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What It's About
School district employee becomes a writing ninja and earns more than $100,000.
Business Model
Skills Required
Complexity
Profit Potential
Words of Wisdom
The great thing about online projects like Shaunta's is that there are usually a number of ways to read or research someone’s story. Probably the easiest and quickest one is to look at their About page. In fact, the About page may be the most important page on your website because it gives you an opportunity to communicate your mission and tell your story the way you want it to be told.
On Shaunta's page, she speaks directly to the needs of a large group of people. Her way of speaking is welcoming and personal. Like Shannon Mattern in Ep. 30, Shaunta uses insider language that creates a kind of personal relationship with her subscribers and lets them know that she's one of them. She wants to help them succeed.
Fun Fact
After publishing her first novel, Shaunta got the idea to create a new, online journal project focusing on writing and publishing to help others figure out what it takes to write a novel.
She knew that she was onto something after getting more than 800+ subscribers in the first month of having that online journal. For a long time, she’d had the idea for a year-long novel writing course, and she thought that this might be a good time to test it out. She made a sales page on Gumroad and sent out an email to those 800+ subscribers. After that, she decided to go see a movie with her husband so that she wasn't checking her computer constantly.
When she looked at her email upon leaving the theater, she noticed that two people had bought the course! During that two-hour movie, Shaunta had earned $700, which was close to an entire month's pay at her day job in the school district.
