48: Stacy Juba: Published Author to Freelance Editor and Online Course Creator
This podcast episode is part of our course creator series where I'm chatting with ordinary course creators, just like you. We’re talking about their journey in their online course business, how they got started, the challenges they've experienced, and how they overcame them. These are real discussions with real people.
In this podcast episode, you’ll hear about Stacy Juba’s journey of how her freelance work has grown over the years and how she transitioned into online courses. Stacy published her first novel at age eighteen, and over the years has written sweet and sassy chick lit novels, mysteries about determined women sleuths, and entertaining books for young adults and children.
Stacy is also a freelance developmental editor, creator of online courses for writers, and an award-winning journalist who has published more than 3,000 articles in newspapers and magazines. She is the founder of Shortcuts for Writers, and her goal is to take the writing and editing tips she learned in the trenches and simplify them for her clients and students. Her signature course, Book Editing Blueprint: A Step-By-Step Plan to Making Your Novels Publishable, empowers fiction writers to think like an editor so they can save time and money.
Listen in to hear how she has educated herself on marketing, website development, and sales funnels which has led to her success in her online course business.
Mentioned In This Episode
Transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Course Creator's MBA Podcast. I'm your host Destini Copp. And in this podcast, we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. But before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my Course in Box program, which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week Course in a Box is on the AppSumo marketplace at a special deal. And the link, for Course in a Box on AppSumo is in our show notes. And today we're in the middle of our course creator series where I'm chatting with ordinary course creators, just like you, we're going to talk about their journey in their online course business, how they got started, the challenges they've experienced and how they overcame them. These are real discussions with real people. So let's started. And today I have Stacy Juba with me.
New Speaker (00:52):
Stacy published her first novel at age 18 and over the years has written sweet and sassy chick novels. I'd love to read one of those mysteries about determined women's and entertaining books, books for young adults and children. She's also a freelance developmental editor creator of online courses for writers and an award-winning journalist who has published more than 3000 articles in newspapers and magazines. She is founder of shortcuts for writers and her goal is to take the writing and editing tips. She learned in the trenches and simplify them for her clients and students, her signature course book editing blueprint, a step-by-step plan to making your novels publishable empowers fiction writers, to think like an editor so that they can save time and money. And Stacy, thanks so much for joining me. I'm super excited for our discussion here.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh, thank you for having me. Thank you for the nice introduction.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
As you know, I'm in the middle of writing my book . It is almost done. So this, this conversation is extremely interesting to me and I'm excited to jump in, jump into this with you, but before I began, and I have a ton of questions for you before I begin, can you tell me a little bit more about you, how you got started? What were things like at the beginning of your journey?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Well, I've been writing books, you know, as you said for a long time, I had my first book published when I was 18. That did well, but then there were several years of rejection. So a lot of ups and downs. And while I was writing on the side, I also worked for a newspaper got into journalism and then I had my kids and started working from home and did some freelance writing for a parenting magazine. And then branched out into like editing newsletters. I did a lot of health writing, writing health articles. And then I, as they, by that time, I had published several more books a combination of with traditional publisher, small presses and indie published, and I built up a lot of experience. So I started doing developmental editing working with fiction and nonfiction writers and various genres. And then eventually I branched out and launched my fitness shortcuts for writers and started working on online courses as well. So it's, it's been quite a journey.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, I would say, so what is developmental right editing? I'm not familiar with that term.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Well, there's different types of editors. This developmental editors line editors copy editors and proofreaders. So I do developmental and line editing. So developmental editing is giving like a broad overview of the whole book. So for fiction, it would be looking at the characters the character development, the plot, the pacing, the dialogue the technique, the word choice for nonfiction, again, it would be like the structure, how it's presented, how well does it flow. And then for both fiction and nonfiction, I also can do some line editing and that's something I can do with writers where the manuscript is more further along. If a manuscript needs a lot of big structural changes, lots of big rewrites, then, you know, if the writer wants to focus on those first, because if you, if you start working on the line editing, you know, all those little changes could become obsolete if you're doing major rewrites.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So, you know, for authors, if we've gone through a few drafts, or if it's a more advanced author, then I can work on line editing with them and that's tightening sentences, make them flow better, pumping up their word choice. So that's sort of like the creative kind of more on the creative side, and then copy editors would focus more on the grammar, the punctuation that continuity details and just the smaller aspects, like for a non-fiction book, the copy editors would kind of some of them might verify their facts or you know, look for vague or ambiguous sentences and that kind of thing. So they're kind of looking for more of the smaller things while I'm looking at more, the broader aspects of the book.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I had no idea there was so many different types of editors. So you published your first book at 18, then you started working from home, you had, you know, children and you were doing some freelance work. You are also publishing additional books. I know you said you had some, some years of rejection, but you, it sounds like you kept at it and wanted to stay on that track when, so you were working as freelancer and then at some point, and tell me a little bit about, when did you transition into moving, maybe moving from a freelance or working for firms to helping other people with writing their books. Tell me a little bit about that process and how that happened.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Well, I'd had like a few regular clients for my freelance newsletters when I was doing one of them. I had for about, probably about 10 years, cause I actually had worked for them full time before I had my daughter, and then I worked for them on a freelance basis. And then they started doing that newsletter in house. So I was looking for a way to kind of fill that gap in my income. And I started seeing a lot of freelancers around this time. Like the self publishing was really taking off like Kindle and nook. And there are lots of opportunities opening for authors that weren't there. Like when I was starting out in the early 1990s in self publishing was like you know, you'd have to invest a lot of money upfront and, and buy hundreds of copies of your book and, you know, sell them from the trunk of your car.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Whereas now it's, it's print on demand for the print versions is the ebook version. So I've seen a lot of freelancers springing up in, in different aspects of publishing, like different kinds of editors, formatters cover designers. So I decided to kind of venture into, into editing and that went really well. And I started building my client lists and getting testimonials. But then I was one thing I was noticing with that. First of all, editing it's expensive. I mean, I think my rates are reasonable, but still most authors need multiple rounds of editing. I think a common misconception is that for beginner writers that they'll hire an editor and often they'll start with the wrong kind of editor. Often they'll go straight like a copy editor thinking that all they need is grammar and punctuation to be fixed.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And they don't realize all the structural issues that the manuscript has. And, you know, sometimes they don't really, that doesn't really register with them until they publish it. And they start getting negative reviews on Amazon, or they go with a small press that might not prioritize editing and they get negative reviews or they start sending it out to agents and publishers and it keeps getting rejected. So so a lot of authors underestimate that and don't realize how expensive the editing process is. And they often, when they do hire a freelance editor, oftentimes they'll hire the wrong kind or they'll hire when way too early, when, when what they have is essentially a rough draft. And I'd say for most of the beginner writers I've worked with most of them will have needed at least four rounds of developmental editing. I've had some that were starting for square one and would have needed like ideally like seven or eight rounds, because it was just almost like I was privately teaching them the craft of writing.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And you know, obviously if, if a round of editing is hundreds of dollars, most writers can't afford that. And then eventually they would need to go on to do some copy editing and proofreading, so it can be expensive. So I realized that a lot of editors, a lot of authors needed a stepping stone to working with an editor. And that's when I started thinking about becoming an online course creator so that I could create a course that would kind of be like their prerequisite to hiring another editors you know, that they once had gone through that. They'll have a, they would be able to do a lot of self editing on their own so that they can bring their manuscript up to a higher level before they actually start putting money into that at any point.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
So, so let me ask you this, you mentioned that a lot of this started right when the self-publishing was taken off and you were seeing a demand in the marketplace. What year was that? I really, I don't even remember when that started.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Cool. It was about 2012 around, around that time.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Okay. So you, around that time, you started seeing this demand in the marketplace. You started doing some freelance and, and just working with clients, right. You're working with clients by this point, helping them with their, with their editing. When, at what point did you decide, or did you determine based on what you were seeing and working with those clients that you you know, that an online course would be beneficial for them and that there was a need in the marketplace for that?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I think it was sort of, I realized it would be mutually beneficial. Cause when my kids were younger, there was a limit to how many editing clients I would take on, you know, I might do like one or two a month, but then as my kids were in school for the full day, I started taking on more clients. And first of all, like for myself I realized that there's only, there's only so much editing I could do in a week without feeling burned out because I put a lot of creativity and energy, you know, it's really time consuming. And I want to give my best to each book and I was doing like maybe two edits per week. So I was finding that, that, that was just too much. And also when I was looking sort of at my end of the year profits so much was taken out in taxes and then there was the expenses of like maintaining my website and my email list, ConvertKit things like that.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
I really wasn't making as much money as I should have been for the amount of work I was putting into it. And then meanwhile, because I was working with such a, so many clients in so many different genres, I would think that they were all making the same kinds of mistakes. And I actually had a word file where I would paste just information general information that I was pretty much putting in each editorial letter, like the commonly overused words I was seeing authors who were telling rather than showing just all kinds of things. And it's just regardless of what genre was, you know, whether it was a mystery or a romance or a time-travel book or a nonfiction book, I was just seeing very similar mistakes. And that's when I realized that this could be mutually beneficial product if I put out.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
So, so that I could kind of scale my business and work with more clients without burning myself out and give them something that they really needed because they were spending so much money on on what was essentially a rough draft. And then finding out that the, that this draft really would need multiple rounds of editing is typically you would just go back and forth with the editor if you times, and, you know, depending on your level and get feedback and, you know, author would make the rewrites based on what the editor's suggestions were. And then he had send it back and then eventually reach a point where the developmental editor or in my case, I can do developmental and line heading where I would say, okay, I think, you know, you're ready to go to the next step. And if there's someone who has trouble with grammar and punctuation, then the next step will be for them to hire a copy editor and proofreader. You know, and so it's, it's a big investment for them. So I just felt like it would be a win-win situation.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
So what was that time timeframe you started your kind of your, this part of your business kind of started flourishing as you know, after 2012, when self-publishing took off how many years was it before you said, you know, Oh, this, this is, you know, would make a great course. I really see a demand for that. And this would really help people.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
He goes in the back of my mind for a few years, but it didn't really, I didn't really start actively pursuing it till around 2017. Either again, my, my younger daughter was my younger daughter, actually, she was diagnosed with type one diabetes and kindergarten and she's 13 now, but like, it was, so it basically when I, you know, if there was a year where I just didn't do much. And then after that, it's when I started branching out into editing and finishing a book, I have it. And so I, it was kind of starting up slow. And then as I got more comfortable with their diabetes and, you know, we've got her on insulin pump and all the technology and she started, you know, doing well with it. And then she was in school for the full day and everything. Then I was able to gradually start I guess get more, yeah, ambitious my, with my business.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
So I started spent a couple of years, probably just testing the waters, taking a lot of free webinars on online course creation and learning about funnels. And just learning about the different, you know, teachable versus like Thinkific and, you know all the different platforms. So I spent a lot of time in that research phase. And then around 2018, I bought Devi software because they knew that I needed to, I needed to like another website. Basically. I had my Stacyjuba.com website for my books, and I had like an editing tab and the navigation bar. But if I started branching out into online courses and everything, is it just, the website would just kind of be too all over the place. We know with fiction books and, and online courses and editing. So I realized I needed to move my editing and the online courses over to another site.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And I didn't want to hire a designer for it because I was by the summer, I was pretty comfortable like with WordPress and but I, I never really built a site from scratch before. So I, I bought the Devi software cause it was a drag and drop software and I designed a website. So I spent a lot of time just learning how to do that and researching like other online course creators and, you know, listening to your pocket, all kinds of things, just learning about lead magnets and like writing website copy, you know, and because it was kind of a totally different approach than my website that themed at readers where I'm just trying to hook them on a story or a genre that they're interested in. This is like, I've, you know, it's a totally different marketing slant.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
So there was just a lot to learn. So I kind of took my time before jumping into it. And then then it took me a while to actually create the course. Probably took me at least a year. And it was just a lot of learning about the technology. Like I knew nothing about video and nothing about audio. So watching YouTube videos, trying to figure out the best kind of microphone to get and webcams. So it was just so much to learn that it was just kinda taking it one step at a time so that I didn't make any, you know, I felt confident that it was making the best decisions. Well, what I like about what you just said there, you
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Educated yourself on all the different aspects from what I'm from, I'm here, all my course creation, but also more importantly, all the marketing aspects, the sales funnels, the lead magnets and everything else that is required to set up an online course business that you may have not had tp focus on in the past.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Right. Right. So in the past, my, my newsletter was basically just you know, I'd have a lead magnet, but it would be like a deleted scene from my book or a sample chapter that I had to come up with something totally different and start a Facebook group. And if they wanted to fill my audience before you know, before I had something to sell, I wanted to kind of have an audience in place and where I'd started building relationship with them. So, you know, I didn't intend for it to take me so long to get started, but as I learned more and more, there was just so many aspects. So I, you know, I just, and it did the best I could and breaking it down and working on one step at a time.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Well, and I think we have to give ourselves grace, right. Things come up and family life, it came up for you it's come up for me in the past. I mean, it's, you know, life happens and you know, you got to take it at a pace that you feel comfortable with. So you got really serious about creating your own course in 2018. You know, took some time to educate yourself. Tell me when did you actually launch it? When was it ready to sell?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I launched my Facebook group and in like spring of 2019, and then I launched the course in in March of 2020, actually. Right. As a pandemic was starting. So it wasn't the literally I was in the middle of my, of my sales funnel, my sequence when everybody started going into lockdown. So it wasn't the ideal time to launch a course, but yeah, it's, it's still the thing it's still did well. But it was, it was exciting and it was like a learning curve just going through my first launch.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Okay. How did you launch it? Tell us a little bit more about those details.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Well, I first I really worked beforehand on like the prelaunch. So I, I developed a lead magnet line editing class. And I really focused on publicizing that class and getting people on my email list. And then I my Facebook group, I I really focus a lot on like friending other writers on Facebook and then sending them invitations to my group. And just talking about my free class in, on different, like writers' groups where they allowed like promotion on certain days and just really on having an audience to launch to. And then I had a I had some blog posts that I wrote that was sort of like in the prelaunch phase, you know, getting people interested, just kind of talking about different aspects of editing and sharing my own story about how I'd been overwhelmed by editing in the past.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
I created like a trailer for the for the class and put it on YouTube. And then I made some videos like take a tour, like give me a tour and then like a sample lesson. And at the time I was, I was, I wasn't ready to jump into Facebook live. And that was something I started getting into probably the end of last year. I started thinking, okay, you got to start going live. But I did start making videos and making YouTube videos. So I just kind of started with prerecorded videos. And then eventually I, you know, built up my courage and started doing more live videos in my group. So I started posting the videos on my YouTube channel, uploading them to my group. And then I had like a, there's a couple of week sequence where I had had all these templates and collected over the past couple of years of just different different emails that work well for a launch, like really hitting the pain points and making them, you know, understand why they needed the class in, in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I mean, most so many writers that are beginners didn't realize what the editing process was like. So I had a few emails that kind of just explained about the going back and forth and, you know, how, what the costs are. I had some slides showing like the editorial freelancers association showing the different costs of editors the different kinds of editors, like the average costs, like I think for a developmental mental editor where something like 45 to $50 an hour and in that could only be like five pages in that hour. So I think just showing those kind of numbers, help people to really people who hadn't started working with an editor yet made them realize that, Oh, maybe, maybe I shouldn't jump into this, you know, cause so many people just hit type the end and then a week later they're hiring an editor.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So it was just a lot of education in my blog posts and videos and email sequences. And then I had a limited time I had a sale and I had some bonuses. I contacted a lot of other service providers like cover designers and website designers. And they all came up with different bonuses, like cheat sheets for working with a cover designer or thinking of a cover concept or what to go into your author website. So I had a whole bunch of bonuses that I put like on a private password protected page if you bought during that, you know, joined two weeks you get access to that. So and then I just had like the reminder emails toward the end cause I'd heard. And, and I found that it was true that a lot of people tend to buy either right at the beginning or at the end, you know, in the last couple of days I thought that was definitely true. So I had a couple reminder emails, you know, on that last day and posted a lot of reminders on social media, like time is running out. So I found that having a deadline was really an important part of it because, you know, when you, when they saw that deadline, that's when a lot of the sales happened.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
And I think that's an important point. I mean, like you have to have for launches like that. You need to have a cart open and a cart closed date to kind of force that decision. So I like I like everything you said there and I think it's important for us to emphasize something that you did, which was building an audience before you launch. So you actually had somebody to sell to, I like what you did with your Facebook group and all the networking that you did. So you, you just made sure that, you know, and you went out to the right places, right? You went out to these writer groups and these other groups and you know, promoted your lead magnet. I think you had a really great lead magnet. So it's a writing course. Was it a course that's on like teachable or think of it or was it like an email course that you were providing people?
Speaker 2 (25:14):
It was an email course. I remembered that I had I had attended like a webinar on free email courses. So basically when I knew that I wanted to launch some kind of core, you know, a course, I started like a treble board where I just pasted like all kinds of information. So when I did, when I was ready to just start working on it and start working on like the marketing of it, I had all these templates in Trello and I had one for like launching like a, like a five day email course that would eventually, you know, we could transition them into your sales funnel for a paid course. So so it was, it's a five day course where they get emails delivered to their inbox every day. And it definitely a couple of introductory emails before the half a lesson start.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
And then there's like a bonus where they get like a cheat sheet at the end of everything they learned. And then I incorporated that into my Facebook group. Like I use the units a lot in my Facebook group. So I have a unit where the people who are going through the line, editing class can go into that unit and then post their homework. If like revise sentences, like a, like a before and after sentence, you know, they could post it and then they could be what other people that posted just to kind of help reinforce it. So I was getting a lot of great feedback on it, on the class people, to me, it was just like such an easy concept, but but for a lot of beginner writers, they hadn't, they didn't realize that they were using like the word look.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
How many times? Like one of the things in the class was check and see how many times were you using the word look and how many times you're using the word eyes? Like if you write fiction and a lot of people just couldn't believe how many times they were using it. So just so they felt like they were making like right there, that one small thing had a big impact on them because it was something that could just easily go on fixed now that they have their attention drawn to it. So that's what I tried to focus on what the course was. Like. I just pulled some things out that I was teaching in the line editing module of the full book and editing blueprint course,uand just highlighted them so that hopefully they would see a few things in their own manuscript that they could start working on fixing right away, you know, boards to cut out,uwords to improve.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
And I found that they really liked that because it was like actionable and it wasn't overwhelming. It was just little things that could, that made them feel that their writing was improving. And then I also had like a free book blurb toolkit, which was a sort of directed people to my Facebook group. Like if, if when I was promoting my Facebook group, I would just say like, if if you become a member of the Facebook group, you can go to the unit section and then there's a free book blurb toolkit, which kind of guided them through writing their back cover copy, or that product description you would see on Amazon. It just had like a sort of like a outline to follow. And I kind of take them through a little hunt on Amazon where they find other books in their genre, so that they can really hone in on the different approaches that other successful authors in that genre take.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
And then if I can guide them to how they can apply that to their own book blurred, regardless of whether they're, whether they finished the book or whether they're in the middle of it, or whether they're just thinking about writing a book. And a lot of them realize that, you know, like a misconception was that you have to wait for the books done before you write the book blurb. But I think by going through that that unit, they realized that just thinking about all of that really helped them to sharpen their idea. Because a lot of times, as an editor, I'll see a blurb that doesn't match what's in the book you know, and it just really helped them to tie it together. So I think just having those free resources that were simple things that they could start doing immediately to notice improvements sort of helped to kind of warm them up to purchasing the full class because they had already seen some progress.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
So you mentioned that you launched your, your first launch for your online course was in March of 2020. And I think we all remember what happened in March of 2020. I know I'll never forget because I was right in the middle of the virtual summit that I was doing and everything just, you know, the whole world closed down. Do you feel comfortable talking about your launch numbers and the price point of the course and tell us a little bit more, you know, in terms of the students that you had joined in your first launch?
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, I was going to sell the course of the regular price would be like one 97. And then the launch price was one 29 plus they would get the access to the limited time bonuses. So I did have a lot of people join. I think I'd make close to like close to $5,000 on not on that launch. Which wasn't as much as I hoped I was hoping for more, but again, it's not like it's a $1,000 course that I'm selling, you know? So I think for the amount of people that I had on my email list I probably had about three or 400 writers on my email list at that time. And then my Facebook group now has about 1500 members were probably at around that time. It was probably closer to like 600, 700 members.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
So I think for the audience that I had, I think it was, you know, a successful launch, especially when it was during a pandemic, because it was, it was felt awkward. You know, promoting something when we all were in such a state of uncertainty, but I was, I couldn't postpone it because I was already in the middle of it. So I did wind up wound up like extending the the price, like maybe for a couple of weeks after that. You know, I just sent an email. I think that, yeah, that's what I did was the last couple of, Oh, the only because it was just the start of this pandemic and people were, you know, a lot of people were kind of already are out of work or home for awhile. I extended the closed cart date for that price by a couple of weeks. You know, and some people were appreciative of that because they just been so distracted by all the pandemic news and everything. They weren't focusing too much on you know, on, on Facebook or their emails. And as they were home, they were realizing that they wanted something to do, you know, to fill up, fill in that time. So I, I, so I did wind up extending that the close cart date, just to give them more time to kind of assimilate everything with all that was going on. So tell me
Speaker 1 (32:25):
A little bit more, so you launched in March of 2020. Did you launch again last year or what, what was your plan or what did you do for the rest of the year with your online course?
Speaker 2 (32:37):
I had a black Friday sale where I think it was, yeah, it was like November and December where I had like a market to like one 19 and it was like, buy one, give it to a friend so that, that two people can enroll in it together. I was just trying something I had seen in that price point was really attractive for people. And I had a lot of people join, but I noticed that a lot of people didn't bring a friend. So I thought that was interesting that, you know, that they could either like, just give it to a friend as a gift or they could split the costs, you know, and, you know, one of them could just pay for it and then they could kind of share amongst themselves. So I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Cause I had seen someone else doing that and I thought, Oh, that's a great idea. I want to try it. So I don't think I would do that again because I, you know, I don't think like the buy one get one really was what was, what enticed them to purchase it. But, you know, having the fail, the discount and the deadline did help with that. And then I also launched another class around that time was early December called the energize, your writing toolkit, cheat sheets for character emotions. And that was something I'd been working on for a while, but it kind of got tabled because it was just so much work going into all the marketing of the book, editing blueprint. But that's like a hundred page PDF that I created that focuses on nonverbal communication and body language.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Like cause I it's just, a lot of writers tend to use the same body language or nonverbal communication phrases. Like she walked across the room or he smiled or she glared at him. So I kinda, I kind of broke it down into different emotions and came up with fresh ways that they could see this and, you know, just to kind of enliven the emotion in their main script. And then I create a couple of videos and some little assignments, so it's sort of a combination ebook and mini course. So I launched that in December and to like I had it on sale and you know, that did really well also. Yeah. So now does that answer your question? Yeah,
Speaker 1 (35:00):
That's perfect. So what do you see as next steps in 2021? What do you have on your roadmap? What are you planning on doing with your courses or the other side of your business that you're still offering with the services?
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So I'm still editing it, you know now it's probably one or two manuscripts a month right now and I might increase that down the link once I have my priority now is focusing on adding more courses. I did a launch it in affiliate program last summer. So my courses are hosted on Thinkific and I upgraded, I was on the free plan and I upgraded to the next level so that I can have an affiliate program. So I started seeing probably it didn't start seeing much traction on that until until like November, December when I was having those sales and then launching that new class, then I was seeing the affiliates sales coming in. So yeah, I have like a little email list of my affiliates and yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Tell us a little bit more about that. Where did you find them?
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Some people who have gone through the course,
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Like I offered them the opportunity to be affiliates and I have it right on my website, if you can be, you know, if you're interested in the affiliate program some like I'm on some different Facebook groups like a mom to mom, preneur kind of Facebook groups where they have different like collaboration threads. I would post, you know you know, have an affiliate program if anybody works with writers. And, you know, I had some people approach me who, who, who did other aspects of author services who were interested in being affiliates. And then I period up got a lot of podcasts and YouTube shows last year. And a lot of those hosts where like creativity coaches or you know, writers themselves or had, you know, a writing coaches and a lot of them became affiliates. So and I have like a whole list of contacts.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
I do want to approach, you know, again, I have a Trello board, but it just people I want to network with. So it just kind of start out with like following them on Instagram or Facebook and just getting to know more about them. And then sometimes I'll send out like a you know, an email just telling them about my program and seeing if they're interested in being an affiliate. I haven't done too many of those cold emails yet because I've had so many other things to focus on, but that is one of my priorities this year. It's just start building my partnerships and my affiliates because I think it's you know, it's a win-win situation. I offer like a 50% commission. So
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, it's definitely a huge bonus and incentive for them. I'm a huge fan of using affiliates to sell your online course. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
I think there's definitely a lot more I can explore with that. There's just, there's just so many different avenues, like small, small presses author groups other service providers or, you know, proofreaders copy editors, people who don't do the kind of editing that I do and, you know so I think it's just a mutually beneficial relationship that I definitely want to make more connections. And then I want to keep building my Facebook group. I'm working on deadline funnel right now. I'm in the process of testing out having a deadline with that, so that so that I'll be constantly like every day I'll be, you know, in theory every day I'd be launching book editing, blueprint to a new group of people who've gone through my line editing class. So I'm working on that and really excited about seeing where that goes.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
And then I have a tripwire, my energize, your writing toolkit. It's also, I have it set up as a tripwire on my site so that if, if, once they sign up for my line editing class, they'll get like a timer where they can get their toolkit at a discount for like 20 minutes. So that's something I just set up like last month. So I'm still kind of testing it out to see how that works, but just kind of trying different, different things and you know, seeing what seems to be the most successful.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Well, what I'm hearing from you is you're continuing number one to educate yourself, and you're also continuing to test and figure out what's working and what's not working because something that might work for me might not work for you. And, you know, you have to figure that out for, for your own niche. As our closing question here. What advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there who are working on growing their online course business? What would you say to them?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I think having a Facebook group was really effective for me and just building engagement in that group. Again, I started it before I had something to promote so that they don't just associate me with trying to sell them something. They, I think they associate with me with trying to help them. I genuinely want to help them. I have like weekly prompts, like a motivational Monday where they can kind of post their goals for the week and then a weekend wins where they can you know, share something they're proud of, or they can sh you know, share a link to their book. And then I use post planner as a scheduling tool where I just schedule like every, every few months, I'll just kind of find a bunch of like interesting articles, blog posts on other sites that I think would be of interest to them.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
And then I just schedule them so that I'll have a couple of posts per week. And then that way, if I'm, if I'm not constantly trying to focus on finding things to post about, if that's all sort of automatic, then I can really focus on engaging with them in the comments. And I noticed when I post videos in the group, especially live videos I'll see a correlation like to the people who are joining my email lists on that day, or, you know, shortly afterward, or I'll see an increasing sales. So I think if you're nervous about doing videos and Facebook lives, I think that's something you try to focus on getting over. That's something I've had to focus on getting over. Cause I'm very introverted, you know, writers just like the, you know, sit at their computer and write and actually having to go.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
It was very intimidating to me, but I think that I've definitely seen an increase in sales when I do videos. So that's something I'm going to be working on. It's just batching a lot of video ideas and YouTube ideas and just you know, I think that's a good thing to focus on and definitely having a good lead magnet like I did with the class, something that's really relevant to, you know, who your audience is, know who your audience is and know what their pain points are. And because I'm a writer and I've been through it so much, I really know those pain points. And then, you know, coming from the other side of being an editor, you know, I kind of opened my eyes to like how it, wasn't just me. I think a lot of writers to think who are going through something or, you know, having trouble with some aspect of the book, they think, Oh, it's something maybe I'm not cut out for this. Or they don't realize, you know, that so many other people have the same pain points that they do. So I think you just have to know what the pain points are for the audience you're working with and the product that you know, that you have the course that you have and be able to show them that you know, what they need, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Yeah, absolutely. Stacy, I know that I'm going to be checking out your resources. Can you let people know where they can find you?
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah. They can find my books that can go to Stacyjuba.com. And then if they're interested in my courses and editing, they can go to shortcutsforwriters.com and then if they click on the freebies tab, they can, that'll take them to where they can sign up for the five day line editing class, or if they want to go join my shortcuts providers, Facebook group, there's a link there.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Perfect. And I will make sure that those links are in the show notes. So everybody has it. Course creators. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you have any questions about Course in Box, which is offered on AppSumo, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or DM me on Instagram. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Stacy. We'd love for you to rate and review the podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.