This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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It's always great to hear from listeners who have put in the work, made progress, and are ready to go to the next level. That's what we have here today. Arnold from Illinois has created a home improvement video course. He's actually put in a lot of work, a ton of work. I'm gonna talk about it a bit after his question.
And this course is currently on a third-party platform, which you'll hear more about that from him in a moment. And he wants to be able to drive traffic to his own website. That's because he gets a much higher royalty rate for customers that he sends to the platform, as opposed to the ones that they do. So what's the best way for him to do that? We'll also take a look at the course and website itself.
I think it's really well done. I might have a couple of suggestions, but he's definitely on the right track. So how can I drive more traffic to my site instead of this third-party platform? That is our focus for today after this message from our sponsor. [Music]
Hello, Side Hustle School team.
This is Arnold Milton from Central Illinois. So I've been listening, I think, from the very beginning. And it was while reading "Born For This" that I came up with my idea, which was a home repair and improvement video course. It took me a couple of years to get everything ready, but the course is live. And I'm happy to report that I have recently broken even, and I'm now making actual profits.
So my question is basically how to best reach more people. So the course is currently hosted on udemy.com, which is incredibly handy, but they, of course, take a significant percentage of the sales price, and rightfully so. But if I can bring in a customer using a coupon code, then I receive a much larger percentage of the sale. So I've been using Google Ads to drive traffic to my own separate website, which in turn sends the people to Udemy with the coupon code. And that's all been working fairly well.
I generally at least covers the cost of the ads, but I'm wondering what the best next step would be. So social media immediately comes to mind, but I guess I was kind of hoping to avoid that. It's just never been my thing. I don't even have a Facebook account. So do I just need to bite the bullet and sign up for...
Well, actually, what should I sign up for with that goal in mind? Or is there another direction you'd recommend heading? Thank you so much. And I really appreciate everything you're doing. - Hey, Arnold, thank you so much.
So glad you're out there. And congratulations. First of all, first and foremost, I just want to say I respect the hustle. Listeners, go and check out his website, becomeyourownhandymand.com. So great title, great domain name, becomeyourownhandymand.com.
But also this video, of course, that Arnold has made is 47 hours long. So it's extremely detailed. This is for the completionists out there. Everything you want to know about all forms of home improvement, home repair, et cetera. And it looks like it is really well done.
47 hours of video. I can't imagine how many more hours went into the preparation for that. I just know from doing some video stuff that there's always like multiple hours for every finished hour of production or every finished minute of production sometimes. So well done. I also like that it's not low priced like most Udemy courses can be.
So if you haven't used Udemy before, you can usually get most classes for less than $15. They have this introductory offer. But Arnold's course is just under 200 bucks. It's 199.99. And if you buy from his website, which is what he wants people to do, then you actually get a 25% discount, which is significant.
But of course it's still not nearly as cheap as most other Udemy courses, which I think is the right decision because there is so much value there. So because it's not discounted that much, Arnold should still be earning a good amount from the sales. Looks like he's had 142 students go through it, at least at the time I'm recording here, which is pretty good at a legit price point. Okay, so lots of good stuff going here. Still, as he points out, Udemy takes a lot of commission on the sales they refer themselves.
And that's the trade off in working with a platform like that. You know, they're like, we have a huge audience. We know how to make video courses. You give us the content, we're gonna be able to send some customers your way. And it works, but of course, they get paid well for that as well.
So that's why he wants to refer customers himself where the commission is higher. So what's next? Couple of ideas here. Arnold, how can you provide more value on your website? So the website looks good, but you can tell he's put so much more effort into the course itself.
Now that makes sense, but the course is now done. So he's done 47 hours of video. He's obviously comfortable in that format. Why not include some clips there on the website? Why not include some tutorials?
Right now, the website is constructed almost entirely just to talk about the course. And I think it could be more helpful and inspire more loyalty, more commitment for future courses, et cetera, if there was actually more content there. Also, since he now has all this experience with video, why not pull some clips from the course or retake short videos if you have to do it that way and put them on YouTube, maybe one a day for the next year, or even just two to three a week consistently. These are topics that lots of people are searching for every day. You might also wanna think about answering questions on Quora to do something in addition to the video format.
So Quora can also be a great resource. People are searching with questions about these very topics, all the home improvement topics that he talks about. And then last, I would say, well, what's the next course? Okay, what's the next course you're gonna make? I mean, it doesn't have to be 47 hours perhaps.
In fact, I would suggest the next one be a bit more focused and be all about one of the topics included in the bigger course. So the next course is all about electrical or plumbing or flooring or building a wall, or maybe even just a single project. Maybe it's like your first handyman project or something like that. I don't know, do some more research on what's most needed. But in the long term with courses, you're usually going to benefit from building a portfolio and then continuing to serve more and more students along the way.
So overall, this is a long-term project and the fact that the course is already done, and now he can just keep referring people to it over and over as they discover him, it really should be a great feeling. So again, congratulations and keep working away. I think this is a wonderful example for many of our other listeners. And speaking of other listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll be featuring them throughout the year along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects.
Once again, Arnold's website is becomeyourownhandyman.com. Thank you for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
