My Business Strategy and Objectives : How did I Do?
This is my first report of my performance against my key objectives and KPIs which I set up at the beginning of 2015. So how did I do?
Please note that while I do mention some $ numbers, this report is more about sharing with you the successes, or otherwise of my tactics and strategies. I hope they will inspire you to see how you can be more process driven and systematic with your business.
If you are not familiar with my Start of the year objective setting project, you might like to listen to the episode of the Online Learning Podcast where I introduce it. You can link to an MP3 player here to listen: http://traffic.libsyn.com/jbdcolley/olp090.mp3
Online Business Management – How I Structure My Online Business – Mini Course
If you want to get in deeper you can enrol in my mini course at my Course Creation Masterclass to walk through it in detail, get the slides to download and a copy of the MP3 track for good measure. I make no apologies for charging $9 for this.
I want to know that you area serious about growing your business and I do not want to fill my list with freebie hunters who will subscribe to the course and never look at it again. This is a nominal fee to ensure that you value the content and will follow up. This school is where I shall host my really premium content much of which will not be published on Udemy.
Alternatively, you can access this content as a module of my Master Udemy course on Udemy for $297! – just click on this link:
Remember, I really want you to value this content and take action to grow your business!
Affiliate Link Disclosure!
Please note: some of the links below are affiliate links and I will be paid a small commission if you buy through them. Thank you of you do!
Business Strategy and Objectives: 1. Revenues
My Udemy revenues were my 2nd best ever by only a very small margin. This was certainly helped by a storming start to the year when Udemy launched their new year promotion but my promotions were satisfactory too, particularly as you will see that I did not launch a new course this month as planned.
My Fedora sales did not materialise as I am still sorting my courses out on this platform and designing funnels to promote them. Perhaps expecting revenues in January was too optimistic. To sell these effectively, I believe you will need a funnel strategy with some great value added free content to build trust. I don’t want to just launch coupons out into the social media ether and hope some of them stick.
This is the best month ever for my affiliate business and I look forward to devising more and better strategies for further growth in commissions. Revenues were just over $350 but it only takes me 10 minutes a day to schedule the promotions. Additional time is taken creating new campaigns but only in a way that they can be used many times over.
Business Strategy and Objectives: 2. Fedora
I have three Fedora schools which are in various stages of development.
The Six Minute Strategist Academy is up and running and can be found here. I want to bring these courses up to date and then create the funnels to bring them effectively to market. I will not be doing this for my copywriting or Udemy masterclass as these are being hived off to separate schools to give them distinctive brand marketing.
The Online Copywriters Masterclass can be found here. I have ambitions to build this out with everything I learn about copywriting and make this a real destination course. This will be several months in the making.
The Course Creation Masterclass can be found here. I am finalising the update of my Udemy course here and have some very exciting, ultra high value content in the works for this school. Creating my objectives was only the start and this school will contain all the details of how I am running my online business with how to videos, explanations of strategy and sharing was works and what does not work for me.
Ask the Course Doctor!
The first project for this school is the “Ask the Course Doctor!” Consulting project where I am aiming to mentor 5 students a month on a 1:1 basis to help them with their courses.
This also comes with a free 30 day Course Health Check programme which you can join with no obligation. Click on this link to find out more.
You can enrol in my free 30 day Course Health Check programme by simply signing up below.
As part of my content strategy I will be creating Premium content for these two schools to differentiate them from my Udemy content and justify higher prices and lower discounts.
This month I need to increase my marketing for my existing Fedora courses and have two funnels, similar to the 30 day Health Check programme planned. One for my Startup Funding course and one for LinkedIn course.
Business Strategy and Objectives: 3. Skillfeed
I increased my Skillfeed courses to 60 this month which is 5 short of my target. I need to keep the momentum up here as Skillfeed is such a great plaform. If you don’t know about it, listen to my recent interview with Community Manager, Aneri Shah in episode 094 of the Online Learning Podcast. You can find a direct link to an MP3 player here and the show notes are at https://jbdcolley.com/olp094
If you want to submit your courses to Skillfeed and have not yet signed up, here is my affiliate link.
If you think you may want to take some courses there, try this link which will take you to my courses on Skillfeed and you can start from there.
A new initiative this month has been my active promotion of my Skillfeed courses through my Social Media campaigns promoting the share button linking to my Skillfeed courses. [results]
I have a block of messages which I share through my social media accounts which will hopefully drive traffic to my courses on Skillfeed, thereby increasing my minutes viewed, as well earning me commissions if new students subscribe to Skillfeed. This is simple to set up and I send it out once a day. It will be interesting to see over the coming weeks, the impact this has.
Business Strategy and Objectives: 4. Google Analytics
001.309.myftpupload.com: I had just under 1900 site visits to my site last month which is just short of my initial target of 2,000. This should start to improve as I work on the SEO and accessibility of material on my site which is one of my strategic projects for this month.
In addition, as I create more funnels for courses using existing blog content to create interest and add value (I have 300 blog posts to work with) then I expect this metric to improve. I am not trying to drive traffic for the sake of it but increased traffic should come as a result of my marketing strategies and this is a great way to measure that progress.
Fine Art America: My Photographic Website I am very proud of my photography although it really is a side hustle for the time being. I am promoting my photos on my Twitter channel (www.twitter.com/jcphotoart) and on my facebook page (link). You can find my main website at www….
If you feel the urge to buy something, please use this code to get a 25% discount: ESNPKB. You can find my FAA website here.
I have Google analytics set up on all my course pages so I can monitor what is happening and you should too. I am only measuring these two metrics to prevent me being overwhelmed by the numbers.
Business Strategy and Objectives: 5. Udemy Coupon Redemptions
These are the number of free coupons that I gave away in January. The target was 1,000 and I actually had 651 redemptions which I am not unhappy about, particularly as I did not release a new course.
I am becoming more conservative with my free coupons than in the past and prefer to offer some very low price coupons for some of my smaller and lite courses. I tried a $5 offer on 7 courses for 36 hours on BestBlackHatForum which was very disappointing. Since the forum split its free and paid Udemy coupon forum pages the paid offers are not converting anything like as well. It is still a good place to offer free coupons and you can find the Udemy section here.
Giving away free coupons to your paid courses can be a great way to grow you student numbers. My caution would be to make sure that the new students are likely to buy courses from you in the future which is far from assured if you simply give out 1000 free coupons on Reddit, which I have done in the past.
Business Strategy and Objectives: 6. Udemy Unique Students
The combination of my free redemptions with my actual course sales meant that I gained 993 new students this month. My target was 1,000 so that was a result! If you are one of those students, welcome! And thanks you for joining the community!
Udemy is a numbers game so this is an important metric. I would encourage you to develop strategies which grow your student numbers. If you would like to come on board here is a free link to my Lite Udemy Design course which has some really great lectures on course pricing, if I say so my self! 😉
Business Strategy and Objectives: 7. Udemy Courses Published
The goal here was to publish one new course which I failed to do. It is no consolation that I have nine courses in draft. I need to focus more on core content creation and this month I am going to try to dedicate the first three hours of the day from 09.00 am to 12.00 to creating new course videos. This after I have completed my social media campaign scheduling for the day.
Creating new content is an essential part of growing your revenues and students on Udemy. Cross selling to your students with a paid launch offer, even if it is very attractively priced is a great way to bank earnings each month. Once you have created a couple of courses, one new 90 minute course a month should be an attainable goal.
Business Strategy and Objectives: 8. Udemy Course Reviews
This was definitely a success with my goal of 175 reviews coming up just short at 174. This really proves my view that what you measure, moves. I have had more reviews this month than any on their single month by a country mile. Just keep asking for them. Please note if you are enrolled in one of my courses, please pause here and take 30 seconds to leave an honest and, hopefully, positive, review for the course to help me with this months goal.
Go on, I will wait for you while you leave that review. Please now email or message me to say you have done it – so that I can say thank you!
Email List Sign Ups
This is incredibly important. I have two sets of lists. My aWeber account which this metric directly measures and my Fedora students who are on Mailchimp. I added 62 new signups to the AWeber list this month, ahead of my target of 50. That is 2 a day which I am pleased with but want to do much better and I have high hopes of my Course Doctor offering. This offers both a 30 day Course Health Check and the ability to connect with me directly for 1:1 mentoring. You can find out more about my programme from this blog post.
I currently have 439 people on my aWeber list and 214 on Mailchimp, a total of 653. This is a small list but great oaks from little acorns grow.
I have set up some very value adding lead magnets and auto responder sequences in January which I am pleased about and I really hope are valuable to my email list members. This is all controlled by a complex spreadsheet to ensure that I make the most of my content and the autoresponder sequence contains a high ratio of value adding content to funnel introductions and course sale offers.
Make sure that you have some kind of free offer on your site, a small ebook or cheat sheet, which visitors can download in exchange for their name and email address. In addition if you are creating content for your blog, create a bespoke “lead magnet” which relates to the article and off this in exchange for a sign up.
Your autoresponders should be more than just link bait. As well as offering a tempting download, you need to have some forward thinking logic to the emails that you follow up with. These take three forms: more valuable lead magnet downloads, entrances to funnels (such as my 30 Day Course Health Check) and direct sales offers to your audience. The ratio of value to sales should be at least 80:20.
I will be continuing to build out this programme in February, including putting a proper autoresponder sequence in place for my Mailchimp members, a real priority on my strategic projects list.
YouTube Subscribers
This metric moved forward by 17 to 121 this month, which is my best month so far but some way behind my target of 50. This is a difficult metric to influence directly. I can only add more great video content, improve tagging and all SEO techniques and promote in social media.
This month I am going to experiment with one or two longer videos (if I have the time to make them) as it was recently suggested to me that this can help with views which can lead to more subscribers. If you have not yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, shame on you :). Please rectify this oversight by clicking on this link and subscribing now!
Libsyn Downloads
My target for downloads this month was 75,000 and I achieved 68,450 which I am still thrilled about. The Online Learning Podcast – which you can find on iTunes by clicking on this link – goes from strength to strength. I have just released episode 094 but with all the multiple episodes I did earlier in the year, there are actually 136 episodes out there.
A podcast is an excellent strategy for building your audience and reputation. It is not difficult to do or to promote. Another benefit, if you have an interview show as I do, is that you build great relationships with your guests as a result of talking to them for an hour or two. Plus they will appreciate that you are giving them a platform to promote themselves on to your audience.
Please consider subscribing in iTunes and leaving a positive rating and review. Periodically, I give shoutouts on the show to people who leave me 5 Star ratings and rewviews in iTunes.
Recent Episodes include:
OLP090: One Amazing Strategy For Growing Your Online Courses Business with Jerry Banfield
OLP091: Online Business Management – How I Organise My 2015 Online Business
OLP092: Nine SEO and Content Management Tactics to do Now with Adrian Knight
OLP093: Six Social Media Marketing Strategies with Dennis J Smith
OLP094: Everything that you wanted to know about Skillfeed with Aneri Shah
Click on the Links to go to the show notes and listen to to the episodes
A new strategy that I have been implementing where I can is to produce a PDF of the key action points of a conversation and turn it into a lead magnet for my email list. This has been paying dividends and I can also use this content for my auto responders sequences to add value to my members when they subscribe to other lists.
Twitter Followers
The growth of my Twitter channels has been a great success this month. My goal was to reach 10,000 across my four channels, links below. I added no less than 2,394 followers to total 10,865 so I smashed my target.
This month I have launched two new Twitter channels: @makemoneycoupon which is focused on discount codes for courses relating to making money online and @TecDiscountCode which offers the same for Technology courses.
These Twitter channels are very important for both my courses business and my Udemy affiliate business. Growing the followers with a continual stream of great tweets should grow both both my courses and affiliate sales.
I shall be seeking to become more strategic about the growth of my LinkedIn and Google+ channels as well as to a less extent my Facebook pages. I am still very enthusiastic about Facebook groups and do not intend to move to paid advertising at least in the short term.
Promotional Messages sent across all accounts in Social Media
This month my scheduling system has been going full tilt. Normally around half an hour a day,I have recently made some small improvements to speed it up. However, I also added Skillshare as a new campaign category.
My target was to send out 5,000 messages in the month. In fact, I sent out 8,152. That is around 260 a day and no spamming.
Being able to do this on a scalable and semi-automatic basis is one of the great strengths of my system. The rewards in sales, coupon remdemptions and audience growth, speak for themselves.
Strategic Objectives for February
In addition to my KPIs there are a number of key tasks which I would like to achieve in February
- Update my website to make it easier to find my content by category both for my blog and my podcast. This will mean an update to every blog post and show notes page and I will also take the opportunity to improve the SEO with key words, internal links, image tagging etc. This is a big job and may run into March
- Collate and update my coupon codes and affiliate links from the Udemy instructors I have interviewed. I want to create a detailed sheet of:
- course name
- Price
- Discount price
- Discount code
- Link (with code)
- Brief description
- These will be used to create social media marketing lists and lead magnets tailored to the course categories. If you are a previous Online Learning Podcast guest, please send me an update of all your courses, with fresh codes where appropriate.
- Set up autoresponder messages for my Fedora students on Mailchimp
Do you want to know how I do this?
I am in the process of creating a premium course for my Course Creation Masterclass school where I will explain, spreadsheet by spreadsheet exactly how I manage my online business. This is a system that I have been developing for 18 months, with lots of blind alleys. Members of my Course Creation Masterclass school will be the first to be given access to this when it launches.
You can listen to my Online Learning Podcast Episode OLP091 for an audio walk through for free. Alternatively play it direct from the MP3 player at the top of this post.
You can find my Business Objectives mini-course on my Fedora Course Creation Masterclass school. This mini-course costs a nominal $9 (it’s for people who are serious about growing their online business) and can be found by clicking on this link. This offers a 50% discount to the current price of $19.
What are you struggling with?
I hope this gives you a clear idea of what I have been up to. The work is never done and it really is all about creating systems and processes.
What are you struggling with? Drop me an email to let me know? john[at]jbdcolley[dot]com.
Alternatively, if you are making online courses, definitely enrol in my 30 Day Course Health Check Programme which you can find here.