Learning With Leslie

Introduction

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Learning with Leslie, the podcast where you learn, I learn, we all learn about those things like Internet marketing, online business, blogging, traffic generation, social media, you know, all that www stuff.

I started this podcast to share what I’ve learned about Internet Marketing, and what I’m still learning, and to interview other experts who can help us all along in our blogging journey. I’m your host, Leslie Samuel, the Internet Marketing teacher from learningwithleslie.com.

I have the most exciting episode for you today. Today’s episode is a very special one. The title is, “How to Turn Your Passion into a Business and Get Over 800,000 Views and 1000 Testimonials.” You keep hearing about people talking about how to make money online by teaching how to make money online, but I’m going to use an example from my personal experience and how I’ve built a business and something that has absolutely nothing to do with making money online. So, thats what I’m going to talk about today.

I am excited, and you know, the reason why I’m excited is because this episode, I seriously believe that you can listen to this episode, and do the things that I recommend in this episode, do the things that I talk about, do the things that I’ve done and build a business around your passion. Does that sound enticing? I think it sounds very enticing. Because you know what? I’m learning so much about Internet marketing, and I love to share what I’m learning because you know, learning is one thing. But, to me, it’s not exciting unless you can bring people along in the journey with you. And, since you’re listening, you’re taking the time out of your busy hectic schedule to listen to this podcast, I want to make sure that you’re getting value out of it.

So, I’ve spent a lot of time preparing for this interview. I have spoken with a friend of mine, Chris, that I always kind of brainstorm with, and we kind of map this out, because I think there’s so much value in this podcast episode that I want you to get out of it. So, I want to make sure that it’s just awesome content.

Now, before I get into the actual content , I want to remind you that this podcast is about you, and I know that as you grow your online business, as you grow your blog, as you do these things online, all that www stuff, you’re going to have questions. I have questions all the time. I ask people that I trust, and I get answers. I do some research. I do a lot of research, not just some research. But, I do a lot of research, and I get the answers to the questions that I have.

Now, if you have a question, many of you know this already, and many of you have called in questions, but if you have a question, the reason I play this number at the beginning is because that’s the hotline, and you can always call the hotline, ask the question, and I will answer every question on the show, just in case. You know, I haven’t done this as much as I used to do in the past in terms of playing the hotline throughout the podcast, so I need to do it some more just so that that number sticks in your mind.

I’m going to play the number right now for you. That number is 888-835-2414. And, that was my beautiful wife singing that number for you. Call that number anytime you have a question about Internet marketing, blogging, traffic generation, social media, all that www stuff. Once again, the number is 888-835-2414. And, I will personally answer your question on this show. Did you get it? All right. Sweet. So, feel free to do that.

How My Passion for Teaching Started It All

Now, let’s talk about the topic for today. “How to turn your passion into a business and get over 800,000 views and 1000 testimonials.” Now, I’m not just pulling these numbers out of thin air. This is what has happened in my blog, my Biology blog at Interactive-Biology.com, and if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I’m a Biology professor, at a University, and I teach different classes, different foundation science classes.

There’s kind of a back story to how this started. I want to give you a little bit of a back story, and then, get into the content in a way that I can give you practical steps that you can implement, and do the same thing that I have done for Biology, but you can do it in something else. You might be interested in basket weaving, or Chemistry, or History, or anything of that sort. I want to talk about how I’ve done it, so that you can go out and do the same thing regardless of what your passion is.

I used to be a highschool Science and Math teacher. And, one of my dreams was to be able to teach at a University. The problem was that I didn’t have a Ph.D. and I still don’t have a Ph.D. When I was doing my Masters, I did some research, and I hated the research so much that I told myself, you know what? Forget this Ph.D. stuff. Forget this teaching at the University level stuff. I’m just going to teach at the highschool level. I don’t need a Ph.D. for that, and I can do that. And, I think I’d still enjoy it.

So, I started teaching, and I was enjoying it. But, I still had that drive, that longing to want to teach at the University level. So, I said, you know what? Okay, I don’t have a degree. I don’t teach at a University, but what’s to stop me from teaching the content still?

So, I decided to start a blog at Interactive-Biology.com, and the reason for that blog is because I wanted to pursue my passion. I wanted to teach at at the university level, so I was going to do it, and nobody was going to stop me. It was what I was passionate about. So, even though I wasn’t doing it in an academic environment, I can still do it on my personal blog.

So, off I went, and I started to build my Biology blog using similar techniques to what I teach in my 7-Day Boot Camp at 7daybootcamp.net. And, I got started! And, what I decided to do was to use video, and make very short videos, explaining a concept in Biology, just one step at a time, breaking down complex topics in a way that anyone can understand them. So, I just started doing that.

The Beginning Stages – How Recording Videos Helped in Building the Site’s Foundation

Let’s talk about the beginning stages of it all because really, in the beginning stages, I was setting a foundation for everything that’s happening today. And, it’s interesting to see how things have evolved, how things have grown since then, and it’s all based, in my opinion, it’s all based on what I did back then. And, this was January of last year. I had started the blog before, but I didn’t really do much with it. January of last year, of 2010, I decided, “All right, this is the year I’m going to make things happen with this blog. I’m going to do it the way that I know I’m supposed to do it, and it’s going to be a success.”

What I decided to do was to… I set a really big goal. I was going to record a video every single weekday. Well, not necessarily recorded, but post a video every single weekday. So, I would do a bulk of videos on Sunday, and whatever I finished on Sunday, I would let that go out for the rest of the week. So, I’d post one of the videos on Monday, another one on Tuesday, and I didn’t exactly get every weekday, but I did on average 3-5 videos every single week, for a while, for a few months actually. And, it was challenging because you always had to get that content out there, but it was so worth it.

I wanted to record these videos and use YouTube as one of the main ways of getting traffic to my site, and it turned out to be a very good decision. I’m so glad that I did it. If I had to do it over again, and I foresee that I will be doing it over again at some point in the future on some other topic that I’m passionate about because I’m so passionate about so many different things.

How did it work?

What I want to talk about first is how I record my videos. I’m going to give you tips on just about every aspect of my business in this episode. So, first, let’s talk about how I record my videos. To record my videos, I wanted it to be very simple, very easy to make, and that it didn’t take a whole bunch of work.

What I did is I took the program Keynote, which is very similar to Powerpoint, but it’s on a Mac, and in my opinion it’s better. It just looks cooler, and all that kind of stuff, and I made little presentations, really short presentations. Some of them would have one slide. Some might have five slides depending on the topic that I’m covering. And, I would make my Powerpoint presentation, and then, I would go through that Powerpoint talking and recording the screen with the program, Screenflow.

Screenflow is a Mac only program. There is one on PC called Camtasia. That’s one that you can use to accomplish the same thing. So, if you’re on a PC, I would go with Powerpoint and Camtasia. If you’re on a Mac, I would go with Keynote and Screenflow. That’s what I use to record my screen. I also have a microphone that goes into my laptop. There are a number of different options for doing that. You can get an inexpensive headset. I went all out because, you know, I’m doing this podcast also, and I want to have the best quality audio because I just love audio. I’m very much into audio. So, I figured I’d invest in my sound quality, so that I can get the best quality on the budget that I had.

Microphone going into the computer, or headset going into the computer, you record, you have your Powerpoint, you talk over that Powerpoint, and you record your screen with Screenflow or Camtasia. Just as an added note, if you don’t want to spend the money on Camtasia, there’s also a free version, an open source version that’s called Camstudio, and that’s available at camstudio.org and I think, that’s a PC only program. Let’s see here… Yes, it’s for Windows. So, if you’re on a PC, you can download Camstudio and use that.

Okay, one more tool that I use in my video is a Bamboo pen and tablet because what I like to do, for some of my videos, when I want to make it really simple, and I don’t have like the best animations or anything of that sort, I can just use that pen and tablet and write directly on the screen. And, that has come in very handy for drawing little diagrams, and writing things on the screen, doesn’t take much to prepare. You just write on your screen. And, it’s very simple, and it works.

So, once again to recap on how I make my videos, you can use Powerpoint on a PC, or Keynote on a Mac; Screenflow on a Mac to record the screen, Camtasia on the PC to record the screen. Or, if you’re looking for a free version, you can use Camstudio. I should probably also mention, if you don’t have Powerpoint, which some people don’t have Powerpoint, and you don’t have Keynote, you’re on a Mac or a PC, you can use Open Office, which is an open source, kind of like an analog to Microsoft Office. You can make presentation. You can make Word documents, and all those types of things. You have versions that you can get for free if you don’t have a big budget, or if your budget is nothing. You can use all these free tools, and still accomplish pretty much the same thing. So, there’s nothing stopping you from doing that.

That’s in terms of the technical details when it comes to making my videos. Once in a while, I’d use a video camera and just record myself, and I’m starting to do more of that, and I’m starting to do some more advanced stuff with that. But, I didn’t do that in the beginning. So, you can start very simple, and expand from there.

Maximizing Traffic Generation with YouTube Videos

Then, the next thing I did, as I mentioned before is I put my videos on YouTube. Now, why did I put it on YouTube? Well, it’s very simple. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, second to Google, which is kind of interesting because Google owns YouTube. So, I figured that since there are so many people on YouTube, yes there’s a lot of people making videos, and a lot of competition, but the pool is so big that if you do it the right way, you can get a significant amount of exposure, and it has come true in my business because I’ve gotten a significant amount of exposure from YouTube. YouTube is the second highest referrer to my site that’s why I get the second highest amount of traffic, second only to Google of course, because I get a lot of traffic from the search engines. But, YouTube is, in my opinion, the best place to put videos to get exposure.

What I’m going to do is give you now some YouTube tips, some simple tips that I have used that have really helped my videos rank well, get a lot of traffic to my site, and it has increased my video views and subscribers, and all of that stuff.

YouTube Marketing Tips

Tip number one. Your titles need to be very descriptive. Don’t make them too long, but you want them to be descriptive. Are you showing someone how to do something? For example, how to upload a video to YouTube? That is very descriptive. When you come to that video, you know exactly what you’re going to learn. That is something you want to keep in mind whenever you’re writing your titles.

Also, if you can make it kind of exciting or thought provoking, or something that catches your attention, that’s also a good way of doing it. I don’t personally put a lot of thought into my titles. I just kind of write what makes sense, and that has worked for me. Find what works for you, but make sure your titles are descriptive.

Tip number two. Make sure your videos are short. Unfortunately, people do not have long attention spans especially when it comes to videos on YouTube. They want it to be short and to the point. Now, when you think about something like Biology, and you think about Biology lectures, many people think, “Oh, those long boring lectures that you have to sit through just so that you can understand the content.” What I found is that by breaking the content into really short videos, and by short I mean, 3-5 minutes maximum. If you can get it under 3 minutes, that’s great, and if you can hammer in the point, and teach the lesson or show how to do something, or amuse people or just capture the interest of your video viewers in a very short period of time, you will be much more effective.

So, tip number two, keep your videos short. Tip number one was descriptive titles.

Tip number three, the first thing you want to put in your desciption is a link back to your site. Why? Because that link becomes clickable, and when someone watches your video, if they see that link, the chances of them clicking on that link will be much higher than if the link is farther down in the description. So, the first thing you want to put in your description is a link back to your site.

Then, there’s another tip. This is a very cool tip that I learned from Gideon Shalwick, actually many of these tips are tips that I learned from Gideon Shalwick, but this is something that a lot of people don’t think about, but it’s extremely powerful. If you’re making YouTube videos, you want to do this one. And, if you’re not doing it, start doing it because it’s going to help.

When it comes to writing the keywords for your videos, now whenever you post your videos, you’ll put a title, a description, and then you can select some keywords. My recommendation would be the last keyword that you use should always be the same.

For example, when I post a video, I use the keywords, ‘Interactive Biology,’ and that is the last keyword phrase that I put when I’m tagging the video with keywords. Why is that significant? Well, when someone does a search on YouTube, and your video comes up. They click on your video, and they start watching your video. One of the things they see to the right would be a list of suggested or recommended videos. And, how YouTube determines what to put in those videos in part has to do with the keywords that you use.

I’m going to do this right now. I’m going to go to YouTube.com/interactivebiology, and I’m going to go to my most recent video, which is the Five Causes of Disease. When I do that, and I look to the right, I see a list of a number of other recommended videos, and the ones that show up the most are videos that I have done.

So, what that does is when someone sees my video, they look to the right, they see more videos from me. So, if they like the video that they are watching, they are more likely to click on one of those other videos. That is probably one of the best tips I can give you when it comes to YouTube marketing. The more you can get your videos to show up in that side bar showing other recommended videos, the better.

So, make sure to tag your videos with the same keyword, and try to make it a keyword that other videos won’t have. I don’t think anyone is going to have the keywords, ‘Interactive Biology.’ I haven’t seen a lot of people with those keywords. I haven’t seen anyone with those keywords actually. So, that’s why I decided to choose that. So, you want to choose something that is unique to your videos. That will help more of your videos rank next to one of your videos in the recommended videos.

One more tip for YouTube marketing? At the end of your videos, always have a call to action, and that call to action should include coming back to your site. At the end of my videos, that’s all I ask people to do. “If you’re enjoying these videos, and you want to find more resources just like this, visit the website at Interactive-Biology.com and you’re going to get…” I fill in the details, but the important thing is that I’m calling them back to the site. So, I think that’s all I’m going to say about videos, at least for now.

How I Drive Traffic to My Biology Site

Now, let’s talk about driving traffic. How did I grow my traffic to my website? And, what you’ll notice, or what I’ve noticed is that in the beginning, it was a lot more work on my end, to get traffic to my site. Now, I hardly ever think about traffic to my site because I’m getting so much even if I don’t do anything. In months where I haven’t posted not one video, not one blog post in recent months I have gotten significantly more traffic than I ever got when I was putting in a ton of work, and that’s because my site is growing an authority, and that is exactly what you want to have when it comes to your site.

You know you’re going to put in a lot of work in the beginning, but if you do it the right way, you can build it in a way that it gets easier, well, actually, not that it gets easier. I did an interview, and I think it was with Tim Conley, where he mentioned, “it’s not that things get easier, but you get stronger.” You go to the gym and you’re working out, and you try to bench press 150 pounds, and it is so heavy you cannot do it, but you keep going week after week, and you keep doing it. Next thing you know, 150 pounds is nothing, 220 pounds is nothing because you’re getting stronger, because you’re exercising. You’re doing these things over and over, and that’s the same thing with traffic generation.

So, where do I get most of my traffic from? Google. Why do I get most of my traffic from Google? Because my site is growing an authority, and as your site grows an authority, Google starts to give you, starts to send you more traffic, which is a great thing. So, what did I do in order to get that to happen?

Number one, I focused on good quality content and lots of it. I just wanted to give a ton of value because I know that if I give value, people are going to find it valuable, then people are going to link to the site. People are going to share the site. People are going to recommend the site, and the more people do that, the better I rank in the search engines. Google is going to see that, and they’re going to realize that I have good content, I have new content that’s updated on a regular basis, and it’s not just a spammy site. It’s actually useful stuff.

So, number one, more content, and good quality.

Number two, something I did right at the beginning. Once I had a decent amount of content on there, and I made sure it was great content, I went to other people who were doing similar things in my niche, not necessarily what I was doing, but there were some other blogs out there on the topic of Biology. And, I strategically contacted a number of bloggers, a number of websites, letting them know what I was doing, what I had to offer, and that I think that it would be of value to their subscribers.

And, you know what? Because it was of such high value, a number of people decided, “Oh, I need to link to this because I want my visitors, my subscribers to be exposed to this quality of content.” So, I started getting more backlinks. And, if you know anything about Google, you know one of the things they rely on strongly is recommendations from others. That’s a nice way of putting it. In other words, if someone is linking to your site, they are recommending you. So, when Google goes, and they scan your site, or someone else’s site, and when they scan the site, there’s a link back to your site, they think, “Oh, okay, this person has recommended your site.” And, the more people recommend it, Google starts saying, “Okay, I really need to start paying attention to this site.”

By doing that, Google starts sending you more traffic. That’s what I found. That’s what a lot of people have found, and it works! It’s a strategy that works. Put great content out there. Get people to recommend it. Get people to find value in it, share it, and distribute it in whatever ways they can to people that they think would benefit from it. And, that will increase your rankings.

So, Google was number one. Of course, I made sure to optimize my website for the search engines, and you can do that by what I did in the early days is I installed an all-in-one SEO plugin, and that helped me to specify the name of my site, the keywords that I’m targeting, and it helps to arrange the titles in a way that helps them to rank well in Google. So, it’s a very simple process. You install the plugin, and it takes care of much of that for you.

If you have a Premium theme, which is what I use, I use Woo themes for, well actually, for my Biology site, I use Elegant themes, and then, for my Learning with Leslie site, I use Woo themes, but they have search engine optimization features built in that helps you to rank almost automatically if you’re doing things the right way.

So, Google, number one source of traffic. Number two, getting backlinks. Not only are backlinks good for recommending your site to Google, in other words, for increasing your page rank. It’s also good because if someone visits their site, and they see that link to your site, they will then in turn, click on that link, or they’re more likely to click on that link, and come and visit your site, which is a good source of traffic. It’s another source of traffic.

In my early days, one of my top sources of traffic was getting linked to from one very popular Biology blog. I gave value, she saw that value, and she linked to my site, and it started sending a ton of visitors to my websites. Now, how do you go about doing that? My recommendation is this. This is the way that I generally go about doing it. You approach that person in a way that gives value to that person.

So, for example, if it’s another blogger, the first thing I would do is comment regularly on that person’s blog. When you comment, don’t just leave a random comment telling them, “Oh, this was great,” or “I like this post.” No, make sure there’s a ton of value that you’re adding to that comment, to the post that they’ve put on their blog. Make it insightful. Make it informative. Don’t just comment for commenting’s sake. You are trying to deliver value to them. And, as a blogger, when you see someone taking the effort to leave an informed comment on your blog, it’s like the best feeling in the world. So, that’s one way to get on their radars.

Beyond that, you can offer to do a guest post for them, or do something for them that’s going to give them value. It’s not about you. It’s not all about you. It’s about how you can be of value to them. And then, when it’s time for you to get value in return, they are going to be more than happy to do so. So, that’s another one, reaching out to other bloggers, connecting with them, and making those key relationships.

Another one, of course, I mentioned already was YouTube. Just by having that link back to my site in the description, and by saying at the end of the video, make sure to come back and check out the site for these resources, that has driven a significant amount of traffic to my website.

Those are the main things that I’ve been doing to get traffic on my site. Now, there’s one thing that I did that really helped to give me a boost. I called in to a radio show once. It was The Tech Guy, with Leo Laporte, and I was asking some questions about creative comments, licensing, and the videos that I’m putting out there, and so on. The details of the call doesn’t really matter. I actually linked to that in the Show Notes. So, you can go and check it out, and you can listen to how I called in, and how that resulted in a significant amount of traffic to my site.

It was basically just me looking for one of those opportunities to get my voice out there, and let people know about what I had developed, the resources that I had available, because I knew it was good quality, and if people found out about it, they would fall in love with it. So, I’ll link to that, and you can check out how that has really made a big difference.

These are the main things that I’ve done when it comes to traffic. Number one, search engine traffic, search engine optimization (SEO). Number two, reaching out to other Biology bloggers, othe bloggers in my niche, connecting with them, and then, getting links back from them in return. Number three, YouTube, for getting traffic, linking in the description, and at the end, having that call to action to come bacl to my site. And, let’s see. Oh, yes. And then, that one thing when I called in to the radio station that resulted in a significant amount of traffic.

Blogs – More than Just a Place for Sharing Ideas

Let’s talk about the community that I’ve been establishing because I think blogs are becoming more than just a place for someone to share ideas. It’s becoming a place for you to build a community, and if you can build a community, you’re going to have a much stronger business. Websites that are doing very well today, are doing well for the most part because they have a strong community behind it. And, there are certain things that you can do to help build that community.

Number one, what I’ve done, I’ve use Facebook significantly. I set up a Facebook fan page, and if you come to my website, you will see that you can connect with me on Facebook, and you can follow the fan page on there. And then, you can participate in any discussion that we may have over there. Now, I want to give you a few tips on how to do well with Facebook since I’m giving you tips on everything that I’ve done to grow my Biology site to over 800,000 views and 1000 testimonials from people all over the world.

Tips on Building a Community on Facebook

Facebook tip number one. The first thing is going to be this, post regularly. This is very important. If you have a Facebook fan page, and it’s just remaining dormant, you’re doing it an injustice. You’re doing yourself, your business, your blog, a tremendous injustice. So, you want to post regularly. What does that mean? It maybe once a day. It may be multiple times a day. It depends on what you are able to do. My recommendation would be to try to post at least once every single day. So, that’s tip number one. Post regularly.

Tip number two, ask easy to answer questions, questions that are very easy to answer. So, you don’t want to ask a question that people have to thing, and then, write out a paragraph or anything. Just ask a question that is very easy to answer in one word or maybe two or three words.

For example, one of the questions that I’ve asked is, “What is your favorite topic in Biology?” That’s a very simple thing to answer. Someone might say, Ecology. Someone else might say, Microbiology. Someone else might say, Botany. It’s one word, very easy to asnwer. If they’ve been checking out my site, they are interested in Biology, so they can come up with that answer very easily.

You can think about ways and ways you can do that, or you can do fill in the blanks. For example, let’s say, the best…I’m just going to reword what I just stated. “The best topic in Biology is _____.” And, what I would do there is say, fill in the blanks. “The best part about Biology is _____.” And then, they can fill that in.

When I started doing that, I saw engagement increase significantly. Before I would ask questions that you have to write out a paragraph or a sentence or something of that sort, and I was not getting any responses. When I changed to doing this, and making it very simple, the engagement went up almost instantaneously. Well, not almost instantaneously. It really was instantaneously. As soon as I made the decision to change, and ask my questions in that way, there was a change in engagement.

Another tip, this is something that I started doing recently. But, that is by posting fascinating facts or fascinating questions. So, I went online and I did a search for interesting Biology facts, or fascinating Biology facts. And then, I got a website with a bunch of very fascinating facts. And then, every so often, I would post that fact. For example, and I actually got, later on, I encouraged the people that are following my page to post their own fact. So, I’m going to read a fact that was posted, let’s see, this was posted a few days ago by someone in my community.

“My fascinating and incredible fact. Kidneys filter about 150 to 180 L if blood plasma every 24 hours.”

Now, you might be listening to that and thinking to yourself, “Oh, I don’t really care about that.” But, this people are Biology people. They are Biologists. So, these things are interesting to them. So, by doing that, I’ve really been able to increase the engagement. Then, I have here, this is an example of one that I posted.

“Today’s fascinating question, how many miles of blood vessels are there in the human brain?”

And, I had ten people, ten reactions, people guessing answers, and then, eventually, I gave the correct answer. And, the correct answer is somewhere between 60000 and 100000 miles of blood vessels are in the human brain. Now, that to me is fascinating. That, to someone that’s into Biology, it’s going to be very fascinating. And, by posting it in the form of a fascinating question, I’ve been able to increase engagement to where I get 5, 10, 15, even 20 and more people responding to these questions, to these quick facts, and engaging that way on Facebook.

So, tip number one, post regularly. Tip number two, ask easy to answer questions, and tip number three, post fascinating facts or questions. So, yes, that’s all the Facebook tips I’m going to give.There are many more that I can give, but I need to move on.

Next thing is for building your community, one of the most important resources you can have is a mailing list. Significant, significant, significant. I have my mailing list. I use Aweber of course, for my mailing list. And, I’ve built my mailing list to over 6000 people. And, everyday, I’m getting between 30 and 60 people subscribing to that list. So, it’s growing rapidly. And, my recommendation to you would be to make sure you are building a list. I don’t care what stage your business is at. Build a list. That’s going to be the driving force behind your business. Trust me on that. So, let me give you a few tips for building a list.

Number one, you want to entice people to get on your list, and you can do that by giving away something of value. For example, you can come to my site and get access to all of the Powerpoints that I’ve put together just by giving me your email, by opting in with your name and email. You get on my list, and I will be sending you valuable content, and I will be giving you all of these Powerpoints for free.

That is something very enticing to someone that’s a Biology teacher, or a Biology student because that can help them prepare to teach or to learn the stuff that they need to learn for a specific test. So, number one, give away something of value in exchange for them signing up to your email address and to your mailing list. And, tip number two, continue providing value via a mailing list.

So, when someone signs up, use your autoresponder features, and continue to provide them with value that’s related to why they’re at our site. Very, very important. A list is powerful. Using my list, I’ve been ab;e to do a significant amount of things. Sell my ebook. I’ve been able to win awards by getting people to promote stuff, and voting for me. It’s just been extremely valuable. So, make sure you’re building a list.

Another thing that I’ve done for building a community is interacting with people that subscribe to me on YouTube. This is a tip that I spoke about in one of my earlier episodes. But, whenever someone subscribes to me, and this was something I used to do. I don’t do it as much. I don’t do it anymore actually. But, in the beginning it was really helpful. Whenever someone subscribe to me, they got a personal message, thanking them for subscribing, letting them know that I really appreciate it, letting them know what my channel is about, my YouTube channel is about, and letting them know that if they ever need more resources, they can come back to my website.

I can’t tell you how many people responded to that, and let me know how much they appreciated that because they subscribed to so may people and they have never gotten a message like that. If you’re getting started on YouTube, and you want to build that community, this is something that I higly recommend for you to do.

Another thing is making sure to respond to comments. Once again, this is something that I used to do much more of in the beginning, and I don’t do it as much now, but by doing that, people can see that you’re engaged with your brand. They’re engaging with your brand, and you are engaging with them in return, and that is very valuable. It helps you to grow that loyal following and I cannot over-emphasize that enough.

Finally, Turning My Passion Into Business

So, those are the things that I’ve done to build a community. Now, let’s go beyond that because you know, I said that it’s turning a passion into a business. And, really and truly, you do not have a business unless you have a customer. In other words, you have something to sell. You are making money from that business, and I’m glad to say that I am able to do that with what I’m doing on my Biology website. And, this is how I did it. Very simple.

The content that I used to build my website. The content that I used to make my videos, or the notes that I have. I basically put all those same notes together in an ebook format. I call it my Human Physiology Study Guide for Regular People. So, I repurposed the content that I had on my site, the content that you can get for free, and I put it together in a very nice package, so that you can get every access to everything from one PDF document, you can put it on your mobile device. You can put it on your computer, and you can use that as a study guide to help you understand physiology. And, that has been going very well.

I want to re-emphasize the fact that I repurposed the same exact content. But, people are willing to pay for it because it’s in a format that they can take one document and have access to all of the content. And, that is extremely valuable. And, I put that on the site and I listed that for, I think it’s $34.95, I’m just going to check it out right now, just to make sure. Yes, I listed it on the site, and the price is $34.95, and you can purchase that study guide, and then, you get instant access to download that study guide.

It’s basically an ebook, and you can do whatever you want with it. You can print it out and study from it. You can keep it on your iPad and read through it,and it llinks to videos that are on my website, and it’s just this interactive study guide. It has been doing well. I’ve been selling a number ofcopies every week, and I really cannot complain. Why cannot I complain? Because it’s something that I put a lot of work into in the beginning and now I don’t do anything to it, but because it’s on my website, because it’s something of value, because it’s related to the content that I talk about on my website, people are buying it, and there’s an automated process there that’s just making it so easy for them to purchase, access, and I am not involved in that process, whatsoever.

So, my recommendation, when you get to a certain point, you have a certain amount of content, and you determine what that point is, put together something of value that you can sell. And, for me, that was my ebook, my study guide, using the same content that I had on the website. For you, it might be a report, an ebook that you write or a video course, or whatever the case might be. Put that together, and then, put it up for sale.

Once you’re giving value away on your site for free, people are going to learn to trust you, if it’s good content, if they’re learning a lot from you, the chances of them buying is going to be significantly higher. Yes, they can find the answers on the site, but it’s much harder to have to go to the site, and search for the content than just having this one PDF, well-structured document that they can look at and get everything that they need.

Now, the funny thing about what I’m doing is, I haven’t even gone through and optimized the process. I just kind of thrown it out there. And, it’s making sales on a regular basis, and it’s just exciting to see. I’m going to work on optimizing it, so that I can increase my sales even further. But, the main thing is get something out there. Put it out there.

How did I make my PDF? My study guide? Once again, I went to, well it’s not Keynote now, it’s Pages, which is like Microsoft Office, but in my opinion once again, better because it’s on a Mac. Well, not because it’s on a Mac, but, well no, because it’s on a Mac. I’m sorry. I’m a biased Mac guy. Anyhow, I wrote it, and I put it together in Pages, and then, I just formatted it to look the way I wanted to look. I put the images in the way I wanted it to be, and you can do this on Microsoft Word just as easy. Then, I exported it as a PDF.

That’s pretty much it. How do I deliver it to them? I use the service E-junkie at e-junkie.com. And, you can sign up for an account there. It’s very easy to set up. And then, you an upload your ebook, whatever it is you’re selling, and they handle everything. It goes via your Paypal account. That’s how I have it setup, and they take care of automatically delivering the content to the person that purchased it. Very easy, I went with them because they are easy, simple, and I don’t have to worry about it.

In other words, it becomes more of a passive income stream for me. Literally, I have not touched it in months, and every month, I am making a significant amount of money from that Study Guide. At least, the money is significant to me. To someone else, it might be insignificant. But, for me, for not doing anything, for just having something out there, it is great to see sales coming in. Sometimes almost everyday. So, it’s just awesome. Sometimes, multiple sales in one day, and that to me is very exciting.

All right, so I’ve given you a lot of tips. A lot of things that I believe that you can implement, and I believe that if you implement those tips, you can do exactly what I did taking your passion, and turning it into a business that has gotten over 800,000 views and 1000 testimonials. And, I want to quantify that, not quantify that, but qualify that a little bit — 800,000 views, that’s how many views I have on YouTube. To be more specific, if I go to my site right now, I can see 809, 517 video views as of right now.

Within the next two months, I’m pretty sure that’s going to be at about a million, which is very exciting to me. I have over 4000, to be exact 4213 YouTube subscribers, and I’ve gotten messages over a thousand times, via email, via YouTube letting me know that the site is doing for people all over the world. That to me is very exciting. I’m getting up tp 20,000 plus, 20,000 unique individuals to my website every month. And, that is very exciting.

So, what has happened as a result of this? Well, I’ve spoken about numbers in terms of how traffic has grown and all of that stuff. But, there have been a number of other great effects, exciting things that have happened as a result.

Number one, as I told you I used to be a highschool Science and Math teacher. As a result of what I’ve done online, now I’m a University professor, which has always been my dream. I don’t have a Ph.D., but I teach in one of the top Doctor of Physical Therapy programs in the nation, it’s in the top 10%, and that has been an awesome experience, and it’s great to see what can happen as a result of a blog.

Number two, I’ve gotten great feedback. I mean, some really, in some ways emotional emails from people who’s lives have been affected, who’s job has been saved. I’ve literally have people say that I’ve saved their job because they’ve been able to use my resources to help build their curriculum, and to build their teaching resources, students that were failing, and they ended up passing a class just because they found the videos, and that has been very exciting, very awesome.

Another thing that has happened is I’ve won the Edublog Awards for Best Use of Podcast/Audio/Video, or something of that sort, which is a big online award for educational websites. And, I was very excited to win such a prestigious award. That has been great.

Another thing that has happened recently is now I’m featured on the radio on the Total Tutor Network. I just did my first interview on there. I think it was just a days ago. And, that is a network that does a talk show about education. It’s syndicated on 53 stations nationwide, and now they’ve asked me to be the science guy for the show. The Science consultant. So, anytime they have a topic in Science that they want to talk about they’ll bring me on the show, and I will be the Science expert or the Biology expert on that show.

That to me is just an amazing opportunity, and I’m very excited to get that kind of exposure.

Also, since we’re talking about business, well, this has been able to be turned into a business. Now, many of you who have been following me from the beginning know that I preach giving value first and building a business around that. There’s a number of different ways to do it, but I’m a testimony to the fact that it does work. It can work if you do it that way. It doesn’t always work. But, it can work if you do it the right way, take the right steps. So, this is something now that is a full-fledged business. It is making money. And, if I don’t do anything, it will continue to make money.

And, of course, I’m not going to stop there, I’m going to continue doing awesome things. I have some cool ideas. I’m actually going to be now outsourcing video editing and all of that, and taking my videos to the next level, and I’m very excited about that.

Managing Outsourcing In Growing the Business More Efficiently

One more thing, I’m going to mention. It was something that I had in my notes earlier, but I forgot to put it in, and I think there’s a lot of value in it, so I’m going to throw it in right here at the end. One of the biggest things that has helped me to grow my Biology website, is that I’ve outsourced and I’ve developed processes to outsource, to help make me more efficient. I’ve hired an assistant, and my assistant has been helping me in so many ways with my Biology blog, with my Learning with Leslie blog. When I record this, I’m going to upload it, and she’s going to go, and she’s going to format it for my blog. She’s going to type out the transcripts, link to all the things that I spoke about, and just make my job much easier. My recommendation for you, if you’re trying to build a business, don’t try to do everything yourself. Try to get help.

How did I do it? I went to oDesk. You can go to learningwithleslie.com/oDesk, and I found, well, I’ve been through a number of different people, but I found someone that has really helped me to grow my online business, and it has been invaluable, I couldn’t do it without her, and she’s just an asset to my business, an asset to everything that I do online. She’s listening to this right now because she’s transcribing it, so I just want to say, thank you, Noemi. You’ve done a great job, and I’m happy to have you working with me. So, thank you.

How do I manage outsourcing? Number one, I use Wunderlist as a task manager. So, if I have a task for her to do, I put it in there, I share that task list with her and she has access to it. Whenever she completes a task, she makes sure it’s in that Wunderlist. She checks it off when it’s completed, and I can see what’s being done in my business at every point in time.

I also use Evernote. Very, very valuable for anything that you’re writing, and I’ve spoken about this in the past. Evernote.com is a free program that you can put in your computer whether it’s a Mac or PC, and you can have it on your iPad, your iPhone, your Android device, just about any Smartphone, just about any device that you have, any computer-related device. You can have it on there. So, when I have something to write, I write it in there. When she’s writing stuff, she’s transcribing my posts, she transcribe them in there. And, everything written is done there, and it’s automatically synced, automatically backed up, so I will never lose that content.

I’ve set up manuals, and I put those manuals in Evernote, so that, the main tasks that I need to do are outlined in those manuals, and she can do them efficiently. And, you know what, as I’ve done in the past, I want to share those manuals with you. If you’re getting into outsourcing, and you want to see how I’ve done it, go to learningwithleslie.com/manuals. I just have a redirect there. It’s 100% free and you can see the different manuals that I use in my business, and how I’ve constructed them, and hopefully, they can be valuable for you.

So, I think that’s pretty much it. I don’t really have much more to say where that’s concerned. But, I really hope that you got a tremendous amount of value from that.

As usual, if you have questions, you know what to do. Call the hotline. Leave your question and I will answer it on the show. This program is brought to you by my 7-Day Boot Camp course. Go to 7daybootcamp.net, 100% free. Check it out. If you’re struggling to build an online business, you don’t know where to start, you don’t know how to set up your website, you don’t know how to get traffic, what kind of content do you have to put on the site, how do you make money with your site, go to 7daybootcamp.net. I’d go through it one step at a time. You will love it. It’s very practical. It’s hands on. You get to see my screen as I do all the things that I’m doing. From doing the research to setting up the website, installing a nice theme, driving traffic, making content, all that stuff that I just spoke about.

Once again, I want to invite you to call the hotline. I will play the number at the end. If you have any questions, you know what to do. Just call that number, and you can ask your questions, leave a voicemaeil there, and I’ll get to it on the show.

So, that’s it for this episode. Until next time, take care and God bless!