What I Learned at CaboPress 2018

I am back from another CaboPress, and I am much more energized this time than I was last time. If you’ll remember, last year, I wrote a blog post about how CaboPress was the business conference that I needed. It turns out the timing was right again this year. I was going through a few things over the summer with my business, “Am I taking it in the right direction, and why are things so slow?” And then CaboPress happened.

Setting CaboPress 2018 Goals

My main goal last year was to figure out who my audience was. And Chris talked about that on the first day. I ended up getting ConvertKit the next day, and things fell into place well after that. A similar situation happened this year.

Now that I know who my audience is, I need to figure out how to talk to them. My goals for this year were finding or reevaluating my niche and getting the right message out there. I also wanted to focus on building authority in that space so that the people I’m targeting could trust me.

Price Communicates Value

Very similar to last year, the first few conversations that I had turned out to be insanely helpful. Jennifer Bourn talked about her courses and how we can offer higher-value courses. Most of my courses are below $100 dollars.

Based on some of the advice that Jennifer Bourn gave us, and then other conversations I was having, some of my prices missed the mark – they were not communicating the right value. This was put nicely by another host, Justin Wise, when he said, “When someone buy my course on how to create online courses, how much am I charging, and how long would it take for somebody who completes my course to get that money back?”

It turns out I’d have to sell one or two courses at max. So, I could probably triple the price of that course and show people, “This is the real deal. You’re going to learn some good stuff and make money from this course.”

Why Should People Trust Me?

The other thing that I came away with was that I’m not telling people the right thing. One example is my bio. My bio was, “Front-end developer, course creator, podcaster. “ Why should they trust me to teach them?

What that bio doesn’t tell people is I’ve been a college professor for ten years. Further, I have multiple college-accredited courses that I’ve developed. This is important for people to know if they want to take my online courses. I’m not some guy who decided, “I think I can make money off of online courses.” I have been doing this for a decade. I’ve got the pedigree under my belt to show, I have created courses that not only have been vetted by professionals, but they’ve got and the seal of approval for colleges like the University of Scranton to offer them.

Promote the Right Benefits

That is one of the big takeaways I had. The other is to make sure I get the message right on my online courses. I’m telling people what they will learn in my course. What I’m not telling them is the problem I’m solving for them.

Let’s take my newest course, my Build a Podcast Website course. I’m telling them, “You’re going to do this with WordPress. You’re going to learn how to make a podcast website with WordPress.” That’s not what people care about. Their problem is, “I have a podcast. I don’t have a website. Creating a website is hard.”

Solve Their Problem

So instead what I’m saying is, “You’re going to get a podcast website out of this course, and I’m going to show you exactly how to do it every step of the way. “ In my course, You don’t have to worry about choosing hosting, or configuring it, or buying the domain, or finding the right podcast plugin. I’m going to show you how to do all of that.

I Learned So Much More!

Those were my big takeaways. I have a ton of other things that I could talk about from CaboPress, like my conversations with Brennan Dunn and RightMessage, and how I’m almost definitely going to buy that very soon. It’s a tool that solves my exact problem, because it’s going to help me talk to the different people I’m trying to talk to.

I’m super energized, I’m excited to revamp my online courses a little bit, and I think it’ll pay off big time. Thanks again so much to Chris Lema for putting this event on, and for all of the crazy smart people that I’ve talked to over the last week. I truly believe it’s going to evolve my business.