#283: From College Dropout to $2 Million Digital Product Biz

In this episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I’m interviewing Molly Keyser, a digital product expert who helps people create more passive income with digital products.

We talk about her journey from dropping out of college to starting her photography business and ultimately creating successful digital products. Molly emphasizes the importance of solving problems for customers and building a real revenue stream from digital products.

Molly shares her experience of starting with low-priced digital products and how they helped her gain confidence and learn about product-market fit. She also talks about the success of her $59 ebook, which went on to sell over half a million dollars with no ad spend.

As the founder of MiloTreeCart, the easiest tool for online entrepreneurs to sell digital products, I found her insights on pricing and marketing strategies incredibly valuable.

Don’t miss this episode if you are ready to create and sell successful digital products and tap into a new income stream!

From College Dropout to $2 Million Digital Product Biz | The Blogger Genius Podcast with Jillian Leslie

Show Notes:

Intro (00:00:04) – Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast, brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Building a Simple Payment Tool

Jillian Leslie (00:00:11) – Hello my friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I’m your host, Jillian Leslie. I am a blogger and a serial entrepreneur. I build businesses online with my husband.

In fact, in 2009, we started by building Catch My Party, which we have grown into the largest party idea site on the web. If you need Father’s Day Ideas, printables, DIYs, head over there.

Next, we built our pop-up app, MiloTree. And when we built it, we had a philosophy that has informed everything we’ve built since, which is we wanted it to be simple.

And in fact, the feedback we get from our customers who use it, many of you do to grow your social media followers and email subscribers is you say, “Oh my God. I was able to install it on my blog in under two minutes.”

When we built MiloTreeCart, which is our new payment tool to help you creators sell digital products like digital downloads and memberships, coaching workshops, all of that we set out to make it simple.

I was on a call today with somebody interested in MiloTreeCart, and he is a coach and he helps people with depression. And we started to talk about different ways he could monetize with digital products.

And ultimately, I could tell that he really wanted to help a lot of people personally. And I said, how about setting up a membership? And he was all in. So. I showed him MiloTreeCart and he said to me, gosh, I don’t know, five, 10 minutes in I’m buying this.

He said, I love how simple this is. All of a sudden, it all makes sense to me. And the thing about MiloTreeCart is we give you guides for launching all different kinds of digital products, like do this, then do this, then do this, and boom, you’ve got a product.

And it was so satisfying because I knew that he wanted to be putting his message out into the world in a bigger way and didn’t quite know how and didn’t want to deal with all the tech headache.

And by getting on this call, I was able to explain it to him and he got it. And I think we’re going to talk next week so that I can help him launch this. This is resonating.

Please get on a call with me, head to milotree.com/meet, and we can talk about your business and how you can sell products and services to your people in the easiest way possible. All he kept saying is, I can’t believe how simple this is.

And honestly, I was so happy because he gets to go out there, make more money and serve more people.

For today’s episode, I am interviewing Molly Keyser. She is ready for it. A digital product expert. She is on a mission to help people create more passive income with digital products so they can create more freedom in their lives.

She has a really interesting story. She has grown a very successful business through digital products. And what I love about this episode is we go step-by-step in how to think about solving problems for your customer as they move along their journey.

She also talks about how building a real revenue stream from digital products is not about you. And I love that. So, without further delay, here is my interview with Molly Keyser.

Molly, welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast.

Molly Keyser (00:04:07) – Yay. I’m super excited to chat.

Jillian Leslie (00:04:10) – You are a digital product expert, but will you share who you are and how you got started and how you became this person who teaches people how to sell digital products?

Solving Problems for Customers

Molly Keyser (00:04:23) – I would love to. I feel like I’ve been on this long 16 year journey. I’m going to tell you guys the speed dating version. We both have lattes, we’re looking cute. I studied photography, graphic design and marketing in college.

And it was a lot of theory, a lot of teachers teaching things that they had never done these things. They had never had a business. They never taught me how to make money. They did teach me a lot of great things, loved my teachers, but the conversation was never around making money.

I ultimately dropped out of college to start my photography career because I thought, if they’re not going to teach me how to make money, I have all these loans and I need to start paying for this.

So, I started my photography business and within a few years I had grown it to six figures. And I had switched to predominantly focusing just on boudoir photography for women, which is essentially like a glamor shoot for women.

Jillian Leslie (00:05:26) – Did you have a studio and props and the whole thing?

Molly Keyser (00:05:30) – I had all of it. I was based in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, which is a little 60,000 person town. So to build a multiple six figure photo studio only with boudoir in a 60,000 person town was pretty crazy.

And so, as you can imagine, other photographers started asking me like, “How are you doing this?” I wasn’t doing any coaching or anything, so they would book photo shoots with me, just to pick my brain.

I very quickly realized, okay, I should probably do some coaching. So, I did a little bit of coaching, little workshops, which I loved, but I quickly realized, I’m already so busy with my service business and now I’m just trading more of my time for money.

I realized I was repeating myself to each coaching client because I was just teaching them my strategy that was working. I decided after I found out what online courses and digital products were, I first started out with a little guide on posing and a guide on lighting.

And I made a couple printables for how to partner with other businesses, just little things that I heard photographers were struggling with. And I was like, oh, I have strategies that work for these things.

Then I decided I’m going to package up all my coaching and workshops and stuff into an online course. And so, that’s essentially my journey from dropping out of college to beginning my online education career.

Jillian Leslie (00:06:53) – Your first digital product I guess was your one-on-one coaching?

Molly Keyser (00:07:03) – Yes, it’s interesting. I guess coaching can be seen as digital, but what’s interesting is my coaching people were actually coming to my studio in person. I guess as digital it was like a Zoom meeting.

I started with workshops and coaching, then little products, then courses, and now I help people to turn their passion into their own digital products.

Jillian Leslie (00:07:27) – When somebody says, “I want to start creating digital products,” the first question is, do they even know what that means? Do they say I want to make digital products? Or do they come to you and go, “I want to sell a course,” or “I want to sell an ebook?”

And then how do you lean them on the path to actually find that connection where they can actually make money?

Starting with Low-Price Digital Products

Molly Keyser (00:07:54) – Right now I actually have two different products. I have a course for people who want to make courses, and then I have a membership site for people who want to make low price digital products. And that’s really how I started.

I think the low price digital products, the purpose they serve is, you start to get those first sales, you get confidence, you start to learn your product market fit, which is very important.

And also, one of my ebooks I must have hit, what do they say, nail on the head or whatever, because that ebook went on over a few years to sell over half a million dollars with no ad spend. So it was pretty much pure profit, and it was only a $59 ebook. So, you can make a lot of money with an ebook.

The reason I’m sharing that is because I believe that that ebook was a very strong catalyst in my digital course sales, because people would buy the $59 ebook, they would get an amazing result with that.

And then that would make them really feel more comfortable purchasing a larger price digital like a course because they’re like, okay, if she can get me this result from a $59 product, I can’t imagine what she can get me with a thousand dollars product.

So yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there, but let me know more about the specifics that you were asking.

Jillain Leslie (00:09:14) – Again. It’s interesting because you were selling an ebook for, you said $59, whereas most people go, oh, I’m going to sell an ebook for $6.99. So, that’s interesting.

Like, cool, that you’re like, no, no, there’s real value here for people to purchase this. Where were you selling it to get customers? How did you get it in front of people?

Pricing Digital Products

Molly Keyser (00:09:39) – First I want to talk about the pricing. I love that question. And then yes, I’ll absolutely share how I’m getting in front of people, how I’m selling it.

What’s interesting is, because of my photography background, I was seeing other photography educators and I can’t think of one time I’ve seen an educational material for photographers. And keep in mind, I never looked on Etsy or any of those sites.

In the world of professional photographers, I never saw anyone sell anything that low. I never even knew that people sold $3, $6 things on Etsy and stuff until recently. So, I do feel like there are two different worlds.

I’m more in the world of you take your expertise and you package it and you sell it. And as far as how to price digital products, I always look at it as what is the value that they’re going to get from this thing.

For example, my $59 ebook, it was four photographers that had to book more clients. And some photographers, their average sale is maybe $300. My average sale is $3,000.

But as you can imagine, even if they’re on the low end of the spectrum and they’re making $300, $59 it’s like, oh, if I can at least make one sale, then this ebook will be worth it. So, that’s how I price things, is what is the result it’s going to get them.

And then what are they going to think in their head? They’re going to think what I just said, if I at least book one, like if you had an ebook for coaches and each coaching session was a $1,000, but your ebook was like a hundred, they’d be like, “Oh, I just put one coaching client and I’ll make money.”

Jillian Leslie (00:11:15) – Absolutely. For example, I’m a teacher, and I’m looking for a lesson plan for my second graders on math facts. I’m on a teacher’s salary and somebody is selling something, I’m going to pay $5, not $50.

Molly Keyser (00:11:37) – It’s interesting that you bring this up because I have a few students that sell to teachers and I’ll be honest, I think it’s a very difficult niche.

I’m not saying it’s one you shouldn’t do, but I’m just saying I find it to be very difficult because you’re essentially having someone pay for something with their own salary and they’re not going to get a monetary return on that.

This is a great time to bring this up. Not every return has to be a monetary return. It could be a reduction of stress, it could be happiness, it could be with teachers, almost like ego, but in a good way.

Like, oh, I feel like I’m a better teacher because I’m taking the time to really help my students. However, I do agree with you that typically those do need to be lower priced because they’re not going to be able to say in their mind, “If I pay $50, I’ll get $100 back because they won’t get any money back”

And so, with some of my students that teach teachers, for example, I have them research on how they can get school credits or maybe have the school pay for it. I just wish that teachers were paid so much more.

And so, I do think that’s a more difficult niche for sure. If you want, I can share now about how I actually get sales?

Jillian Leslie (00:12:55) – How did you get in front of photographers to sell this book?

Getting in Front of Customers

Molly Keyser (00:13:00) – Essentially the thing that actually really kicked off me selling digital products other than doing the coaching and workshops, I bought an ebook from another photographer and it was like my 20 best selling poses for boudoir, something like that.

And I remember it was $199 or something crazy for an ebook. And I remember thinking that was just astronomical at the time. And I downloaded it and it didn’t have any explanations on how to do the poses. It didn’t have any information. It just was the poses.

And I was like, seriously? I’m like, this is just 20 photos that I just paid $200 for and they’re not even photos of me. What the heck? So that’s actually what, because I was thinking, though I’m at multiple six figures, I don’t know enough.

And I think that our fear can set it and we can think we’re not good enough, but you only have to know 10% more than who you’re teaching.

And so, when I saw that ebook, I was like, if this girl can sell a bunch of random photos for $20, then I can certainly create an ebook that’s going to have the information and how to do the post and all that stuff.

What I did was I knew that in order to sell my digital products that I would need a following. This is non-negotiable. Non-negotiable. You need to have a following. And I know a lot of people, they want to go to Etsy or they want to pay teachers, or they want to go to whatever other sites are out there because they think that those sites are going to give them traffic.

I’m here to tell you, I, I have yet to see this happen. It’s not as easy as they make it seem. You still have to rank for search engine optimization. You still have to maybe pay for ads. You still have to do a lot of different things to get seen on one of those websites.

And my theory is, if you’re going to put that time and effort into it, put it into your own business because you will end up making so much more money. I see people teaching Etsy that are only making a hundred thousand dollars a year. I’m like, and you’re the teacher.

That’s crazy to me. You can make millions of dollars with digital products guys. I’m not trying to just blow smoke. When you grow a following and you help that following solve a problem with your digital products, you literally can build a six and seven figure business eventually.

What I did was I started a blog. I blogged every single week. Keep in mind, this was back in 2014, so I’m going to share what I did then and what I do now.

Every week I’m blogging, I’m posting in Facebook groups, I’m building my following, I’m pinning my blogs to Pinterest, ranking for search engines, doing all those things. And growing my email list.

I’m turning every blog viewer, every social media follower, all those people into email subscribers by giving them a free digital product in exchange for their email address. And then they could go to my website and buy digital products. Funnels weren’t really a thing back then.

And then also I did email marketing. So very quickly, what I do today, instead of blogging, I do YouTube because bloggings, it’s just a lot different. There’s no RSS feeds and things like that. But same thing. Build a following, grow an email list, sell those people a digital product that solves their problem.

Jillian Leslie (00:16:14) – So, today you’re working, if there’s one platform that you are focused on, it’s YouTube.

YouTube Strategy

Molly Keyser (00:16:21) – YouTube. Absolutely. I do a lot of things, but YouTube is my main long form. But I’m a guest on podcasts. I also have my VA turn my YouTube videos into blogs, and then we pin those on Pinterest.

We also take the clips for my YouTube videos and put those on TikTok and Instagram. I didn’t start with everything at once. I started focusing on one thing and then once I had the processes for my team to repurpose, then we could start to hit the other platforms.

Jillian Leslie (00:16:48) – And how many followers, subscribers do you have currently on YouTube?

Molly Keyser (00:16:53) – This is interesting. First of all, I started with a Facebook group for this business. I had over 6,000 people on my Facebook group. And I have about 20,000 people on my email list, but more recently I decided to not focus on Facebook.

I don’t think Facebook is the future. Their stocks are plummeting. In October of 2022, I just started focusing full-time on YouTube. What’s interesting, I only have 2,000 followers on YouTube. And what’s interesting is I get new email subscribers every single day.

Some of my videos have over a thousand views on them, like even once from last week. So, it’s a lot more about the views on the videos than the actual subscribers is what I found. Although obviously I want to grow my subscribers, for anyone doing YouTube, the views are more important.

Jillian Leslie (00:17:47) – And I’ve heard that it’s slow growing, but very powerful.

Molly Keyser (00:17:51) – Oh, for sure. It takes a while.

Optimizing YouTube Videos

Jillian Leslie (00:17:52) – And are you doing a video every week? Do you have that thing down to a science like your videos are, 8 to 11 minutes long? Are you optimized like crazy for YouTube?

Molly Keyser (00:18:09) – A lot of people, their strategy used to be very SEO heavy, which is still important. But what I’ve been learning lately is what’s more important, YouTube has changed and you want to now try to rank for the YouTube homepage.

I actually spend one half of my workday every Monday researching, planning my scripts, planning out what I want the thumbnails to look like, finding the tags, the keywords, the title, everything. And then one day a week I film the videos.

And I use a video agency called Vid Pros and I think it’s vidpros.com. And so, for $700 a month they do unlimited video editing and they do all my thumbnails, my clips of my videos and everything.

I essentially just do the planning and the video recording, and then they do all the thumbnail clips editing, and my VA is the one who schedules all the videos. But it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. YouTube is the most work in my opinion, but it also has the highest return on investment.

Jillian Leslie (00:19:14) – That’s interesting. So, it’s worth it for you spending $700 a month to bring new people into your world.

Molly Keyser (00:19:24) – Absolutely. And the people that come from YouTube are so much more likely to purchase something. I have the data, I use HIRO to track all of my data, where people come from what post, what platform.

The amount of people that come from YouTube, that purchase is literally astronomical compared to something like an Instagram post or a TikTok post or something like that. In my experience, I think every niche can be different.

Jillian Leslie (00:19:51) – I love that you’ve figured this out and that you’re in the details and in the data and figuring out where people are coming from.

Molly Keyser (00:20:00) – I love data.

Jillian Leslie (00:20:01) – And your conversions I think that’s fantastic. Let’s now talk about how you teach people to build a digital product empire. With MiloTreeCart, that’s how I think about it.

And I love what you were saying because I teach this way when you were saying, that first sale, let’s say it’s an ebook or it’s some sort of digital download that’s just the first rung on the ladder.

Ultimately if you can deliver with that ebook like you were able to do with your photography ebook, they go, “Oh my God, Molly is my girl. Molly delivers for me, I trust her.” It’s like before we press record and you complimented my lipstick and I’m like, “Here’s the lipstick.”

Like you can trust me, this is cool. If you’re looking for a lipstick, and so you know, we all have friends that we trust when they tell us to do something. And by being able to sell something at a smaller price point, but deliver.

We’re all looking for those shortcut people who you go, oh, right. I want to buy from you again because I know you can deliver again for me.

Building a Digital Product Empire

Molly Keyser (00:21:18) – You want me to touch on the latter product?.

Jillian Leslie (00:21:22) – Let’s talk about the latter.

Molly Keyser (00:21:24) – I want to start all the way from freebies because that’s really where it starts. I think a lot of times, back in the day you could put up a freebie that was just a PDF with a bunch of information in it and say, “Hey, to get this for free, put in your name and email.”

But here’s the thing, even though it’s free, you still have to sell people on it because even though they’re not paying money for it, they’re paying their time for it. And also if they downloaded and they think it’s crap, they’re not going to buy anything from you.

Jillian Leslie (00:21:52) – And they’re giving up their email address, which is inviting you into their inbox, I think it’s like inviting somebody into your living room.

Molly Keyser (00:22:02) – Oh, absolutely. And I feel like people almost protect their emails more.

Jillian Leslie (00:22:05) – Absolutely.

Molly Keyser (00:22:08) – I totally agree with you. What I’ve learned as of recently, what works best for freebies is done for your items. It could be a script, it could be a tool, it could be a calculator, it could be a workbook.

It needs to be a workbook. It would be more work, I suppose, than a done for you, but as close to done for you as possible. And I actually learned this from my friend Jessica Walman. She runs a Facebook ads agency.

What’s cool about her is she gets to see inside hundreds of different businesses of what’s working with their ads and what’s converting with their landing pages and everything. That’s where I learned that.

And honestly, what’s crazy too, is creating a done-for-you tool actually takes less time than creating an actual informational pdf.

One of my tools, for example, I did this YouTube video on AI and I said, there’s a freebie in the description below on all of my top AI tools. It’s just a list of AI tools and a Word document. I didn’t even design it or anything. People don’t care. They want the actual website.

And then another tool I have is just my process checklist for how to make 30 reels in one a day. People just want, done for you stuff. So, that’s the freebie. And if they’re impressed with the freebie, they’re going to be so much more likely to buy the next thing.

So next, if you have a low price digital product, again, I just can’t stress this enough, you can’t just make a product to make a product. You have to actually think, who is my ideal client? What is a painful problem they have? Not a nice to have, not a want a painful problem.

And can you do a nice? Can you do a want? Sure. Is it going to be a lot harder to sell? Yes. So I always get this question, it’s like, you can do whatever you want, it’s your business, but I’m just telling you what’s going to sell the easiest.

And so again, with my ebook, it’s what do service businesses need more? Clients. I don’t think there’s any service-based business on the planet that doesn’t want more clients. And so it was like, what’s my ebook going to help them get more clients?

Growing a Business

And my ebook, that half a million dollars, was only 13 pages, including cover and back, 11 pages. And it was hardly written. It was scripts, screenshots, templates, everything they needed to actually go and start posting to get these bookings.

So, then once you have some product that actually gets people results no matter what type of product you created. Whether it’s a template or a guide or an ebook, or a challenge or a course, no matter what it is, the first product you create, even though it’s going to get them a result, it’s always going to create the next problem.

Once you solve one problem, there’s always going to be the next problem, and that’s what your next product should be. With my ebook and my course on how to book more clients, their next problem was like, oh my gosh. How do I balance all these clients? How do I grow a team?

How do I scale? How do you run the actual processes of your business and how do you organize and all of those things. So, that’s pretty much the whole gambit. And oh, I do want to tell one little story with my last photo education business.

I had a mentor and you’re going to laugh because I was stuck at about $400,000 to $600,000 a year. And I know a lot of you guys are like, that’s amazing. I would love to be stuck at that much. But I like to grow. It’s fun.

And I wanted to see how much I wanted to be honestly a woman in business making over a million dollars a year. I think there needs to be more women like that . And I asked my mentor, I was like, I cannot get past this level.

And he said, “How many products do you have?” And at the time you get ready to gasp at over a hundred different digital products like printables, ebooks, that’s like I’ve done it all. And he’s like, “If you just go all in on the one or two that make the most sales, you’ll probably scale your business way bigger.”

Retiring Products

I actually retired all my products except for the ebook that was crushing it. And I took all of that into, and I made one roadmap course and we went from zero to 2 million a year in two years by being able to scale that product.

So, there’s something to be said about starting, trying things and seeing what works. And then there’s something to be said about focusing on what works and scaling it.

Advertisement (00:26:37) – I want to take a short break to say that if you are thinking about digital products but you don’t know where to start, go take my quiz, head to milotree.com/quiz.

Based on the personality questions that I ask, it will tell you whether you should start with a digital download, a paid workshop or coaching, plus it includes the six purchasing buckets. So if you want those right in front of you, definitely get this pdf. Head again to milotree.com/quiz.

And now back to the show.

Customer Journey

Jillian Leslie (00:27:17) – Couple things that I’m hearing you say. One, is it’s not about throwing things at the wall and hoping they stick.

It’s about thinking the process through of your customer’s journey and where the freebie ties into the low ticket item, which then ties into the higher priced item and maybe even the item after that.

Whereas it’s like, I’m not going to sell a coloring page of dinosaurs or I’m not going to give away like, hey, here’s a dinosaur coloring page and then sign up for my marketing class. Or then, purchase my healthy vegan cooking, my vegan cookbook. It’s like whoa.

Just because let’s say I do kids’ activities and I’m a vegan and I like helping people with marketing and then I put them out there and I go, “You choose your own adventure.”

Jillian Leslie (00:28:23) – No, your job is to be that cruise director or that person who is leading somebody on this path of success. So, that’s the first thing. You have to take some time to figure out what these steps are that makes sense from the perspective of the customer.

And I think that a lot of people I talk to, like you were saying, they have an idea of a product, they don’t even know if it’s going to sell. They’re just like, “Yes, I want to make this.” And it’s like, no, let’s take a step back.

First of all, see if it’s something people want. I talk about these six purchasing buckets, what you were talking about, something that either makes people money, saves people money, saves people time, moves them toward happiness, moves them away from pain or raises their social status.

And if you can even do multiple, get touch on multiple buckets, you’re onto something. And I think that moves you from a nice to have to a, oh my God, I must have this because I’m in pain and I want to get out of pain.

But it’s like you’ve got to take that time to really think through that ladder and make it make sense. And I think that’s where people fall down. I think the most important thing is also everything you just said.

First of all, agree and really thinking about who’s the person that you’re serving, because I do agree with you, I think a lot of times creating digital products can be really fun. And so, I think a lot of people are just like, I want to create a digital product.

But the thing that’s hard to hear is it’s not about you at all. And if you make your business and your digital products about you, especially in the beginning, no one’s going to care. And I know that’s hard to hear, but it’s just the truth.

Once you have a big following and people adore you, then it can be more about you. But in the beginning especially, people want to know how are you going to help them?

Molly Keyser (00:30:34) – And so like you said, you need to have a niche and you need to know what world you are in. But most importantly, who exactly are you helping? And for me it really helped once I did the coaching and workshops, it helped for me to think of, okay, who is my favorite client?

And then anytime I would create a product, I would literally just think about that person. I literally would create everything with that one person in mind. And that was super helpful.

And I feel like I know with my most recent, the business I have now where I help people with digital products, it took me a lot longer to get to that point of being able to picture that one person because there’s so many people you can help with digital products and courses, it’s not as niche.

Jillian Leslie (00:31:19) – Who was your ideal person and how did you hone in on that person?

Molly Keyser (00:31:24) – That’s an interesting question. I started this business thinking that my ideal client was me, who I was four years ago. Because that’s what everyone tells you. They’re like, “Your ideal client is who you were four years ago.”

I have to tell you with this business, that was not the answer for me because who I was so many years ago, it’s like I was a service provider who was very successful and had people practically knocking on my door for help. That’s not a lot of people .

And so, I started out trying to market to that person, but it’s just not a lot of people. There were not enough people that fit that basket. And so I think there’s something to be said for saying like, you are your ideal client, but apparently not always the case.

I learned after I really tried to help a lot of service providers in the beginning and that was really good. Except for, here’s the thing with service providers, they’re very busy . So, the thing that they struggle with is balancing their current business with starting a new business, which is possible.

I did it, but it’s very difficult. What I learned actually over time is I do help a lot of people, but my ideal client is someone who wants to monetize their following because that’s the person that I can get the absolute fastest result with, because they already have a following that we can monetize.

We can survey their audience, we can see what they need help with. We can easily decide what products to create. Can I help people with no following? Absolutely. We just need to start to grow your following and make sales at the same time. But who can I help the fastest? Someone with a following.

Jillian Leslie (00:33:03) – Let’s talk a little bit about courses because I feel mixed on courses. Tell me your thoughts on courses and why you think they’re powerful or what do you think makes a course successful?

Courses

Molly Keyser (00:33:19) – First question is, what are my thoughts on courses? Why are they so powerful? So like I said, first I started with lower price digital products. And then I went into courses and courses. Ever since I started them, they’ve made up about 80% of my business’s revenue.

And the reason simply is because you can charge more for them. In order to make so much money with a $59 ebook, you’d have to sell a lot more obviously than a $1,000 course. It’s as easy as that. And your course is close, is it? Close to $2,000.

The course I sell currently that’s a course on courses, which is kind of funny. It’s $900, it’s $1,997, but we sell it on sale for $997. Got it.

Jillian Leslie (00:34:09) – Talk to me then about why courses can be so powerful and so lucrative. One is you can charge more.

Creating a Profitable Digital Product

Molly Keyser (00:34:19) – And I do want to preface that with this is going to sound harsh, but you can’t take a bad idea and put it into a course and then charge, it’ll make money, right? It’s not about the course.

It has to actually be something that fits into a course because a lot of people ask me like, “What digital makes the most money? Or how do I know what digital to go with?” Think about what problem you’re solving and what is the best and how you’re going to teach that, and then what’s the best way to deliver that?

So, if the best way to deliver it is an ebook, but you’re like, I want to put it in a course so I can charge more. It doesn’t really work that way. The result needs to actually match the price .

But typically you can get someone a deeper, more profitable, I guess you could say, result. Because a course can go deeper because you have a combination of videos and downloads and sometimes even group coaching and things that can go into it.

So, for me, a course, the reason I like them so much is because instead of just having an ebook with one marketing strategy, I can teach an entire course on my whole marketing strategy for my entire business for photographers.

It can be all of my strategies versus just a one-off thing. And then I can charge a lot more for that. Something that I really like doing recently with courses is I like to enroll them in my course, get them that result. And then I like to have a backend membership.

A lot of people, they’ll say like, “Oh, the course is lifetime access,” which is fine, but you want to be careful with that. You don’t include coaching, that’s lifetime access because now you’re on the hook to coach these people forever, forever. A thousand dollars over five years is not a lot of money.

What I do is I say it’s XYZ to join my course, and then you get 30 days coaching for free and then it’s so much per month after that. So, when they join, we have a form they fill out, and I believe MiloTree does this.

Charging for Coaching

You can put in your information and then after the 30 days of free, it’ll start charging them monthly unless they cancel.

Jillian Leslie (00:36:40) – Got it. So, you’ve got a membership on top of that. I would say that I feel mixed on courses because tell me, I would tell you, couple things. One, most people, including me, don’t finish courses.

I like that you’ve got this whole back-end thing of like, hey, I’m holding you accountable because there’s coaching and there’s a program on the other side. I find in terms of courses that I’ve purchased, I start them, let’s say, and maybe if it’s a good course, maybe I get 50% through it.

I’ve read and heard that most people do not finish courses. And sometimes it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I go and you know what it does, it feels like work and I feel bad about myself. Like, gosh, I spent all this money on this course and I haven’t done it yet.

And then I feel bad and then I don’t want to do it because I feel bad. And so it sets up this weird feedback loop. So that’s like my vibe.

I’ve heard other people say this, so I say make sure that when you want to build a course that people are going to want to buy it and that it needs a little more preparation and research and recognition, like seeing if there is product market fit before you go spend.

I guess that’s my second point. I think people can spend so much time creating their course, having no idea if it’s going to sell because you weirdly feel like you’re working on your business. So, you come back in six months and you’re like, okay, I got it.

And I had already talked to people and they really wanted to buy it. And then you go back to those people and they’re like, no, not that much. Those are my thoughts.

And three, we live in this weird TikTok world where we want our information now in 15 seconds with just graphics on a TikTok and feel like our attention spans are shorter.

And so it’s like, oh, you really want me to sit through 30 lessons, even if they’re seven minutes each, like, oh, that’s a big ask where I could be on TikTok. No, I’m not saying learning the same amount as the course, but I feel like we’re weirdly now programmed to consume our content that way.

What are your thoughts about these things? So one, people typically on average do not finish courses. Two, if you’re making a course, you can get kind of distracted or get hijacked in terms of time. And three, just this idea that we want our content really quickly.

Molly Keyser (00:39:32) – Okay. Took notes.

Jillian Leslie (00:39:34) – . Oh, good. Good, good.

Molly Keyser (00:39:35) – I have so much to say about this. First of all, I googled it while you were talking and 15% of people finish courses. Here’s the thing though. What percentage finish ebooks? I’m going to guess probably honestly about the same amount. Maybe it’s 20%.

I think bottom line, whether you’re a teacher or an online educator or whatever, you’re never going to help a hundred percent of people. You have to get over that. It’s not going to happen.

What you can do though is you can create really good products that help people, and you can do your best to sell them because selling is serving. And when you sell them now they’re closer to achieving that thing.

Another thing you could do is make sure your course is actually good. Actually fun. Make it, like my videos in my course, profitable courses are five minutes or less. And I paid thousands of dollars.

You don’t have to do this, this is my fifth round of this course, but I paid thousands of dollars to editors to edit them, like YouTube videos. Very short, quick, like almost TikTok style edits to hold people’s attention.

The other thing you can do is charge a lot, when people pay, they pay attention. What I noticed was when someone pays $97 for a course, or if they pay $6,000 for a course, who do you think is going to be more likely to complete it? A $6,000 person.

Jillian Leslie (00:40:55) – I love that. I’m writing that down. When they pay, they pay attention. That’s beautiful. That is so true.

Tips for Building a Successful Course

Molly Keyser (00:41:00) – It’s so true. Because I’ve sold courses of all these ranges and when people pay a lot of money for something, let’s say you paid $6,000 for a course, you’re not going to forget that you bought that course. You’re going to think about it every day.

You might lose sleep over that course, maybe you told your husband about it and he’s like, “I don’t think that was a good purchase. Na na na.” Now you’re going to prove him wrong. You’re going to do everything in your power to make that dang money back. These are just things to keep in mind.

I’m not saying you have to charge that, but if someone buys a $2, digital product, they’re going to be very unlikely to use that digital product.

Next thing is, I totally agree with you. Too many people think that working on their course equals having a business. And I just want to shake them. What you need to do is to pre-sell your course. There’s absolutely no way around it.

I can’t even tell you guys how often I see this. I get messages, texts every day saying, “I made a course, it doesn’t sell.” Just because you make a course doesn’t mean people are going to buy it. Field of dreams, if you build it, they will come, very wrong.

First of all, he said the line in that movie wrong. Anyways, that whole quote wasn’t even supposed to exist in the first place. But what you need to do is pre-sell your course. So, you need to figure out who this is for? What’s the problem you’re going to solve for them? Build a little following.

I teach my students that they have no following to just build a little Facebook group, just a couple hundred people. And then you’re not going to cold message. You’re going to post some posts seeing who’s interested, and then you’ll message with them from there.

And you’re going to mention your offer. You’re not going to have made anything. You’re just going to mention your offer. So like, what does the course help with? What are the components? When does it start? You’re going to teach the first round live.

This is where people always yell at me and say, that’s a scam. I can’t sell something and it doesn’t exist. Funny. It’s the same as a workshop or coaching. There’s literally no difference. So it’s not a scam. It’s called pre-selling. And most successful businesses do things this way.

They sell things before they create them. It’s just like a Kickstarter. I actually call it kickstarting, that’s what I call it, kickstarting your course. You’re going to pre-sell it and then guess what? If nobody buys it, you didn’t waste a lot of time. You maybe wasted an hour making your offer.

Pre-Selling Your Course

And what you’re going to do is you’re going to keep tweaking it. You’re going to keep talking to people, you’re going to keep going until you figure out the product market fit. Then you will teach it live, then you will move on to the passive course that everyone dreams of.

There are more steps, I think, with courses, but the payout can be a lot larger because you can charge a lot more for it. I don’t believe I’ve ever made a course before selling it first. I’m pretty sure.

Jillian Leslie (00:43:54) – All my courses and how much, how perfect does my course need to be? You seem like you are very comfortable working with editors and you’re very telegenic and you’re a photographer, you understand lighting, how much do I need to sweat about the quality of my video and what’s the balance?

Molly Keyser (00:44:19) – So, even in 2021 when I started profitable courses, I had already eight years of making courses and experience and stuff.

And even though I own very expensive camera equipment, tons of lenses, tons of lighting, I’m using a ring light for this video. I just used Loom, L-O-O-M. I just recorded my screen. That’s all I did. I wasn’t even in the videos, I just screen recorded. That’s usually how I start every one of my courses.

I do the first round live where I add everyone who pays into a Facebook group and then I teach it through Facebook Lives. Then I’ll usually just do a screen recorded version.

And here’s the thing. I try to make my courses better over time because I know everyone wants to just create their course once and never have to deal with it again and sell it passively for millions of dollars and right off into the sunset. It’s not going to happen.

I hate to crush your dreams, but I just want to be realistic. It’s not going to happen. What is going to happen is you’re going to pre-sell, you’re going to make thousands of dollars, it’s going to feel great.

You’re going to grow your confidence, you’re going to teach these students, they’re going to love you, they’re going to leave you testimonials, you’re going to feel like a million bucks, and then you’re going to create the next version of that course. Then you’re going to teach that.

People are going to love it, but they’re also going to tell you, oh, well I had a question about this, or I wish there was a download for this, or I didn’t really understand this.

Revamping Your Course

And then you’re going to be like, oh, I bet I could teach this better here and here and here and here, and then you could redo your course.

I typically revamp my course about once a year. And yes, it’s a lot of work, but I’m also making, you know, like half a million dollars from my course. So, it’s worth it.

Jillian Leslie (00:45:58) – Absolutely. This has been so good and I love the fact that I was able to throw these challenges at you and that you responded to each one with a big smile on your face.

Molly Keyser (00:46:08) – Oh, it’s so fun. I love talking about this kind of stuff. Honestly, it’s been my dream to teach digital products for so long, but I wanted to stick with my photo education for a very long time. And I’m glad I did.

I think it made me a better digital product creator and educator. So, thanks for having me on. This has been so much fun.

Jillian Leslie (00:46:27) – If people want to reach out to you to see what you do, see what you teach, see your course, where should they go?

Molly Keyser (00:46:35) – I would like you to check out freedomcreator.co. That’s my website and I have lots of free goodies on there for you. I have a little freebie about AI.

I have freebie about Instagram reels. I have a free funnel and a free ebook template for Canva. Lots of freebies, so head on over there. I also have a YouTube channel and I’m somewhat on Instagram but Molly Keyser on all the socials.

Jillian Leslie (00:47:00) – Awesome. I just have to say, Molly, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Molly Keyser (00:47:05) – Thank you for having me.

Upsells and Sending People on Journeys

Jillian Leslie (00:47:07) – I hope you guys like this episode. I love Molly’s energy, her willingness to share and her willingness to really give people actionable tips.

What I thought was so interesting was how she thinks about courses, how she thinks about charging for courses, and how she thinks about courses as a way to get people into her funnel so that then she can upsell them with a membership.

And in fact, this is something that I’ll be talking a lot about, which are upsells. How do you send people on journeys and get them to spend more money? So, with MiloTreeCart, we just rolled out the ability for upsells and I’m very excited about it and people are starting to use it.

If this sounds interesting to you, again, get on a call with me, go to milotree.com/meet because I would love to meet you. And if you want the digital product quiz, go to milotree.com/quiz and I will see you here again next week.

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