The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 26. Creating an Online Course with Lindsay Bowden

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

Have you ever thought about creating an online course in addition to your blog? Lindsay Bowden is here today to chat with us about how creating an online course is a great tool. We chat about how she got started, who is a good candidate to be a course creator, figuring out the topic of your online course, and if you should have a certain amount of blog traffic or social media traffic before creating a course. We also chat about having the course completely ready vs. building it based on feedback from your beta launch, pricing, market research, what platform she recommends, costs to create a course, and mini offers. Lindsay also shares information on the time commitment involved with creating a course, marketing the course, evergreen vs. live launch, and passive income. This episode is full of so many helpful tips for anyone who is considering creating a course. Be sure to tune in to hear all of the key takeaways and check out the show notes (link below) for links and resources mentioned in this episode!Thanks for listening! Connect with us on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsThinking about starting a blog? Check out the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode26

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm, and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Today, we get to introduce you to Lindsay Bowden, who is going to talk all about creating a course, which we think is such a great way for bloggers to earn extra money on the side or just build an extra income stream with their business. Lindsay teaches people how to create a course and is an expert in this area. We are so excited to have you on the Ultimate Blog Podcast, Lindsay. So thank you for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to talk about online courses. Yeah. So how about we start out by you just telling us a little bit about your story and how you got involved in creating online courses?

and how you got involved in creating online courses. Sure. So I am actually a former high school math teacher. I taught high school math for eight years. And while I was in the classroom, I really struggled to find resources for my students. We didn't have a textbook. We didn't have really any resources. And my first year, I was just scrambling to find things to give to my kids like worksheets and activities. So I started to create my own resources for the classroom. And as I started doing that, co-workers kind of started asking me, hey, how did you do that? How did you create this graph? How did this activity come about? And so I started teaching people in my school how I was making resources. And eventually I created a course for math teachers to teach them how to make resources.

And that course was called Math Resource Academy. I still sell that course till this day. I launched it in summer of 2019. And that course actually allowed me to quit my teaching job. It allowed my husband to quit his corporate accountant job and kind of led me to helping others to create online courses. I love your story because you saw a need and then you just created a solution to help people with it. And it's as simple and as hard as that. Exactly. Seems so simple, but the actual, you know, action steps, I feel like people might struggle with it, but we're going to help them today. Yeah. So did you have someone who taught you or are you self-taught? Did you teach yourself how to do this? So I took a lot of courses. I listened to podcasts. I read books. I taught myself, but I also had a lot of help as well. So those, I basically just immersed myself in business and online course creation because I

found out I was pregnant January of 2019. And I knew I wanted to leave the classroom. So I had this really big why, this goal for creating this business. And that really motivated me to learn all the things about business online courses, because as a teacher, I knew nothing. Yeah. I love that. So then you've been able to stay home with your daughter, right? Since doing this. Yes. I stay home with my daughter and now my husband gets to stay home with us as well. And we're just living our best life. It's awesome. I love it. So when someone is sitting in similar shoes, like, like you were like, and they're either a blogger or they're, maybe they don't have a blog yet, but they know something that they could possibly teach something. How would somebody know whether or not they'd be a good candidate to be a course creator?

What are some of those qualities that somebody would need in order to create a course? Yeah. So I honestly feel like anyone can create an online course, but you kind of need to have some things in order before you start that process. So I definitely recommend having like a really nailed down niche or like a topic that you talk about and that you're known for. You also need to have a problem that you can solve within that niche. So if you're a blogger and you are blogging about a certain topic all the time, that could definitely transition into your online course topic. But you do need to have some kind of topic that you're known for before you just kind of randomly create an online course. I would agree with that because I think

that we have to niche down in blogging as well. I think we tell our students that in the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp. And I think that is kind of difficult for some people to wrap their mind around in the beginning because there's so many different topics that they want to talk about. But when you kind of narrow down your focus, then you can find your community, I think, much easier too. Yeah. And finding your audience, that's a good point too. You need to know who you want to help. Do you want to help moms who just had a baby? Do you want to help college graduates? That's going to really affect how you market and what your message is. So you want to know who you're going to resonate with.

What's a good way to test out your idea? If you think you have a great idea, but you don't necessarily want to like go all in on it until you know that it's something that people need, what would be a good way to check that out and see? Yeah, there's a few ways. So I recommend first of all, seeing if anyone else has created an online course about this topic and if they're successful with it, then that is a pretty good way to start. You don't want to copy that person, but there are so many people interested in a certain topic. So just because someone else has created a topic on how to teach guitar doesn't mean you can't also create that online course. And the fact that someone else has been successful with it is a

really good indication that your course could be successful. So I like to start there. I don't necessarily mean that if someone else hasn't created an online course about the topic you want to, that, you know, your topic is out. In fact, my first online course, Math Research Academy, no one else had created a course like that. So it can work, but that's a good place to start. You can also create a really good lead magnet or kind of like free resource around your topic. And if you get a lot of people to sign up for that lead magnet, meaning they give you their email address, then that means people are interested in this and they want to learn more. That's a great idea just to kind of get a feel for your current audience and what they like.

I like that idea. So let's say that someone's a new blogger and they're building their community and they're wondering about creating a course. Do you feel like they need to have a minimum number of either blog, like a minimum amount of blog traffic or social media followers or email subscribers? Do you think that there's like a certain threshold that they need to be at in order to move forward with creating a course? I definitely don't think you have to have some minimum number. Of course, the more you have, the more sales you're going to have, but it's really just math. Normally between two and 10% of your email list will convert into a customer. So if you only have 100, you know, that's still

between two and 10 people. That's a great beta launch, which means the first launch of your course, you know, you can get those 10 people in, get them to give you some feedback, some testimonials, and then you can relaunch, which is just going to build your audience even more. So I like starting small because, you know, you can really refine your course before having some huge launch and then having to go back and fix things with all of these people in it. You don't want to do that.

You want to make sure you get everything really nice and refined before you do a big launch to a big audience. I really love that because I think we can put a lot of time into something that we thought was the best thing ever. And then when we introduced it to people, it may not be exactly what they need. So how much time do you recommend somebody spends creating this course before they do something like a beta launch?

Should you have everything, like all the videos recorded, all the lessons planned out? Or is it better to maybe drip the content? You definitely don't have to have the complete course ready. I've done it both ways. I launched my first course, Math Resource Academy, with it completely done. And as people signed up, they just got the whole course. So I've done it that way. But I also like to have a really small group of beta members. And that's what I'm actually doing right now with my new course, which we can talk about later. But I have 20 members right now, and I'm about halfway done

with the course. So they are aware of that. And they are going to give me feedback on the first portion that I've created. And that's going to help me finish out the course to really make sure that I understand what they want and need. Because like you said, you may think you know your audience and what they want and need. But then once members start coming in and you're like, oh, wait, I need to add this and this part doesn't make sense. And you can really, you know, edit things and make sure it makes sense. I think that that's scary for some people to do that. So I'm speaking from personal, like I'm, it scares me. Yeah. Jennifer's laughing. So that scares me. So what would you say to encourage

someone to say it's okay to sell a course that you haven't fully created? Like, how do you encourage them to say it's okay to like, know what your topic is, know where you're going to go with it. But then when you get people in there, create the course, basically based on the wants and needs of the people in there. So basically, Lindsay, can you encourage me? Yes. And I totally understand because I felt the exact same way with the launch of my first course. I was like, there's no way I'm selling this before I'm done with it. What if something happens and I can't finish it? So I totally get that. And that is a valid concern. But I think that if you truly think about the wants and needs of your customers, and you're really open and honest with them about, hey, this is not done. You are a beta member.

You're going to help me create this course. It almost gets them more excited because they're like, wow, I am going to be like the first member of this course and I'm going to help create it. And they are going to be like your mega fans. When you're done with that course and they have finished it with you, they're going to tell all of their friends about it. They're going to talk about it on social media. They're going to be those people that really build the hype for that next launch. That's why I really like having those solid core group of beta members, you know, because you just,

you want those mega fans that are going to support you along the way. So does your beta launch then, is that a different price point then from when you launch it, like a bigger launch that the course is refined and it's done? Are those two different price points? I do it that way. I've seen people that don't do it that way. They just offer it at the same price. So I think it's up to you.

I like to offer a lower price just because it's a good selling point and it creates urgency. Like, hey, the price is going to go up if you don't buy right now. And that gives people a reason to buy now instead of to wait later. Okay. So let's back it up a little bit. And let's say that somebody's got an idea for a course. What is the first step that they need to do? So they have their idea. They have their target audience. They know what they want to teach about or provide a solution for, what's the first step that they need to do in order to get started? So I definitely recommend doing some market research just to make sure that you know what your niche is and you know that people want to purchase things about this topic. So I recommend

finding other experts in your area and seeing what, maybe on Instagram, you find someone in a similar niche or the same niche and you see what their followers are commenting about. Like what questions are they asking? I use keyword research to see if people are searching about this topic. I try to get on Zoom calls with people,

maybe even offer like a couple of free coaching sessions so that you can really make sure that you understand your audience's wants and needs before you start the creation process. So basically nail down your online course idea and what you're going to teach before you start the creation process. And then when they start thinking about actually putting it together, is there a platform that they can use to help them? What kind of technical knowledge are they going to need to have in order to make this happen? Yes. So I use Kajabi. It's an online course hosting platform, but it's kind of like an all in one platform.

So I use it to host my online course, but I also use it for my website, for email, for payment integration. You can blog on there. So it's kind of everything in one. So you're not having to pay for all of these multiple services. So as far as tech skills that you need, Kajabi is very user-friendly and they have an awesome support community. So that's pretty easy. And then other than that, you just really need a microphone and then some way to film yourself. And that's it for an online course. And we use like, we create slides, for instance, and the ultimate blog bootcamp, and we created all those slides in Canva. So we didn't, we didn't pay for them either. I mean, Canva has a ton of free resources that we were able to utilize. And so you're right. To create an

online course, it really doesn't take a lot of upfront cash. I think the only thing that we really spent money on, Jennifer, was really photography. But we were using that photography for other things in our business as well. So it wasn't like we got pictures just for the course. We had pictures taken for the business. What else did we spend money on? Anything? I mean, just the monthly fees for the Kajabi platform. But yeah, you can do like a month to month.

You're not making any huge commitment to that. We decided to do a webinar with our course as well. So we had to find a way to host our webinar. I think we initially did it on Zoom and then switched to Webinar Jam. But yeah, I think the cash investment for the most part seems fairly minimal for most ideas you're going to have for creating a course because you're creating it based on knowledge and skills that you already have. It's just going to be more, I would think, of a time investment on your part to put it all together. Yeah, for sure. I agree. And I love Canva and that's what I use too. So it's so easy and they

have amazing templates that make all your stuff look beautiful. As a person who's not a graphic designer, I love it. Yeah. Same, same. Have you ever wanted to start a blog, but had no idea where to begin? Or maybe you have a blog that you'd like to update and want some help to make it the best it can be. We know that there are many people out there who have big dreams for their own blog that never happen because they simply feel stuck. The Ultimate Blog Bootcamp is an eight-week course designed to help you create a solid blogging foundation by teaching you how to treat your blog as a business, find your audience, design a website that is optimized for SEO, all while providing support via online coaching calls each week of the course. There's a private

Slack channel for students as well, so questions will never go unanswered. The Ultimate Blog Bootcamp will give you the tools and support to create a blog that has the potential to turn into a profitable business. We are committed to helping each and every student feel empowered and confident with the foundational principles of blogging and the behind-the-scenes work that goes into it. If you don't want to blog alone, we can help. We keep each round small in order to provide each student the attention and support we believe you deserve during this process. Since space is limited, get on the waitlist today so we can help you with your blog. The link to join the waitlist is in our show notes or go to sparkmediaconcepts.com and click on the ultimate blog bootcamp.

So how much time do you think is for like a first course or for any course really about how much time does it take to create the course? So let's say they've done their market research. They've interviewed some of the people in their target audience about how much time are they going to invest in creating this? You think? Yeah, it definitely depends on the niche and what they're teaching and how like complicated it is. And also like how advanced your audience is. Like, are you teaching like advanced piano or are you teaching, you know,

just like the basics of, you know, herb gardening? That's going to affect it. But I would say someone could create an online course in like three months, you know, just, and also it depends on how many days a week you're working and how many hours. But my first online course, I was working two hours a day. So I did it in two hours a day in three months.

I think it's good to know that timeline so that you can kind of plan out what it's going to take and how long it's going to take you to be able to launch. If you wanted to do something that you could get to market a little bit sooner, could you create something a little bit smaller to kind of get yourself up and running before you spend the time to create this bigger course? Yes, absolutely. I love mini offers and I actually teach members of my course to do a mini offer before your online course. That's another great way to test out your course idea before you go all in on this huge signature offer, do a mini course or a paid workshop. You can do even one-on-one coaching. I consider like a mini offer, even though you can charge a premium price, you can do templates, swipe files. There's so many things that you can do before your online course to go ahead and start making money.

It also helps people get into your ecosystem and starts them on that customer journey. So I teach my members to create a mini offer that will lead into that signature offer, that online course, because they are more likely to invest $17, $27, $37. If they don't know you that well, or if you're new to business and you don't have a lot of trusted audience members, they're going to pay that before they're going to pay $9.97 for a signature course. So it's a great way to start building your audience and getting really qualified leads. And it's great for connection too. Yes. Obviously bringing them in at a lower price point. We are working actually with a business coach this year who is saying you want to be able to

have each customer come in and have like two to three offers that you have to give them. And so I think a mini course is a great idea for that, them coming in. And then if you kind of warm them up with the mini course, and then you can sell them something larger, that is going to be a solution for something that they need anyway. And so that's great for them. And it's great for you as the course creator, because you're just keeping, you're keeping a customer and you're building more community because so much of what we do as bloggers and course creators and of the like is connection and it's networking and it's meeting people. And a lot of times we're meeting people via the people that we're connecting with in our own communities who are

simply just sharing about the goods or services or content that we're creating. And so I think that that's a beautiful way to keep people in your community and create that larger community by having different offers for them as well. Yeah. A product suite is such a good idea for any business owner because there are so many different types of buyers in your audience. Some people are going to be fine forking over $997 after watching one webinar and going through an email sequence, but others are not going to be able to do that or not going to be comfortable doing that yet. So if you get them in with that low ticket offer, then they'll say, oh, wow, they really

know what they're talking about. They know blogging. Yeah. I want to buy their signature course. Absolutely. So how does somebody know how to price their course? I think that that was something that when we first launched our course, we were like, how do we know how to price this?

It was this very tricky. It's a very tricky way to think like, how much am I worth? You know, and you kind of downplay yourself, I think a little bit in the beginning. So what do you recommend to your students on how to price their courses? Yeah, this is so hard and there's no right or wrong answer to this, but I definitely think that if you stop thinking about like what you are worth and what your course is worth and think more about what your audience could pay because that's a big deal. You know, I help teachers. They don't make a lot of money, so they can't pay like a super premium price.

So think about what your audience can pay. Think about how big of a problem your course is going to solve. You know, some courses are more hobby niches like crocheting or watercolor painting, which is fabulous, but that's not necessarily going to be a course you could charge, you know, $2,000 for. And then some niches like B2B, if you're helping people make money, if you're helping people to get healthy or find love, those are more needs than wants. Then you can usually charge a higher price for that. As far as the specific price, I recommend looking at similar courses in your niche and kind of seeing what other people are charging and then finding a good average to start with. And then once you get some testimonials, once you get some kind of credibility and your business grows, then you can start charging more

and more and kind of just charge what you want to charge. Yeah, that makes sense. So you can adjust the price kind of as you go along and as you start to build and you get more comfortable in all of that as well. For sure. And a price increase is a great way to increase urgency. So if you start kind of lower and then every launch, you increase the price and you say, hey, this is the last time this course is going to be this low of a price. Make sure you purchase now because the next time I launch, it's going to go up $100 or however much. That really helped me with the launching of my math course.

I started at $197 and then I went to $227 and then $297. And that increase really increased urgency to buy. Yeah, we're all definitely motivated by money. So I can see how that would work. Besides just giving them that urgency, what are some other ways they can market their course and get more people in the door, get more eyeballs on this course and get more people to buy? Yeah. So there's kind of like two areas of marketing. There's organic and then there's paid. I'm sure you guys know all about this, but organic is the best way to start in the beginning because you don't really have a lot of money to invest in paid ads yet. form. Building your email list is vital. So creating a really high quality, valuable lead magnet, which is just a freebie, a PDF guide, a checklist, something like that, and really

marketing that everywhere to get your email list, really good qualified leads on your email list. That's a great way. And then once you're ready to go to paid ads, that's what I use now mostly. once you're ready to go to paid ads, that's what I use now mostly. So I use Facebook ads and I just run ads to a free workshop. And then after that, they go into an email sequence to buy the course. So is that something that runs evergreen or is that workshop that you have a live workshop? So I am running evergreen only now. I have done live launches in the past, which I love as well. But right now I am 100% evergreen. Okay. So we do live launches. So we'll walk people through that. But if you would just take a moment and kind of walk us through what that looks like to have an evergreen launch,

because I think that's going to be a big question that they're going to have like, okay, I'm going to create a course, but then how do I get people to find it and purchase it? So if you'll just walk us through like an evergreen launch and how you have that set up. Sure. So I definitely recommend doing at least three successful live launches first before you go to evergreen, because if you're just throwing ads at something that you don't already know works, then you're going to waste a lot of money. But once you have those successful live launches down and you really have a good email sequence, your open rates are good, all of that data is good, then you can move to Evergreen. So Evergreen basically just means you have some type of pre-recorded training, video series, mini course that is going to get people kind of into your

evergreen funnel, which a funnel for your listeners that don't know is just a way to get someone that's not a customer to become a customer. So I will run an ad to a free training that I have. They'll watch that free training and then they'll go into a seven-day email sequence. And every day, they get an email from me about my course, about testimonials, frequently asked questions about the course, and then reasons for them to buy. I also use Deadline Funnel, which is a way to automate urgency. So usually in a live launch, you have an open close cart period where people can buy from this date to this date. And then after that, they can't buy anymore. And that's a great way to give people a reason to buy.

When you go to Evergreen, you don't you can't really do that because everyone is getting into the funnel at a different time. They're signing up for that training at a different time. What Deadline Funnel allows you to do is they will track people based on their IP address and they will give them an actual start and end date where they can buy. And it's not a fake end date. Like once it's off, it's off and they really can't buy anymore. And the deadline funnel software cuts off the sales page for them and they have to join the wait list. So it's a really good way to maintain your integrity and not just say, oh, this is going away, but it's really not going away and still have that urgency that you really need to give people a reason to buy. So when they go into a wait list, then do you like market the wait list again?

So yeah, so you can choose like a certain amount of months that you want to wait before you put them back in the funnel, or you could like wait six months and say, hey, do you want to sign up for this training again? And then they can get back into the funnel that way. Another thing that I like to do is kind of mix up live launching in Evergreen. So before I would do live launches like three times a year. And you guys know that can get a little tiring because live launching is a lot of work. And I have a two and a half year old. And the whole reason I started this job was to spend time with her. So I wanted to put it on Evergreen for that reason. But if you add in maybe one live launch a year, then you'll get those people that maybe

didn't sign up through the Evergreen funnel, but they really need that hype and excitement of the live launch, then they will buy then. So you can put those waitlist people into your live launch funnel. Does that make sense? Yeah. So you can have people on your list for a while before they finally purchase. I've had people for years and they'll say, I saw you at a conference in 2018 and now I'm buying like, wow, that's awesome.

I feel like we've looked at it before and typically people are on our email list for about six months. Yeah. So that just, that just tells people like, if you have, if your first launch doesn't go as well as you think it should know that these people just really need to get to know your offer and to know you, and they need to know that they can trust you. And I think with our course, it's about blogging. So they have to like really make that decision. Do I want to start a blog or not? And so it just takes them some time, but typically our members who join are it's around six ish months. Isn't that right, Jennifer? Yeah, I think so. I think that's about right. And some even a longer, you know, it's, it's always

hard to know for sure, you know, how long it's going to, somebody is going to be on your list. We also have some people who come to our live webinars that join right away. So maybe they've been connected with us on social media, but not on our email list. You never really know where they're at, but I just don't want people to feel discouraged if it takes people a while to buy. I think we have to remind ourselves to continue to show up because these are people just like you and I who are sitting here. We are all moms. We are all made a choice to stay home, to be with our families. That was our three stories. Other people's stories could look different, but we are just normal people who are just offering a solution to somebody else. And so for somebody else on the other side of the fence there,

they're thinking about how this is going to impact my life, how it's going to change my life. Do I have the time and the money to do it? And it takes some people some time. It doesn't take everyone that amount of time. Some people are more impulsive than others and can make that split second decision quicker, but it just shows that you want to continue to show up for your email subscribers, for your blog audience, for your social media followers, and just remind them how you can serve them, how you're going to help this problem in their life, like find a solution. So we do a live launch and we've only done, I think, one launch that we didn't do. We just did it via our email list.

But when we started our course, it was in 2020 and we've always done the live launch. So we are kind of addicted to live launching. We are not going to do as much live launching as we have because you're right. It burns you out. It is a lot. There is a lot that goes into it, but it's been successful for us for the most part since 2020. So what that kind of looks like is we really market our email list and we have a live webinar. Generally, we have two webinars on one day, noon and like 6 or 7 PM is what generally works for our audience. And we invite people via our email list. And we also have our affiliates who are former bootcamp students share the webinar

with their followers and email subscribers as well. And then people come to our live webinar and we give a presentation and then we open the doors for the bootcamp at the end of that presentation. And typically we offer a sale that is just during the time of the webinar. We've offered a couple different things. We've offered free one-on-one coaching. We've offered a little bit less, so like a discount. And generally what's worked for us is money off. People are, like Jennifer said, motivated by money. And so that's generally what's worked better for us. And then the cart is only open, like you said, for a certain number of days. And that's generally been between 5 and 10 days that we've left the cart

open. And I think something that's really important to note here is that you have to really pay attention each launch and keep track of things to know what's working and what's not. We know that using one-on-one coaching as kind of bait, I guess you could say that's a horrible word to say, but kind of a hook to get them to join. That was not something that motivated our audience to buy. They weren't motivated by one-on-one coaching. Our audience wants money off the bootcamp. And so that's what we give them because that's what motivates them. So paying attention to what motivates your audience and what's working round after round and make sure that you continue doing those things. And I would also say, don't change too many things at once.

Because when you change a bajillion things in one launch, then you really don't know what actually stuck and worked that time. And you want to make sure that actually stuck and worked that time. And you want to make sure that you're keeping track of that. So with the live launch, like we do, our course has a coaching call component to it. So that's why we do more of the live launch because then we go through six to eight weeks of live coaching. So that's why we have chosen to do it that way. I think it'll depend a lot on people's course ideas and what they want, whether an evergreen or live.

We would love to have an evergreen at some point. That's definitely on the list of things to do because I love how you're really passionate about building passive income. You shared that with us when we talked about wanting to build that passive income. with us when we talked about like wanting to build that passive income. So let, can you just kind of give a little bit of knowledge there with that, about why that's important and how that can work for you and your business by building that passive income? Yeah. So, I mean, basically it just gives you the freedom to do what you want when you want to do it, which is what I really wanted. I wanted to be able to hang out with my daughter. I didn't want to have to put

her in daycare if I didn't want to. If she was sick, I didn't want to have to get a sub and do sub plans and all of that. I wanted a way to not trade my time for money anymore. So that's why passive income was really important to me. And it wasn't at first, I didn't really understand passive income when I first started into the online course business. I actually did digital downloads first for teachers on a website called Teachers Pay Teachers. I started with that and then moved into online courses.

And I was kind of just doing all the things so that I didn't have to go back to work. But even though I was home with my daughter, I was hustling hard. Like I would put her down for a nap, work, work, work, work, work. She would get up. I would hang out with her. And then as soon as she went down for another nap work, after she went to bed work before she got up, I mean, I was just working all the time, like more than I was in the classroom. So that's why I was like, okay, this online course thing is awesome. And I love it, but there's gotta be a way that I can continue to offer value and help people and make money, but work less. So that's why I really moved into the evergreen model because I just wanted more freedom.

And like I said, you can still do live launches sporadically and still be on evergreen technically, but I just, yeah, I wanted more freedom. I think that's why a lot of people choose to go into blogging as well, because they want to build this business and they want to be able to get passive income once they qualify for ads. But I love the idea that once they've achieved that or while they're getting to that point, they could be thinking about creating a course and they could potentially even start creating a mini course or a mini offer just to test out their ideas right away because they're essentially testing their ideas with all of their blog posts anyway. So I think blogging could really

go hand in hand with course creation. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like a mini offer would be like perfect for a blogger. I mean, online courses too, but to start with that mini offer, because you're already really good at getting traffic to your website, you've already done half the work. That's what I teach my members is how to get people to your website, how to get that organic traffic before you start running ads. So if you're already really good at getting people to your website, then you could have a pop-up for your mini offer or inside your blog post, advertise your mini offer and start making income without really doing anything. And then you can still go on to make an online course.

So I feel like a lot of people have a misconception about passive income that you do this thing and then you don't have to do anything else and you're still making money forever. There's always work involved and passive income is really hard to set up and get right in the beginning. But once you get it set up correctly and you have systems in place and automations in place, then you have the flexibility to take a day off and you're not worried about a paycheck coming in or take a week off and you don't have all of those worries that you do with like a normal nine to five job. So yeah, it's not like you never work again and you're just sitting on a beach drinking cocktails, but you can hang out with your kid when they're sick, if you want to. Yes. I love that you said that because it's not,

I like set it and forget it. Right. Nothing is. Yeah. You do have to make sure that things are working properly. And if your course needs updating, you'll need to update it. I mean, we update every single round. We're adding things because we're constantly getting feedback from students like, you know, this would have helped more to add this. And so we add it, you know, and so, but the time involved overall has obviously been less since our initial launch, you know? Right. So I love that you said that. I think you've given so many great tips today. I hope that you've given people some courage to at least look into creating a course because I think it could be so beneficial for their business. And I know that they're going to ask, okay,

how can somebody teach me how to do this though? So Lindsay, would you tell them how you could potentially help them create their own online course? Sure. So I am currently working on my signature course where I'm going to help you basically from the very beginning, learn how to market research, create a mini offer, create a course, launch it and put it on evergreen. That will be ready in September. But I have lots of free resources on my website, meetthebowdens.com.

And then over on Instagram, I'm constantly giving out free advice and behind the scenes of how I'm actually making the course right now. So that's at meet.the.bowdens. Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us today. This has been just awesome. I think they're going to love it. So we appreciate your time. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. been just awesome. I think they're going to love it. So we appreciate your time. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at spark media concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the

link in the show notes for those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the ultimate blog bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.