A number of bloggers have asked me to write my reflections on being involved with running the Six Figure Blogging course over the past couple of months. Yesterday Andy and I did the last of six calls and today I’ve been reviewing how I felt it went.
While there are a handful of things that I think we will do differently in future runs of the course – overall I’d have to declare it to be a success on a couple of levels.
Business – Firstly it was successful in a business sense. We had 1100 or so people sign up for the free preview call (which indicates it’s a pretty popular topic) and 80 or so enroll in the course. This exceeded our expectations and made doing it worth our while. Some have commented that we must be rolling in cash as a result of it – I would encourage them to remember that half of the fees were paid to affiliates, there were then expenses of calls, transcripts recordings etc and that lastly Andy and I shared the revenue.
I’m not saying we made a loss or anything – it was worth our time – it just wasn’t at the level that some have written about :-)
I would also add that while it was worth while it was also a lot of work. Between preparing content, answering questions between calls, proof reading transcripts, keeping the course blog up to date with content and moderating comments – it was a pretty busy six weeks on top of my normal schedule. It was definitely fun – but not something to be entered into too lightly.
Learning – Secondly after hearing the feedback we’ve heard so far I’d say that the course was a pretty successful learning experience for all concerned. Some of the feedbck that we got at the end of yesterday’s call was pretty amazing. One person told us all that he’d put some of the principles into place that we mentioned in the first two weeks and in doing so had paid for the course already. THAT is what the course was really all about so I was pretty satisfied that we must have done something right. I also learned a few things – not only about running a tele-seminar course but also about ProBlogging.
Where to from here?
This is something that Andy and I have talked about quite a bit. As you’ll see on the course home page – we’re now working on a home study version of the course. This is in response to the many people who have expressed an interest in participating but who couldn’t afford to participate in the live version. We’re yet to set a price but expect it to be in the vicinity of half of what the live course is. Cheaper because you don’t get the interaction of the live calls, but still covering the same content that we did over the last six weeks.
Andy and I are also hoping to run another live and updated version of the course early in 2006 for those who want a more interactive version. We’ve also even talked a little about a live in person intensive version of the course somewhere in the US next year if we can find enough people who would be interested in coming to spend a day or two with us.
I think it would also be a pretty safe bet to see Andy and I working together on some other similar products in the year ahead.
If you haven’t already signed up for the free preview call of the course you might like to do so here. It will give you a free hour long preview call but will also include you on an email list that will announce when the home study version and any new courses are ready to go.
