Common sentiment is that "audience-first" is the correct approach:
Create content, gain attention, build something for your new audience, sell it, and celebrate your new found success.
But if you're starting from scratch today, is that your only path? 🧵👇
Audience-first: Build an audience before building a product.
Product-first: Build a product before building an audience.
But there's another option that can give you even better results:
Build both at the same time.
Here's the playbook:
1. Plan your first product.
2. Announce that you're building that product.
3. Build an audience around the idea of your product.
4. Work with your audience to refine your product.
5. Launch your product to a much more targeted audience.
I'm not suggesting to build your product in a cave. That is the only wrong approach. Im suggesting that you can build a better audience with more intent if both you and your audience know where you're heading.
The difference is subtle.
There are 3 unique advantages to building at the same time that you don't get with a pure audience-first approach:
"I tweet about X" vs "I'm writing a book on X" establishes different levels of authority. Anyone can tweet about a topic, but fewer people create books or courses on it. Set yourself apart from the crowd.
🎯 Create focused content.
When you know where you're heading, you can create content with purpose from the start. Deciding what content to create simply becomes a matter of asking, "Will this appeal to the same person who will also want to buy my product later?" If not, pass.
🔥 Build a primed audience.
Anyone who subscribes or follows you now does so with the intent of learning more about your product. In the audience first product second approach, your audience might be larger, but it won't anywhere near as targeted.
Audience-first can work. Audience and product at the same time can also work. Product first is the only true wrong path.
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56 creators made over $1,000,000
823 creators made over $100,000
What do the top course creators have in common? 🧵👇
🗣 They share what they know for free.
They spend countless hours creating free content and demonstrating value to establish domain authority, credibility, and earn trust.
📚 They focus relentlessly on the student experience.
They create raving fans who won't shut up about their course. Satisfied students don't recommend courses, transformed ones do. Student referrals become one of their best marketing channels.
At @teachable, we help creators measure completion rates.
But completion rates are a proxy metric at best. Track them if you want, but don't let them trick you into thinking students are getting value 🧵👇
Hypothetical 1:
As a student, would you rather consume 100% of a course, or complete 30% of it but find an idea that helps you achieve your goal faster?
Hypothetical 2:
As a course creator, would you rather have 100% of your students complete your course, or have 100% of students actually apply the learnings they got from the course, regardless of their completion rate?
I'm confident you'd pick the latter in both cases.
If you’re building products for creators, you’ll eventually need to generate revenue. VC money or not.
Get familiar with the most common monetization models 🧵👇
🤝 Share of earnings
∙ Aligns incentives between creator & platform.
∙ Harder to monetize creators with low sales.
∙ Creates a graduation problem (successful creators are incentivized to leave).
∙ Platforms negotiate special contracts for top earners to solve this.
- "Running a live course is like organizing a music tour, but having to develop the music before every single new show."
- Curriculums aren't set in stone. The advantage of live classes is you can adjust the curriculum to cater to students needs.
- A day or two before every session, they typically spend between seven to nine hours preparing the next lecture.
- How? They have existing building blocks and assets, adjust based on where students are getting confused, and reassembling the blocks into the next lecture.
"I really want to start a side hustle / become a creator / earn income online... But first I need to learn more about [topic]... Then I need to research the best tools... And I'm really busy right now, so I'll start later when things calm down."
Sound familiar? 🧵👇
There's a good chance this is you. And if so, you've probably been telling yourself this same story on repeat for years.
The only thing you're creating is excuses.
But don't worry, you're not actually that far from your dream. You already have the skills, knowledge, and tools you need to make your first dollar online. You just need to take action.
So if you want to stop dreaming, follow this plan:
With a good pre-sale you can validate audience/idea fit with real money in the bank... Before you even create the product.
The secret to a good pre-sale? Treat it like a Kickstarter.
4 examples in the thread 🧵👇
🎯 Set a goal
How many customers / much revenue will you need to continue working on your product? How long will you give it to hit that target? 1-2 weeks at most. Don’t drag it out.
📄 Create a lean sales page
Don't focus on the design or layout too much. Messaging is what's important. Include:
∙ What the pain point is
∙ Why your product is the solution
∙ What's included. Be specific, e.g. chapter outlines.