This is the second post in a series about creating e-products you can sell online. There are many things you can get started on right now – today – even though you think you have no skills in this area. Everyone should be selling something online. E-products are for everyone – just figure out what you’re going to create, and DO IT!
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Living in Thailand I’ve come to believe that Thai is one of the hardest languages for English speakers to master. I’ve needed to speak Thai nearly everyday for over four years now. Still, even even today a third grader would spank me verbally – if I ever got into an argument with one.
Many of you reading this post speak two languages already. Have you ever considered creating an e-learning course to help others learn one of those languages? There are many “learn English” programs out there and you know what? There’s room for a great one. There is always room for a great e-learning course. Even better, create an e-learning course about the other language you know.
A couple years back my then girlfriend and I made some MP3 files for visitors to one of her Thai sites to download. We went over some simple vocabulary and I think we focused on greetings and food for the most part. The MP3′s got many downloads and we briefly considered turning it into a focus online, but we got involved in other things – she in “JoysThaiFood.com” and me at ThaiPulse.com/blog/ and here at AimforAwesome.com.
Back then when we were doing a bit of research to see if anyone had an exceptional monthly subscription based service to teach Thai to foreigners there was nothing we could find. Literally nothing. Sure there isn’t as much interest in learning Thai as there is in English – but, Thailand receives over 12 million foreign visitors per year during non-tsunami years! Many visitors are guys looking for sweet Thai wives and needing to learn a bit of Thai to sharpen their game.
Anyway, so – we found a few audio podcasts from a guy that sounds like he’s from Sweden, with his Thai girlfriend. The audio clip was short, easy to understand and seemed to present the Thai language in an easy to learn style. We found out he gave up after about 5 lessons, citing high server costs to keep the files available for free.
Apparently he smelled the opportunity and jumped into it. Recently (yesterday) I found his new website for learning Thai. It’s quite a well-put-together effort and I can bet he’s doing just fine from it. More than fine.
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Why does this site work?
- This site is not brain surgery – it’s pretty simple. He brands it with the ultra simple red chatter box with “LTP” in it all over the site. He has good amounts of white-space. The site is uncluttered and has simple navigation.
- It’s very easy to understand what you’re getting with the premium course.
- He has a special video overview of what comes with the membership course.
- He offers many free lessons which are also downloadable audio or mp4 and viewable with Quicktime or other mp4 viewer.
- He uses multimedia – powerpoint demonstrations with basic gradient background slides and both Thai and English written words. He does voice-over on the slideshow and screencaptures it. It’s a basic e-learning style that is plenty good for what he’s charging – just $15 per month membership.
- He has thousands of words and hundreds of lessons built up. Someone could easily spend 3 months on the site – that’s $45.
- He’s adding content all the time. If someone is serious about it they might join for a year. That’s $180.
- He offers a 100% money back guarantee to anyone that isn’t satisfied within the first 30 days.
- His samples and the Thai girl’s voices are VERY clear and easy to understand. Her pronunciation is of course, perfect because she’s a native speaker.
One negative note – the screencasts are horribly blurry for the premium membership video (on this page – time into video: 5:18 and on) and he could’ve used Camtasia for crystal clear video there. I think he’s missing a real opportunity to show the best he can do with screencapture. He’s likely using a freebie screen-capture or doesn’t know how to shrink the filesize without losing all the resolution. When you create your elearning product please invest in Camtasia – it’s amazingly clear and you can optimize it for YouTube uploads or any other output you desire.
The big reason why it works?
He did it.
He didn’t procrastinate… he banged it out when he saw that so many people were downloading his simple mp3 podcasts. He realized – this is an OPPORTUNITY and he jumped all over it.
One thing he could do better?
Offer an affiliate program. I’d love to offer the readers on my 12 Thailand-based websites this program and earn some money from it. I’m just looking for a great reason to ditch Adsense ads altogether. The one thing he could do to catapult this into the stratosphere is to begin an affiliate program and split it 50-50 with affiliates that sign up members at his site.
So, have a look at this website and use it as a guide for your own elearning course in whatever language you know and want to share with the world. Research “affiliate” programs and how you would implement that on a site like this – and then DO IT with your own site. The difference between what you can make without an affiliate program and what you can make with one is so substantial and its the difference between night and day.
Are there any exceptional Hawaii based elearning language sites online? I’ve not found any in my surfing, but there must be. Anyone care to share one?
If you have others selling your elearning language course for you – you need not rely on your own visitors to your site. That’s saying a lot because whether you have a successful site or not doesn’t matter at all. Affiliates want to make money with their successful sites – their sites have traffic already that they can monetize… partner up using an affiliate network and get selling!
Best of Life!
Vern
Hawaii skies at night are incredibly clear at the beaches away from the city…
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