150: Mini Series: Teach What You Know Part 4 - How to Create Revenue Streams

Hello, how are you? Welcome to another episode of the Professional Creative. Thanks for being here. It means so much to me that you tune in and that we get to spend time together with whatever it is that you're doing. I'm honored to be in your ear. We have another episode today that is a part of our teach what you know series. So I've been talking a lot recently about teaching what you know, how important it is I think that we give back. We're going to link all of the Teach what you know series over on the show notes of today's episode so you can find those@PropriationalCreative.com today I'm sharing with you 10 different ways that you can monetize your expertise, literally turning what you know into income.

I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative podcast.

As a professional creative, I think that adding a educational component to your business, such a beautiful thing. I think that we're called to teach others. I think that it is one of the most impactful ways that we can really change the world, change our community, change the people that are coming up, the next generation behind us, and change our industry. I think it's our, I think it's our duty to teach what we know. And one of the great things about it as well is that you can monetize it, meaning you can add it into your business as a revenue stream in a bunch of different types of ways. So that's what we're going to cover today. 10 different ways to monetize what you know. And I have personally done at least seven of them. So I will be sharing with you my own experience with these different models, if you will. And then we'll cover some that I have on my radar as well. But before we get there, let's Just talk about the knowledge industry. We really cannot deny what time we're living in. It's really incredible. Online learning is the fastest growing market in the education industry. It's grown 900% since its creation. That's just. That's amazing. But the number of online learners is expected to reach 1 billion by 2029. Now, to put that into perspective, in 2022, there were 220 million people subscribing to at least one kind of online course. So that's going from 220 million to 1 billion by 2029. This is one of just the most incredible times to live. I think. I truly believe that knowledge is power. And making knowledge accessible to people, the world for the first time in history, really, if you think about long term, right. Is just incredible. It levels the playing field, it makes things accessible to people who may not have ever had the opportunity to learn before. So it's a beautiful industry to be a part of. I think we're called to be a part of it. And we're also going to talk about how it can benefit you today as well. So let's just dive in to the first one. The first one is probably the one that comes to mind right off the bat and it's through an online course. So I know, I'm so grateful for the online courses that I have been able to take from other people who've been willing to share what they know. And teaching an online course is also one of the most beautiful things I've been able to do in my business as well. Lots and lots of different ways that you can do this. You can teach it through someone else's platform like Teachable or skillshare. You can also do it on your own website. And I've done a big mixture of all of them. But currently I'm only teaching through my own website, though I got my teaching start really teaching for other people on other platforms, which was also a great way to get started. So when you think about an online course, you want to make sure that you've nailed your topic. And you've also also coming. You're also coming to teach something that you have some expertise around. You do something in a different way. You've had great success with something. And I would say the biggest focus that you want to have is on your curriculum, making it really just a solid learning experience for someone and then also quality. So you want to make sure that your video, your audio is quality and that the whole experience just feels really good for someone to move through. So I Like to think about online courses and online classes. Online classes can be shorter, maybe shorter on topic. And then an online course can be something that's really, really in depth and multiple months long as well. An online course, I think is one of the most beautiful ways to learn and to teach. Now, the second one is through live workshops. Now this could be in person or online, but a live workshop is more like an hour, let's say like an hour to a couple of hours online. Sometimes they're called webinars as well. Oftentimes they're free, and then sometimes they're paid as well. And then sometimes you can also do what's called like an upsell. So maybe here's an example. I did a five day challenge recently. Well, it's been, I don't know, about six months ago. And it was free. And I would call that sort of like a live workshop. It was over the course of five days and it was free, 100% free. But if you wanted to stay kind of after hours with me and do a live Q and A, we sold a VIP live session on the back end for I think $24. And so there's a way to monetize it like that. Or you can also just charge for the workshop itself. So if you think about hosting a live session like this, you could use a platform like Zoom, that's probably everyone's favorite for teaching a workshop, something like this. Now the next one would be a membership site or a subscription. And I have had a membership for many, many years. I've had one since 2012. And I love a membership for its ongoing access to high quality content. It's really a membership is just such a beautiful way to have ongoing support and ongoing community, ongoing kind of learning. And so I'm a huge fan of a membership site, not only for the student perspective and the interaction, but also for what it does for your business. It builds in kind of this recurring predictable revenue, which is such a gift for creating. Now you could also think about subscriptions. Subscriptions, when I think about that, is more like maybe a box, a physical mailing, like a subscription box or something like a recurring subscription for a platform, like a tech or tool or something. So I'm not sure if a subscription will fit your business, but membership sites and subscriptions are a beautiful way to monetize your knowledge as well. The next one, number four, is coaching and consulting. So I've done a bit of both of these. These options provide that really personalized guidance and services that really allow people to tap into your knowledge. It is so much fun. Now let me take you back to the first time that I did what I would consider maybe consulting. This was in I think around 2017. And the backend story of this is that we needed like a cash injection in the business. We were starting to rely on my income more and more and I was just in this kind of dead quarter. Like I just didn't have any revenue generating happening until later in the year and we had bills to pay. And so I came up with an idea to coach or consult people who are looking to advance in their career in surface design. And I made this big announcement and I booked all of my spots. I think I opened up 15 spots for maybe, oh goodness, like $150 or $200. I booked them all up and enjoyed this so much. So basically what I did was I had people fill out a little survey that told me what they were looking to get, what they needed help with. And then we met for like 15 minutes on a Zoom call to flesh it out and talk more. And then I went away and wrote up a plan for them. I did it just in a Google Doc, but it was a multi page plan. And what I didn't realize was that this exercise taught me more about how to kind of build information in a way that was helpful and built on itself so much. I was able to use what I did for these 15 clients like to develop my curriculum after that. So, so much. And now today I have moved into the kind of coaching atmosphere. So today I have the professional creative coaching business coaching program. And it's a one to many model. So instead of one to one, it's one to many. But it's weekly coaching. And so that has also been really incredible. It's for creative entrepreneurs, not specific to surface design. And if you ever want to know more about that, you can go to bonniecristine.com coach.

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Okay. Number five is through ebooks and guides or physical books, either one. Goodness, I love ebooks and guides. They're such a beautiful way to get information into the hands of someone in a different kind of format. I think that we all kind of expect videos and YouTube and, I don't know, even podcasts at some level, but it's like the further away we get from having something that we can read, the more valuable it feels. And so with the ebooks and guides that we offer, I oftentimes love to give, if I can give people the option of also purchasing a hard copy of it. So if you want to curl up on the couch and hold it in your hands, you can. So I've done a mixture of all sorts of things. I, way back in the day, used to sell little ebooks for five bucks on how to grow your blog, how to do SEO, how to be successful on Etsy. I think this is like maybe 15 years ago. Today we have a number of ebooks and guides that are available as well. You can go check those out over@bonniecristine.com but they are either paid or free. So we have a guide that is free. It's like 42 pages about surface design. And then we have an ebook that is coming soon that I'm really, really excited about on licensing. So those two are where we're at with ebooks and guides. And I think if any of these other kind of things you might find intimidating right now, like you're not ready to do a membership or coaching or a course, you can Absolutely. Kind of put your knowledge into writing and start there. Number six is through speaking engagements. And this is when you really monetize your expertise by offering to speak at conferences or seminars or panel discussions. This is one that I never saw coming, but it does really make up some of our income now and quite a lot of my time during the year. So for instance, I'm gearing up to speak at Craft and Commerce in the next couple of weeks I host my own conference called Immersion Live. And so it just kind of happens that speaking and speaking opportunities is such a great way to formulate what you teach in a concise way. So if you think about taking something like a large subject and building it into a keynote presentation or a workshop style presentation, it really helps you think about your work differently, it helps you clarify your work differently and really get to the bones of what it is that you teach and transform people's lives in. So I love this one as well. And as a host of a conference, I also love when people have speaking as a part of their business because I can pull them in to teach at mine. Number seven is something you might not think about, but it's affiliate marketing or partnering with other courses that have been impactful for you. So I'm putting it here. It is definitely under monetizing your knowledge, but it is a little bit of a different way. Right. But for the courses and classes that I've taken that have truly transformed my life, I'm such an advocate of telling you all about them. And so that is when it's like complimentary like that it is the perfect scenario for you to become an affiliate. Now I'm really passionate about only affiliating for things that I truly stand behind. Meaning I would, I would suggest that you take, take them whether or not I was an affiliate, meaning I'm already talking about how amazing they are. And so if you find yourself ever doing that, talking about how amazing a product is or a class or a course or something like that, see if they have an affiliate program because you might as well get paid and earn a little bit of income for your recommendation. Now, number 8 is something that we haven't cracked the code on yet, but that is a YouTube channel. It's on our radar, we're playing with it, but we haven't cracked the code on it by any means yet. We haven't even really tried to crack the code on it. But I know so many people who successfully share their knowledge through videos and then they monetize their YouTube channel by ads. Sponsored content and sometimes like viewer donations. And so in order to really do this and do this well, you have to consistently produce high quality videos that engage the people who are watching them and then use the YouTube SEO tactics to increase your visibility. So it is a really amazing opportunity to get rewarded for your content. It's not something that I can advise heavily on since we, we're not really doing it, but I do want to put it here because I know many people who have been able to monetize their YouTube channel successfully. Number 9 and 10 are also things that we haven't personally done yet, but they definitely earn a spot here. Number nine is corporate training programs. And so I am familiar with several entrepreneurs who have been able to take what they teach, what they know, and develop training programs that are not being delivered in an online course, let's say to the public, but rather being offered to corporations for their employees to take the training program. And oftentimes these have a much higher price tag because businesses typically have a bigger budget for things like this and they want the development of their employees. And so this is a really incredible opportunity if you know something that a business like that could use for you to offer your services, to come in and train the employees. And it can be a really nice revenue stream for you as well. Finally, number 10 is licensing your content. You know, one way to think about this is if you feel like people are teaching what they learned from you, you might as well offer to let them do so, but you earn for it. So let them do so by licensing the ability to teach your content for a fee. Licensing your content basically just means that you're giving someone else permission to teach your content, but they have to license it from. And so again, this is not something that we've personally dove into yet, but it's on our radar. And I know a couple of other people who've wildly, successfully licensed or created licensing programs for their content so that their frameworks and their teachings and all of their content can be taught by other people and other programs. But of course it is. It comes back to the licensing fee to them. So, my friends, that's 10 ways to monetize your knowledge. I'd love to know, if you were to start with one, what would it be? So many of you have different areas of expertise and I think it's really fun to think about one way to get started or one topic that you would teach. What would it be? So come tell me, come find me over on Instagram. I'm just Bonnie, Christine and I would love to know what it is that you would teach and which of these different models would you use to get started with. Most of all, create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world and remember, there's room for you.