How do you make money with a podcast? This is a question that people ask me all the time, and it's varied over the years on what my answer is right, because in the very beginning it was, oh, you can do affiliate marketing. And then it was you can offer services or you could sell a product or swag for your content. But really, when it comes down to it, one of the most lucrative things that I ever added to my content monetization strategy was a digital course, and I've talked about this before on here. But I wanted to go a little bit deeper into why digital courses matter, the success that I've had with mine personally, and how you can get started, if this is something that you also want to look into for your content, whether it's your podcast, your YouTube channel, even just social media content like what does that really look like? And I'm excited to dive into it today. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the Profit Podcast, where we teach you how to start, launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, crystal Prophet, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today, because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we? Okay, making money with your content. I want this to be something that, like, you receive that. You hear it, you receive it and you're like, yes, I'm ready to get started, and you don't have this weird aversion like, oh, but should I really be selling? Or people are going to get frustrated or mad at me if I ask them to buy something from me. Like, I actually have an upcoming interview that I did recently that's going to air in a few weeks, all about selling and the psychology behind it, the different patterns that we need to change as entrepreneurs, especially whenever we're just getting started and maybe you don't have that assertiveness when it comes to owning the fact that you absolutely can sell to your audience, especially if you are giving away tons of value in your free content, that next step should be that they become customers of yours. They purchase your digital products, they sign up for your programs and all the things. But today I wanted to speak specifically about digital courses and how it's had an impact on me personally, from a consumer standpoint and from a business owner standpoint, and I'm actually going to dive into four points that I want to make about why you should add a digital course to your content if you have not already. But first let's dive into my personal experience. So I have taken I mean, I should have added all these up right before I started this, so I've probably taken somewhere in let me see, since 2018, I've probably taken 10 or so digital courses that were not cheap let's just put it that way Like I mean, we're talking tens of thousands of dollars at this point. We're not talking about like, oh, I spent $1,000 and that was it. No, no, no, I've invested tens of thousands of dollars in digital courses and I will say that the return has come back five, 10x, like it's. They've absolutely come back in my favor. So when you think about, you know, is it worth it to invest in digital courses? Yes, I'm going to keep pushing that, and many of you are students of mine, so I appreciate, thank you so much that you've trusted me and invested with me in learning how to start your podcast, what the next step in podcasting is for you, or how to navigate some of those pieces that you just aren't sure. And that's what it's like to purchase a program, go through it and actually get results. And even here recently I started looking into sponsorships and we're actually going to have Justin Moore. He is the latest person that I have learned from. He has a brand called Brandill Wizard, or he's the creative wizard, but Brandill Wizard is his program. It's the name of his program and it is incredible, incredible. I'm going to like shout it from the rooftops and keep talking about it. I can't wait for you to hear our conversation, because so much has changed just since we had our initial chat and I've already made back all the money that I invested in his $1,500 program 2X. I've already 2X that and it hasn't even been. I think it's been like four weeks since I took his program. So I can't wait to share that testimonial. But I wanted to just say that I don't just tout oh, you should have a digital course, and I don't consider. I'm a consumer of digital courses and I have been since the very beginning of my journey. I actually took a program called Elite Blog Academy back in 2018. That was the very first digital course I ever invested in and that was kind of a fun journey. What happened is Ruth Succup, who is my very first mentor in the online space. I talk about how to blogging mentor who started a podcast. That was her, and when I look back on that journey, I was still working my corporate job and my sister in law actually gave me this book. It was called Living Well, spending Less, and it was endorsed by Dave Ramsey, and I was like, oh well, that's interesting. We had just taken financial piece university. This is back like circa 2014, 2015. So we're going way back for this and I read her book. It was fantastic. I started reading her blog. I started following her online, of course. I joined her email list and I was like, okay, I think that I'm ready for this next step. I had already been trying to blog. I didn't really know what I was doing and I bought her course and at the time, I think it was a $997 course and I remember thinking, oh my gosh, this is the biggest investment I've ever made in a program. Am I ever going to see this? You know, get this money back. And I absolutely did, because it helped me learn how to do basic things on a website. I was connected with people that I never would have ever gotten connected with, and I'm still friends with some of those people today that have gone on to do incredible things, incredible things. And so I met Laura Belgray at Amy Porterfield's event in 2019 and I remember saying like, oh you know, I thought Ruth was going to be here, so I thought I was going to be able to meet her in person, but it was just like so weird how all these different worlds collide. And I just think it's so fun that I can look back at that moment, back in 2014, 2015, when I first got her book handed to me when I was still this is before I actually quit my job and started staying at home and looking into blogging and journaling and all the things and I can think back to that Genesis moment of my sister-in-law handed me this book that she it was kind of like a throwaway item. We do that in our family. It wasn't a throwaway item, but we do that in our family where if my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, read a great book and they have the physical copy, they'll just hand it to me and say, hey, this is a great book, you should read it and check it out. So it was just such a Genesis moment of so much of my journey that I don't often talk about, but I thought I should actually bring that up today, because that led from reading her book starting to follow her and then I got her digital course and it was incredible. It was worth all the money that I invested in it. So I want you to reflect on your own digital course journey. Have you ever purchased a course and what did it look like? And the reason why is because when people come to me and they say marketing is so hard, I don't know how to do marketing, it's confusing for me. Or it's this and that and I say hang on, you know how to do this. Because if you take a step back, you have living examples in your own experiences. Cause, if you've ever bought a digital course, I want you to go back to that Genesis moment, to where, like, you're literally about to put your credit card information in there and you fill one of two things. One you are so excited. You're like I've been waiting for this moment. I cannot wait to buy this thing because I've been waiting for the cart to open, like, take my money, that's what I want to do. So the second thing is you are like that nervous, like scared, excited, like I think it's like called sided or scared sided, I don't know. Glennon Doyle has like a great. She's a great analogy for this. But when I think about that is so many of my programs that I have joined. That's how I was. I was like, ah, I hope I can do this. I really want to make this work. I think this is going to be something that's going to be really helpful for me. I'm investing in myself and even though I have this kind of trepidation behind it, I also know that this is me investing in my journey and taking myself seriously and making this happen. So that's my journey. So whenever I go to market my own programs or affiliate programs or anything that I'm selling, I put myself in my student shoes. I put myself in my customer shoes and say what is the thing that they're feeling right now and how can I make them feel better about this investment that they're making in themselves? Because, of course, yeah, if they're buying from me, they're investing in me. They're investing in like, hey, you know, crystal, you better deliver on this product. I'm giving you my cold, hard cash. You better do, you know, give me the results, give me the transformation. But at the same time, they are putting that in themselves. That confidence level rises just a little bit because they're like I can actually do this, otherwise they wouldn't have purchased it Otherwise. I hope that they don't purchase it. I don't ever want you to buy anything from me. If you're like questioning, is this the right move for me? Should I do this? I want you to feel so confident You're going to say I'm in good hands, I'm ready to do this, and that's how your students will feel too, when and if you decide that a digital course is right for monetizing your content. Okay, so there's a little bit about my personal backstory that I wanted to share, with being a consumer of courses and creating courses and marketing courses. We can absolutely talk about that too, but I want to dive into why I believe that digital courses are perfect for content creators specifically. Right, because I know a lot of people listen to this podcast and you have an existing business. Maybe it's outside of the digital space, maybe you have a brick and mortar business or you're doing something else that's not just solely online and you're already making money in another capacity. Well, I want to really stress to you today. I have four points on how adding a digital course can add more umph to your business or really just have that recurring revenue that you've been dreaming about. I actually I hired a coach recently and we were chatting and we were talking about, well, what does it mean really to have a digital course and what does that look like? And like, what did it look like for me? Right, but when I was making my very first course like why did I do that? And it was my, like, my honest answer, like I just kind of blurted it out I was like I want to make money in my sleep that's really what it was, as I don't want to be having to hustle and chase down customers all the time like I want to be able to log into my computer and see that I made sales while I was in bed, sleeping, or while I was watching my kids at their basketball game or reading a book on the beach or, you know, doing a million other things. That's really and truly what I wanted. And so at the core of all of this today that's really the thing that I hope that you can grasp is that it can unlock so much financial freedom for you, for your family and all the things that you want to do in your business and in your content. So let's dive into point number one, because the first thing that I want you to realize as a content creator is that you have so much knowledge and value to offer or your knowledge bombs galore, because I want you to picture this. So you're an expert in your fields and you have all of this wisdom stored in your brain. It's more than you would have in a library. And that's probably what you're creating your content for your podcast, for YouTube channel, your email newsletter. So what's the best way to share all of that in a way that helps you monetize what you're already creating? That's where digital courses come in, because you see, podcast are fantastic for delivering that valuable content, but sometimes you need to go beyond just audio and with digital courses you can create that structured, step by step All the lessons, the worksheets and even like quizzes or checkpoints or milestones. So it's like taking your listeners on an educational journey and they're actually ready for it. This is what people will tell me when they join my program. So I have a course. It's called profit podcasting. It's all about how to start launching, market a podcast, and when people tell me that, like, I'll ask like you know, why did you join my program? And they'll say well, I was listening to your podcast or I watched your YouTube videos, but I just wanted everything like step one through step twenty seven. I didn't want to go hunting and pecking all over your podcast or looking on everything on YouTube, because that feels overwhelming. And if you're currently doing that, like awesome, I love that. You're getting a ton of value from all the free content here on the podcast. But I can tell you there's over four hundred twenty three I mean, that's what this episode is, but with the bonus episodes and we have over four hundred episodes here on this podcast. I also have over five hundred and ten YouTube videos right now when I'm recording this. That is a lot of content to go through, especially if you're hunting and pecking. You're like wait, crystal said to do this, but should I do this next? Or what about this piece and what about that? Like you can absolutely piece together a podcast just using all of the free content that's online one hundred percent. But what happens is people will come to me and say that feels overwhelming. I just want you to tell me do this and then do that, then this is the next, and then this is the next thing, and then you need to make that happen. So Imagine teaching your audience how to ace a skill that they've been dying to learn, because that's what I'm able to do with my course, and you could do the same thing with your program. So you're not just dropping the nuggets of wisdom, you're handing them the whole treasure chest of everything that you know. And when your audience gets results because of your course, they'll sing your praises from the rooftops and that's some serious content creator street cred. And I can tell you that once you start getting testimonials about your program, several things happen. One the validation sets in for you, because you're like oh, I thought people could get results and then now they have, and that is an incredible feeling. When people actually get results, it's not just you. You're helping people really transform their lives, transform, you know their business. Whatever your specific, you know niche is, you're helping people change, and I know it's for the better and I know it's something that's a positive thing. So that's like one thing that testimonials does. But the next thing is it really does make a difference when you hear from other people how incredible someone else's program is, because this is how I've bought most of the courses that I like, even Justin. Let's go back to the example of Justin's program. It was so helpful because I heard him speak at Craft and Commerce. So this is convert kits Conference that I went to earlier this year. I heard him speak on stage. He gave a keynote and I was kind of sold at that moment. So I was like, dang, this guy knows what he's talking about me. Like, okay, like, I'll go see, I'll start following him on Instagram, see what he's up to. I got on his email list, watched a few of his YouTube videos and Literally was like take my money, because he was talking about things that I didn't even know existed. In the world of sponsorships, where I Basically knew nothing, I knew that people get paid to create content, you know, outside of just podcast ads. I wanted to know more about what. What do you do to pitch somebody for YouTube content and what does that look like? How do you negotiate contracts and what does it look like to follow up, and you know just the whole dance of sponsorships. I had no idea, but, learning a few of the things that he had to say, I was just like I am sold. Yes, yes, yes, I want to do this. So he was taking the knowledge that he had learned from working with hundreds, probably even thousands, of brands in Helping them with sponsorships, helping them monetize, and it was just worth all the investment. So again, I wanted to come at today's all of the examples with not only just oh, you know, this is profit podcasting and this is all things. I'm telling you my experience as a consumer and this isn't something that I did like. I invested a bunch of programs five years ago and I don't know, I just bought one Like earlier, you know, earlier this summer even it wasn't even like a long time ago as of me recording this so wanted to throw that out there, take advantage of those knowledge bombs that you have and Monetize it. So the second point, the second thing we need to talk about today is your Cash flow. So who doesn't love the sweet sound of cash flowing into their pockets? Because digital courses are A money-making machine. You put in that work up front, you create a course once and you can sell it again and again. It's like having a 24-7 cash register that never runs out of change and I said this earlier, I love that. I can log into kajabi and see, oh, I sold some of my $27 products. I sold another 37 dollar product. I was able to sell my digital course in my sleep. That is the thing that I am looking for, because you know we just talked about sponsorships. Sponsorships are one of those things that, yeah, you could get a $5,000 deal, a $10,000 deal, but until you build up like a steady flow, like a great funnel of those coming in every month, that's not really predictable. Same with coaching clients you can't really predict how many clients you're gonna get and then are they gonna move on? Do you have to constantly, you know, go out and find new clients? And it's like what I love about digital courses is you are able to put in the effort up front, create the thing and be able to sell it over and over and over again, which is really just passive income at its finest. And I imagine waking up to notifications of all of these sales whenever I'm asleep, so you can get notified. You know, get emails when people buy stuff, so when you're checking your email first thing in the morning, I want you to imagine this like Close your eyes for a second. If you're driving, of course, don't close your eyes, but I want you to imagine what would it look like if you woke up tomorrow and you checked your email and you saw new student purchased. New student purchased, new student purchased. And you actually had to scroll Because there were so many purchases in your email inbox. That happens whenever you have something that you can sell and it happens in an automatic, automatic standpoint where you can tell people about it. It's like I tell people about my course all the time. My course is on evergreen, so it's not something that I have to relaunch over and over and over again. It's not a live launch model, it's an evergreen model because people are always wanting to start a podcast. It didn't. It didn't make sense to me to say, oh, I'm only gonna open this once a year and that's the only time people can ever start a podcast. No, it makes sense because people are always asking me how do you start a podcast? Well, if you want to go start a podcast, go by my program profit podcasting. Here's the link. Go to crystalprofitcom Forward slash course. There you go. That's the sales page. Go check it out, see if it's right for you, and that's the magic of being able to have something there. Plus, you can also price things at different levels from something that's really budget friendly and affordable, like I have the low ticket offer that's 27 and $37 or something that's more premium, like profit podcasting. I raised the prices. It's not as cheap as it used to be. It's more premium because it has so much value in it and I want to be able to give a wide range of options for my audience. So it's like having, like, a menu. I'm imagining like you're at a steakhouse, you're at a fancy restaurant and your audience gets to say, okay, I want a little bit of this, a side of that, and, you know, a cherry on top. So that's really how I like to look at it. So it helps with your cash flow across your entire content business and it is something that can add a ton of value to what you're already doing. All right. Point number three we need to talk about your audience engagement, because who doesn't want an engaged audience? Right, whether you're just getting started or you've been doing this a while. Like, digital courses aren't just about delivering the content. They're about transforming people's lives, and digital courses are your secret weapon to making that happen. Now I can give you very specific examples. So I think about Carrie and Melissa. They were recently on the podcast. They talked about being each other's accountability partners and what that looked like for them. Both of them joined my program and they went through it. I can think of Kathy. She went through the program and she was able to get everything up and running. I'm thinking about Amanda and Hunter and all these incredible people that have taken my course and gone through the program and it transformed something for them. I think about Chelsea. So Chelsea is actually a friend that I've hired a few times to help me with Kajabi. She is shout out, chelsea. I know that you're off in Kajabi land doing incredible things because this is what she specializes in. She specializes in helping people get their digital courses up and running in Kajabi, and she was like Crystal, I just want to start my podcast. I've been thinking about it and it's time I need to just rip off the Band-Aid. She bought my program and in four days four days I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh my gosh, like that's unheard of, people usually are like at least a week, four days she started her podcast. She got it up out in the world. It was up and running, but it's because she needed just to get the information that she needed and she was ready to go. So there's all kinds of different options for everyone to have a place in this community, but I love that it brought everybody together. Now we have this common bond and we can all talk about our podcasting journeys. We can talk about what it looks like to have interviews with people, and I actually have coaching in the program where once a month, we get together for our group coaching calls and we're able to share different milestones, different pieces of our journey where you wouldn't otherwise have that type of engagement. You wouldn't have it. So you're not just entertaining people. Maybe you're doing that in your content, right. Maybe your podcast is about entertaining them or making a deeper connection. Maybe your YouTube channel is about getting information out there getting out there to an organic audience. But when you create a course now, you're transforming their lives and when you do that, they'll be your biggest fans and your brand ambassadors, because they're going to tell other people about it. I can't tell you how many times I get tagged in Facebook groups of my previous students when someone else asks about well, how do you start a podcast? They're immediately like you need to go talk to Crystal. I didn't ask them to do that. I don't pay them to do that. They may be an affiliate for my program maybe not, but I get this a lot and it's just because it's something that they know they got results from the program and they want to tell other people. And we talked about marketing earlier and this is the best form of marketing Like you can't pay Facebook or Instagram to give you that kind of street cred. Like that only comes from people actually getting results from what you're creating, so that audience engagement is on steroids whenever you have really incredible results of people going through your program and transforming something right. Something is being transformed in their lives and they want to tell other people about it. So it offers a deeper connection with your audience and they're investing in their own development and you're their guide on that journey. So that's what makes the connections and the engagement that much better. I want you to picture this so your course becomes their favorite TV show and you're the star. Now I know that sounds a little weird and you're like Crystal I don't want to be the star. I didn't sign up for this, I don't want to be on TV. So, okay, just bear with me for a second, because I actually just finished binge watching the show physical on Apple Plus. You have not seen it. Roseburn gives this incredible performance and it's so good. It was just three seasons. Okay, I'm not even going to tell you how fast I did it, because I'm a little ashamed of how quickly I binge watched this show, but it was so good and the reason why that I just like go through. I was just like I could not get enough. I could not get enough of this program. It was so incredible and I also get that way when I buy a new course. I finished Justin's program in a weekend, in a weekend. I think it's meant to be finished over four to six weeks. I finished it in a weekend because I was eerily awaiting, like, okay, what's the next step? Everything he was giving he was like, oh, that was fantastic. You know what's the next thing? What's the next assignment that I have? Like where can I engage with other people in this community? I want to ask questions Like I was in it. So it's like creating a fan club, but instead of all the posters on the wall, like you're really consuming the course materials and you're getting into it. Like there are acronyms that I'll hear Justin say, like on one of his YouTube channels or one of his YouTube videos or in his newsletter and I'm like, oh, I know what that is Like. It's kind of like I know the inside scoop because I've taken his program and I know it very intimately, so the audience engagement can just skyrocket. And it's funny because I've been talking a lot more recently about my PREPA method and everything and people in my course are like oh yeah, we already know the PREPA method, that's, you know, you talk about that in the program and so it's like this you know unwritten language that you have with your audience and it just gives you that extra special feeling of connection and community whenever you have that. And that's the third point is your audience engagement can just skyrocket when you have a digital program where they can learn from you on a much deeper level. All right, the fourth point about having a digital course for your content monetization strategy is being able to scale. So imagine having thousands of students without the need of a giant classroom, because with digital courses you can scale your impact with no more limitations of time or space. And let's be honest, scaling your impact is the dream right? You want to get your message out in front of as many people as possible. You could reach people on the other side of the world, across the globe, all while you're drinking your almond milk latte in your yoga pants and digital courses. Let you do that on a global scale and you're not limited by the number of hours in a day or the size of a zoom room. You can make it all happen. And I think about people that are in this audience. We have people listening from different time zones, different countries and even different continents, and that still blows my mind. And to know that someone in Australia has taken my digital course, know that someone in the UK is a student of mine, and just thinking about all the different areas that people listen to this podcast people have taken my course it just it still blows my mind. And when I think about having a digital course and people enrolling from you know, anywhere from Brazil to Bali, think about that. Think about that impact. What does that mean to you? Being able to scale, to kind of unburden yourself from thinking about limitations. How does that feel? Because it feels damn good to me. It really does. It feels incredible Like you're hosting a worldwide party where everyone's invited Everyone, not just the people in your little community of where you physically live Like. The best part about it is you can do it from the comfort of your own home, sipping your favorite beverage and wearing your coziest slippers. You don't need a passport to do any of this, because your digital course is your ticket to having this bigger impact on the world. So scaling is the other really important part of having a digital course and having a bigger impact in your business and in your content. Now that so, those are the four points I'm going to recap again real fast because I don't want you to forget this. The first one is you have the knowledge and the value in the content that you're already creating. Number two cash flow. You will have so much more cash flow on a consistent basis when you have a digital product that you can market throughout the year. The third point is audience engagement on steroids, because they're going to get so much of a transformation from your program. And then the fourth point is being able to scale, scale, scale. I love this about digital courses. It's just so fantastic. But I wanted to tell you because if you're listening to this in real time and you're thinking, well, this sounds incredible. I don't know how to get started. I don't know how to get started with digital courses. Well, you probably know you've heard us talk about it on the program, but Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy is where I learned how to do everything about creating a course. So, if you're listening to this in real time, the program is still open for enrollment until Thursday, september 28th 2023. So I'm going to have a link in the show notes, but you can go to crystalprofitcom forward slash dca23 dca23. And that's where you're going to learn all about my bonuses and everything that I have. But what's really fun this year is I feel like this is going to be one of my goals. Like when I do my year in review, I'm going to say, oh my gosh, I have my own webpage on amyporterfieldcom and that feels freaking unbelievable. So let me give you a little backstory. So I've been a student of Amy's since 2019 and her team reached out to me this year and they were like, why don't we have your DCA story on, like all of our testimonials? And I was like what you do somewhere? And then we started thinking about it and was like, no, I have a testimonial because, again, I've loved to buy courses. I bought systems at scale, or actually it came with another program of Amy's that I bought and I am one of the testimonials for there and they were like, oh no, you only did systems at scale. We want your digital course academy story. And I wasn't going to say no, I was like, absolutely. So I want you to go check it out. So if you're listening to this, it's going to be in the show notes. So go to crystalprofitcom and you're going to find everything for today and be able to where you're listening to this. You'll actually have the episode website. So I want you to go check it out. But I wanted to read a little bit of this story because I don't know that. You know all the things that I've been able to do with digital courses and I want to give you a few of the highlights. So I'm just going to read it verbatim and then you can go check out the rest. So it says right before I had my third baby, I became a stay at home mom, but just three years later I started my own podcast. This new career gave me the pride and passion I never had working for someone else and I wanted to create a digital course to share what I had learned. I had been a huge fan of Amy for a while. So I felt I knew the basics of course creation from listening to our podcast and thought, well, I can just do this on my own. So I'm going to pause right here and say, did we not just talk about this earlier? How people are going to say, oh, I can just peck around and listen to the podcast and watch videos. This is what I was trying to do. I didn't want to buy her program. I really didn't. I was like I don't have the money. This is not going to work for me. I'm just going to go listen to her podcast and find all the answers. Plot twist, that didn't work out. So I'm going to keep reading. But that idea gets a big nope because my course did not sell well at all, and it really didn't. I knew the next smartest step I could take would be to sign up for digital course academy. So I did, and it goes into a lot more of the results that I've had since I joined the program. So I really want you to go check it out and, like I said, I'll have it linked in If you go to crystal profit dot com forward slash DCA to three. I have my story linked right there on the page. So I want you to go check it out, because this is a program that is really. I mean, if we take a step back and say this was a $2000 program, I've made well over $50,000 a. You know, whenever I first joined, I think I made back my investment in the first Three months three to six months easily. So it's $2000 and only took me three to six months to figure out everything, launch my first webinar and make that money back. But since then I've made tens of thousands of dollars from all of my digital courses and this is the thing that I'm just going to keep telling you over and over and over again and that's tens of thousands of dollars. With my $197 program let me throw that out there. I don't have a program that's two or $3000. It was $197 and I was able to make that with a lower ticket program. I've since raised the price of profit podcasting, but this is absolutely achievable if you have a lower ticket program or you want to get started today with a premium product. You could absolutely do that and you could blow my results out of the water. So I want you to go to crystalprofitcom forward slash DCA 23 to check it out DCA 23 to learn all about my bonus package because, again, it expires on September 28th 2023 and you don't want to miss out, but that is all I have for you today. So remember that digital courses are the spicy thing that you can add to your content monetization strategy, and I want you to go out there. Then I want you to create your content with confidence and get those monetization dollars rolling in, and you can do that with a digital course, but that's all I have for you today. So make sure you are following or subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening and, as always, remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.