OCTOBER 11, 2022

Welcome to The Tilt, a twice-weekly newsletter for content entrepreneurs.

In This Issue: Take this step before launching a full-length online course. Discover how a YouTube creator’s success led to a bigger business. Plus, grants from and for creators are ready for applicants.

full tilt

Do Webinars Before Launching Online Courses

Too many creators want to launch their online course revenue stream with the ultimate course – an enormous collection of videos covering everything their students could need.

This is the wrong strategy. It requires too many decisions, too many assumptions about your audience, and too much time.

So let’s work on a better strategy where you can minimize the probability and the cost of failure – start with a short webinar.

A short webinar is the leanest way to create and sell a course. It’s a live lesson – with time for questions – that runs 60 minutes or less.

You can shrink the webinar’s risk by stealing a tactic from smart content entrepreneurs like Jeff Walker, who created a product launch formula: Sell the webinar before creating it.

It works this way:

Set an early bird price.
Write a landing page to promote the webinar and early bird pricing.
Send a promotional email with your landing page link to your email list (or at least part of it to test the idea).
If not enough people buy to merit the webinar’s creation, refund those who paid and cancel the webinar.
If enough people buy, go on with the webinar.

A webinar prevents perfection: When you record a course, you can take all the time you want to polish every single word, every single scene. In a live webinar, you prepare the slides and the outline, but you shouldn’t read a script. Thus, you won’t be able to perfect every single word.

Warm up your audience with a lower price: Many audiences need to take small steps to build their trust before they pay for higher ticket products. A low-priced webinar can make the first conversion easier. Think about charging $50 or less per person.

Make it live to increase conversions: Scarcity is probably the most powerful conversion lever. If people want to interact during the webinar, they must be there at the right date and time. A live webinar could increase conversions because it embeds scarcity.

You can mitigate this problem by doing the live webinar several times to accommodate people who can’t attend the first date.

I hope this webinar-first strategy will help you build your first course more quickly and effectively. It will teach you a lot. And maybe provide some cash to fund the next product.

– Alberto Cabas Vidani

To learn more about this webinar-first strategy, read the full article.

And for even more hands-on learning about audience and revenue building with online courses, join us for Creator Economy Expo in May 2023. Best prices available now.

we stan Kurtis Conner

Entrepreneur: Kurtis Conner

Tilt: Satirical takes on current events and trending topics

Scene: YouTube (4.15M), Very Really Good podcast, Patreon, Instagram (1.3M), Twitter (988.8K), Twitch (301K)

Snack Bites:

Kurtis Conner started on Vine before moving exclusively to YouTube in his early business days.
When an in-the-moment comedic take included an ableist TikTok clip, he apologized to his audience to recognize his mistake.
Once Kurtis grew an audience in the millions, he expanded to other products, including a podcast, merch, and a live tour.

Why We Stan: Kurtis is a great example of how “overnight” audience success doesn’t mean “overnight” business success. He’s worked hard for many years to build and grow an audience that supports his content creations. We also like how he attracts an audience through his free podcasts, but encourages them to subscribe for bonus content on his Patreon account.

– Shameyka McCalman

To learn more about, check out the longer story.

Know a content creator who’s going full tilt? DM us. Or email [email protected].

things to know

Money

Small grants: Vlogbrothers use a slice of their ad revenue to give grants to less established creators in the education and information space. They’re accepting applications. (Hank Green; h/t Publish Press)
Tilt Take: Cool to see successful content entrepreneurs give back to spur growth of other content businesses.
Snap it: Snap’s 523 accelerator program is accepting applications from content businesses owned, operated, and controlled by individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. (tubefilter)
Tilt Take: Sure, the $10K monthly grants are great, but the creators’ content also lands on its discover platform, a move that’s perhaps more instrumental to long-term audience growth.

Audiences

Z’s subs: Gen Z replaces interest in pop culture with passion for subcultures and niche communities, according to new research. Among the emerging subcultures: Streetwear X Gamers, Gamer Girls, Adult-ing Hackers, Scientific Edutainers, Horror Healers, and Poetic Connectors. (Horizon Media)
Tilt Take: If your target audience includes Gen Z, use this data to update your audience profiles.
Facebook choice: Meta will soon let Facebook users opt to see fewer or more posts from friends, groups, and pages. It will change your feed and teach Facebook’s AI system for feed rankings. (Engadget)
Tilt Take: If your audience is on Facebook, think about proactively asking them to click on the three dots and requesting to see more posts from you.

Tech and Tools

Stay still: TikTok’s straying from its video format. It released a photo mode with a carousel format. (PetaPixel)
Tilt Take: It’s getting hard to differentiate among all these image-focused platforms.
Easier data read: Twitter updated its professional home display to give a brief overview of key performance stats, including total impressions, engagement rates, profile visits, and link clicks. (Social Media Today)
Tilt Take: Analytics matter. If you’re posting, you’d better be looking at what resonates and what doesn’t.

And Finally

Try bye: The Try Guys felt the pressure of their community to go public with their decision to remove one of the Try Guys (Ned Fulmer) for his affair with a staff member. They published a statement and then made a video to explain the issue. (Insider)
Tilt Take: Don’t wait for your community to notice your crisis before you explain what’s up. Transparency is essential for building and retaining trust.
Who wins?: Andrew Hutchinson writes: “The concept of the Creator Economy being a pathway to monetary success is simply not realistic for the vast majority of people.” (Social Media Today)
Tilt Take: We’re not a fan of his premise because it hinges on social media platforms, which require people to create entertaining content, churn it out every day, and still face a slim chance of being more than a one-hit wonder. Content entrepreneurship is a hard game, but by building and owning your audience, you’re not reliant on feeding the social media beast.

the business of content

Publishing Your Next Book? Here Are 3 Tips to Get Started (Content Inc. podcast)
The Musky Scent of Twitter (This Old Marketing podcast)
5 Tips I Wish I Knew Before Starting My Business (Entrepreneur)
Why I Don’t Like Networking and What I Did To Fix It (Almost Timely News)
Sometimes VCs Do Give Good Advice (Sifted)

the tilt team

Your team for this issue: Joe Pulizzi, Pam Pulizzi, Ann Gynn, Laura Kozak, Marc Maxhimer, and Dave Anthony, with an assist from Alberto Cabas Vidani and Shameyka McCalman.

Secret to Course Success – October 11, 2022