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Creating Email-Based Courses (EBCs) for Fun and Profit with Will Steiner

Created

Apr 16, 2023 8:44 PM

Creating Email-Based Courses (EBCs) for Fun and Profit with Will Steiner

Will is the founder of Big Later, the internet's most entertaining crash course on personal finance, investing, and employee equity.Before starting Big Lat...

www.youtube.com

Big Later: EBC on personal finance/money with humor (a vacuum for financial content, usually dry)

Important to differentiate with a niche, consider humor/lightness
Started when Will taught his friends basics of personal finance

Taught it at Salesforce where he worked
Productized it into an email-based course (EBC)

An email a day for a month
Now converted it into an enterprise solution where employee packages are included with financial literacy

Monetize by converting to enterprise solution

EBCs are a good alternative to CBCs, MOOCs

MOOCs: videos are a lot of work, even more to edit
CBCs: require facilitation
Nowadays people's relationships with email are evolving with the advent of newsletter revival
EBCs are also a lot of work though...Will's tombstone will read "he opened 1 million browser tabs so someone can read 1 email" 😂

Upside is that it's one-and-done (email is the product) and one can shift quickly to marketing
Low-risk entry point to teacher-student relationship (for both creator and the consumer)

EBCs are not newsletters because they are a product in-itself

Will codified the process of making Big Later so others can make Big Later (need to research where this is??)
They can co-exist with newsletters

EBC learnings

Non-negotiables for successful EBCs

Take every opportunity to set expectations

Read time
Key takeaways
Progress tracker

Ability to enable self-pacing

Allow fast-learners to fast-forward and get the next email earlier, receive additional content

Allows identification of the "1000 true fans"
(There's 2 months of content for Big Later!)

Cherry-on-top

Better copy/humor/Wait-But-Why style writing?

Structure of the email - Hook, Set Expectations, Define New Concepts, Put in Context, Why You Should Care

Provide the sensation of learning

Style and Voice

Feel like a conversation with someone who has interesting things to say

Use a Q&A format

Metaphors used to deepen meaning

Personal touch

References to personal life
Inside jokes developed over-time
Develops student-teacher relationship too

Business models/monetization

People don't value free stuff

Price is a signal!

Will has a $5 EBC and a $299 EBC (!)

Out of 1500 customers, 1 requested for refund (b/c content didn't apply to their country)
Open rates were higher when people pay $5 for a product
How convincing is your landing page?
Really dial in the free trial option (tricky to improve conversion rates)

Moving from B2C → B2B

One size fit all product → different skews originally, but ended up going straight to B2B

DO NOT build a business around a $5 product 😅

Upside is 1500 customers and beta-testing
Was forced into B2B because he priced too low in the beginning...

works for Will b/c the "current product" is so terrible (ancient 401K rep giving an hour long lunch-and-learn...)

Reasons to make an EBC

Are you interested in teaching someone something?

Teaching pedagogy

EBC content can be leveraged into other media

The craft will force one to distill ideas and easily transpose into workshops, MOOCs, CBCs, etc.

Will's writing rituals

Cyclical, content + selling + operations, typical founder stuff 🙂
Writes best early in the morning
Solving problems in subconscious
Divergent → convergent thinking/outlining process (open research → 3 key takeaways)
If you are surprised when you learn something, then someone else will be surprised too

Audience Q&A

Why $5 then?

Base product is just $5 to make financial literacy available for everyone

What are typical EBC pricing ranges?

$299 is on the high end

Philosophically, where is email heading?

The move of corporate communications to Slack has improved people's relationships with their email inbox

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