Thanks for the awesome insights Brock. I loved hearing that you spammed your entire contact list to help get an initial email list. I have this irrational fear of doing that.
I also really love that you translated the learn by doing in coding straight to the DJ world. So cool
My Quick Question
Do you have any statistics on course completion yet?
I would be curious how you guys compare against the more traditional subjects because learning to be a DJ sounds awesome
One thing we are hoping our productivity/anti-procrastination startup Focusmate (www.Focusmate.com if you are curious) can do is elevate course completion rates by helping people actually show up and put in the time and work necessary to get their money's worth.
Cheers for all the insights and hard work.
Will
1
Yes - it's absolutely insane how many people never finish the courses. Even for a course as fun and straightforward as ours.
I think the last time I checked ~80% don't make it past the 10th video.
We need to do a better job of engaging people throughout the course but it's hard to do it when we spend such a limited amount of time on the project.
To help increase completion rates I've created a private Facebook group for those who purchase something from the site where they can get feedback from their peers. We also plan on doing private AMA's with the DJ's and we will do giveaways. Signed equipment, meet and greats and all that just because you are a part of the community.
It is something that we want to figure out but right now we're hoping to create more classes and build from there.
2
I'd say keeping 20% past the 10th video is quite good in the world of online courses. Most online course completion rates hover in the single digits unless they have that interactive element where all the students are going through at the same time or you drip the content out (but this is tricky as some people want to learn faster and some slower).
Thanks for the insight!
3
Thanks for sharing all this! Some really valuable insights here. I’m just starting to create a community for people who want to make money coding (either with their own apps or through freelancing), and want to go down a similar path with e-courses (www.theapphacker.com).
Can you tell me a little more about the community of “trusted learners” you wish you had from the get-go? I’m really curious what questions you wish you had asked that you didn’t (and what you did ask early on that was helpful).
It’s really impressive that you were able to get 600 emails just from your contact list and a landing page. Did you do anything to bump up your SEO or were all the sign-ups organic?
1
This is a great question. I really wish that I would have been more intentional with the people I approached to audit the courses prior to release. I should have created like 3 different subsets of learners. 1. Complete beginners
Hobbyist - people creating music for fun (this would include some YouTubers and people who create music outside of their actual careers).
Advanced producers
I would have approached about five in each subset and then ask them to take the course for free in exchange for feedback.
I would compile all that feedback and used it to build a model of the different courses we could offer then I should have re-done some of the course videos for each subset and see where it made the biggest impact. Then I would redo the curriculum based on that feedback.
We didn't do this. We shot the courses with Mello and I was a little bit afraid that we wouldn't get another shot to shoot again so I released the courses hoping that the fact that Marshmello did the courses would make up for any inefficiencies in the curriculum.
The course is still high-quality but it could be better in many ways if we would have taken our time.
As for the sign-ups, I just spammed everyone I knew on email and then I sent it out to everyone on Instagram. I'm not the type of person to really care if someone feels like I'm spamming them. People are either going to be excited and support you or they aren't and if they don't support you then on to the next.
2
I'm happy to see that this is successful. I'm building something similar for woodworking courses, some useful insights for me. The preregister is something I'll need to add in.
As for getting additional courses and creators, how did you go about (1) finding them and (2) deciding on a revenue split?
2
Additional courses have been some what of a bottleneck especially in the music industry because no one is really incentivized to create a class. They make a lot of money touring and trying to explain to them why they should sit down for three days and create a course has been a bit hit or miss. I do my best to try and approach artists that love their craft and want to inspire others. Marshmello and Slushii were obvious fits because we were already friends and they were on board with the mission regardless of how much money was generated. A lot of the credit has to go to Moe Shalizi for pushing them to put this out there. I could not have done this without his help/influence.
The revenue splits are different for each artist. I can't release the exact details on the revenue splits but I can tell you that the revenue split is purely based off profits so they don't start making money until Creator Arcade is back at even. We spend money upfront on marketing and promo and once the course starts to generate money then we start paying out. The more classes they sell the higher their splits become so if they sell X amount of classes then their % of profits increases. Send me an email I'd be more than happy to chat with you one on one and take you through my thought process. brock@creatorarcade.com
1
Love this. I'm building something similar at SkratchSchool.com - awesome to see you guys off to such a great start. We've built a list of 10k with our free DJ fundamentals course and a DJ challenge we ran in May and are planning our paid subscription product now. I dropped you an email - let's chat!
1
quick typo; For ///someone/// reason, everyone in the music industry says yes
Thanks for the awesome insights Brock. I loved hearing that you spammed your entire contact list to help get an initial email list. I have this irrational fear of doing that.
I also really love that you translated the learn by doing in coding straight to the DJ world. So cool
My Quick Question
Do you have any statistics on course completion yet?
I would be curious how you guys compare against the more traditional subjects because learning to be a DJ sounds awesome
One thing we are hoping our productivity/anti-procrastination startup Focusmate (www.Focusmate.com if you are curious) can do is elevate course completion rates by helping people actually show up and put in the time and work necessary to get their money's worth.
Cheers for all the insights and hard work.
Will
Yes - it's absolutely insane how many people never finish the courses. Even for a course as fun and straightforward as ours.
I think the last time I checked ~80% don't make it past the 10th video.
We need to do a better job of engaging people throughout the course but it's hard to do it when we spend such a limited amount of time on the project.
To help increase completion rates I've created a private Facebook group for those who purchase something from the site where they can get feedback from their peers. We also plan on doing private AMA's with the DJ's and we will do giveaways. Signed equipment, meet and greats and all that just because you are a part of the community.
It is something that we want to figure out but right now we're hoping to create more classes and build from there.
I'd say keeping 20% past the 10th video is quite good in the world of online courses. Most online course completion rates hover in the single digits unless they have that interactive element where all the students are going through at the same time or you drip the content out (but this is tricky as some people want to learn faster and some slower).
Thanks for the insight!
Thanks for sharing all this! Some really valuable insights here. I’m just starting to create a community for people who want to make money coding (either with their own apps or through freelancing), and want to go down a similar path with e-courses (www.theapphacker.com).
Can you tell me a little more about the community of “trusted learners” you wish you had from the get-go? I’m really curious what questions you wish you had asked that you didn’t (and what you did ask early on that was helpful).
It’s really impressive that you were able to get 600 emails just from your contact list and a landing page. Did you do anything to bump up your SEO or were all the sign-ups organic?
This is a great question. I really wish that I would have been more intentional with the people I approached to audit the courses prior to release. I should have created like 3 different subsets of learners. 1. Complete beginners
Hobbyist - people creating music for fun (this would include some YouTubers and people who create music outside of their actual careers).
Advanced producers
I would have approached about five in each subset and then ask them to take the course for free in exchange for feedback.
I would compile all that feedback and used it to build a model of the different courses we could offer then I should have re-done some of the course videos for each subset and see where it made the biggest impact. Then I would redo the curriculum based on that feedback.
We didn't do this. We shot the courses with Mello and I was a little bit afraid that we wouldn't get another shot to shoot again so I released the courses hoping that the fact that Marshmello did the courses would make up for any inefficiencies in the curriculum.
The course is still high-quality but it could be better in many ways if we would have taken our time.
As for the sign-ups, I just spammed everyone I knew on email and then I sent it out to everyone on Instagram. I'm not the type of person to really care if someone feels like I'm spamming them. People are either going to be excited and support you or they aren't and if they don't support you then on to the next.
I'm happy to see that this is successful. I'm building something similar for woodworking courses, some useful insights for me. The preregister is something I'll need to add in.
As for getting additional courses and creators, how did you go about (1) finding them and (2) deciding on a revenue split?
Additional courses have been some what of a bottleneck especially in the music industry because no one is really incentivized to create a class. They make a lot of money touring and trying to explain to them why they should sit down for three days and create a course has been a bit hit or miss. I do my best to try and approach artists that love their craft and want to inspire others. Marshmello and Slushii were obvious fits because we were already friends and they were on board with the mission regardless of how much money was generated. A lot of the credit has to go to Moe Shalizi for pushing them to put this out there. I could not have done this without his help/influence.
The revenue splits are different for each artist. I can't release the exact details on the revenue splits but I can tell you that the revenue split is purely based off profits so they don't start making money until Creator Arcade is back at even. We spend money upfront on marketing and promo and once the course starts to generate money then we start paying out. The more classes they sell the higher their splits become so if they sell X amount of classes then their % of profits increases. Send me an email I'd be more than happy to chat with you one on one and take you through my thought process. brock@creatorarcade.com
Love this. I'm building something similar at SkratchSchool.com - awesome to see you guys off to such a great start. We've built a list of 10k with our free DJ fundamentals course and a DJ challenge we ran in May and are planning our paid subscription product now. I dropped you an email - let's chat!
quick typo; For ///someone/// reason, everyone in the music industry says yes
This comment was deleted 2 months ago.