Curated online courses for artists & creatives
Craftsman creative exists to help creatives and artists make a good living doing what they love through online courses and coaching.
We just crossed a HUGE milestone, $50,000 in course sales, and to me it's the most exciting milestone yet.
It's a VERY strong signal that what we're doing at CraftsmanCreative.co is working and resonating with the audience we've built it for.
People want to learn from the influencers and creators they follow, because they have a personal relationship with them, unlike the courses that celebrities are putting out.
They get to learn from people they admire and respect and have engaged with, just at a deeper level.
We now have over 600 students, have paid out over $30,000 to course partners, and this is just the beginning.
I've started building out systems for lead generation, marketing frameworks, and assembling a team to help grow the business.
Next stop, $100k! Let's see if we can hit it by the end of 2021!
In every business I've ever owned, I've encountered "The Dip". Seth Godin talks about this in his short book, The Dip.
It's the point after things are going well, and then things, sometimes for a moment and sometimes for much longer, stop working the same way that they were.
I experienced 50% revenue growth month over month from October to January, which felt amazing.
Then, in February, it nearly dropped in half.
In the past, I would have been discouraged, frustrated, stressed, and even a little ashamed that I let it happen.
This time, however, was different.
I saw the dip coming, and I mentally and emotionally prepared for it.
In order for any business to have revenue (and profit, for that matter), it has to have sales.
Because of my schedule in February, I knew I was going to be filming a lot (5 courses, to be exact) but not releasing any new courses on CraftsmanCreative.co
No new launches means that we wouldn't have any weeks with big sales numbers.
I tried getting one course to do a presale launch, but that didn't end up happening, and it would have been too early for her audience anyway.
Another course has taken MUCH longer to edit than expected. (6 weeks vs the normal 2-3 weeks).
All of those things compounded and I ended February with just $3,000 in sales, mostly from past courses, and a few from two new Google Ads campaigns that I set up to start testing that part of the business.
Now, again, I could be discouraged, but I now have better insight on how to stagger the releases of courses, the filming of courses, and to better manage my time in post production so that we can get to launching one course a week on the site.
Plus, I have a huge 1-2 months ahead where these 5 courses will be released, so having one course a week launch on the site is going to lead to some of the best months ever on the site.
Rather than being depressed, stressed, or ashamed, I've learned new lessons, made changes to how the business runs, and am excited for what's ahead.
I guess you could say I made it through the dip and am now back on track to scaling this mountain I'm on.
It's been just over 9 months since the first partner course launched on the site, and we just crossed $20k in payouts to course creators!
This feels like a super meaningful milestone, as the goal from the start was to help other creators build resilient, profitable businesses, and this shows that in a very tangible way that Craftsman Creative is doing that.
I can see getting to the point where we're doing $20k in payouts every month, and then every week, by the end of this year. Going to be a fun ride!
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Last year I only produced 6 courses. I'm not exactly sure why I didn't scale up sooner other than fear/impostor syndrome.
I partnered with a guy I met on twitter to help with deal flow, and we agreed on 5 leads for $1,000 at the beginning of December.
Those first sales calls were a little nerve wracking because I didn't know the creators previously, but they all went really well. Closed 2/3 of the first three calls, still waiting to chat with the next two.
That's put me in a position to produce FOUR courses in February. We released two this month, and with those four, I'll have produced more courses in the first two months of 2021 than all of 2020 (9 months).
The big takeaway for me is that you are responsible for creating the results you want in your business. The business doesn't grow without you, you have to be driving it every step of the way.
Want more revenue? More clients? More time off? More X, Y, or Z? You've got to go get it.
How to get it? Understand your ideal client, make them an irresistible offer, then overdeliver. They will become your superfans and refer you to more people (partners/customers/clients) and your business will grow.
It's been a year! Holy cow - after our biggest launch in May, I spent (way too much) time building. And building. And building some more.
I lined up another 6 courses but only 3 came together between June and October, so I had to rethink the way I was going about getting new partners on the site.
Each new course was adding about $1k per month to the baseline of the site, and I have been so focused on finding new partners to do courses with and, again, more and more building, that I nearly missed this huge milestone!
We just crossed $20k in sales for Craftsman Creative!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tr20ot33x4mkwy7/Screen Shot 2020-11-30 at 10.54.20 AM.png?dl=0
It feels amazing to have built this up over the last 8 months, and with the courses that are coming down the pipeline in the next 2-3 months, I'm really excited to see what 2021 holds for this company.
This one feels like a HUGE milestone. I didn't think I would cross it this year, but here we are:
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Today I sent payouts to the three partners who have courses on Craftsman Creative and realized that I just crossed the five-figure mark.
What an amazing moment.
What this means to me is that from this crazy idea I had just a few months ago, $10,000 was created and added to the businesses of these awesome creators.
Woo! Two more courses launched this week on https://www.craftsmancreative.co/bundles/makers-academy
This one was a blast to produce - two courses in one! We did a course on creating physical products that sell, and another on crafting a successful crowdfunding campaign.
They're going to be putting their own ad spend behind this launch, so I'm really excited to have them as partners and to see how the ad approach goes.
Had a friend recommend an awesome makeup artist to me, and we hit it off great. After a lunch meeting with her and her husband, we immediately set out to get a course put together.
A month later we launched to her 10k followers on Instagram. I was hoping for another $10k launch like we had with the first partner course, but it wasn't meant to be.
The audience didn't respond as well, and I didn't do enough coaching on the launch process this time around since I was knee deep in producing a new season of the tv show I work on, Relative Race.
The launch did ok, she made about $1500. But definitely less than what we all were hoping for.
The good news though is that the course exists, and we can continue to experiment with messaging, sales, etc to continue selling the course over the coming months!
We launched the first partnership course this week - meaning a course produced by me but of a different creator.
We launched a course for Hayley Barry of typeaffiliated.com to her 11,000 followers on Instagram.
They were hungry for the content and she did an amazing job pre-launching and promoting the course.
In one week, she did 82 sales of her course, and did over $10,000 in sales!
It's an incredible feeling to have this come together so quickly and shows me that I can turn Craftsman Creative into a six-figure a month business if I focus and partner with the right creators.
Here's a link to the course if you want to check it out!
https://www.craftsmancreative.co/courses/type-affiliated-hand-lettering-course
The second course launch was better than the first, but because it is a free course for now it didn't generate any income.
Well, that's not true - I had a launch week bundle where they could get this course for free, and my first course for half off. And ONE person took me up on it!
So I made $179 from a free course!
I realized that in order for this business to succeed, I need to find some other way than just creating courses that no one buys.
I still don't have a large audience (maybe 350 people or so at this point) so I needed to find ways to partner with other people who have a bigger platform.
Then the idea hit me - I have everything I need to create courses for other people. The production experience, filming, editing, the website, the payment processing...everything!
So I reached out to Hayley Barry, an awesomely talented hand lettering artist with an audience of over 11,000 people on instagram, and asked if she had ever thought about doing a course.
She lit up! She had been wanting to do a course for a while, but didn't know where to start.
I decided, right there in the moment, to structure it this way:
I'd produce the course for free. Help with the content, filming, editing, marketing, hosting, payments, everything. No up front cost.
We'd do a 70/30 revenue split on the backend and that's how I'd cover my costs, as long as it was successful.
This structure aligned us toward a common goal - reaching as many people as possible with her course.
We'll see how it goes!
Craftsman creative exists to help creatives and artists make a good living doing what they love through online courses and coaching.