JEFF THOMAS COBB

Leading with Learning

teaching sells

If You Want to Learn How to Launch a Product Successfully …

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product-launch-success-awaitsYou could rack up a pile of debt attending a top notch MBA program and then try to land a job in a classic product management position somewhere like Proctor & Gamble

Or, you could fork over thousands to an Internet marketing “guru” like Jeff Walker to get access to his formula.

Or you could buy Dave & Naomi’s book. (Which at $97 really is a bargain.)

But why not just learn for free?

Study Aid 1

brian-clark-copybloggerThe guy over there to the left is Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger. If you want to learn how to launch a product successfully, it would be hard to beat simply studying him closely in his native habitat – the Web.

And you can do this for free.

Study Aid 2

Currently, I’m most concerned with what Brian is doing with Teaching Sells, which at the moment is in stealthy, pre-launch, lots-of-great-stuff-for-free mode, but I should back up for a minute to where I first came across Brian. It wasn’t even on Copyblogger, which now sports an enviable subscriber base of 73K+ in its Feedburner ticker.

No, where I found Brian was in my native habitat – online learning. Brian helped launch the Articulate Rapid E-learning blog and take it from 0 to 6000+ subscribers in a single day. Subscriptions are now north of 40K and the blog and its launch have become a standard case study in my presentations about doing business on the new Web.articulate-rapid-elearning

I found the Articulate blog before I found Brian, but it didn’t take me long to discover who was behind the launch, and I’ve been on Brian’s trail ever since.

Study Aid 3

teaching-sellsWhich brings me to Teaching Sells.

When Brian, with the Articulate triumph in his pocket, announced that he was launching a site that would teach people how to create and market successful, revenue-producing learning communities…well, I was intrigued.

But intrigued is one thing. Actually forking over the $197 (if I remember right) that Brian and his partner Tony wanted for a charter membership was another.

Articulate alone would not have done it for me. But Brian provided so much more. First of all, Copyblogger in itself represented a wealth of information. I’m a subscriber to this day.

And on top of that, Teaching Sells offered up some really valuable content before so much as a penny was asked of potential members. Wow – hadn’t encountered that before.

I started to feel like Brian was a trustworthy guy who was willing to give plenty to make sure it was clear he knew what he was talking about. In fact, I felt like the Teaching Sells community he offered promised knowledge I simply would not be able to get anywhere else.

Hmm…what a great value proposition for a member community.

Study Aid 4

how-to-launch-productAnd so, I plunked down my money, and here I am today – a passionate member of the Teaching Sells tribe. And like many other passionate members, I am now evangelizing you on the prospect of joining.

That, ladies and gentleman, is A+ material in the world of product launches.

And the fact is, you can stop there if you want to. Take what you have read here. Take the highly valuable free materials that Brian is offering over at the Teaching Sells site. Digest it all, and go forth and prosper. You almost certainly will.

But…

Study Aid 5

inside-teaching-sells

If you want more excellent content. If you want a community of peers to support you as you venture forth. If you want additional input from Brian himself. In short, if you want a complete road map and support system for building a successful, revenue-producing online learning product offering (!), I’d recommend you get over to the Teaching Sells site up for early bird notification of the official re-launch (you will have the chance once you register at the site). In the meantime, you will receive – absolutely for free – the following great content:

  • A 22-page report Forget Everything You Know About Making Money Online (And Start Making Some)
  • A bonus report about building quick and easy membership sites with licensed content.
  • A 20-Step Process Map to building an online training business.
  • An instructional video that reveals the solution to the “traffic dilemma” every online entrepreneur faces.
  • And a complete course listing of the entire Teaching Sells program.

Odds are very high that Teaching Sells will sell out before the official launch ever happens sometime later this week. You could hold out for the next time around. I’m sure there will be one, but it’s not clear when – Teaching Sells was closed to new enrollments for months before this current re-launch. In the meantime, there’s a pretty good chance you are looking for way to add or increase revenue.

Seems crazy not to at least check it out, eh?

Jeff

What Teaching Sells Teaches

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teaching-sellsTeaching Sells, a program developed by Copyblogger Brian Clark, is about to re-open. And while I don’t tend to use Hedgehog & Fox as a site where I promote third-party products or post ads, there are a couple of reasons I can’t let this one pass without mention.

First, the Teaching Sells program falls squarely in the area where I do so much of my consulting and research – i.e., the sale of online education and the strategic use of education as a tool for marketing and building community. These are exactly the things Teaching Sells teaches, and it does it very well.

How do I know? Well, that’s the second reason I can’t let the re-launch pass without comment:  I have participated in the program pretty much since it first launched years ago. At first, I was simply interested to see what Brian and his partner Tony could pull off. I was amazed to see them quickly build a vibrant learning community that the average education director or educational marketer would die for. Thoroughly impressive.

In my opinion, if you have anything at all to do with selling online learning, or if you have subject matter expertise you have been trying to figure out how to monetize, you’d be crazy not to sign up for this program, even if only for a while. There is no quicker or better path than Teaching Sells to understanding educational content and community as a business model. Period.

So what does Teaching Sells give you?

I encourage you to visit the Teaching Sells site for more detail, including a great video and a number of highly-valuable, free resources (I’ve actually signed up for all the free stuff again myself!), but basically what Teaching Sells provides is:

  • A thorough and customer-centric process for developing and marketing online education and training. Teaching Sells provides what I consider to be a roadmap for creating a successful e-learning business.
  • Specific information and instructions on the use of low-cost and open source software to create and manage your online learning site. Using the tools suggested, you can be up and running in relatively short period of time for less than $500 in software and hosting costs. Considering what the returns can be, this is an incredibly low investment.
  • A very active and vibrant community of colleagues who are all engaged in creating successful sites for offering e-learning for members. This highly active community is one of the things that has impressed me the most.

It is worth noting, too, that the knowledge that Teaching Sells delivers can help drive high e-learning adoption rates for any interactive learning program, whether you actually plan to sell online learning, offer it for free as a member or customer benefit, or even use it for a public education initiative.

To be clear, this is not a free program, and I know some people will balk at making this kind of investment. But you have to ask yourself – what are the potential returns you are giving up by not learning what Teaching Sells teaches? Up to you, but I’ve found it worth every penny.

To find out more, visit Teaching Sells today. And feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Jeff Cobb
Hedgehog & Fox

P.S. – Yes, those are affiliate links throughout this post. Look around this site and you will see that I promote no other third-party offerings here other than the Thesis WordPress theme, which I use, believe is a great product and which – not coincidentally – was another project of Brian Clark. In short, I trust what Brian Clark does, I’ve also tried what Brian Clark does, and I am highly enthusiastic about being an affiliate for Teaching Sells.

Teaching Sells