Niall Doherty's Blog, page 179
May 8, 2020
eBiz Weekly #70
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May 1, 2020
eBiz Weekly #69
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 4,654 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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April 24, 2020
eBiz Weekly #68
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 4,612 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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April 17, 2020
eBiz Weekly #67
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 4,559 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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April 13, 2020
Udemy Coupon Hacks
Legit Udemy coupon codes are rare.
Udemy instructors can create coupon codes for their own courses, but those codes only work for a maximum of 31 days.
Udemy itself occasionally publishes a sitewide coupon code, but those also expire within a few days/weeks.
Latest Udemy Coupon Codes
These are the most recent sitewide coupon codes (aka promo codes) released by Udemy:
UDEAFFBFS19 – expired Nov 29, 2019UDEAFF24S1119 – expired Nov 19, 2019UDEAFFBCS1119 – expired Nov 15, 2019
Note: you’ll find many “Udemy coupon code” sites online, but almost none of them actually provide valid coupons. Instead, they show you a list of Udemy courses that are free for everyone.
Click here to see our ultimate list of free Udemy courses (updated daily)
Udemy Review 2020
588 Best Udemy Courses
130 Free Udemy Courses
Udemy Coupon Hacks
April 10, 2020
eBiz Weekly #66
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 4,529 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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April 9, 2020
On teaching piano online, working 4 hours a week, and earning $40k/month
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Jacques HopkinsFrom Louisiana, USACreator of Piano In 21 Days
Business Model: Authority$40,000monthly revenue$20,000monthly profitAll info self-reported by intervieweePublished April 9, 2020Reviewed and edited by Rita Epps
Who are you and how do you make money online?
I’m Jacques, Louisiana native and founder of Piano In 21 Days.
I used to work as an electrical engineer, but I was always fascinated with the idea of starting my own business. It took some trial, error, and hard work but I now fully support my family by selling my Piano In 21 Days course online.
Since I spent 12 years of drudgery taking piano lessons as a kid, I always knew my lessons had to be different!
There’s no sheet music, repetitive drills, or Mary Had a Little Lamb in sight. Instead, I teach a chord-based approach that is simpler, faster, and a lot more fun.
My students love that they can play songs they hear on the radio rather than spending endless hours trying to master Moonlight Sonata.
On average, revenue is around $40,000 per month with profit being around $20,000 per month.
What does a typical workday look like for you?
My workdays are very flexible, which is a big deal after 8 years of working the typical 9-to-5!
At this point, most of the “behind-the-scenes” tasks for Piano In 21 Days are outsourced or automated.
I sit down with an iced coffee and review a daily report that my assistant updates for me each morning – just to check KPI’s and make sure the train is still on the tracks.
I have a small but solid team that stays on top of the minutiae so I don’t have to.
I still make sure that I am in tune with what’s happening, and I’m as interactive as I can be with my students to make sure they’re having a great experience with my course.
Every so often I have course updates to make, new videos to film, and changes to make on my website.
But at this point, my schedule is pretty close to the famous ‘4-hour workweek’ ideal.
So after my course became sustainable and successful, I got to ask myself a fun question: “What do I want to do with most of my time now?”
I had become really passionate about helping other course creators grow, so I started a podcast. This is where I can share my early struggles with starting an online business, what’s worked for me, and more.
The Online Course Show allows me to interview other successful course creators and hopefully inspire new ones! Helping those new and aspiring course creators is now where I spend a lot of my time.
What’s your backstory and how did you come up with the idea for your business?
Engineering seemed like a natural career path for me when I was young, but after I entered the workforce I started to realize that I also wanted a business of my own.
I’d read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and it opened my eyes to the potential of having an online business.
I wasn’t sure where to start – I worked on a few apps, tried designing a physical product, tried blogging… nothing clicked.
At a certain point, I realized that my number one outlet after stressful and busy days was playing the piano. Not only that, but when I was supposed to be working on my new side hustles, I would procrastinate by playing piano instead.
Bingo! Turning my hobby into a business was the game-changing idea I needed.
Soon after that realization, Pat Flynn posted a podcast episode that just so happened to feature a successful online piano course creator, Steve Nixon. Hearing his story helped me validate my idea for my own course.
While I wasn’t a career piano teacher or a world-renowned virtuoso, I knew that I could teach a simpler way for everyday people just like me:
How did you prepare to launch the business?
Launching my business was slow going at first.
I started a YouTube channel and I created a free workbook as a lead magnet to build my email list. I knew these were important steps, but the pressures of working full-time made it a long process.
It took about eight months to put together my full course.
This involved writing out my lessons and getting them into workbook form, creating and editing numerous videos for each, and building my members’-only website.
There wasn’t a lot of information at the time about even simple things like how to rig an overhead camera to video my keyboard!
There was a lot of trial and error.
I officially launched Piano In 21 Days in 2013. But I didn’t have any background in marketing and I didn’t know how to tell my story in a compelling way. I sold one copy of my course during that first launch.
It took time to build marketing skills, but that is how I was eventually able to increase my sales to a sustainable level.
How much money did you have to spend to get started?
I spent about $10 to buy my domain, and bootstrapped most of my course creation process. I kept my software budget very low at first, and I didn’t start outsourcing until things were up and running.
My wife and I had set aside some savings and that allowed me to quit my job and spend up to one year to make my piano course financially sustainable.
Looking back, I think I could have succeeded faster if I had spent a bit more money learning the ropes from a coach or outsourcing more of the work sooner.
It’s great to be frugal, but in retrospect, I believe having some help would have accelerated my business growth earlier on.
Talk us through your first few months (or first year) in business.
I had heard so many success stories, people being interviewed on podcasts talking about selling 100+ copies of their course during their first launch.
But that wasn’t my experience at the time.
I had a lot of doubts about whether this online course business could actually work.
As I did start to make a few more sales, it really encouraged me to hear that my students were getting good results. They were enjoying their experience with my course, and I knew if I could just get it into more people’s hands that they’d feel the same way too.
That’s what motivated me to keep going and not quit.
My wife was very supportive of my efforts, but I didn’t really feel comfortable talking about Piano In 21 Days to co-workers early on. I was struggling to fit working on my course into my schedule while employed full-time, but I couldn’t say that to the same people whose company I planned to eventually quit.
Like I mentioned earlier, marketing was not something I knew how to do.
So writing effective sales copy, getting comfortable with pitching my course, and everything associated with that was a big challenge for me at first.
A few things really helped move the dial for me with my business.
Setting up an evergreen funnel, giving away a free 5-day workbook that was filled with valuable information, making some YouTube videos that still provide a big percentage of my web traffic even today… it all added up.
Outsourcing certain aspects of my workload also made a huge difference.
I eventually connected with a good video editor, I hired a virtual assistant, and now I also have a podcast editor. The help they provide with customer support, content creation, and administrative tasks enables everything to run more smoothly.
How did you make your first $100 online?
My one and only course package available during my initial launch was priced at $97, so my first sale was basically my first $100.
Most of my traffic came from YouTube early on, and it still does.
Late 2016 was when I really started to see more traffic and more sales, meaning it took about three years from initial launch to replacing my previous income from my old job.
How does the business make money today?
My top three traffic sources are YouTube, Google search, and Google Ads.
I’m always finetuning my evergreen funnel, working on new content for YouTube, and asking past students for testimonials in order to boost social proof.
I have a lot of calls to action and I offer a lot of free value to prospective students.
This makes a big impact on both traffic and sales.
Once people enroll, I try to maintain connections and encourage them to keep learning. But since I sell one main product I don’t have to worry about marketing to them after their enrollment.
I try to be very proactive with SEO – if you Google some of the biggest piano search terms my website usually shows up near the top.
I tailor my YouTube content to what will bolster search results, which has been helpful.
Other things like Facebook ads have not worked out so well for me.
It seems like a lot of people focus on creating courses before they have an audience, but I think it’s important to build your audience first.
Even though I didn’t make a lot of sales at first, building an audience and offering real value gave me credibility before my course even launched.
I recommend looking at your course like an entire business, not “just” a course.
What are some of the challenges particular to this kind of online business?
I don’t have a lot of complaints about where my business is at today.
It was relatively easy to scale, it is profitable, and at this point, I don’t have to spend a huge amount of time keeping things on track.
But due to being online, it is more common to see hateful comments and hear from people who don’t like what I do. Some piano teachers don’t like that I’m offering an alternative to their traditional lessons!
And sometimes people are just rude or hurtful.
If you’re starting an online business, you have to learn to brush off the trolls and the haters.
There’s always going to be some negativity no matter how great your product is – it’s usually not about you at all. That’s just the nature of the internet.
Jacques accepting an award for earning over $1,000,000 through ClickFunnels.If you were starting the same business today, from scratch, how would you do it?
If I had to start over, I absolutely would!
The very first thing I’d do would be to create a YouTube channel.
I’d focus on providing as much free and authentic content as possible, and start building an audience there.
I’d also set up a website with a free opt-in and a strong call-to-action in order to collect email addresses. My YouTube channel could then direct traffic to my website.
I’d work to build rapport with my audience, listening to their struggles and needs in my niche. That would give me a framework to build on for future course content, and a built-in set of customers because my solutions would be tailored to their problems.
What books, podcasts, courses or other resources would you recommend to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?
My top book recommendations for online course creators are:
Expert Secrets by Russell BrunsonLaunch by Jeff WalkerStoryBrand by Donald Miller
I always recommend that course creators listen to the stories and tips that successful online entrepreneurs have to share.
I interview a lot of big course creators regularly on my Online Course Show podcast, so definitely check that out – there’s a lot of great advice that can benefit new and existing course creators alike.
April 3, 2020
eBiz Weekly #65
eBiz Weekly is a free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business. We send it out every Friday to 4,464 legendary subscribers. We also post the content of each email here on the website.
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April 2, 2020
Six Figure Mentors Review 2020
Welcome to my Six Figure Mentors review for 2020.
I recently spent 7+ hours researching this affiliate marketing course so you don’t have to.
If you want to know:
What Six Figure Mentors is all aboutIf it’s legit or a scamCommon complaints about the programWhy some people call it a pyramid schemeIf students are actually getting results
Then you’ve come to the right place.
Let’s get started.
Six Figure Mentors – Key Points
About
An affiliate marketing course for fans of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM).
March 31, 2020
How I built a $25k/month SEO agency that I can run from anywhere
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Leslie GilmourFrom Dublin, IrelandManaging Director at Cube Digital
Business Model: Agency$25,000monthly revenue$10,000monthly profitAll info self-reported by intervieweePublished March 31, 2020Reviewed and edited by Rita Epps
Who are you and how do you make money online?
Like many who have worked in the online marketing industry for as long as me, this was an accidental career.
While at university I built a website about Camino hiking routes back in 2006. It got no traffic and that just annoyed me. So, I started learning how to get traffic from Google.
I was studying English Literature and Philosophy and had no real idea of what I would do when I was finished. Learning SEO solved that problem as I was obsessed with and loved SEO from day one.
Within a year of leaving Uni, I was working as an SEO consultant for a web design company. Less than 18 months later I started my own consulting business.
Cube Digital runs SEO campaigns for small businesses in the UK, the US, and Ireland.
We look after all onsite optimization and content writing, but our main focus is link building. Building links has become our main focus as we now provide this service to other agencies.
The profit of the company is around 40% of the total turnover of $25,000.
However, a few months ago I decided to invest all profits back into building affiliate websites. I had already been running one reasonable affiliate site and understand the potential.
Related: 20+ Affiliate Marketing Website Examples
What does a typical workday look like for you?
I am awake around 6am, easily, given that I have a five-year-old who is up at that time.
I walk to my office which takes around 50 minutes and aim to arrive around 8am.
Between 8am and noon is the time I use for focused work.
However, this usually only works well on Tue, Wed, and Thur, as Monday morning I check with everyone that they are clear on the work for the week, and Friday morning I do accounts and payments.
Working online is great.
I currently live in Prague and we plan to move in the near future as I can work online from anywhere (assuming the time zones are not an issue).
I do work fairly traditional hours due to having a family.
There are problems that need to be addressed when you run a business that needs you to be online. My focus and concentration have been eroded over the years and now I am working to cut distractions as much as possible.
I highly recommend the book Deep Work by Cal Newport and his blog.
It is easy for me to take time off during the day.
I do not think that I work a lot of hours – perhaps around 40 per week right now.
I notice that on many days I could leave at 3pm as after lunch my productivity on real work is very low.
Afternoons are a good time for emails. (I have come to hate email, which is really funny because as a company we send out 10,000+ emails a month…).
On a morning walk to the office.What’s your backstory and how did you come up with the idea for your business?
As I already mentioned, I started this online gig a long time ago.
When I first discovered that I could write and publish blog posts and make money via ads or affiliate, I thought I had discovered the exact use for an English Literature degree.
It has always been delightful to have money just drop into my account every month without me having to go to work somewhere.
However, I needed to make more money than I was earning from my websites.
I built an ugly looking website (not on purpose, I just wasn’t very good at building websites), and I started offering my services.
My first “client” was a web design company and I worked for them as a contractor for a year or so while building up my own base of clients.
The biggest problem in 2008/2009 was that small businesses lacked understanding and knowledge of SEO, and so much of my work was educational.
In 2010 I was offered a contractor role by a sportsbook and I became their in-house SEO for the next 5 years. It was great having bigger budgets to work with and a roller coaster going through the many Google updates especially Panda and Penguin.
In 2015 the company lost its ability to bring on new players and shut down all marketing. After that experience, I decided to set up my own agency.
How did you prepare to launch the business?
I was already fairly good at on-site SEO and had good link building skills, so building my own agency was a natural progression.
Also, I wanted to build a business that wasn’t completely dependant on one client and could earn profit without me being there all the time – the last part is still a work in progress.
I learned SEO first by building my own websites, then working on some client sites and then having a large site to optimize.
I knew I needed some visibility and clients quickly. I built a better-looking website this time and ranked it for vanity keywords: SEO agency. But, most of the work came from me reaching out to past clients and other people in the industry.
How much money did you have to spend to get started?
One of the biggest problems in many service industries and for SEO is that the cost of entry is just a website. That’s it.
I believe this is why referrals and client testimonials are so important. Anyone can say they can do it and not deliver the promised results.
Talk us through your first few months (or first year) in business.
During the first year, I charged very low prices and took any work. Both of these were a mistake.
I got tied into not paying the right price for my own outsourcers and believing everything was too expensive.
Charging low prices meant I was busy – too busy – but there was not enough money to really market my own business.
I worked too many hours and work was never out of my head. I did not rest and recharge. My computer went on holidays with me – it was tough.
It took a long time of crazy hours and charging lower than was best for me or my business before I did something about it. At the start of 2019, I started working with a coach, Kirsty Hulse.
Having a coach has turned my life and business around.
I was always fairly good at SEO, I just didn’t think I was good at running a business. Before working with my coach I was ignorant of the many things inside me that were holding me back.
In most cases, the root problem was fear, fear of losing clients, fear of being poor, fear of upsetting people – I cringe writing this.
For example, I would do a lot of unpaid work to satisfy clients just not to lose them.
I mistakenly believed if I charged the right amount I would lose ALL my clients and my business would implode.
Madness, but that is where I was.
I started charging a much higher price. Mostly it was fine, I only lost one large client.
That was a great experience. I discovered that I was fine and my business continued to grow, nothing imploded and I felt better about myself.
How did you make your first $100 online?
I made my first $100 online with AdSense (ads on my website). I still make a reasonable amount from ads but using different and better ad networks like AdThrive.
With client work, in 2015 I had one large long term client. That really helped during the first two years while I was bringing on more business.
At this moment we are now at capacity for the four of us.
How does the business make money today?
The business makes most of its money from small business SEO services, mostly link building.
Right now, only 3 to 4 new clients come on board each year from my website.
The majority of new business is coming from referrals.
Most people who run a business socialize with other business owners – this is always worth bearing in mind.
However, I also aim to rank my own business site. We’ve just launched a new website that is targeting specific sectors where we have had great growth for clients. There are plans for advertising and appearing in publications that this market refers to.
During the last few months, we worked a lot on our process documentation. Not having all process docs in place has been a barrier to hiring lately. I do not want to have all the decisions in the business to go through me.
What are some of the challenges particular to this kind of online business?
The biggest challenge in SEO, after getting results, is having all processes in place.
Hiring and scaling the business becomes messy and overwhelming for me without these.
It has also become clear to me that a low-revenue client takes as much of my time as a high-revenue client – sometimes they take more!
With that in mind, agreeing on the scope of work has become important. I am no longer willing to work without getting paid.
One other problem that has surfaced is the obvious reduction in profit the more staff are in the business. (Hence the big push into affiliate websites.)
If you were starting the same business today, from scratch, how would you do it?
I am fairly sure that with my current knowledge I would not start an SEO agency again. I would consider two different options:
Is there another type of business I can get into where my SEO skills would give me a large advantage?I would be more inclined to start a paid advertising business. It has always been easy with paid media clients to transfer part of the budget to SEO.
Failing either of the above and I was starting from scratch, I would niche down and choose a market to provide services to and become an expert in that market.
Many tasks are much easier when you have 2 or 3 SAAS companies, or travel companies, or accountants – you get the idea. The problems that they experience are similar, link building is easier as you already have the relationships, content production and ideas are easier because you know the market and what drives results.
What books, podcasts, courses or other resources would you recommend to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?
My favorite books that have had the most impact are:
Deep Work by Cal NewportThe One Thing by Gary KellerThe Magic of Thinking Big by David SchwartzYou Were Born Rich by Bob ProctorThe Gift by Lewis HydeWho by Geof SmartGrow Your Digital Agency by Robert CravenWaking Up by Sam Harris
I only listen to two podcasts (time is an issue):
Authority Hacker PodcastThe Tim Ferriss Show
Honestly, I don’t have much time for training courses and find most of them targeting lower-level information than I need.
I have only bought one training course for myself, The Authority Site System.
Editor’s note: see our in-depth review of The Authority Site System, including discount info and how it compares to similar courses.
One of the most valuable $99 dollars I spend each month is for Traffic Think Tank. This is a private SEO community and worth every cent.
It is incredibly helpful to be part of a community where there are many other SEO agency owners and affiliate marketers.
