In this 6 part series of articles and videos about marketing with YouTube, I will show you how… My YouTube channel generates an additional $3,000 to $5,000 each month in sales for my online course. I’ll give you a step by step guide to copying my process for growing your audience and generating online course sales with YouTube. Note - I shared a draft of this post with a few clients and within a few days they saw great results including increases in YouTube engagement and course sales.  Also, I’ve put together a short checklist / summary to keep you on track. Get the Checklist here. My success in online course marketing with YouTube comes despite the fact that, my channel has only 15 videos and under 1,600 subscribers. And, although I haven’t updated the channel or posted a new video in over 2 years, it continues to produce a consistent supply of students who purchase my online course. This generates a steady stream of passive revenue while growing my audience. What that tells us is, not only is YouTube a great place to promote courses, but it’s also a great way to set up your passive revenue stream from online course sales. In this article I’ll give you a list of key steps you can follow to improve your exposure and sales on YouTube.Check out this guide to YouTube marketing for online course sales. - Increases sales by 30%+Click To Tweet Here’s what we cover here: Why is YouTube a great marketing channel Exactly what to include in your video - a step by step approach The steps that lead from YouTube video to a sale Optimizing your videos Popularity - the elements that will increase your video’s popularity Relevance - how to increase relevance of your video for more views and conversions In order to help you through this I’ve put together a quick summary checklist. It doesn’t cover everything in these articles but it’s a handy reference guide to keep you on track. First let’s look at a few things about YouTube and why it makes a great marketing platform for online courses. Why YouTube? YouTube is the second largest search engine. Next to… you guessed it, Google. YouTube sees over 3 Billion searches a month and while many of those are for cute cats or gangnam style videos plenty of them are people looking to learn something. This gives you an opportunity to share some knowledge on YouTube, which can then drive visitors to your actual online course. Not only is YouTube bigger than Bing, Yahoo!, Ask and AOL combined, (when it comes to monthly searches), your videos will also show up in regular Google searches. So if your training videos are on YouTube, people searching on YouTube, or regular Google search can find them. That’s some impressive exposure and a great opportunity to promote your online expertise. And as I mentioned earlier I’ve personally leveraged YouTube to generate an additional $3,000 to $5,000 each month in sales for my online course. Here’s how I did that… We’ll start by looking at the general strategy for posting on YouTube, and driving leads from YouTube to your course and then I’ll give you essential steps to get better exposure on YouTube. What this article is NOT about: What I won’t cover in this article is paid advertising. That’s not to say paid video ads aren’t a great way to promote your videos and get more views and sales. For this discussion we’ll focus on maximizing your free results on YouTube. I also won’t cover virality or viral videos. Viral videos can lead to amazing results but that’s a whole different game. We’ll focus on a step by step approach to help even boring videos lead to sales. (and trust me, some of my videos were exceptionally boring - but they gave people what they wanted and led to significant monthly sales) What we’re going to focus on here is some clear steps you can take to increase your YouTube views and, as a result, your Conversions. Let’s dive in and learn about increasing your exposure and sales with YouTube - a Step by Step approach. Increase online course sales by 30%+ by marketing with YouTube! Check out this feature series Click To Tweet Next up…  Part 2: Increasing the Exposure of your YouTube videos. I hope you’re getting value out of this! It would mean the world to me if you took a few moments to share it! The post Marketing Online Courses with YouTube appeared first on Thinkific.

Meet David. He has worked as a college History professor and academic librarian in northern New Jersey for over a decade. David has devoted his academic career to his love of History. With four current degrees under his belt, he’s working on his fifth and is a doctoral candidate in American History. Don’t let history repeat itself by struggling through your next course! Connect with tutors like David to understand and enjoy the stories of the world we live in. Ready to work with David? Get in touch with him on HelpHub or learn more about him below: Education: Bachelor of Arts in History from William Paterson University, Master of Library Science from Pratt University, Master of Letters from Drew University, and a Doctor of Letters from Drew University Hardest class you’ve ever taken: Intellectual History of Modern Europe which had a ton of dense reading and hard writing assignments. How long have you been tutoring/teaching: I have been tutoring for two years. What do you like most about tutoring/teaching? I like seeing people get interested in History when normally they were bored. What made you decide to major in American History? It is something I have always loved. Favorite school memory? Being a student athletic trainer at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Favorite subject in school? History, I like to learn about how people related to each other and their work. Do your best, keep trying, never ever give up, but be willing to change when needed. Favorite late night snack: Apples with peanut butter. Is there a subject/trade you wish you could learn not related to your major? I wish I studied Electronics or Database Management. If you could study abroad anywhere in the world for free, where would it be and why? England to learn more about their labor movements and shipbuilding unions. Favorite way to study: My favorite way to study is with music in the background and soft light. Best advice you’ve ever gotten from a teacher or mentor: Do your best, keep trying, never ever give up, but be willing to change when needed. To connect with David, sign up for HelpHub and start chatting with him and thousands of other tutors now!

Today we’ve got a video showing how you can quickly create interactive online courses from your existing eBooks. Unlike traditional eBooks which have no interaction between students and no insight into who is reading the content, creating a course from your eBook content creates a fully interactive course experience. Quickly turn your eBook into a fully interactive online course experienceClick To Tweet Turn your static eBook into a fully interactive course experience with discussions, downloads, videos, and other content all included Students can ask questions and engage in discussion with eachother, right from within the course experience Maintain full control over your content, including the ability to make updates and changes as time goes on Get valuable contact information for every single person who takes your course, so you can contact and market to them again Best of all, it only takes a few minutes. Read through the transcript below, or watch the video here to see how it’s done.   (START TRANSCRIPT) Hey guys! Miranda here from Thinkific. I am chatting today about one my very favorite topics, and that is how to turn your eBook into an online course. Now, this is so simple that it almost hurts, but the benefits are amazing! We all know about eBooks, and they’re a really great way to deliver content to your audience. You can design them how you want, get all of your content in there, you can make it look really good, and you can get it out into the world. The problem is that there’s no real interactivity, so with a normal eBook… you pour your heart and soul into getting that book ready, but once you release it into the world, that’s kind of it. It goes off, it has a life of its own. This is really amazing if you’re wanting lots of people to view your content - lots of times it gets out there (lots of times it doesn’t go anywhere, but that’s a whole other situation); people read it, share it, email it, post it, but you have no ability to interact with the people viewing your content. You don’t know who those people are, and you have no way to reach your new audience. You’re basically relying on people who get a hold of your ebook to independently reach out and come back, dig out your contact information, and contact you. And, that’s the problem that we aim to solve at Thinkific. So, imagine this. Instead of creating your PDF and sending it off into the world to have a life of its own - and crossing your fingers and hoping that you actually hear from some of the people who end up reading it - what if thing were different. What if people who wanted to learn from your content have to come to you? What if they are giving their email address so you can contact them again, and once they’re there, they actually have the ability to contact you and to chat with other participants, and to be a little bit more involved in not just reading your course, but actually TAKING your course. That’s what I’m going to show you how to do. The first thing we need to do is split our PDF into multiple smaller files. If you have a 40 page PDF it’s all one file, whether you’re using the program you used to create your PDF in the first place or, on a mac, you can just click and drag in the individual pages out onto your desktop to split it up into smaller files. There are also online tools, but basically instead of having one giant PDF, we want to create multiple small PDFs that each have one lesson’s worth of content (maybe 1-4 pages depending on your file). A couple great online tools that work for this are splitpdf.com or smallpdf.com, but there are lots of online tools if you do a quick google search. Once you have all of your small PDF files, we’re going to jump into the Thinkific dashboard. You’re going to go under "Courses" to "Create & Edit", and then create a new course. Once you’ve entered the course name and price, you land here, and we’re going to want to click onto "quick builder". We simply click here to select all of the files we’ve created and start our upload. We can watch it as it’s uploading we can see everything pop up. And that’s pretty much it! If I wanted to stop right here, I absolutely could. I can enroll students in my class, they can log in to take my course, I get their email address, they view my content, all is good. But, why stop here? We can turn this eBook course into a really interactive online experience that your students are going to LOVE and that is going to take this from being just an eBook to being something that is so much more. That’s what we’re going to do now. Back in the Thinkific system, on the left hand side I have the ability to add more content, and that’s where this shines. In addition to all of the PDF pages that are here, I can add anything I want - quizzes, discussions, files to download, videos, the list goes on. I’m going to start by adding a discussion, so I click to add, add a prompt question, and hit save. That’s it. Now I know that my students have an opportunity to discuss the content they’re viewing right within the course, with the instructor and with other students. Similarly, I want to add a video. I can click to add a video, add a title, and I can select or upload my video here. Hit save, and I’m done. On the left I can see my video has appeared, but I want to move it up to be the first item that students see, so I simply click and drag it to the top of the list. Finally, I add a downloads resource where I can include some extra worksheet files (or any other file type). for students to download, right from within the course. Like the other content types, this is super fast, just select and I’m done. That’s it! Now I’m ready to preview my course. Here I am in my brand new course, I can see my chapters and lessons on the left. My video is front and centre, my download resources with files for my students are here, and I have the PDFs that make up the various lessons in my class. Finally, I have a discussion so students can chat with me and with other students in their class right from within the course experience. And, we’re done! That really is all you need to know about how to turn an eBook (which is a fairly static document with no interactivity, and has the ability to go off and have a life of its own), into an interactive course experience where students can interact with you, and interact with each other. You as an instructor have an ability to make changes and updates to your course as time goes on - not just to make updates to typos and the like, but to add information and make it a really compelling learning experience for your students so they’ll keep coming back. And, most importantly, you know who is taking your course. You’ve got their contact information, you can email them about other stuff you’re creating. If you do coaching and consulting, you now have the ability to market those services directly to your group. Basically, you’ve got the contact information for your audience, and that is so valuable and will really make you and your business move forward. I hope this has been a really great course learning experience, and I SO look forward to seeing all of the PDFs that people are turning into entire courses. Don’t ever hesitate to drop a note if there’s anything at all we can help you with! Cheers. (END TRANSCRIPT) The post Turn Your eBook into an Interactive Online Course appeared first on Thinkific.

Please refrain from the use of digital native again | From experience to meaning…. I like this. This is the response I’ve been seeking for those Educationists who are forever repeating these myths. Often those who generate more heat than … Continue reading →

Laetitia is based in Winnipeg, Canada at the University of Manitoba working on her PhD in Applied Health Science. As a specialist in human health with degrees in both Physiology and Endocrinology, her hope is to combine her knowledge and PhD to help diabetic youth add years to their life, and life to their years. Ready to work with Laetitia? Get in touch with her on HelpHub or learn more about her below: Twitter: @l_guillem Education: Currently at the University of Manitoba for a PhD, I got my Bachelor of Science and my Masters of Science at the Université de Sherbrooke (Québec). Hardest class you’ve ever taken: Calculus. Math has never been easy for me and everything we learned was so theoretical I couldn’t figure it out. It’s probably why Statistics is my cup of tea. I can figure it out by applying it to real-life examples! How long have you been tutoring/teaching: Since Fall 2013 Understanding better how things work so we can help make people more healthy; that’s the reason why I get up every morning. What do you like most about tutoring/teaching? I like helping students formulate their needs, because framing the question appropriately is half the work of finding the answer, and it helps students work independently. What made you decide to pursue a PhD in Applied Health Sciences? I want to advance the current state of knowledge {in the field of Applied Health Sciences}, but I also want to gain applied research skills. The Applied Health Sciences program at University of Manitoba is interdisciplinary by nature. As I firmly believe that the future of Health Sciences is through interdisciplinary work and research, I knew it was the program for me. Favorite school memory: When I was in CEGEP (a Quebec-specific institution that provides two years of classes more general than a Bachelor of Science, but more focused than in high school), I didn’t specialize so I had classes in everything from Biology and Organic Chemistry, to Art History and Dance, to Philosophy, Optical Physics and Sociology. We were a class of 25 people and our schedule was exactly the same because of the craziness of the program. Our workload was so intense that we would often meet on MSN messenger (I’m old!) around midnight to discuss assignments; we’d stay incognito in the school’s classrooms until a security guard kicked us out to do a group project; we’d finish our group reports at the exact deadline and rush through the corridors to give it to the teachers. I actually feel closer to some of those ex-colleagues/good friends than some members of my family! Favorite subject in school: My favorite subject is Pharmacology, because it’s all about understanding relationships between molecules (proteins, minerals, amino acids, etc.) to predict the impact on the body - you can’t learn everything by heart. Understanding better how things work so we can help make people more healthy, that’s the reason why I get up every morning. Favorite late night snack: Self-popped popcorn (with a hot air popcorn popper). Is there a subject/trade you wish you could learn not related to your major? If I had the time I’d learn Psychology. It’s so interesting, but so complex. If you could study abroad anywhere in the world for free, where would it be and why? Venice, Italy - I love the language, I love the food, I love the weather, I love the city, I love the culture, the music, the wine, the history…I would live my whole life there if I could! Favorite way to study: I go through the notes I took during class (by hand or on my laptop) and recopy (by hand) only the highlighted parts, or what I think is important to memorize and understand. Writing helps me remember better. Best advice you’ve ever gotten from a teacher or mentor: Working with humans means lots of drama arising all the time. Take care of your co-workers, feed their passion, and understand that there’s no work-life balance, but only life - so find your balance, and respect the others’ balance. To connect with Laetitia, sign up for HelpHub and start chatting with her and thousands of other tutors now!

At Thinkific we are constantly trying to make your online courses better, and today we are very excited to share our newest feature with you. Drip Release Content is here! What is Drip? Drip Release Content gives you the ability to pre-schedule the delivery of your course content over time. Why would I want to drip release my content? Getting all the course content at once can be overwhelming for students - drip release allows you to delay the release of content so students can learn at the pace you intended. You can even give them assignments to complete while they wait for the next piece of content to be released. If you charge a monthly subscription - drip release content gives students a reason to return to your course over and over to access new content. This means they’ll keep their subscription to your courses for longer, and you can create new content over time rather than having to have it all ready at the beginning. Drip content is also a great way to market other products or services. You can slowly release valuable content to your clients over time - building student’s perception of your brand and their trust in you, as you build long-term relationships with your students. Students are more likely to take courses and make purchases in the future from people they know and trust. Improved course success: I’ve been using drip content to increase the sales of my own online course and I’ve seen my sales more than double due to drip content. Drip released courses can improve student engagement; build brand perception + trustClick To Tweet How does drip release work? Drip is extremely simple to use. Simply: Create your course Add your lessons Set a schedule for your content That’s it! I’m ready to get Drip Release Content! If you’re a member with one of our paid monthly plans, you already have access! Head to your dashboard to try it out. If you are not yet a Thinkific customer or if you’re on our Free plan, get Drip Content (and all our other awesome premium plan features!) by upgrading to one of our paid plans from your Thinkific dashboard by Friday, February 27th, at midnight PST. BONUS OFFER Ready to get Drip Release Content? Upgrade your account by Friday, February 27th and send us an email with the codeword "Drip Release Bonus". We’ll make your 2nd month on the new plan free!   The post Drip Release Is Here! appeared first on Thinkific.

The significance of plot without conflict - still eating oranges. COOL. I’ve been looking for something like this for ages!  I’ve never been entirely convinced that conflict is essential, and now I have a way to describe the alternative: Kish?tenketsu … Continue reading →

Since early childhood, Josh understood that hard-work, commitment, and diligence was of the utmost importance. His parents moved to the United States from Taiwan before Josh was born. Thanks to their sacrifice and dedication, he has been able to live a blessed and amazing life full of opportunity. This understanding drives him to exemplify these traits in both his professional and personal life. His love for professional sports has also influenced Josh to be who he is today. Josh’s perseverance has lead to achievements such as making captain of his freshman basketball team, a role he was extremely humbled and proud of. More than anything, Josh’s focus is to be there for others to help meet people’s need and it’s no surprise he is majoring in Hospitality. Ready to work with Josh? Get in touch with him on HelpHub or learn more about him below: Social: Instagram - @joshkao Location: Las Vegas, Nevada Education: Alumni of Los Gatos High School, in Los Gatos, California. Currently attending University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Hardest class I’ve ever taken: Environmental Science 101. I am not a big fan of Science and I never enjoyed it. Taking the time to listen to my instructor and do the assignments was dreadful and I simply wish Science never existed. However, without Science, there would not be nature, creatures, and all the great living organisms around us. How long have I been tutoring/teaching: I began tutoring for HelpHub on April 1, 2015. What do you like most about tutoring/teaching: There is so much to appreciate about tutoring and helping other people. I think the most beneficial thing for me is being able to interact with people from all over the world, just to see different personalities and work styles is pretty awesome. Making connections is crucial, so start at a young age! What made you decide to major in Hospitality: A lot of my friends are Business majors, Math majors, Science majors, etc. I wanted to go a different direction, create my own path, and do something in a whole different field. There is just so much opportunity that comes with a Hospitality degree and Las Vegas is without doubt the number one place to be. I chose Hospitality because of what Las Vegas offers: entertainment, fine-dining, quality five-star hotels and residencies, and the night life. If I did not choose Hospitality, I would have contemplated pursuing a career in Physical Education and becoming a head coach. Favorite school memory: My favorite school memory had to be when I graduated from Los Gatos High School in California. Being that I was the only student from my middle school to enroll at LGHS, I was uncertain of how my four years would be. It was difficult at first, a lot of uncertainty, but I did what I had to do, made trustworthy friends, and worked extremely hard during my time there. Los Gatos ended up to be a place I truly love, admire, and will always respect. Your upbringings and surroundings are very important to your future! Favorite subject in school: My favorite subject in school has to be Chinese. Though I already know how to speak and read basic characters, I enjoyed it because I was able to watch other students develop their speaking and writing skills. Having an advantage already made my job easier and I was able to cruise by the class easily. Favorite late night snack: No favorites but whatever I can find in the fridge. Is there a subject you wish you could learn not related to your major? Physical Education. If you could study abroad anywhere in the world for free, where would it be and why? I would have to say Switzerland. I have been there before and just to imagine what life would be like living there is pretty awesome. It is definitely a different culture and environment. Making connections is crucial, so start at a young age Favorite way to study: I like to study away from all the drama and chaos. The most effective way is to go somewhere where you can get away, have your own space, and just take care of your business. Best advice you have ever gotten from a teacher or mentor: Honesty of Effort and Intensity of Purpose. To connect with Josh, sign up for HelpHub and start chatting with him and thousands of other tutors now!

It’s been a while since we last shared a big batch of new updates and features, and the latest list is even bigger. Grab a coffee and browse through some of our most recent updates! Tonnes of new features rolled out for online course creators, by @Thinkific! #ThinkificLoveClick To Tweet Deliver course content over time Top of the list, as we know, is Drip Release Content! We wrote a whole post about this, so check it out here. Drip Release allows Thinkific instructors to create lessons that are released to the student on a set schedule, rather than all at once. Our knowledge base article gets into the nitty gritty. Highlight courses with more prominent positioning By popular demand, we’ve added the ability to manually re-order your courses. This is perfect for instructors with lots of courses, or those who want to feature certain courses at the beginning of the list. Simple but effective. This almost doesn’t need a description, but we’ve got a support article up here. Run comprehensive promotions with quantity limited coupons Coupons can now have a quantity limit, which allows more flexibility for marketing using this type of promotion.  Read more here. (Teaser: more updates on the way for coupons and promotions! Will update soon!) More intuitive site design & navigation = faster course updates A few super useful usability tweaks, like quick links back to your dashboard when previewing your site, quick previews of content from the dashboard, and the ability to view the course landing page as a student would see it. Magic! Important terms and conditions & privacy policies are now fully customizable The addition of terms of use and privacy policy pages, that you can edit for your own site Add clear calls to action for your site landing page The ability to update your site header and subheader text directly for the course landing pages, found in the basic settings dashboard for your site Increased attention for your courses with higher converting course cards And finally for today, beautiful new course cards (we sent a note already about this one, but if you missed it, here’s the video Phew! I TOLD you it was a long list We’ve got even more exciting updates - including a few BIG things - up our sleeve, but, until then… We want to hear from you What do you want to see next from us? What features are you most in need of for your online courses, or what are your biggest problems that we might be able to help you solve? Drop a quick note in the comments and let us know!   The post Massive List of New Features! appeared first on Thinkific.

Why Games Don’t Teach From Angry Birds to World of Warcraft, the charismatic popularity of entertainment games is the envy of every trainer teaching information security 101 or facilitating new hire orientation. Multiple articles, webinars, and conference presentations have touted … Continue reading →