Welcome to the first Ask Me Anything episode where I answer listener questions about Course Creation.
I am so excited to answer your burning questions and in this episode, we touch on
I can't wait to dive in and answer these questions about courses. If you ever want to submit a question for an upcoming 'Ask Me Anything' episode then you can do so over at the Fearless Female Collective website on the contact page.
Or you can send me a DM on Instagram or Facebook.
Important links
Connect with Nicole on Instagram @fearlessfemalecollective or Facebook @fearlessfemalecollective
Welcome to the first Ask Me Anything episode where I answer listener questions about Course Creation.
I am so excited to answer your burning questions and in this episode, we touch on
I can't wait to dive in and answer these questions about courses. If you ever want to submit a question for an upcoming 'Ask Me Anything' episode then you can do so over at the Fearless Female Collective website on the contact page.
Or you can send me a DM on Instagram or Facebook.
Important links
Connect with Nicole on Instagram @fearlessfemalecollective or Facebook @fearlessfemalecollective
This is the Fearless Female Collector, a podcast for aspiring entrepreneurs to launch and grow a thriving business while fearlessly mastering your mindset so that you can make more money, have more time, and have a little bit of fun along the way. Let me help you create a life and business you love. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Fearless Female Collective. My name is Nicole, your host for this evening and founder of Fearless Female Collective. Today is, and ask me anything. Episode I've been compiling your listener questions. And so today I'm going to be asking, answering a few of those. I'm really excited to jump right in and answer all of your questions this week. Before we jump on into this week's episode, we have a free course creation starter kit that's available for anyone who is interested in creating a course or program for their business in 2023.
You can grab your free copy over@fearlessfemalecollective.com and um, up the top you will see a little area for you to download a copy and I'm really just here to help motivated women just like you to build their business, to make more money and also to create a life that they love. And my aim in life is to create a safe and inclusive online community for women so that they can create an abundant business and life, uh, on their own terms. So I would love if you could jump over to the website and you can grab your copy of the course creation starter kit and you can also have a look on there and see ways that you can work with me. And if you need help with course creation or anything to do with your website and digital marketing, I'm your girl. So you can, um, jump over onto the website and find a little bit more about the collective and how I can help you in your business.
And it really doesn't matter what level you are at in business. I'm gonna be there the entire step of the way. Whether you're starting your business, whether you're wanting to grow your business, or whether you're wanting to master your mindset, uh, that's what we're here to help you do at the Fearless Female Collective. So without any further ado, let's dive into this week's episode. The very first question is from Mia from Sydney. Now Mia asks, what software do you use in order to create your content for your course and membership? Thank you so much Mia for your question. Now, I have kept the majority of my content fairly lean. I really only have a limited number of software things that I'm using. The reason for that is because I just wanted to keep things fairly simple. I didn't want to overcomplicate things. So in terms of software that I am using, let's start with.
So to creating the content, what I do is I have my Blue Yeti microphone. That is the very first thing. I actually started off with the blue snowball microphone, which was also really good and was a really great entry product. It wasn't overly expensive, but the quality of the audio was was fantastic. I find that the Blue Yeti, the quality of the audio is a lot better, but if you're just starting out and you really wanna keep your cost down, the snowball worked really, really well for me. It's really just down to personal preference and also budget. The next piece of software that I use is a Screencast software, which is called Camtasia. I use that it allows me to, uh, record my screen so I can create presentations, record over that, and then talk while I'm doing the presentation. It also has the option to do the screen record plus show my face or you can, um, turn the Screencast off and only record yourself as well.
That is a really great piece of software. I find that it's fairly cost effective in terms of how much it is for the year and you can basically, like I purchased mine back in 2019 and I've really just only needed to upgrade recently. Um, so I think I've paid, yeah, look, it's very, very minimal. I think the, the renewal in Australian dollars is like roughly $200. Um, a little bit more perhaps. Um, but yeah, I mean I really only renew when I need to. Some people will renew every year. They do release an update every single year. Um, but I mean there's other really great screen recording, uh, systems as well, including Loom. That's another really good one to use. But I've just been using Camtasia for a really long time and I even use it for this podcast as well. I find that the um, editing system, amazingly easy to use and it's quite intuitive.
It has quite a lot of features for the money that you pay. So that's the second piece of software that I use. So to actually create the presentations themselves I use, um, I alternate between either Canva or Google Sheets or Google, um, presentation actually. And I find I just find that Google presentation super simple to use and you can just like, it gives you quite a few different layouts, but particularly if you're religious using bullet points, I think that that is sufficient enough and it allows you to go into presentation mode, which takes up the whole screen of my computer, which I just find really easy to use. Canva does that too. It's probably just, um, I'm very used to using Google Drive and using all of Google Docs, Google presentations sheets, all of that. I'm just very used to using those, so I've just continued to use that.
But Canva is another brilliant option as well. Well then when it comes to my actually selling of the course, I was previously using Kajabi and I think that that was a really great product for course creation. The only thing and the reason that I changed from Kajabi back over to I'm using now WordPress with Access Ally is I just find that gave me a a lot more flexibility because I also have, I don't just sell course courses, I have the membership to, so that just gave me the flexibility to be able to create, um, certain modules that are sort of reused. For example, in my SEO course, there's a couple of videos that really touch on keywords. So then within the membership we created like a keyword bundle. And so that works really, really well. It just gives me a lot more flexibility, whereas within Kajabi, I would have to recreate it.
And I just find, I mean I'm obviously web design based, so for me I'm just very, very comfortable using WordPress and I love the flexibility that that gives me in terms of the design as well. And now Kajabi is an amazing platform. I mean, most of the platforms for course creation are great, but because I wanted one to silence between course and memberships, I've found that WordPress just did that a lot better. But yeah, I mean I was actually really happy with Kajabi and there was really no problems at all. It was just a personal preference for me. The final piece of software that I'm using is for email marketing. I use an active campaign. It's a brilliant email marketing system, particularly for the cost compared to the features that you actually receive in that it is still quite a lot more expensive say than using something like MailChimp.
The flexibility around the tagging system when people purchase is just a really, really easy system. I run all of my businesses on Active Campaign and I've literally never come across any issues. The campaign area is super simple to use when I'm running, like wanting just to send out like broadcast emails. The automation software is phenomenal and there's so many different ways that you can actually set your automations up. Yeah, it just works really, really well for, for what I need. I mean there the other one that if I was to the other one I would say that is a close second to that would be Convert Kit and I have looked at that previously, but it's just such a big job to move from active Campaign over to Convert Kit that I'm just gonna stay where I am. So then my five tool tools that I use to create my courses and yeah, they're just, I would highly recommend, and again, these are the tools that work really, really well for me.
Obviously you are gonna find tools that work really well for you, but these ones are my personal favorites and just have worked really well. The next question from the audience is from Sarah who is in Brisbane, and her question is around Facebook ads. And Sarah wants to know whether you need to dive straight into Facebook advertising to promote your course or whether you can promote your course using other ways. So this is a pretty big question and is it's going to be very, very personal for, it's going to be very, very personal based on your market and also based on where you are at within your business. Now there are some markets that Facebook adss are probably just not gonna be a good fit, and there are going to be somewhere Facebook is just gonna work amazingly well. For example, like the fitness industry, uh, the Facebook ads seem to convert really well.
Same with digital marketing. They, they tend to convert fairly well as well. What I tend to do with Facebook ads is actually more, I do this for more for my list building and one of the things that I'm gonna be really trialing in 2023 is the using a funnel with a low priced offer. Let me step back. So previously in 2022, what I was doing to build my list was I had a Facebook ad running and it was for the course bundle that I have, which is my freebie. That worked really well. The conversions, um, were were amazing, but in terms of then converting from them going onto the list and then actually purchasing the course, I have found that the transition from like giving away the freebie to then selling was a little bit harder to do. So what I'm going to be transitioning into into 2023 is going to be a, an evergreen funnel.
Now, this isn't going to be all of my courses, but definitely for my membership, for the collective membership and also for the WordPress course and the SEO course that I have, the three of those are going to jump go onto an evergreen funnel. Ideally, what I'm going to be doing is, particularly with the two courses, will be having a lower priced ticket item. You've probably seen those ads going around that you know, where it's like $9 or you know, $19. There's quite a lot of like $30 products that like are really just, um, I guess a gateway into your courses. So I'm going to be trialling that and um, I will keep you updated as to how that goes. But the idea behind doing that is that when you are creating your Facebook ads and then people are then converting into these smaller sales, they are basically paying for your advertising and helping you grow your list and also then that transition then they've already purchased from you and then going into your list where you actually have a larger offer.
And I guess the best way to think about this is that the lower cost offer is going to be something that naturally flows into my larger course. So that's something that I'm gonna be working on this year and absolutely like it definitely works and it's a really good strategy to use if you are really just starting out and you don't have the budget, you don't have to go down the road to Facebook ads. It just means that depending on how visible you are on social media and what you're doing in terms of marketing the course, it can just be that the growth of your course is going to be a lot slower. And this question is from Kim from Sydney, and Kim wants to know how I plan out my year and the launches that I'm going to be doing throughout the year. And this is such a, an important question.
So many people want to know this. Now, what I generally do is I actually, I get this planner out, it's actually from Kmart and it like a 12-month planner. It's literally when you open it up, there's one month on the first two, like each page essentially, or like it spreads over the two pages. So it gives me a fairly large month-to-month diary. Um, it's very small, it's like a, just a four, there are only 12 pages or so in it. So it's relatively easy to use. And what I do is I go through that now. I have kids, I've got four kids. I need to be very planned around when I'm gonna be launching and when I have, you know, time to do the course creation and when I'm actually gonna be doing things around my children. What I do is, the very first thing is I go through and I look up all the school holidays for the year and I met them into my diary.
Now it's not that I'm not working during those times, but what I also then like to do as part of that is work out what weeks over the year I'm gonna take off. Um, for example, over Christmas I take off usually from say the 20th of December and usually come back around the 10th of January. So that's roughly around the two and a half, three week mark that I know every year I need to be taking that time off. So launching for me is not going to happen over that period. And I also then like to take at least one week in the middle of the year and usually a couple of days here and there across the rest of the year. So that means I need to factor in four weeks worth of holidays and they go straight into that calendar before I do anything else. I also like look at public holidays.
I then map them out. I have like my highlight is and I color code so that I'm really aware as to, you know, what is what, for example, like orange relates to my, the holidays and the kids when they're on holidays as well. Then from there, I have map outs, I've got my three courses, I have Create Your eCourse and I have the Beginner SEO course and I have the Build Your Own website. So what I would like, what I generally try and then do is I map out when I'm going to be launching the programs and I look through the diary and workout roughly when I want to do that. So create your eCourse even though it is open, you can purchase that all the time. It is a, all of my courses are Evergreen. I keep them on Evergreen. However, what I want to do this year is I will be doing two launches of Create Your eCourse and I will probably do one the other ones as well.
So one for the WordPress course and one for the SEO course, and I map that into my calendar as well. So then I know in the lead up to those launches and I've given myself enough time roughly around the six-week mark out, I really need to start talking about those individual, uh, course topics. So for example, in the end of February, we'll be launching Create Your Recourse. And so from now until then, the content's really going to be heavily focused around Create Your Recourse. And then probably around May, we are going to be doing a launch for the SEO eCourse. Now these are gonna could change, um, I did say previously when I answered the other question that these are really going to be having like an evergreen funnel with the low cost offer and then following into the course. So depending on how that actually goes, I may even change that and not do a live launch.
But for now, I have mapped it in my diary. And the best thing about doing that is like I know that even though we're we're launching Crate course in Feb, it's then gonna take me, you know, seven to nine weeks to deliver that because we do like live calls within that as well. So that will take me up roughly around the end of April. So I absolutely need to be very mindful and that's kind of gonna cross over if I was to do May. But the content in terms of like the launch for the SEO course would not be until May. So I know that I would be okay to be, be able to deliver the course and then also then launch the next round. Now it is going to be quite draining to, to do that this year. I have some pretty big goals that I wanna achieve.
And so this is just where I'm looking for now. And then basically we'll be doing the same within the next six months after that. Now the SEO e-course runs itself like I don't necessarily need to deliver live calls. All we will be doing for the other courses is that we have one live coaching call every month, and that's for the membership and the other two courses. So any other topics we basically cover within that coaching call for the month. So that keeps that side fairly, fairly simple, uh, which is really good. And obviously what I'm really trying to do right now. The other thing that I do with the membership is we know that at the beginning of the month, we have a Thrive bundle that we release. And so I have planned those out so I know when they need to be going out.
They're in the diary under another colour. And then as part of that, I also then have my web design business. So that is mapped in. So my email newsletters, when they're going out, everything is colour coded in that diary, so I can pretty much pick it up and look at where I'm going. And then from there I can plan it out and send it out to my team. So that's kind of how I map my whole year out. Um, it <laugh>, it probably sounds a little bit complicated, but basically, it comes down to mapping up my personal time, mapping up my launches and then breaking down into smaller tasks throughout the month. So like email newsletters, um, my podcast episodes and, you know, content creation that I know is going to be flowing into those launches. So I hope that's helped. If you have any questions, um, feel free to ask me.
And we also cover a lot of this in the Create Year Course program if you are interested in that. We are doing a live launch in Feb, so keep an eye out for that. Now that's it for this week's episode and the end of this week's. Ask Me Anything episode. If you have any questions for an upcoming Ask Me Anything episode, you can jump onto the Phyllis email collective website, jump onto the contact page and send me an email. You could also send me a DM on Instagram or Facebook. I'm on both of those places at Fearless Female Collective. If you are interested in grabbing a copy of our course bundle, you can do that www.fearlessfemalecollective.com/bundle. It's a great download. It gives you a checklist, it gives you a module planner and anything that you really need to get started and a blueprint of the certain things that you need in place to create your course, um, it's a really great freebie. Um, I absolutely love it and I think you'll love that too. But you can jump online and grab a copy for yourself and feel free to share that around to anyone else who you think may be interested. And thank you again for tuning into this week's episode. Feel free to like us on Apple Podcast and the Spotify network. We absolutely love when you leave your feedback that really helps us to get the podcast out to more people. I will see you next week for another episode. Bye for now.