Turning Your Creativity into an Evergreen Income: A Guide to On-Demand Courses

Lyric Kinard (00:02.35) Hello friends and welcome to Creatives on Camera. I'm Lerick Montgomery-Kinnard, your host. And today I would just like to chat a little bit about what an on-demand workshop could look like for you. You are a creative, an artist, a quilter, a crafter, somebody who makes things and loves what you do so much that you can't help but teach, right? It's that. you have that spills over into wanting to share the joy in what you create with your students. And we're kind of limited by our geography and by our circumstances sometimes, aren't we? I see all the time how we get tired of traveling and trying to find a venue and a place where we can reach our students, where we can share this gift. It's wonderful to be in the classroom with our people. It gives us so much energy to see when they get it, when they bring into themselves the joy of creativity that we know that they have. They have that creativity and we just help them access it. They get to make things. They get to bring beauty into the world. And my friends, especially... when the world is insane. We need beauty in the world. And that's what you do. You spread the joy of creativity and beauty that you create to students who then bring more joy and beauty into the world. So what you do is not frivolous. It is important, especially when the world is insane. Today I wanted to chat just a little bit about what an on-demand course could look like as part of your business, why you might want to have it in your business, what it can do for you, what possible outcomes are and possible structures, just so you have in your mind the possibilities of what this could mean for you. So what is an on-demand course? On-demand means so many different things. Lyric Kinard (02:27.022) There's a huge range of things that can be an on-demand course. Usually, it's evergreen content, meaning you create it once, you put it out there. So you are no longer trading your hours for every dollar that comes in. You teach it, you film it, you get it up where your students can access it. And then, The work for you evolves around either creating community or getting your gift in front of more people so they can access it. And that's what your course is. It's a gift to your students. It can be completely filmed ahead of time, put up on a platform, and then you can automate it. You can have marketing funnels. You can have ads that go to your landing page. You can send out emails to the list that you're always building, right? We'll talk about email lists another time, but they're very, very important. They are your most important marketing mechanism, your most important way to authentically connect with your customers. But you do have to continue to Get it out there. You create the course once, so nothing is ever completely passive income, but you have to mark it anyway, whether you're traveling or teaching on demand or teaching live Zoom classes, right? So it's a much smaller part of time than having the hustle for every time you teach a class. So it can be filmed and put there. All at once, your students can purchase it, access all of the videos, and that's it. You're good to go. Or you can put time limits on it. You can say, this course is all pre-filmed, but you only have access to it for a short amount of time. Why would you do that? It kind of depends for me, the way I've done that, on how much time you are interacting with the students. Lyric Kinard (04:49.472) In an on-demand course, can choose to interact as much as you want with the students who sign up or not at all. I have a broad range, a broad spectrum of on-demand courses in my business model. Some are short, pre-recorded videos that all add up to maybe an hour and an hour and a half or so worth of content. It's all how to do this thing with your hands. and the videos pretty much explain it all. So sometimes a student will post a question and I'll answer, but once they've been up for a while, people just scroll down and see the answers or here's the thing that's really cool with on-demand courses. If you get the same question over and over again, it's like, that probably should have been in the course. So you add it in, you make another video or you write something underneath the video. Lyric Kinard (05:58.092) Now, you could have a lot more interaction. I have other courses that are more thinky, right? The students need more feedback. I might be teaching them design and composition and they ask me a question or they post an exercise and they need feedback on it. Now I have chosen and you can choose entirely different to really be involved with that interaction, but. on those big courses where there's a lot of interaction and it's really thinky like that, I put a time limit on the amount of time that I interact. I give them the course material, the recorded and written content long-term because I choose to, but I put a time limit on the amount of time that I'm going to be interacting. It encourages them to go through the content. It helps them to... be engaged and really get something out of it. Or there are models where you have ongoing interaction. You can create a community outside of the video content, like a Facebook group. Many of the online course platforms have the opportunity for you to create a community, either for all of your classes or for a specific class. And you can participate fully in those. as long as you'd like to. It can be outside of the course, right? Or you can also have ongoing interaction inside an on-demand course. I have a lot of courses where people buy into the content and then I'll have a monthly Q &A session. It's a very viable business model for an on-demand course. All of them are. So you need to think ahead of time, how much time do you want to spend ongoing? Now all of them are going to need some sort of marketing. And when I say marketing, I don't want you to think, ick, salesy. I want you to think making a connection with the people that you want to serve, with the people who need that gift of creativity that you are offering to them. Lyric Kinard (08:23.15) authentic in what you have to offer in your desire to serve your students, then it's not icky pushy salesy. It's you offering a gift that will help their lives, that will help them be better and happier. Again, that's what you do as a creative, right? I want you to believe that you do make their lives better, happier. more creative, give them a moment of peace, give them a moment of joy, give them the opportunity to create something with their hands that they can see. It's such a beautiful thing. All right, so we've talked a little bit about different ways that on-demand courses can work. We haven't talked about drip content. So you can create a course. where everything's filmed ahead of time, but once they sign up, they get the lessons on a schedule. Like the first lesson as soon as they sign up, the next lesson a week later, or whatever schedule that you want it to drip out. That's called drip content. There's different reasons for doing that. I have used drip content in the past because I... think things forever in my head, but then rush to do it all at the last minute, right? So when I create a new on-demand course, often it's something I've taught for a while. It's not new. I know what I'm doing, but I haven't filmed it yet. So I will create a landing page. I'll have beauty shots and gorgeous photos. I'll create a quick introductory video that helps market the lesson. And I open registrations for a certain date. And then the first time this course opens, the lessons open one week at a time. And the students know that coming in. I make sure that my students understand all of my expectations, all of that, that we have the same expectations, right? For how long I'm going to be involved when the courses come out, how long they are going to have access to the course. Lyric Kinard (10:45.026) You don't want your students frustrated, and frustration always comes from some sort of expectation that they had that was unmet. So you want to be really clear about this, way up front. And so when I create that new course, I'm usually getting my lessons filmed and up right before it opens. That's not a recommended way for everybody to do things. But for me, that deadline and knowing my students are counting on me helps me to get the thing done. I'm very motivated by external deadlines like that. So that's the way I operate. You can choose to operate entirely differently. You could also teach a class live via Zoom and with your student's permission, record the whole thing, put it up and have that one long video as your first on-demand course. There are so many ways to get this going. Now, what is the vehicle that delivers your course to your students? Usually an online course platform. There are a ton of different course platforms where they've already built the structure. They have built like landing pages that you can just plug your photos and your information into courses where they have the lesson structure set up and you just plug in your information. And then you, they basically take care of all the scaffolding, all the structure around it. They set up the payment system. You don't have to do anything but create your content, plug it in, and use those links to get it out to your people. Now, some of the courses do a lot more than just that. Some of them, you can create a whole in-depth website and you can modify and customize every little bit of everything. Some of them offer marketing funnels so that you can... Lyric Kinard (12:55.064) for instance, have a free webinar that people sign up for. And when they sign up for the marketing funnel, sends them a series of emails as they go through the lessons and then leads them to your paid course. That's a marketing funnel. Lots of people at the beginning, it leads them to a certain outcome, which again, can be your paid course. I love platforms that have built in email automations, like the email automations and marketing funnel. Many platforms can do those automations for each course. For instance, when they sign up for an on-demand course, you can say, hey, great, thanks, hi, great to see you. You made a right choice. We're glad you're here. And then a couple of days later, you can send them, hey, did you log in? Are you having any trouble with that? Send me a quick note if you are. And what did you think of the first lesson? and then one, hey, the supplies that you need for this, did you know you can get them at these places and links? You nurture them through the course when they first get there. They can ignore it if they want, or it can draw them in and help build more of a relationship between you and the student, between what you have to offer and what they are looking for, what they want to receive. Lyric Kinard (14:41.74) Now when you're looking for these online course platforms, I want you to think about where you're already at. Do you already have a website? Do you already have an email system set up? So the course platform might not need any of those things if you already have them. In that case, you want to look for course platforms that will integrate with what you already have. I'm a huge fan of always using what you're already familiar with until it absolutely doesn't work for you anymore. Just get in the easiest way possible. And that kind of leads to the next thing or kind of the last thing I want to talk with you about. How do you actually get started? How do you begin this process? My personal preference that I recommend to anybody and everybody is what do you already know? What is so easy for you to pull out and teach? If I asked you in the next five minutes, teach me something. What do you already have supplies for? What do you already have examples of? What can you just spout off, talk about for 20 minutes straight? What do you already know that's so easy that you could do it right now? That's the perfect thing to start with. Choosing the easy thing, choosing the easiest entry. If you choose, I want to make this big giant class that teaches everything about everything I know, it's going to be forever before you get it done. That's just the truth of it. And often it never gets done. And it's kind of too big. It might be too big for your students to take in and you're generous. You want everything in there. So make a whole bunch of smaller classes. It gives your students easier entry points to come into part one, then move on to part two and pay you each step of the process. It's an easier financial entry point. It's an easier test out the waters to see if your personality is right for the kind of communication they need to receive. It's just easier for you. Lyric Kinard (17:06.37) to get that first class up and running, right? Okay, so what is the easiest thing for you to begin with? Next, just mess around with your camera, with your phone. Start videotaping things, turn it on. It doesn't even have to be a good video tutorial of what you're doing. Just prop your camera up and start talking to it. Talking through your things out loud is very different. than thinking through them in your head as you're making them. Whenever you are making something, turn on your camera and start talking through the process. You can take notes and say, I need to remember to hit this point and I need to remember to talk about this supply. But having your camera on will help you get used to it. Too many of us are awkward and afraid of being on camera. It feels different than just talking to our students. But the more you do it, the less it feels awkward. The only way to get over being awkward on camera is to be on camera more. Sorry, that's just it. You have to practice in order to do it. So practicing while you're just making something without the pressure of, I have to make a tutorial out of this, will help you be more comfortable. And remember, that you aren't talking to a camera. You are talking to your people. You're communicating to them through this magic, lovely, miraculous technology that allows you to be where you are and them to be in a different place, but you still get to communicate. You still get to share. You still get to give them the gift of what you have to teach. So find the easy thing, practice talking out loud. practice being on camera. Do these more and more often. Those are the things I recommend for starting thinking about what your on-demand courses could look like. Now the other thing that I think would be fantastic that I recommend to everybody is to join the Academy for Virtual Teaching. It's a free membership. Lyric Kinard (19:24.526) It's kind of like a Facebook group, but it's not Facebook. We're on our own safe, lovely, contained private platform. And it's filled with other creatives who are building virtual teaching into their business models. It's an open, safe, lovely discussion group with people who get it, with people who are like you. And they're at all different levels. We have beginners, we have advanced teachers who've been doing it for years, and everybody is welcome. We also have a whole library of business resource recommendations. We have monthly guest speakers who have something, some sort of knowledge that will help people who teach on camera in some sort of way, right? And there we also have... a course, the video making crash course that is a little more specific. If you need a little more technical help, what specific equipment to hold your camera, some really easy video edits. It's a quick and easy course designed to help you most efficiently, effectively create videos teaching what you want to create. It's not super in depth. It's meant to be easy to make this as easy as possible for you. We also a few times a year have the Virtual Teaching 101 free workshops where we go more into depth about the things that we're talking about today. So if you're in the Academy membership, you'll hear about it. So we invite you to join. You can find us at academyforvirtualteaching.com or A, the number four. VT.com for short. We would love to see you there. Hop in, introduce yourselves. It's friendly, it's wonderful. And again, it's a place where you can begin to learn how to share your beautiful gifts with your students around the world, no matter where they are, no matter where you are. So my friend, thank you for being here with me today. Thanks for. Lyric Kinard (21:51.084) chatting with me about on-demand courses. It would be such a huge gift to me if you were to leave a review to tell your friends about this podcast. Lyric Kinard (22:16.812) I hope you listen in next time too. Take care friends, goodbye.