The solopreneur business owners I know who are really crushing it – $500k+ personal incomes – have an email list full of customers that love them and/or their products.
LOVE them. Not just like them.
(Note: You can make a lot of money as a shady person with terrible products, but that sucks and I have no interest in discussing those businesses.)
Having a customer list who loves what you do is like having a cheat code for business success.
The way that you create a customer list that loves you, when you’re selling digital courses, is by creating course content that’s addicting to consume.
"Addicting" content is simply defined as content that:
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Gets people to instantly open anything they see from you, and read through it all right then and there, start to finish.
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Influences people to buy whatever’s being sold.
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Bonds people to you and gets them to recommend you to their friends because your "stuff is so good", different, or eye-opening.
An easier way to put it: when someone finishes reading your content, all they should be able to think to themselves every time is, "I f#@king LOVE this person."
Being able to whip up addicting content quickly is good for everyone involved. It’s obviously good for you because you’ll generate more course sales. And "addicting" content is a healthy addiction for customers because they’re starved for quality information in today’s world where the average marketer is trying to pass off weak and generic AI generated content as revolutionary. (Your customers can see right through that junk.)
On top of all of that, creating "addicting" content actually becomes fun over time.
Once I learned how to do this myself, I started looking forward to writing marketing & course content (instead of avoiding it at all costs) because there’s a genuine high when you write something you know your audience is going to love and use.
I also get a high from actually having a line-up of killer courses customers pay me money for. Nothing feels as good as the "you have a new sale" email that rolls in every time someone signs up for one of my courses.
So let’s talk about making that happen for you.
I want to show you 3 easy-to-use strategies to add to your course content that will make it addicting to consume.
These are three parts of a broader strategy I call the "Value Snowball" – something I’ll be covering in more detail in Email Delivered Courses (more on that in a moment).
Strategy #1: Use The Why/What/How/What If Framework
Long ago I learned a simple system from Jason Fladlien (genius marketer) that changed the way I write content.
It’s called Why/What/How/What If.
The idea is simple: different people learn in different ways. Some people only learn if they know why they’re learning something. Other people just want step-by-step instructions (what to do). Others only want to know how they might mess up implementing the steps (how to do things right). And some just want to know what kind of results to expect if they do it right.
So if you cover all four, you’ll cover everyone’s learning styles – and, as I’ve found, make your content vastly more powerful to your readers.
This will be covered in MUCH more detail in Email Delivered Courses, but the basic idea is…
Start with WHY
Open your lesson with, "If you do what I’m about to show you, you’ll achieve [dream outcome from completing this step]".
Then tell them WHAT to do
This is simply giving direct, step-by-step directions. "Step 1: do this. Step 2: do that. Step 3: do this other thing."
Then tell them HOW to overcome any issues they run into
Typically people mess up on the same steps for the same reasons, so coach them through those errors and how to overcome them. "Where most people mess up on step 1 is they don’t do [xyz]…"
Then let them dream a little bit with WHAT IF…
Meaning, "if you do this right, you’ll [have more money / be happier / sleep better / etc.]" Let them dream a little bit about how their life will improve by following your lesson.
Not only will following these four steps make your content 10x easier to write, but it’ll feel 100x more valuable to the people consuming it.
Strategy #2: Be Opinionated
People are desperate and starved for opinionated advice they can trust. We live in a world of "it depends" which is very frustrating for someone looking to solve their problems.
The way to have a strong opinion can be oversimplified to this: be as specific as possible in your advice.
Remove as many options and ambiguities as you can.
Name the exact numbers. Name the exact websites, tools, and companies to use. Make your step-by-step instructions extremely clear with no room for gray area.
And use the rule of one: there should only be one promise and benefit per lesson in your course.
For example, a strong opinion:
"If you need an autoresponder, sign up for Active Campaign".
And a weak opinion:
"There are all sorts of email service providers that you can use. Go do some research and figure out which one fits your needs best."
Your customers give you money because they desperately want their problems solved, and when you waffle around instead of giving strong & opinionated & definitive answers, they get frustrated with your content – and, by extension, you.
It can actually feel a little weird at first to give your customers only one definitive option for solving their problems instead of telling them "here are 15 options and choose what works best for you" – but once you see how much your customers love having a single strong opinion given to them, you’ll never go back.
Not to mention your customers will get WAY better results because they’re far more likely to take action on the one option you’ve given them instead of getting lost in the details of 15 possible options.
Strategy #3: Cliffhangers
This one is stupidly simple but so, so, so powerful.
You can do this with "traditional" course content (lessons in a members area or chapters in a PDF) but it’s most effective when you’re using email because of the anticipation it creates.
(We’ll use email for the examples here but you can also pretend you’re simply adding this to the end of a module in a members area.)
This is simply telling your readers (at the end of a lesson) you’re going to teach them a simple Method, Strategy, System or Concept next, and then include what the benefit of learning that Method will be.
"Tomorrow I’ll show you [Method/Strategy/Concept]. This [Method/Strategy/Concept] will help you {insert simple benefit}."
Check out my email from yesterday. Here’s what I wrote:
"Tomorrow I’m going to talk about 3 drop-dead simple ways to create course content that’s addicting to read (and that will get customers great results while ensuring they buy other things from you in the future).
Whether you build an Email Delivered Course, or go the more "traditional" course building route, you’ll want to read this."
This is simple but it basically forces your customers to read on to the next lesson. It’s a bit click-baity, but in an ethical way.
Like I said – this is so simple. Stupidly simple.
But so few people do it.
Doing it creates an excitement in your readers that they then attach to you and your content, so just put it in every lesson you write. You’ll be shocked by the results from this one simple trick.
But there’s one other thing that will take these strategies to the next level.
And that is writing & delivering your course over email.
Now I don’t recommend you create EVERY course as an Email Delivered Course. I don’t, personally. But:
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I truly feel it’s the single easiest course creation hack if you’ve been struggling to write a course that customers will love. You write your course "on demand" in small bite-sized chunks one day at a time with live feedback from customers who paid you before you write a word of the course – all of this makes it SO much easier to get things done (instead of procrastinating endlessly).
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And I also feel every business needs at least one Email Delivered Course in their line-up – because customers absolutely LOVE them, and they build the "holy grail" of mailing lists as a side effect (paying customers who consume every email you send – even after your course is over).
I’ve been creating digital courses since 2008 and Email Delivered Courses have made me the most money by a large order of magnitude – not to mention they were the easiest to write.
And that’s because the daily bite-sized email structure is not only easy for you to produce – it’s also easy for your customers to consume and act on.
Which means people actually use your content…
They actually get results from it…
And they spread the word about it.
I’m going to be teaching everything I know about Email Delivered Courses starting Monday August 5th – and I’ll be delivering it all as an Email Delivered Course.
Sign-up is open now and the cart closes this Sunday at 11:59PM PDT, and won’t be reopening again for a while (not to mention the price will be almost 2x what it is now when it does re-open).
I’m confident this investment will return at least 100-1,000x ROI to you – or you can send me one email and get your money back.
(In fact you can get your money back for any reason at all within the first 30 days of purchase, which will cover the entire duration of the course. It’s on me to deliver to you – if my content doesn’t blow your mind, then I haven’t done my job.)
If this is something you need, I recommend you sign up now.
>>> Create an ultra-simple, ultra-profitable digital course in the next 30 days — over email
I’ll be back tomorrow with a story about how a "famous" student of mine pre-launched his first Email Delivered Course and had has first $1000 dollar day.
— Derek