer some questions specifically for you , and I'm breaking this into two parts because I have a big old list of questions and I think there's just too much to cover for one episode because it would be like an hour and a half . I know myself and I know it's going to be a long one .

So two parts and the second part is going to be coming out in just a couple of days here if you're listening to this right when it comes out . So two episodes this week . Next , we're going to cover some detailed questions about three main categories podcasts , courses and memberships .

And then in part two I've got some overarching , just digital strategy marketing tips that I want to share with you to help kind of button this up and put all this together . So that's exactly what we're going to cover in this part one some category style questions for podcasts and specific specifically courses and memberships .

And I do have to give a shout out to Ann Capuzza , my colleague , who is a web designer attorney . As a member of web designer pro , she adds some questions about these categories because she herself if you didn't listen to her podcast episode , she was on recently on the podcast and she is 100% a web printer and had some really good questions .

So I decided , instead of just answering these one by one for her , i decided to do what I recommend , tip number one , which is , if you get a lot of the same questions over and over , make an FAQ or make a blog post , or , if you're a podcast or make a podcast , make it a piece of content that you can refer to over and over .

That way , you don't need to answer the same question over and over and over and over one on one . So that's exactly what I'm doing And that's why we're going to break this into two different parts .

So a lot of these questions came from Ann , who is a very thoughtful web printer and has some really good questions , and because I've got a lot of these questions over and over again , i was a perfect time to answer them specifically for this digital strategy Q&A session . So that's what we're going to dive into here in part number one .

Now , before we get into the specifics on podcasts , courses and memberships , ann had some really good background style questions , starting with the transition from me as a web designer and a service provider to being a course creator and a podcaster and running a membership . How did you develop these ventures ?

Well , perfect recommendation if you have not listened to the very first episode of this podcast , episode one where I share a little bit about my story and how I went from being a cabinet maker and a drummer into being a web designer and then starting doing courses .

So good plug to go back to the very first episode of the podcast to listen to that for more detail , and part two of my story is recently an episode 255 . So joshallco slash 255 , where I talk about going from an agency owner to a full time course creator , and more of the second part of that story .

In short , i started having an itch to teach and I started teaching at a local high school and I realized I really enjoyed teaching and the idea about it doing it online and at scale really intrigued me , because I love teaching .

The students that I had who were really interested , the kids who were not very interested It was , it was a long day , but the few who were like really interested in what I was doing , that just let the fire for me to teach . And then I realized you know , i've been doing this at that point for seven years and I've learned a lot .

There's no reason I shouldn't share what I've learned . And I did not value my experience up to that point because I thought , like hitting six figures is not that big of a deal . There's a ton of people who do way more than that .

But then I realized there's a lot of people who would love to be a solopreneur and have a six figure business and to know how to do that and know what's worked for me . So that's exactly what stoked the fire for me to start teaching . Long story short , you can listen to both of those episodes episode one and episode 255 for more detail .

But that's how I ended up becoming a course creator , then eventually taking this brand full time and then building a membership off it and the podcast and all the tentacles of the business octopus as well weird analogy , but actually kind of a good analogy when you think about your business as like an octopus and having several legs of main marketing channels and

client acquisition channels . So that's , in short , as a very , very summed up version of how I got into being a course creator off of being a service provider for over a decade . Which came first ? the course or the podcast ?

So the first thing I did when I launched Josh Hallco the personal brain here was my maintenance plan course , which is still one of my top . It's my second top selling course . My first top selling course is my biggest course . My maintenance plan course is the second And that was the very first course I came out with because I was so gosh .

I love maintenance plans . It was life changing for me . For those of you who don't know , my first daughter , bria , who was born in 2018, . We had immediately a two month NICU stay in the newborn intensive care unit when she was born , and I've told this story many a time before .

But , for those who don't know , we were in the NICU , the children's hospital , and our maintenance plan was one of the key things that got me through and my family through that experience , because it was my only source of recurring revenue and recurring income . It was , as you can imagine , very hard to get any work done .

Luckily , i had just started scaling my business , so I had some help , but it was very hard to do any sales or keep up with everything . It was such a stressful just wild journey time for my family , and what really literally paid our bills through those two months were the recurring income that I had through my maintenance plan .

So that's why I was so interested in making a course out of that , because it was life changing . Ideally , i originally I was going to start out with like a Divi beginners course for my first course , but I was like , screw it . I'm so into maintenance plans right now , so many questions about it , such a big , impactful thing for me and my family .

So that was why I made that my first course and version two of that course is live now and kicking my maintenance plan courses inside of web designer pro for those of you who want to join us and get access to all my courses at joshallco slash pro or you can just go to joshallco and go to the courses page and just get a single access to that course And

I'm going to give you just like to check out the course . But that's why I started that . The podcast didn't come into a couple years later , in 2019 . So I actually had most all my courses done by that point . not all of them , but most of them . My suite of web design courses were done to that point . That's when I started my podcast .

I wanted to do the podcast a year earlier , but I just knew I did not have time for it . I did not have the bandwidth . I was still running my agency at that time And I just I had a YouTube channel , which we'll go into the next question . But that's why I was like I've got to wait to do the podcast until I can really commit to it .

Next background question , real quick , before we dive into podcast specifics is you have a significant YouTube following . Why did you do a podcast instead of focusing on YouTube ? So I did build my brand essentially through YouTube at first .

Two things that built my brand with joshallco is I was a blog author for elegant themes , the creators of Divi , and if you don't know that story , the way that happened was I found out that the content manager at the time lived in Columbus and I just Facebooked him and said , hey , i'm a Divi user , i have a freelance web design business , i love Divi .

I'd love to take you out to coffee and just share what I'm up to and just connect with you . And that's how we did that . I ended up telling him my story and just kind of what I was up to and he was like , dude , you have a really cool business .

He's like would you be interested in sharing some of what you learn with building your business on the elegant themes blog , which was huge , especially at the time . You know I don't know where the numbers are right now , but at the time it was like a seven figure leadership on that blog , so a lot like million range of readers . So I was like heck , freaking .

Yeah , and that's exactly what got me started sharing what I learned on there . And then I started my YouTube channel , at first just posting Divi tutorials , just sharing what I was learning with Divi and web design tips and tricks , mainly all around Divi .

But I decided to focus on podcasting a little while later because I was really entering into the business side of things . So we'll get into that next . But that's kind of how I balance the two . And then I'm still doing YouTube videos . I'm still posting more and more on YouTube , but there's a little more emphasis on the podcast as of now .

But we'll talk about that . And then last digital business background question is how did you make time to balance course creation and podcasting with your full time service work ? The only way I was able to build my podcast , my YouTube channel and do anything with Josh Hall is because I started scaling .

So for those of you who have interest in being a web printer and doing something outside of just your web design services , i'd go on record and saying there's no way you can do everything yourself . You cannot build your business .

Do all the sales , do all the onboarding , do all the project management , client management , offboarding , manager , clients , do your own marketing for your business and do something else without having help with your web design business , which is why I'm a huge proponent of scaling even at a very small level , just to get some help to be able to free yourself up to

do other endeavors . If you want to go that route , thankfully , shout out to Jonathan , who was my first basically full time hire , who came in and did eventually all the web design for my business .

We got to the point where eventually I just had him do literally all the web design and I was just landing clients and doing proposals and had a pretty streamlined .

My entire business course , by the way , is the pulled back curtain version all my SOPs and everything I did in my business to basically just run the business , and that's what freed me up to be able to launch joshallco and teach . So that's exactly how I managed it . I didn't do it all myself . That's the short answer .

All right , let's dive into some questions about podcasting . So , podcasting specific stuff How did you come up with the idea of running a podcast ? I had always been interested in it because , shocker , i am a talker and I really , really enjoy in-depth conversations about stuff Like small talk can just get the hell out of here . I am not a small talk person .

Sometimes I dread like little barbecue parties where it's like so how about that ? Whether they I kind of talk , i just like ugh . I wanna talk about interesting stuff , particularly when it comes to online business and things I'm interested in . It's also one reason I love having like longer conversations .

It's so fun which is a rarity nowadays and lest you're in podcasting to be able to talk with somebody for like an hour about something that's very rare in your personal life That you're like I don't barely ever do that . I barely have time to talk to my wife right now with three littles , so I love so much about podcasting .

The idea of a podcast really stemmed from that like being able to explore more topics in depth , and I just love the idea of person honestly just building a network of other web design professionals , both web design freelancers and then other web design coaches and then entrepreneurs .

And this all actually stemmed from a interview series that I did with some of my friends , mostly in the Divi community . But when I started joshallco , i got some feedback on how to scale your web design business And I did this little nine part interview series . I'll link to it in the show notes .

It's called Scaling Your Divi Web Design Business And I did this little nine part series . It was kind of like a mini podcast and I loved it . I loved doing those interviews so much . I had a really good time doing it .

I got a lot of good feedback , like a lot of people said that I asked them really good questions and they didn't want to the call to end . They really enjoyed it . So I was like you know what ? So it's kind of a test run which I recommend doing . I recommend doing a test run on this kind of stuff And that's what prompted me to be like you know what ?

Let's try like an actual podcast about this . And I wasn't exactly sure where it was gonna go , but that's where the idea stemmed from . Can you walk us through the process of creating and launching your podcast ? The big thing with creating and launching it is I followed a proven path .

I followed a blueprint , which is one of the reasons I love being a course creator . I like to have an idea of what's worked for somebody And I'm gonna make it my own , of course , but that's how I launched my web , my podcast , successfully right from the get go .

Now , i didn't get like hundreds of thousands of downloads , but for me , success looked like a decent number of people listening and , more importantly , people coming into my courses , which is exactly what it did from day one . And I actually took Pat Flynn's podcasting course , power up podcasting which I recommend you check that out as well .

If you're gonna be interested in doing a podcast , you can go to joshallco slash pup P-U-P power up podcasting to check out that course . That's the one that I went through . That really gave me the game plan and the entire outline of how to launch and create my podcast .

Couple quick tips on launching a podcast have at least three episodes ready to go , so you don't launch one episode and then no one hears from you for like three weeks . That's kind of like a concert . If a band just plays one song and then leaves , it's like , oh , that was come on , i want more . So at least have three backed up .

And it really gave me the outline and blueprint I needed to be able to launch my podcast and have a plan for doing it consistently , because consistency is key for a podcast . You've got to dedicate yourself to it . That's exactly why I didn't do it for nearly a year , because I needed to wait until I was at a time and place where I could do it .

What are some of the biggest challenges you face while building your podcast ? How do you overcome them ? I think the challenge with any podcast I guess it would depend on what your goals are with the podcast I find the challenge of podcast is it's not a discoverable type of platform as much .

Now , what I mean by that is like I could post a YouTube video , and YouTube does the work with kicking that video out , and I've got some of my YouTube videos now that are still getting hundreds of thousands of views . That I did five years ago or almost five years ago . Podcasting is a little bit different .

Podcasting is a little more like I don't know how many people are listening to older episodes a few , but not that common And it's not as discoverable Like . Podcasting is not great for SEO .

That said , though , i actually recently did a poll in Web Designer Pro , because I asked how many people came to my brand from podcasting and just searched like web design , and a lot of people said they did .

They found me on YouTube as well , but a lot of people said they were searching for web design or web design business in their podcast apps , whether it's Apple or Spotify or whatever it is , and brought them to the show . So there's some discoverability . But it's a little different than like YouTube .

So I'm glad , honestly , that I started with YouTube and had some blogging authority and then did a podcast because I already had an audience . So , in short , i would not do a podcast to build an audience right away . I would have podcasting be more of an engagement tool , because it really is .

It really has helped deepen the relationship And I'm sure you as a listener feel that too . Like you know me very well . Like who I am on , this podcast is who I am if we were out to coffee or at a bar having a drink together . Like this is who I am . So that really lends itself to creating a deep relationship of trust and authority .

It's just not as discoverable . So that's probably the biggest challenge I've had to figure out how do I promote the podcast without annoying people about a new episode being live ? And that's why I do it with social media typically is we have kind of a three pronged approach .

We have the graphic that goes out that says , hey , new podcast is up with this guest . The next day I share a little reel of the interview and then the following day I'll usually do like a little reel of like a quick tip or a quick win generally from the podcast episode that I share .

That's kind of my current strategy for promoting the podcast , which again takes some promotion . If you just launch a podcast episode and hope somebody listens , good luck . It's probably not gonna get too much traction unless you have a big brand already . So how do you market your podcast ?

So , yeah , what I said right there is exactly how I market it Right now just through social media and then everyone on my email list . For those of you who are not on my email list , just go to joshallco slash , sign up and you can get on my email list .

Or actually , you can just go to joshallco slash podcast and you can sign up to be on my email list , which will kick you every podcast episode that comes out . And thanks to Cam , my VA , who does a really good job with creating those emails based off of the podcast page , and she creates the pages on my website . And , yeah , we send an email out .

And then social media and anytime I do interviews for other podcasts , that's always a great marketing tool . And then , of course , the video versions of all the interviews go up on my YouTube channel , so that's been a big converter as well , so you can watch the interviews there or you can just listen to it on downloads .

Now , like this episode , it's just solo . I don't do on YouTube , it's just a solo episode . So there's pros and cons to that , but that's how I market . Next question how do you measure the success of your podcast And what metrics do you track ? That's a great question . Again , success looks completely different for everyone .

If you start a podcast and wanna have sponsors , then success is probably gonna be measured in the number of downloads .

But one of the reasons I don't generally do sponsors is because my podcast doesn't get a huge amount of downloads compared to probably others in digital marketing , mainly because it's so niche Like there's not that many web design podcasts and I don't know what others are getting . But I'm happy to share .

I generally get about 5,000 downloads on average within a 30 day period or so per episode , and that includes the YouTube views of that as well . So I use Buzzsprout for the podcast , which is where the episode goes , and I get all the analytics there and it's awesome , it's great . We're closing in on half a million downloads altogether And with Buzzsprout .

It tells me that I generally get , on average , 3,000 plays per week And then on YouTube the video version of the podcast . Depending on the episode title , we're generally getting around 1,500 to 2,000 . So it puts us at about 5,000 a month or , excuse me , 5,000 a week for each podcast episode And then that's each episode .

So we're looking at probably like 20 to 25,000 downloads per month . That's about where we're at , which is pretty good . It's still amazing . So what I consider that as success yeah , i mean more important to me with success is what is the podcast doing ? Is it deepening my relationship with my audience of people who are in Web Designer Pro and in my courses ?

That's the biggest metric . I would rather get 10 plays on my podcast and have all of those 10 people inside of my membership Web Designer Pro , then get like a million plays but then have like none of them and a membership .

So what's funny and interesting about this is a lot of people who have a really successful podcast are probably making way less than I am with like digital product or membership .

If they're just doing it for like sponsorship money , which I'm open to , that probably eventually , but I think my numbers would have to be much higher to make that worthwhile , because typically with sponsorships you get paid , if you're curious , cost per meal . So it's like cost per a thousand downloads , which generally isn't too much .

I think average is probably about 50 bucks per thousand . So what's ? so ? I'm saying what Let's . So let's say 20,000 , 20,000 downloads in a month . If I divide that by oh , actually , so it'd be 50 bucks per a thousand . So 50 times 20 , i'm on my phone right now , hold on . What's 50 times 20 ?

That would be about $1,000 a month in ad revenue , which that's cool , that's cool , that's not bad . But I just , i don't know , for a grand a month , i would rather not have ads on the podcast .

Honestly , now , if that was to the point where I could triple , quadruple that , it might be worth it personally if I were to do sponsorships and ads on the podcast . But that's about where it's at And that's why I don't really push the sponsorship thing .

I use this podcast to deepen the relationship with you , the listener , and my goal is to get everyone in Web Designer Pro , which is my web design community , and the cool thing about that is almost everyone in pro is a podcast listener , which tells me that the podcast is successful . It's doing exactly what I want it to do .

So I hope that helps you think about your strategy . If you're interested in podcasts , how do you engage with your listeners and build a community around your podcast ? It's mainly that it's mainly having conversations inside of Web Designer Pro when we talk about podcasts , or a lot of people there are sharing nuggets and tips and tricks they learn from podcasts .

And if somebody hasn't listened to an episode , i often see comments that are like , oh , i can't wait to listen to that this week . Or I hear people say like , yeah , i need to give that a listen Again .

Most everyone at Web Designer Pro is a podcast listener , which again tells me this show is doing exactly what it's supposed to do , which is to build the trust and authority and bring people into the community .

And it's kind of cool when you join a community where there's other podcast listeners too , because even outside of the courses and other materials , it's like a like-minded type of level playing field , which is really cool . So that's how I do it , primarily that , and then social media just keeping up with as many comments as I can in DMs .

If somebody DMs me and says like , oh , i love this episode or really appreciate this . Youtube comments , things like that . I try to keep up with that at least a few times a week . I'll try to hit the comments on Facebook , instagram and YouTube , which is all the places I'm currently active .

Last question on podcasts that will move to courses what are your plans for the future of your podcast and how do you see it evolving over time ? I really think where it's at right now is where it's gonna be for quite a while .

I , as far as the sponsorship type thing , that's something again I might look into eventually , but it would really have to outweigh It would have to . I'd have to make sure it'd be worth the time that would take for us to do sponsorships and all that's required with that . I also don't want to annoy you , the listener .

One thing I promise I will never do is have the ads that kick in in the middle of an episode . I can't stand that for conversations , which is why , if I ever do sponsorships in bulk , they would be at the beginning or end of an episode , just because I can't stand when conversations are interrupted by ads . Other than that , all is the same .

I'm gonna continue to . What I will do is just try to continue to get more and more guests , even outside of not only just web design . But I've really enjoyed getting guests like Pat Flynn , amy Porterfield , mike McAlewitz people who are entrepreneurs , like at the top of the field .

I think it's really good to have their insight because they see a broader spectrum . But then I love being able to talk with students who are killing it and seeing what's working right now , love talking with industry experts and guest experts who are really in like one area of web design . So I love it and I hope you love it too .

If you're here , chances are you're loving the conversations and people who are on the show and all of that is gonna continue . So no immediate changes at all for the podcast . My plan is just make it better and better , ask better questions and keep it as engaging and fun as possible . Now to courses . So some questions on courses .

How did you come up with the idea of creating and running a course ? So , like I said , for me it was really about the idea of teaching . I loved the few chances I had locally in a little high school mentorship program .

I was a part of the teach And I found out that I kind of have a knack for it And I'm in like I am in my happy place when I'm creating a course and then teaching it and somebody's getting results . It's just my absolute favorite thing that transfer of knowledge and experience .

I devalued how much I knew and how much I had learned and accrued over the years , but my first course my maintenance plan course was not only life changing for me with revenue , because I saw that , wow , you can create a product , and my first launch was around $10,000 .

I was like , wow , here's the thing , though I didn't sell something for $10,000 and then have to work for 40 hours . I worked for 40 hours before launching it , but the idea of having something that you could sell over and over and over again and make more , and oh , i just love it . I love the idea of courses .

So that's where it all started , and it was really just testing it out , because I've shared this in the first episode of the podcast and a little more in episode 255 , which is kind of the second part of the story . But my whole goal when I started this was to be like a child theme creator for Divi and to maybe eventually do plugins .

I had no initial idea about doing courses . But the first course went so well . I love my experience and launching it and love seeing the results that were coming in for students who are building their maintenance plan and getting recurring income from it . So I was like , okay , now I'm like it's on .

Now I'm a course creator , and then I started going ham and then came up with this idea to have a suite of web design courses to help you become a web designer pro , which is why now I call my web designer membership web designer pro , so aptly named for exactly what all my courses currently help empower you with . So that's exactly why and how it started .

Can you walk us through the process of creating and launching a course ? So I do have some resources on this as well . In short , it kind of depends on the size of the course with , like , how much is gonna be involved with it , but a standalone course itself .

I actually , if you didn't know , i have a video which is literally like a documentary video on me creating my Divvy Beginners course , a documented 10 day journey where I created that course . Now , that was a pretty fast course . Some courses take way longer .

I'm actually right now in the middle of revamping my business course version 2.0 of that , and this one is a completely different story .

I've been working on this for already a month and a half and I'm only four modules in out of seven , just because I'm rewriting every lesson , pulling out what's working right now with best practices , along with what I've learned and did in my journey . I'm creating slides for every , every lesson .

I'm also doing post-production , so this one's a little bit different . But the process of creating a course is essentially figuring out what the end goal is . One of the course , like what's the result ? I wanna help somebody get what is the quickest path to get there , And that's . I lay it out in Google Docs .

Most of my courses are between three and five modules . Each module generally have five or six lessons . My business course is the biggest one , so that one's a seven module course with extras and bonuses . but most of my courses are in the three to five module range .

But it does depend on whether it's topical , like a Divi type of course , that's like a screen tutorial , like a screen recording , or whether it's a talking head , like with slides and more just information base . So there's a difference between those two . But either way , i laid out in the outline of Google Docs , you can use whatever you'd want .

And then , as far as launching the courses , i generally try to launch within a two to three week period . Do some sort of promotion during the actual launch , because you gotta add urgency and you gotta add scarcity if you're not adding urgency . But I don't do a CAPS model , i like to keep it open .

I like evergreen courses , meaning I like people to be able to join them whenever they want . I don't personally like the open and close model , but there's benefits to that if you wanna get a swarm of people in . So that's the very , very brief overview of how I create my courses and then launch them , and then it's a rinse and repeat baby .

That's how we do that . What have been some of the challenges you face while building your courses ? So I guess the challenges as far as course creation , i think one thing that is really tough is to not make courses fluffy .

So , in particular , to building a course , one thing that's really easy to do is create long , fluffy lessons because you have so much stuff in your head . But this dawned on me more recently . I actually just told my wife , actually yesterday we were talking about this . I was like I view my courses as the best of It's like a greatest hits of a certain topic .

And right now it's very timely as I go through my business course , because the module I'm literally working on today is the module on sales and getting clients . Well , i could do an entire course on just sales . I could do an entire course on getting clients .

Now the trick is , how do I organize all this information that's easily digestible within just a one module ? In this case , i have six lessons in this module that span different parts of sales and different parts of getting clients , like finding clients , getting clients , niching down , getting better clients .

So I've really had to work on what are the absolute quickest wins , best like greatest hit topics about sales and getting clients , and how do I organize these to make them a nice path that somebody can go through point A to B , feel really good about it , make it applicable , actionable and fun . Also , those are the biggest challenges .

It's like how do you take everything you've learned , sum it up and then also make sure you're as brief but also in depth as possible to have a nice series of lessons that make up a module ? That's , personally , the biggest challenge that I've faced . I've learned to be less fluffy and I try to keep lessons under 20 minutes at all costs .

Some of my lessons have gone a little bit longer than that in the new version of my business course , but most of them are between 15 and 20 minutes , which is a good like . You can sit down , you could do a lesson or two and technically you could get through an entire module in less than half a day , and that's pretty good .

That's what I shoot for , depending on , again , what the type of course it is , whether it's like a step-by-step action style course or whether it's more of like broad general terms . That's gonna take some time to implement Either way . Those are some of the challenges that I've learned to try to work with . How do you market your courses ?

Couple more questions before we dive into membership questions and then we'll wrap this one up How do you market your courses ? So this is the trick . This is the tricky part . I mean there's just like you sell web design services . There's so many ways you could sell courses . You could do ads , you can . Summits are one of the best aspects of .

Something that I've realized more recently is like anytime you can get in front of a group of people who are primed and ready . That is what you wanna do .

Just that's why I recommend doing referral groups and networking for your web design business , because those people are ready , they're there for business , they want to help you succeed and they also wanna succeed .

So they're gonna be much more primed than a cold Facebook ad that's gonna hit like Aunt Jane as she's watching an FBI show , who may not be a good fit and doesn't even wanna see your ad . So , and nothing against ad , because those can work too . But yeah , i don't do ads as of right now . I market my courses organically through social media .

But podcast is the biggie . I've not done a best job recently at speaking about the courses .

I'm actually gonna go back to what I did previously for the first year or two of the podcast , which is to maybe have a podcast episode presented by one of my courses , because I'm finding a lot of people are like oh , i didn't even know you had a maintenance plan course And I should not hear that . And this is a good lesson for you , i think too .

Don't assume everyone knows all of your products and all of your services , because they probably don't . So I need to constantly remind myself to market and to sell And it's okay . I know you don't get annoyed .

I try not to overdo it or being annoying , but the reality is , if you want me to keep on producing podcast episodes , i need to sell courses And I need to get people on web designer apparel . So I've actually thought about this more recently .

I need to honestly do a better job of , like keep on pushing the courses , because a lot of people don't know everything . I offer the results that they're gonna get through them . So actually I have to give a shout out to Yalta , one of my new students who joined web designer pro , because we were talking about this on a live call .

I do these hot seats inside of web designer pro where somebody can come up and ask me questions on our weekly call And she was like I can't believe I didn't know about web designer pro . And I was like , yeah , i mean , it's on the website and stuff .

She's like , yeah , i just I just didn't realize everything that was in it And I was like , hmm , that's on me , like I have not promoted it well enough . So , yeah , i'm really working on promoting the courses more and more .

Podcast interviews are a great way to promote courses Again , anything that helps when you're getting in front of people who are more primed , and then I'll often do like live Q and A's on YouTube , webinars , workshops , anything like that . That's topical .

Once I release my business course again the new version you best believe I'll be promoting it and I'll be doing some like live Q and A's and some targeted webinars and workshops on parts of the course , and then you know you want the full thing . Then come into the course . That's how I'm going to market those . Yeah , so building email lists is also key .

Email lists is always the top converter for courses . So those are some of the strategies I have in place for promoting the courses . How do you measure success of your courses ? What metrics do you track ?

Great question , how timely too , because just recently , actually , the last episode was with Eric and Ash , episode 267 on measuring results and results of students and clients . So I definitely look to .

I mean , i want the courses to make a certain amount of revenue , ideally to make sure I make up for the time back and have room for profit and grow the business and everything . But honestly , one of the biggest measurements of success that I look to is what are the students doing , who go through it and how quickly are they getting results .

And this does depend on , again , the type of course . Like my Divi course , you can go through that and build a Divi site that day . My business course it's gonna take some time . You're not gonna implement everything in one day . So I do look at that . I look at what are the results they're getting and how long is it taking .

Those are some of the metrics I use in my courses . But that does require some intentional follow up , like you really need to follow up and go through and have everyone segmented through your email and ask them about how the course , how did you do in it ? What are you implementing . So I'm getting better and better at measuring results .

It's kind of one reason I love having Web Designer Pro to see with my courses now all in there , because it lends itself to me to be able to just DM people if they're really active And I can just say , hey , how are you doing with that course ? And they let me know . And I mean you could do it in bulk .

But there's a lot of benefit with having a community backed with your courses in that regard , because you have a much tighter relationship with your students , which is amazing .

But yeah , there's the business side of things , which is the success of the revenue and the launch and then the ongoing sales And then , of course , it's more importantly , the results of your students . Like , what type of impact are you making with your students ?

When Eric , the CEO of my agency now in Transit Studios at first he was a student , he went through my maintenance plan course When he messaged me and said that they were able to adopt they were able to adopt two children because of the money he was making with his maintenance plan and that changes family life that like there was no greater success like it ever

imagined . And then I started getting those types of stories left and right , which just makes this all worthwhile and worth all the hard work . So that's how I measure the success . All right , a couple of final questions before we get into membership questions . I know we're going a while , which is exactly why I broke this down into two parts .

So , membership questions How do you come up with the idea of running a membership ? So the membership aspect was two prong , one was or I'm sorry I missed the last couple of questions . How do you engage your listeners and build a community around your courses , mainly around podcasts , like we talked about .

And then , what are your plans for future of your courses ? How do you see evolve it over time ? So the next big thing I'm going to be working on is resources about scaling , and I'm buttoning up on where I'm going to do this , like whether it's going to be a standalone course .

I had last year I started exploring the idea of a web design business mastery , which I actually have trademarked , which would be like a more intensive , like group coaching style scaling program . I don't know exactly , i haven't flushed that out yet . I'm getting my business course redesigned .

My business course is the course that helps build a six-figure business , but I have a lot of students now who have done that and now they're scaling , now they're hiring , now they're growing , now they're marketing on a much deeper level .

So that's going to be the next big course I'm working on And it'll more than likely be under the title of web design business mastery , which would , as of right now I'm kicking around it being more of a group coaching style program , so you get access to the curriculum and more in-depth coaching that's over like a three month or six month period , maybe less than

that to really go far , really fast . Whether that's going to be open or closed , i'm not sure , but that's . the next thing is more scaling resources , because pretty much everything I have in web designer pro right now and the way of course is is dialed in to help you build your web design business level up and bring it to six figures .

And then I'm going to have like a tier for the mastery side of things , for scaling and those who are hiring , which that'll be a much more high ticket item as well . Price point TBD , all right . Final questions on memberships . So membership in particular how did you come up with the idea of running a membership ?

So , like I just mentioned , it was kind of two pronged . One was I hated having students go through my courses but then just disappear And unless I followed up with an email , unless I intentionally followed up with people who may have messaged me , i have no idea what results they're getting . I have no idea if they're finishing the course , how it's going .

So the idea of a membership was really to add a community for mainly my students and just followers , followers of the brand who are going to join other courses . So the first version of what is now web designer pro was originally my web design club and it did not have the courses .

So it was just membership community and weekly calls with me , and then it was a good kind of nesting ground to get people interested in courses that they have not yet joined courses . In most cases they were already students and then came into the community .

But that caused a lot of issues because I was sharing resources about , like the business course , but then if a few people didn't have access to the course , they didn't really have a good understanding of what we had already talked about .

So in order to keep everybody on the same page and really have much more of a level playing field with having access to all the resources , that's why I revamped the club to what is now web designer pro and have the courses inside of there .

For those of you who want the courses , coaching with me and the most amazing web design community you could ask for behind you and beside you to support you . So that's where really where it all stemmed was to have all the students in a much more cohesive community style place . But I realized some people don't want a community .

So some people just don't have time Like right now I don't have any extra time for additional communities .

But if there's a course from somebody I wanna take , i like having the option to just go through the course , which is why right now you can join web designer pro and get all the courses and everything , or you could just go through one of the courses , if you're interested , at my site at joshallco .

That's why the setup is the way it is and why I think it's working pretty well . So the idea really stemmed from that to be able to just have deeper relationships with my students and continue to coach them And , quite frankly , i'd always been interested in some level of coaching .

I never wanted to do one-on-one or group style coaching exactly , but I love having a help circle , which is the platform I use for web designer pro . They really eloquently dubbed my community a coaching community , which is exactly what it is . It is a community with courses , but there's a coaching aspect because all members can DM me , get my insight .

I'm having one-on-one conversations that's private , and then I'm getting really good feedback on what they're doing , what's working . So web designer pro is where I go to find out what's working , what the main challenges and pain points are , and then that's spurring a lot of content that's here on the podcast and future courses and stuff like that .

In case in point , web design business mastery the next program I'm looking at really flushing out here stem from web designer pro , because a lot of my members were asking me hey , do you have tips on how to hire ? Who should I subcontract ? Where should I get help ? How do I organize my SOPs ? All these things .

I'm like , oh yeah , now that I'm getting these questions , i realize there is a course here that I need to create . So that's how that all kind of started . So one of the know about the process of creating and launching the membership . It was actually very similar to the podcast .

I made it a big deal I share what I was working on some ideas and then announced a launch date and then I opened up founding member access that did have a discount when you joined And that's how I launched my web design club version 1.0 . And I'm really glad I did it .

I did some live calls and really tried to foster like some excitement around that , because you wanna make it an event , and that's exactly what I did . I recommend that with all launches . You can't just like launch something and say , oh , by the way , i have a new product . No , you wanna email people , create some buzz and it's not gonna annoy people .

You may see it over and over . You almost have to do that . You've got to really branch out of your comfort zone and just make it a big deal . So that's exactly how I launched it . In version one of what is now web designer pro was very experimental . I took real time advice on what was working , what they liked , what wasn't going so well , like .

We did some different formats with calls and then we refined it to our weekly calls being a mix of hot seats and website reviews which spur questions , and that's kind of it was a really group effort , like the thing about a community is it's so different than a service or a product because it is a group of people .

So you need to have some leadership and some hierarchy there , for sure . But I do love getting feedback from my members on what's working and they've helped me shape it to what now web designer pro is , which is I'll stack it up against any online community . Bring it .

I will put web designer pro against anyone else And I think , yeah , there's some things I'm sure we can evolve and improve on , but it's pretty freaking awesome And I've seen some other communities and I'm like mm . Web designer pro .

There's just so much here And it's not just because of what I have set up , it's because of the caliber of like-minded people in there , even people who are just starting and are getting their first project . They're still of a mindset now .

That is so far beyond where I was when I started And I think that's a great reference because we're inspirational group of people And there's people all over who are like six figures plus to people who are just lending their first clients . But it really marries well together and lends itself to a strong community .

So anyway , that is how I launched it , made it a founder member kind of thing and then evolved it first round and then started to do more launch periods moving forward . Now marketing membership is a little bit different than courses .

This is kind of a pain point for me right now personally and it's a little bit tricky because I do have my courses one off and inside of Web Designer Pro . I recognize that that's not ideal and it can some .

It can cause some confusion and a little bit of apprehension of someone's like well , i could just get a course by myself , why would I go on Web Designer Pro .

So I understand that there's it can add some buyer confusion , but for all the reasons I just mentioned , it's why I have the current setup is I have all my courses inside of Web Designer Pro , which is where you get everything .

You get courses , community and coaching everything you need for those of you who are super committed , very serious , and we can do this together , then for those I really actually one of my colleagues mentioned that my courses are kind of like a lead generator .

For me right now It's like if you just wanna try a course and you just you only have time for just one topic , like a maintenance plan , for example , that's an option . But I'm marketing pro as like that's the big thing . That's where I want everyone , because everyone's getting the best results .

That's where all the results are happening And it's in very , very affordably priced and competitively priced next to a lot of other programs that I've seen , because it has coaching , community and all of my courses , which are $3,000 value all inside of pro right now , currently at $199 a month . So it's pretty crazy .

So that's how I kind of like market it with that idea on my website And , again , i'm gonna be marketing it more and more moving forward . I'm pretty deep right now in launching , creating the business course , so I'm not promoting as heavily as I will .

Once I get that launched And then you best believe , because WebZener Pro is now gonna include the entire new version of my course We're gonna be marketing like crazy , but I do that through podcasts and social media organically podcast interviews I'll probably experiment with some ads and then summits Summits are a biggie .

I try to do like a free workshop or a lead generator for a summit and then market them at my ship . All right , final , few final questions on memberships . And then when we will end part one , there's actually some other stuff here that I'm going to save for part two because we're getting lengthy on this one .

Again , not surprised How do you measure the success of your membership ? So similarly , very similar to the courses , it's about what type of results are members getting . There's kind of two different types of results .

I get a lot are the quick win results , like we've had some members recently sharing who are early in the journey , sharing their first projects and how they're closing their first websites at between $3,000 and $5,000 . And that is a huge win . I sold my first website for $300 .

So the fact that , like recently , catherine , one of our new members , she sold her first website for $3,400 . That was 10X what I charged for my first website That is a huge win , so that's a biggie . Some other metrics I look at are how engaged they are , or sometimes if they disappear In a weird way .

When somebody joins Web Designer Pro and they're super engaged for like two months and then they drop off the face of the earth for a little while , more often than not , they'll come back in a couple months and they're like sorry , i was so busy , i got slammed And I'm like that's okay , that's exactly what I want to hear And that's why , with annual access

with Web Designer Pro , you can be really active for a couple months and then take a couple months to build your business , get more clients , and then come back and get my insight and then take it to the next level . That's exactly what it's here for . So there's a lot of different ways I measure it , the results that people are getting .

Of course , i want people to be charging at a minimum of $3,000 per website . And then the other aspect is like what does their lifestyle look like ? Are they getting more time back in their business ? Are they able to free themselves up , delegate a little more ? Are they working less because they're charging more ?

Do they feel like they have a network , finally , of people they can rely on , instead of wasting time in forums or chat GPT trying to figure stuff out ? So a lot of those measurements .

I used to making sure that people are getting a lot out of Web Designer Pro , but , just like we talked about in the last episode of the podcast , i have learned to not hold myself responsible for people's results , because it is up to members of Web Designer Pro to get the results .

Like , i can't force somebody to implement what they learned in the course , i can't go in and adjust their calendar to make time for some of the resources , so they need to do it , but of course , i'm trying to empower everyone as much as I can .

The beauty about Web Designer Pro , too , is because there's so many resources in there between the courses And every month we have guest expert trainings , which have built out to an incredible archive of almost 30 additional trainings that cover like accessibility and goals and planning and SEO and all kinds of stuff .

The cool thing about the coaching aspect is if somebody just wants some focus and priority on what to get into to help them . That's where I come in , because they can DM me inside of Web Designer Pro and they can just say , hey , josh , here's where I'm at , what's the next resource Like , what are the few things I should focus on ?

and then I'll just go and I'll say , hey , I would do this course , then go , this , here's a training , and then that usually prompts them to get the next level of their journey going . So that's one of the reasons I love that And it gives me a really good personal look at their success and the results that they're getting .

So , yeah , that's how I measure it Time , revenue and just lifestyle . Are they enjoying it ? Are they loving web design and the challenges that they're having ? Do they have a support system to help get through that as quickly as possible , or partner up with somebody and hire somebody ? So that's huge .

How do you engage your listeners and build a community around your membership ? So it's similar to just selling the membership . Most of it comes through the podcast . Most Web Designer Pro members do come right through here through the podcast .

So for those of you who are in Web Designer Pro right now , thank you for being a member And again , actually , if you came into Web Designer Pro by way of the podcast , let me know DMEM Pro And I wanna chat with you about it because I would love to hear a little more .

So , yeah , it's really just a matter of those two kind of working together Because , honestly , a lot of the case studies and student successes that I share now they all come from Web Designer Pro , because we have a much deeper relationship and I can get a feel for their .

I see their journeys , progress , i see their websites evolve And I see people like Sam recently , who got his first website for over $3,000 . His first month as a Web Designer shout out to Sam , because I know he's a lawyer listener was nearly $6,000 a month based off of everything he's learning in Web Designer Pro and implementing . So , but again , it's on Sam .

Sam is doing an incredible job at being active and actually doing the thing , which is incredible , so crazy results that people are getting and that's what keeps it going . That's what just lights me up and just fuels this . So , yeah , where was I ? Last couple of questions on memberships What are your plans , future plans for the membership ?

How do you see it evolve over time ? So a lot of these questions are kind of categorized to each one of these . Right now I am refining Web Designer Pro to just make it better and better and better . I think one challenge that I have with Web Designer Pro is when somebody comes in , if they are not a member of my courses previously , then there's a lot .

There's a lot of stuff , and the challenge when you have a lot of content is , well , how do I organize and arrange this content to meet somebody where they're at and get them as far as possible , as quickly as possible ?

So one more recent thing I did is I added learning pathways inside of Web Designer Pro and it has a list of like everything you'd wanna know about pricing , for example , like here's the lessons in the business course that cover pricing , Here's some podcast episodes , here's a couple of trainings that we've done from guest experts on pricing . Start here .

That's how I go about that with these learning pathways , and I'm gonna continue to refine those .

The next step with Web Designer Pro in particular , apart from just overall , just refining of things , is I wanna do a better job at the onboarding process with really giving people everything they need when they join to have like the first few weeks just be like this is incredible . I think right now it's really good , but it's not incredible yet yet .

But that's the big thing I'm gonna be working on . And then the next aspect is some sort of better feel for client success and member success in there .

Like I'm probably gonna eventually hire somebody to come in as a success coordinator to help follow up with people to see where they're getting stuck and then feed them to me when they're ready for some advice and insight directly . That's kind of what I'm working on .

I'm kind of doing that ad hoc like one-on-one for members who are really active and who are posting questions . Like I might follow up on a thread and just be like hey , by the way , this is what I recommend , how are things going ? But I need to create a better system for really tracking results and success .

So those are the things I'm working on with Web Designer Pro to make it absolutely the best place to become a Web Designer Pro And then again moving forward having a more top tier program , the Web Design Business Mastery , which again , not for sure , i don't think that's gonna be inside of Web Designer Pro because it is such a separate beast when it comes to

scaling . I think that's likely gonna be more of a open and close group model or a separate scaling course . That might be a premium or a separate thing for those who are six figures and above and who are scaling . So , yes , that's what we're thinking . So I'm gonna end it here .

More questions about digital business strategy and I've got some resources I'm gonna share with you , but I'm actually gonna save all that for part two , which is gonna come out in just a few days here , if you're listening to it when this comes out .

But there are some answers to the questions that I got from Ann Capuzza , my digital marketing , web Printer , web Designer attorney friend , about podcasting , courses and memberships .

A lot of these questions I've got over and over , so I hope this has shed some light on to how I'm running my business right now , what's working in the Web Printer side of things , and I hope this gives you guys some insight and maybe practical advice on what to do if you're interested in building a course , creating a podcast or creating a membership .

I'll see you in a few days on part two where we'll address some general business digital strategy tips and I'm gonna give you some more resources to put up button on all this stuff , so hope you enjoyed this one . I'll see you on part two in just a few days .