A Continuation …
In the book How to Get Social Security Disability: What You Need to Know (Amazon, iTunes) we go into quite a bit of detail on how to make money while waiting for your first benefits check to arrive.
Here is a continuation of Chapter 11, for those who might be interested in creating and promoting an eCourse.
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Here’s just a quick example of what we mean.
If you are, let’s say, a former secretary with incredible filing skills, you should be able to quickly organize an ecourse that, if marketed well, could be surprisingly lucrative.
I’m terribly disorganized about filing. I’ll file the same folder in two different places on two consecutive days.
I’d probably pay $49 to view three courses at 30 minutes each — just to know what you know.
And I’ll bet there are at least a thousand mid-management types on the Internet who now must work from home because of the pandemic who would feel the same. (Especially if they formerly had admins to file and fetch their stuff for them)
Catch them through a targeted Facebook ad, and chances are that a fair percentage of them would also buy access.
Each paying $49. Which, if you quickly run the numbers, adds up to a tidy profit.
Want more detail? Here you go.
You create a website and call it FileItJustOnce.com (that’s available, by the way — or was at the end of January, 2021).
You create three 30 minute courses on filing: JustTheBasics, (which is just what it sounds like), AmazeYourself (Advanced), and FilingNinja (Expert).
Share all your tips and tricks, learned over the years, during the course of these three videos. Then…
Add a bonus video on Managing Your Disorganized Boss. Even Remotely.
(That eCourse could also be available for free in your marketing as what they call a “lead magnet” — in which you capture and confirm a viewer’s opt-in email address to build your mailing list — and you grant them one time access to your bonus course in return).
Now. Please pay attention.
People dumber than you or me are doing just this and becoming wealthy. I know you have seen them or gotten drawn into their “sales funnels.” Most are exaggerating their profits.
But many are not.
Like the guy on Udemy. (I still can’t get over his success.)
Well.
Let’s say you put together a modest campaign to make people aware of your ecourse.
Facebook shows your carefully crafted ad (with a link to your website) to an estimated 1,000 FB users. These are called “impressions” by FB — again, carefully targeted — to “home officed,” or “remote workers.”
I’m not sure what labels FaceBook would have, but I guarantee they know who these people are — those who would be most receptive to your pitch.
If need be, pay a FB consultant to help you craft your message and targeting — it will be well worth it.
You can find one on Upwork. Or any of the other freelance platforms mentioned earlier.
Here’s the math:
FB shows your ad to 1,000 members (1,000 “impressions.” This costs you nothing until someone clicks your link.
That click will cost you about $1 each. But it sends them straight to your website or “landing page,” which has a preview of the ecourse, a writeup on it, and, of course, a link to buy.
We’re going to say, just to see what the possibilities are, that of the 1,000 people who see your ad, 250 click through to your site.
So, 250 clicks @ $1 each costs $250 total.
Let’s say, then, that five percent of those 250 people buy access to view your three-session course at $49 each, streamed to their device, and paid through PayPal.
(By the way, you should just grant individual viewing rights for their fee –don’t let them download your segments — if you do, someone will post it in an open forum like Reddit, and your course will be available everywhere for free.
Not good.
Contact Vimeo.com — this is where you’ll host your segments rather than YouTube — and they will show you how to go about granting one-time access.
So, 5% of 250 equals 12.5 buyers @ $50 equals $625 directly into your PayPal account.
Minus the cost of the ads @ $250 (total one time fee) for the ad campaign. Costs for creation and targeting would also be separate one-time expenses.
That leaves a net passive income profit of around $375 every time you run the ad.
Neat, eh? But watch this.
If you run that ad for a month (30 days in a row) and use your analytics to improve your targeting each day, reaching 1,000 new FB members every day…
And, rather than immediately spend that $375, you reinvest it every day for a month, tweaking and learning what resonates as you go — so that you achieve more or less the same result every time you send it to a new 1,000 FB member pool…
That rolls up to a $125 net profit x 30 days.
Equals (drum roll, please)
That’s $3,750 going directly into your Paypal account each and every month you run a campaign.
And all of it from three videos that you produced one time and afterward just maintain for years on a big server at Vimeo.
Sometimes this number will be higher, sometimes lower as you refine your targeting and message to perfection.
And the grand total? 12 months x $3750/mo equals $45,000 per year.
All from the same 90-minute course that you created one time.
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I know you don’t believe me — that there must be some catch…
And there will be — until you really refine your message, targeting and ads — as they say, results may differ.
But there are people out there (especially on YouTube) who have elevated this simple formula to a fine art across many skills and messages — and through podcast partnerships — to reach still more people — and they are achieving these incomes.
Why not you?
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BIG DISCLAIMER:
All these gee-whiz numbers are based on projections that may or may not come true for you.
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Well, okay. Let’s be more realistic.
Cut that total number per year in half. That would be $22,500 per year.
Still not realistic enough? Fine. Cut that in half. That would be $11,250 per year.
What is this? Some kind of pyramid scheme?
Nope.
With the right kind of message, and the right kind of content, and the right kind of targeting — and all the other qualifiers and quantifiers that I have scattered throughout this description, it is extremely realistic.
And, again, keep in mind that you created that course — that digital content — one time. And passive income will keep rolling in as long as you keep marketing it along the lines we’ve already discussed.
Are those a lot of qualifiers? Yes.
Now, let’s say you were a ditch digger before you became disabled. It’s true, you are probably not going to develop a three-part eCourse on how to dig ditches better than anyone alive.
But when you weren’t digging ditches, were you good at, say, fixing or repairing — or making — stuff around the house?
There are plenty of men (and women) who don’t have those skills and who really need to be guided through how you personally may look at a particular DIY challenge as easy…
Like finishing out a basement for your kid, complete with pool table and a big state-of-the-art, kick-ass sound system.
I did that for my son’s 14th birthday — built out a 750 sq ft bare walls basement — it wasn’t that hard — and it paid dividends all the way through his graduation from high school.
Because It was someplace where he and all his friends could gather on the weekends — so we totally knew wherehe was, instead of wondering if he was at a wild party somewhere we didn’t know about.
Did I know how to finish out a basement before I started that project?
No. And it took many hours to learn each skill required to do it right.
Would I have paid $50 to view a step by step guide on how to do it — complete with a shopping list at Home Depot?
Yes, I would have, in a heartbeat.
See what we mean?
Oh, sure, you could produce a series of videos like that and put them up on YouTube for free.
In fact, you probably should put a few brief episodes up on a channel you create, showing how you apply your uniquely organized approach to some other handyman skill.
This will help to establish credibility.
But check out a half-dozen similar YouTube videos, and we’ll bet that at least half of them have a link, or an outright come-on embedded in the video, tantalizing you about their low-cost ecourse.
Okay, we’re done.
Hopefully, somewhere in those 25 tips, you found something that you could do to make some extra money while waiting for your disability ship to come in.
And if you did, I am very glad indeed.
Wait. We’re NOT done.
Imagine, after you’ve sold the eCourse to, say, 50 people, you began offering a “menu” of other courses that you create and offer for about the same price.
Or bundle them together, at even lower prices, and send a link to your website’s subscribers — everyone loves a bargain — and there is a strong possibility they will share your ads with all their friends on FB or Twitter or whatever the newest platform is…
Before long, you might even lose interest in applying for — or even getting — disability benefits.
Because now you run your own business from your bedroom — or your local Starbucks — or from the beach. Anywhere there is access to the Internet.
Oops. No free WiFi?
No problem. Open a hotspot on your iPhone or Android.
Data charges? Not if you are on an Unlimited plan, which probably by now includes three-fourths of the world.
Am I exaggerating these results?
Probably. After all, I want you to get excited about reinventing — “repurposing” — yourself while you endure delay after maddening delay in getting your disability checks started.
Can each of these income opportunities be done? Really?
Absolutely.
So, get busy making notes about the things you’ve become extremely good at.
And please let me know when you’ve made your first $1,000 passive income.
I want to be excited for you.