How To Make Money From Your Knowledge Or Skill
Almost everyone has some knowledge or skill, that someone else would like to learn. It could be a hobby, tango dancing, playing a musical instrument, marathon running, changing careers, trading the stock market, budgeting, training sausage dogs, or anything else.
But… how do you make money from your knowledge or skill?
Let’s take Cambell, and his playing of ocarinas, as an example.
Cambell has shared his story before here. He is someone who would be considered an expert in the ‘learn to play ocarina’ niche.
An expert is someone with a high degree of skill or knowledge…
In Cambell’s case he has been playing ocarina’s for many years.
In the beginning he would have learned to play an ocarina from someone. He has bought, and probably sold, ocarina’s. He has found the best ocarina forums online. He has networked in the ocarina circles.
Cambell has accumulated a huge amount of ‘ocarina’ knowledge and skill over the years.
But, would people pay money for this knowledge?
Let’s Do Some Research
Using the Google Keyword Tool, I found that there are 1,500,000 monthly global searches for ‘ocarina’. The competition is low, and it has a $0.42 CPC (average cost per click you would need to pay if you bought traffic from Google).
The keyword phrase ‘how to play ocarina’ had 14,800 monthly global searches, low competition and a $0.37 CPC. If just 1% of the 14,800 searches ended up in a sale, that could be 148 sales per month.
The Google search trend is consistent over the last 12 months, with the majority of searches coming from the US for the keyword phrases ‘zelda ocarinas’, ‘songbird ocarinas’ and ‘ocarinas for sale’.
Amazon has over 3,000 results for ‘ocarinas’ with many having over 50 positive reviews. That means people are buying and selling within Amazon, but there are no how-to books.
eBay has over 2,000 active listings and a few ‘learning the ocarina’ books.
Searching YouTube, I found a user with the name ‘docjazz4’. He has an ocarina video with 6,350,943 views, and others with millions of views… Wow!
These stats are very good and shows that a huge amount of people are searching for ‘ocarina’ information online… And, they are buying and selling ocarina’s online. This is a very good sign, as there are many niches where people will research information online, but will do their buying offline.
How much money is in the niche? We have no idea, because there are no information products or membership sites to compare against. This could be seen as a red flag, but I believe that it’s because there are no ocarina experts with any marketing skills, until now. It reminds me of when I went into the model train niche. It was a similar situation and 4,000 ebooks later, with a 6 figure sale of the website… I think it turned out pretty well!
The other consideration, is that Cambell is passionate about playing ocarinas, so the process will be fun. It would probably make him even more of an ocarina expert. He also has YouTube videos which will provide content immediately.
Where To Start
The best place to start when you discover a niche like this, is to brainstorm some ideas. Here’s what Cambell came up with…
I have brainstormed a heap of ideas for the content of my blog and videos, I just need some help with the implementation.
Should I begin to write some articles and the short guide now before getting the website domain and such? I guess it is better to have content ready before the site goes up, right?
My plan at the moment is to have some sort of beginner’s pack that people can buy from me that includes an ocarina (or perhaps a deal with an affiliated seller?), tunebook and beginner’s guide to learning the ocarina. I would also have the eBook available seperately.
There will be videos on YouTube and the blog on various topics that will serve as my subscriber base, with those that get to my website hopefully signing up for the mailing list to get a free product I offer.
I was thinking that I could perhaps conduct an ‘interview’ (probably via email) with David Ramos (Docjazz4) and use the interview information as my free product. New people are always crazy about David and Cris Gale and I could almost definitely get an interview with both of them.
Awesome job Cambell… The mindmap gives a nice big picture snapshot. And, as you think of ideas, or find resources, you can add them as you go.
Let’s talk about strategy…
What’s The Strategy?
The objective is to take your knowledge and skill of playing ocarinas, and make some money from it.
There are only 3 components needed for a successful business online.
- An authority blog.
- An audience.
- Products and services.
Your blog is where people find you. It’s your shop front and you own it. Nobody can take it away from you. I call it an authority blog because your aim should be to make it the best one-stop shop in the world for anything related to ocarinas. It’s an authority in the niche, it dominates!
Your audience are your raving fans. I’ll explain more later…
Products and services are needed to provide value to your audience. Your one-stop ocarina shop needs to provide the best ocarina deals available, the best how-to information available, the best ocarina community in the world, etc… Nothing less will do!
You only have a business when someone exchanges money for your product or service…
The Plan
The strategy gives you clarity and direction, but now you need to put all the pieces together.
Step 1 is to set up your authority blog…
Ryan Deiss has some great training on authority blogs, but I’ll give you a quick overview:
- Choose a domain that is more community focused. Something like ocarinaclub.com, ocarinaplayers.com, ocarinacommunity.com, etc.
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This is because you don’t want the blog focused just around you. You want to be one of many contributors. This takes the pressure off you to be constantly writing and providing content…
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It also paves the way for a paid monthly access to the community (membership site).
. - Think back to when you started (playing ocarinas) and list all the ‘how to’ information you needed. Then create detailed posts about these.
. - Create a resources page of all the best tutorials, places to buy and sell ocarinas, etc.
. - Create a page listing all of the top websites, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, etc. on ocarinas.
. - Install an optin form in the sidebar of your blog and at the end of each post. In the beginning you don’t need a bribe, just an opportunity to subscribe.
. - Add content on a daily basis. These could be YouTube videos, short or long articles, curation of other content, etc. Don’t worry about SEO (search engine optimization), that will come much later when Google gives you some analytics to work with.
. - Invite other experts to contribute (watch this video).
Get the Authority Hacks report here…
Step 2 is to find an audience…
Once you have an authority blog, the next step is to find an audience.
In the internet marketing game they call this getting traffic to your website. In my mind that conjures up images of thousands of people arriving at your site, of which 70% will bounce off in the first 30 seconds, and the other 30% aimlessly browse around looking for the free stuff. You don’t want that.
You want an audience (or a tribe) that is captivated. They come to your site and subscribe within minutes. They can’t get enough of your information. Your conversion rates are high and they comment and interact.
They are raving fans!
Building an audience is slower, but the results are 10, 20, and sometimes 100 times better because you will connect with them at a deeper level.
Where do you find your audience? On Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, forums and more… Just do a search for ‘ocarina’. The people creating the video’s, the posts, the threads, the pictures, etc are your audience.
Find out about the Free Traffic loophole…
Step 3 is products and services…
You have the authority blog, your audience is building and now you need to add value.
You add value to people’s lives in the ocarina niche by finding them the best deals on new ocarinas, telling them where to find good 2nd hand ocarinas, advising them where the best how-to information is, offering your coaching services, and so on and so forth.
You want to genuinely help people. You might be making an affiliate commission on those sales. But, because you provide such immense value, people will want to make sure you are being credited as an affiliate for the sale.
It happens to me all the time. Subscribers to this blog will email me to make sure they are using my affiliate link before they purchase a product. Some subscribers email me saying they just bought through my affiliate link, so I can make sure I get credit. It’s wonderful, and I sincerely appreciate it.
But then I will happily help any subscriber one-on-one at no charge. It’s my way of providing massive value. I’ve also got cleverer about it and, instead of emailing back and forth with just the one person, I’ll do a post like this so all of my subscribers get to benefit from the information.
That’s the way to run a profitable online business, and one that you are proud of.
Anyone Can Do This
Anyone with a reasonable amount of knowledge and skills can apply this strategy and have a very successful online business… There are thousands of people around the world waiting to pay you for your expertise. You just have to step up and give them a reason to pay you…
Masako could do this with her marathon running knowledge.
Duncan could do this with his tango knowledge.
Joe could do this with his home work out and living in Asia knowledge.
Irwin could do this with his changing career at 30 knowledge.
John could do this with his sales and management knowledge.
Victoria and Andrew could do this with their knowledge and experience of caring for an ageing and frail dad.
Richard could do this with his knowledge for history.
Your job now, is to implement the above and give me some feedback.
Have Fun,
-Ian
Got any questions, comments or feedback? Please tell us in the comments area below this post.
