Medium Writers Can Earn Respectable Side-Incomes Selling Micro Courses
The Partner Program isn’t the only tool in your writing hustle
Most writers join the Medium platform to earn a little side-income. Although it’s harder for new writers, it’s not impossible. As the platform matures, the stakes get higher and the quality of our writing better grow too, or we’ll get let behind.
What many writers don’t realize, is how much potential income they’re leaving on the table.
I did the same thing when I started writing on Medium.
I looked at the Partner Program as the main earning source here. But there’s more money available if we get creative.
Enter — the micro course.
What’s a micro course? I invented the term. This is a single document, usually a pdf, that solves one, specific problem for the reader. The problem you solve depends on the needs of your tribe.
We ask our tribe what they want, through a series of well-crafted email questions. We create a micro-course for them. They buy it.
You can create a micro-course in a couple days, using basic software you already have on your computer. They don’t have to be long. My micro-course is less than 30 pages. I show writers how to use Amazon reviews from bestsellers to help them create a five-star book, while avoiding one-star mistakes (and build the outline). My micro-course retails for $29.
The length of the course isn’t important.
What matters is the size of the problem you solve. Your reader wants the solution now. She doesn’t want to sit through 500 pages of content. The value is in the solution, not the number of pages.
What kind of micro-course should I make?
Don’t guess.
If you understand your tribe inside and out, you’ll uncover a micro-course you can create to serve them.
Solve big problems, not little ones.
You want the purchase to be a no-brainer. You provide the perfect answer for your reader — to get her from where she is to where she wants to be — and if she meets the criteria, she’ll buy it.
Micro-courses are like candy.
They are a quick, impulsive purchase. Like the gum and batteries at the grocery store check-out. You won’t put a $497 sticker on a micro-course. That level takes more selling and a longer relationship.
Listen to your tribe.
What do they complain about? What do they want solved more than anything. If you can take transform them from where they are now to where they want to be, you’ve got a customer.
You can make a micro-course in a couple days.
You need video or audio. They’re perfect for writers who’d rather stay away from the camera.
Grow your email list to sell more micro-courses
You don’t have to stop at one micro-course either. You could make these little courses an entire business model if you wanted.
My little course pays for all my annual business expenses, every month. I get twelve years worth of expenses covered every year.
The best way to create micro-courses is to survey your audience, using the ‘Ask’ method from Ryan Lavesque (look it up). You learn what your audience wants by asking them what the don’t want.
Then, you make it for them.
But you need an email list to do this. Kind of a chicken-egg sort of thing. But I’ve got you covered there too.
I have a free, 7-day email masterclass for you.
I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 subscribers (and you next 1,000) without spending a hot nickel on advertising.
Plus, if you enroll in the Tribe 1K, not only will you get the free, 7-day email masterclass, but you’ll get a coupon for ten bucks off my micro course too!
We’re waiting for you.
Enroll in my Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers
August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.