Making Money from Premium Content - My Formula for Success (or should I say hard work)

What a year it has been so far.  I have worked so hard so I could take the summer months off while the kids are not in school.  And finally, just now, I have passed over the last of the content to my publishing partner and I can sit back and enjoy the sun until September.  I take all holidays off with the kids, and midterms and whatever other days they are off.  I work fully around the kids so it's not full time the days I do work.  Sounds good right!!!!!  Well sometimes it’s a pain but nevertheless, it's what I decided to do while the kids are young.

The joys of selling premium content is that you can make it once and sell many times.  Digital products are a fantastic recurring revenue stream if you get it right!!!!  Facts are, I now have myself in a position if I stop creating content today, I would still have some sort of income for at least the next 5 years, although it would reduce a lot over that time and would need to be supplemented probably after the second year.

In terms of production and publishing of premium content I have achieved a lot this year.

• 4 Course sent to publishing partner in the UK.

• 2 Courses published on Udemy – 1 in hand.

• 2 Course Published on The Excel Club – 2 in hand.

With content in hand I have plenty of new premium content available to publish over the summer months.

Premium Content Distribution Routes:

If you are considering making premium content to sell, online courses are a great place to start.  The distribution routes I use are detailed below.

Make once  * sell many times  * in many places = max revenue.  

That’s my formula for success.

Most of the work I do, I do not give exclusive publishing rights.  That way I can publish and sell in many places.  

All my B2B business has moved to my publishing partner in the UK.  I had a fantastic meeting with them mid-June and have agreed on content for Sept to Dec.  Sales here are good as they exceeded my B2B sales prior to the move.  Payment is annual and is based on royalties, but the first payment is in and I know where I stand!!!!

Udemy, well as you all know from previous posts on the topic, I dropped in sales last year substantially and even with the newly published courses I have not regained the ground I lost.  I have however regained the title of Best-selling Instructor on not one, but 2 of my courses.

  

And I have reached over 55K students.  These are great achievements.  Payment here is monthly.

Skillshare and Other course selling platforms – I don’t have much content on these platforms, and what I have does okay. All courses published to Udemy in the last 9 months will also be shared on other platforms. Payments are monthly so the sooner I start uploading the better 😊

Theexcelclub.com  is a little different in that I have not been pushing sales at all.  This is my own site so I have full control.   Thankfully the sales from both of the above are paying okay so I am not reliant on sales from TheExcelClub.  As I had taken such a long break from blogging and interacting with people and students, I felt like I was starting from scratch.  This has allowed me to focus on growing my traffic, increasing my email list and pushing the learn and earn steem activities.  My call to actions has not been to sell, but to sign up with me, or to sign up for a steem account and take part in the activities.  I wont talk about the calls to actions performance in this post, let's leave that for another one!

With traffic I crushed it.  I was hoping to get to 10K monthly visits by June.  My unique visitors are around 8K and my monthly visits are just over 11K.  Happy!!!!

Finally, I was contacted by Alison.com as they were interested in publishing some of my premium content.  I have agreed to go ahead but have not yet started to upload the content. In terms of revenue, it’s a quarterly payment so I don’t really expect to see any revenue till early 2020.

Really, are you going to sit back until September?

Na, not really.  I have shed loads of premium content I need to publish over the summer.  Setting up courses on different platforms is rather time-consuming, but its revenue generating so I am only losing out by not doing it.

I have enough content ready for my weekly blog posts and learn and earn activities ready till September, so I will continue to push my traffic and growth.  I want to get to 20K a month by the end of the year, do you think I can do it?

The kids are off school obviously and we have a lot of activities organized, but my infill time will be spent on steem, most probably with @steemclan and winning Satoshis Treasure.