The Best Online Business To Start in 2025
Best online business to start in 2025! Discover top ideas and trends to launch your entrepreneurial journey successfully.
Are you curious about which online business will thrive in 2025? This informative video delves into the best options available, showcasing lucrative niches and emerging trends for aspiring entrepreneurs. Learn how technology is reshaping commerce and what skills you need to succeed. Equip yourself with the knowledge that could change your life! Click play now to explore these exciting opportunities.
This Week Show’s Sponsors
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:48.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 97. In this show, we will be talking about the best online businesses to start in 2025. The new year is rapidly coming up. We’re in the last couple of months of 2024. The best company we think you should start is a membership website, folks. That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, folks? Because it is the Membership Machine Show. I’ve got my great regular co-host, Kurt, with me. In this episode, we will discuss some of the critical things you need to understand. So, the launch of your membership website is booming in 2025. A lot of people get lost in the process. We at the Membership Machine Show cannot guarantee you success, unlike others who pretend they can. On the other hand, if you understand some essential things and apply them to your launch, you can dramatically reduce the risk of non-success. So I think this is going to be a significant show.
[00:02:30.400] – Jonathan Denwood
But before we go into the meat and potatoes, Kurt von Ahnen, can you quickly introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:02:41.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, my name is Kurt von AhnenI. I own a company called MananaNoMasand, and we focus, surprise, surprise, on membership and learning websites. I also work directly with WP-Tonic and the folks at Lifter LMS.
[00:02:55.350] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Like I said, this is going to be, I think, a critical episode for you. Hopefully, you’re going to get tremendous value from it. But before we go into the details, I’ve got a message from one of my major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I also want to point out that we’ve got a great course. It shows you how to build a WordPress membership website from beginning to end. Kirk does it. You can get this at a tremendous discount, plus a list of the best WordPress plugins and services. You can get all these goodies by going over to Wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. Com/deals. So, let’s have a quick introduction. I think I said the crux. From this episode, Kirk, I want you to lay out some structures and signposts so people know that if they follow a particular methodology, they stand up getting to the outcome they’re looking for. And I think a lot of people, for understandable reasons, get many things backward when they’re trying to build a membership website for the first time or a membership business.
[00:04:42.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Unless they have a lot of experience building websites and online businesses, they tend to focus on the wrong things at the wrong time for understandable reasons. What do you feel?
[00:04:58.890] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree to put it in terms that resonate with my line of thinking. A lot of times, I come in to help a client halfway through the process. They’ve decided they want to have a membership website. They started to build something, and they’ve run into some instance or obstacle, and they go, Oh, I need a little help. When you jump in there, Jonathan, some of what you hinted at is correct. People will plug in what they think is a community tool, and then you realize when you look at how they set it up they don’t even have a way to add people to that community. They don’t have a membership structure, a content restriction structure, or a payment gateway. And then when you ask them questions about, well, how many paying customers do you have? It ends up being goose egg, none. And then you go, where do you keep your community now? And they don’t have one started. They don’t have a demographic selected, and they don’t have any outreach to start that community. For some reason, I think people, if they build a website and buy a Facebook ad, will get traffic, but it’s not 1996 anymore.
[00:06:06.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
We have to figure out how we’re going to help people find success in this niche.
[00:06:12.440] – Jonathan Denwood
I think there’s something There are limited factors that people got to be aware of if they’re choosing a particular niche to go in. Based on my experience, folks, unless people have an established career in some legacy media platform, they tend to go down this path if they’re going to be successful with their membership website. They tend to build a lot of business through offering their time. Basically, they’ve built a certain following because they’re freelance of some They might be in full-time employment and doing this as a side gig, but they’ve built a group of people that they’re offering services to online. Or consultation, whatever it is, some knowledge, some service-based business. And that’s great. And you can turn that into a full-time gig as well. If if you want to, depending on how well you’re being paid in your full-time job, that will determine the level of income that you require from your side gig to make that attractive, or you just want the freedom. But there’s always going to be a limit, and the limit is what I call the full calendar. It happens to every freelancer, every subcontractor. It’s called the full calendar syndrome.
[00:08:02.560] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s the thing that every subcontractor wants, but when it happens, it produces a load of other problems because there’s only so many hours in a day and night. It’s a better type of stress than having the empty calendar, but it produces its own anxiety, unless for anybody that’s got any conscience Because you want to produce decent work, because you know that if you don’t do it, in the end, that will have the opposite effect, your calendar is going to end up being empty. But it’s extremely stressful dealing with a full calendar. So how can you get round that? Well, people get a lot of traction because they’re offering consultations, doing certain type of work. And then how can you overcome that? Well, you can overcome it because there’s a certain batch of clientele that have a certain level of experience that they probably could do this work themselves to a certain level. There’s a lot of work that every freelancer or consultant does for clients that isn’t that complicated. It’s because the client has no experience in that area to some level, and you do it for them as part of a package. And then of that work, it’s probably 20-30% that unless you’re an expert, your best not to do.
[00:09:49.540] – Jonathan Denwood
And there’s a certain level client, if they’re offered a detailed course and a process, they could probably do it themselves to a certain level and with some consultancy on top as well. And that’s the type of thing you can package in a membership website. And the beauty of doing that, folks, is that you’re not selling your time unlike most freelancers or consultants. Is this making sense, Kerr?
[00:10:26.890] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. As you were talking, I was thinking, How have I handled my latest initiative in adding Scorm content to WordPress websites? And I basically followed that template that you just articulated. I’ve got a course that people can take. It’s 100 bucks. It shows them exactly how to put Scorm into a WordPress website. But there’s a certain percentage of enterprise clients that don’t really care to know. They just want to have someone do it for them. And those are the people with budget, and those are the people that I sell my time to. But for the other people, I sell my knowledge to them through the the membership and the education tools.
[00:11:02.960] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. You decided for the reasons that we’ve outlined, that a membership website or a community The two things are interchangeable because the most effective membership websites are those that build community. But there’s all levels of steps in building community and just It’s like people tend to have unrealistic expectations about the success that they’ll be able to obtain with their membership website, they tend to have similar artificial expectations about building a community online. It’s a slow methodical process unless, like I said before, you’ve got a large audience from some other platform. I’ve seen people in the WordPress that have been much more effective in building a community than I have been. It’s one of my weaknesses folks. I’ve not been that effective, but I’m a little bit of an introvert anyway. I know that will be surprising, folks, but I am. So What I said, one of the problems I see, the next problem is people don’t really understand who their student is. They really don’t understand who they’re aiming, the persona. It’s a phrase in marketing. Who is this ideal student? Who are these group of students? People tend to produce a website and content.
[00:13:05.560] – Jonathan Denwood
They tend to focus on the initial course. They’re not really focussing on the messaging on the website, on the landing page, on the email sequence that’s going to be sent out. You need to really understand, and it’s around what we’ve discussed regularly in this show, folks, around finding a niche. In the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005, the idea that you can market to a very broad category like health and fitness. I’m just going to build a membership website around health and fitness. It can work out well to you unless, like I I’m going to keep hammering away. Unless you’ve got a large audience from some other platform, that ain’t going to work out. But on the other end, if you can find a niche in that popular category and really hammer your message and really understand some of the key problems that people face in that niche, it’s a good chance you’re going to have success. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:14:30.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, the health and fitness one is a perfect example. If you were one of the fitness coaches on The Biggest Loser, and you left that show and started your own membership site, you would have a natural injection of many people in general fitness. But to be someone that’s not known and try and get in the health and fitness, you need to focus. You’re going to take care of postpartum, recent mothers trying to lose that baby pooch, or you’re going to focus on middle-aged men 50 to 65 fight and beer bellies, or you’re going to focus on scrawny kids trying to add bulk coming out of high school. But you’re going to focus on some niche, and it seems counterintuitive because you think you are limiting yourself on who you can market to. But if you try to market to those bigger, broader audiences, in truth, you’re marketing to nobody. And this was part of my mistake when I first started in this whole vertical, Jonathan. I can remember I would make a product, and it could be an awesome product. But if you don’t keep your avatar in mind, if you don’t keep your persona in mind who you’re selling to and what reward you’re delivering to them and your copy doesn’t speak to what’s in it for them, if it’s just bragging about how good your stuff is, because that’s what I thought marketing was at first.
[00:15:48.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
I thought marketing was talking about how good my products were. It’s not. The marketing is, what does your product do for that customer? You really have to think about who you’re marketing to, what problems you’re solving, and then execute.
[00:16:04.820] – Jonathan Denwood
The next thing in is research and development. People say, Well, How do I find this niche? It’s never been easier, folks. There’s so much online community out there through Facebook, Slack. There’s so many platforms out there where community Reddit. Reddit is a fantastic resource to do this research on. Facebook is a great resource. There’s a number, Twitch, that There’s a number of online communities out there. You can join some other experts in this area, just join their paid community is just to listen, just to observe. Is there a niche that’s obviously been discussed, which that influencer or that person, much more established in a particular sector, hasn’t identified or it’s too niche for them to bother with. There’s no excuse for doing research, but I’ve got to be honest with you, the majority of people that we help folks have done no research. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:17:36.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree with you, and I almost buttoned and interrupted you.
[00:17:39.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, please, because I do it all the time.
[00:17:42.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
When you said maybe it’s too nicheed down, right? So there’s not nicheing far enough, and then some people think that they can over niche. They can niche too far down. I want to drive people back to the idea of what does success look look like. Remember, not every online project has to be the next Facebook, my space, because I’m going to show you how old I am or LinkedIn. You can have 50 paying users and consider yourself an absolute success. So don’t worry about over-nitching or being too finite on your decision for content because you don’t need 1,000, 2,500, 50,000 people following you. You need a core group of people that you can start and grow with and grow revenue from. And then as time goes, you can always expand and increase your market in your net. But you want to get started. Being a success is so much easier than people think it is because you don’t need thousands of people, you need tens of people.
[00:18:48.710] – Jonathan Denwood
You must have read my mind, I’m going to be discussing this at the start of the second half of the show, which I think we’re going to do now, folks. Hopefully, we’re giving you some broad Insights. When we come back in the second half, we got some even more fantastic information to give you so you can build that great membership business in 2025. We will be back in a few moments. We’ll folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out we’ve got a great resource online just for you, and that’s the Membership Machine Facebook It’s a totally free group of people. It’s a mixture of WordPress experts with people like you trying to build a membership website and build the freedom, success for yourself and for your family. Like I say, it’s totally free. I’m posting stuff on there almost every day. Kirk’s a member of it. We’ve got a great community there. If you’ve got a question, it’s a great place to get answer. So go over to the Facebook Membership Machine Show Group and be part of the discussion. I think in the second half, you touched at the end, you must have read my mind because you touched something really important.
[00:20:13.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, People tend to want to build what I call a war and peace version of a course. When they’re building their first course, they don’t want to do that, folks. And they tend to fixate on content for understandable reasons. What you want to fixate is the student outcome. That’s what you want to fixate on. And your first course should be a course that you can try out with a small group of students that you’ve gathered through your research, and then you’ve had conversations with this small group, and then you’ve made them an offer to do this course at a very low price and got feedback from them. A group of 12, that’s all you need. That really do the course. Then after you’ve done that course, you can utilize that course as an effective lead magnet, because I think downloadable PDFs have their place. But also offering a course is also a lead… I call it a lead magnet course. It’s also a good idea. But it’s the next course that you’re going to do Where the real opportunities lie, folks, after you’ve done this initial course. It’s the course that’s around what I think is the real sweet point, which is the 497 of course, the 497.
[00:22:04.790] – Jonathan Denwood
Because if you do the math and you do what we’ve outlined and you really listen to what we say, it’s really possible to generate some real income from the 497. Now people, but it should be 197. After you’ve done a successful 497 launch, and it’s gone really well. You might look at the $1,997 course. But you’re not getting $1,997 out of people unless you’ve got some track record and you’ve got a lot of testimonials and you got buzz, or you’re from some other platform and you got a big audience. It ain’t going to happen, folks, but the 497 spot is the sweet spot for somebody like you. What do you think, Kurt?
[00:23:08.790] – Kurt von Ahnen
You’re taking me right down a personal lane because I have a project that I launched at a low dollar amount, and I didn’t get buyers because the dollar amount was too low. So when I did a proof of concept and I invited people to take the course for free, and provided they give me feedback. Feedback is the important part. I took that feedback and all of them resoundingly said, The course is better than the price alluded to, so we wouldn’t have paid that little for this course because we would assume it would be ineffective. And so I had to raise the price. Now, I’m currently selling that course much, much, much higher, and it’s getting that sale, not by the thousands, but by the ones and twos, based on its previous track record and success testimonials, just like you said. So the pricing is really, really important. I have a new client that’s going to launch a website in the next couple of weeks, and they made the war in peace. Against advice, they’ve got like 90 lessons in their course, and it’s beautiful. It’s a wonderful course. It’s 500 bucks, and it’s every bit worth the 500 bucks, if not, $1,500.
[00:24:23.630] – Kurt von Ahnen
But they don’t have anything else in their website that stair steps the client to that $500 purchase. I think they’re going to struggle a little bit getting adoption to come in and say, Oh, yeah, I’ll pay you 500 bucks for that, because there’s nothing else on their site that’s 50 bucks or 100 bucks or 150 bucks that lets them stair step to that premium product.
[00:24:45.110] – Jonathan Denwood
I think I’m right in my math. Because it’s important to do the steps because you’re going to get the verbiage, right? You’re focusing on getting the right messaging on your website, building, being the right If you get the right verbiage, it will also, and you’re in the right niche, there’s a good chance it’s going to show up in search. But the only point in showing up in search is that people are searching for what you… If you’re showing up for people that are searching for the problem, it’s been a total waste of time, folks. But if you’re in the niche and you’ve listened and you’ve done all the things that we talked about in the first half of this show, endlessly in this podcast, we’ve talked about this, me and Kirek, because we just see all the time people not doing this, and they’re really knowledgeable, and they’re great people, and they really want to build a good business, but they also really know their subject, and they’ve got a lot to offer their students, but they just don’t do this what we are laying out in this episode. And they get disenchanted, they give up.
[00:26:10.160] – Jonathan Denwood
But if they listened and followed this plan that we’re giving you, folks, it wouldn’t happen. I’ve just done some quick math. If you get at around $497, you get 500 students, that’s $50,000. If you get 497 and you get 250, that’s $25,000. It’s not life-changing money, but it ain’t bad, folks. It’s a good start to build some other courses on, some one-to-one masterminds, group masterminds, and other courses, and blah, blah, blah. It’s totally achievable, folks. Totally achievable. I’ve done my I’ve done your math wrong, have I?
[00:27:01.160] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think you’ve done your math wrong because I was like, Those numbers don’t make sense.
[00:27:04.570] – Jonathan Denwood
No.
[00:27:04.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
Five hundred people at $497 would be a quarter million dollars.
[00:27:10.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, yeah, there you go. Well, I always like to underperform. I overperform, I meant. I love always to overperform. See, that’s why I’m hammering away at the $497 because it’s the type of money that people, if they’re really serious, they’ve got a real problem, a headache, as I say, and they’re looking for a solution, most people, unless they’re broke, folks, totally broke, they can think, Yeah, the verbiage, the message, what the course is offering. For 497, I’ll get my credit card. If you’re at 11997, they’re going to think quite a bit. You’re going to have to track record, or it’s a business, it’s not their money. Because then the 497 turns into the 197 because it’s the same mindset when it comes to a business. But I think it’s the real sweet point, and there’s some really attractive income in that spot. I think it’s the honey spot. And a lot of people don’t realize this. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:28:37.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m with you. People aren’t good at math. Not just you, but a lot of people aren’t.
[00:28:42.650] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s early for me. I got up for some… I don’t I get up really early, but for some reason I didn’t this morning, and I haven’t had my constant supply of coffee.
[00:28:51.230] – Kurt von Ahnen
I tend to think of, not just in dollar amounts, but I tend to think of the energy that comes in a website. And I I know that it’s a weird crystals and pyramids concept for some people, but if you build an awesome website and there’s no users, for some reason, whether you have membership tools and community tools or not, people can sense that there’s nothing going on in that site. It just feels dead. If it has active users and people taking that course, there’s a certain energy to it. There’s a certain… It’s doing something. And so to me, if you can get to those 25, 25 to me is like the number. If you can get to paying active users in your website. That, to me, is like a milestone to success. And to Jonathan’s point, if you were to have 25 paying users at the 497 mark, you’d be over six figures. That, long and short to a lot of folks, is financial success as well.
[00:29:52.980] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s around the concept that some people call a POP. They To use the language of create a prototype. I use a slightly different methodology, Minimum Viable Course, and it comes from the bootstrap startup world. And Rob Rowland, who’s a great influencer in that space. So I nicked his concept of a Minimum Viable Product, and I call it a Minimum Viable Course, this initial course. And while you’re doing it, is to learn to It helps you change the verbiage. I want to point out to you, folks, it’s really important to have a reasonably good-looking website and have these important landing pages. To get it up to a certain standard, I’m a bit of a design snob myself. I did my MA in design. I appreciate good design. I’m a bit of a web snob when it comes to web design, but also know a lot of people overdo it. And especially the verbiage, you’re going to change the word in constantly, and especially after you get this first group of students that you have developed a relationship because you’re just looking for a small group. I’ve heard other influencers experts in this field say, You need 20, you need 30.
[00:31:33.980] – Jonathan Denwood
It ain’t going to happen, folks. You just haven’t got the bandwidth. But if you go into these online groups and you communicate with members and you listen, you write down, you find the niche, you identify the problem, you have some discussion, you should be able to get 10, 12 people to sign up if you offer them to do this initial minimum viable course, and then get feedback from them, and then you can then expand, use that course as your lead magnet, and then as your content as well for Google. You can put some of it on YouTube, on TikTok, on all these social media to drive them. Then you can use that feedback to build the money earner, the 497 dollar course. That’s why I was excited about this episode, because I’ve been thinking about all these concepts for the over a year. I’m probably going to write a longer PDF and provide it to people, because I think if you really understand this, it’s totally achievable to get success. But like I say, so many people don’t. So Every successful course is going to be work, and there are people that say, Well, it’ll be evergreen, you won’t have to change it.
[00:33:13.640] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s overstating it. That’s ridiculous because every business needs administration. But there’s also some truth about it because this ain’t the same as a service business where you’re You’re selling hours of your time or you’re employing people. The problem with employing people is that you’re not, or subcontractors, is that your margins get hammered Because you’re employing other people unless you’re doing higher grade work or you’re employing people offshore. At WP Tonic, we’re a hybrid because unless you’ve got experienced people handling offshore subcontractors, it can rapidly become a nightmare. We deal with this often ourselves when we’re dealing with half-built projects, because dealing with offshore staff, folks, is a skill in its own. Unless you’re selling your hours or you’re selling Other people’s hours, which has its own problems. A membership, it’s definitely, if you set it up the right way, won’t be like that. But on the other hand, it’s just It will still require nurturing. It’s a bit like saying a plant doesn’t need watering. Well, there’s some plants that live in the desert that don’t need so much maintenance, but they need some. And there’s other plants that if they’re not watered and loved every day, they just wilt straight away.
[00:35:06.880] – Jonathan Denwood
So that’s the difference. I think that wasn’t a bad- That’s a pretty good analogy there.
[00:35:12.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
You pulled that one out good.
[00:35:14.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’m getting better at this. It only took me eight years to learn how to podcast, did it?
[00:35:19.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Because it depends on which niche you pick, which people group you reach out to. Some people are needy. And I’ve experienced that firsthand. You get into some audiences where they just need it.
[00:35:30.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you learn that by working with me, isn’t you? I’m there, I’m needy, isn’t I?
[00:35:35.310] – Kurt von Ahnen
Other people are more independent, but it depends on how you set things up. You talked about something about evergreen and work and trading hours for money. I also don’t believe in evergreen as in build it once and never touch it. But here’s a great example. I’ve got a cohort of 10 groups of students going through a course that I’ve made. That’s 10 students going I’m not teaching it one on one or live sessions. They’re looking at online content. But to your point, I had to go and modify some of that content. Things have changed in the last three, four years. So I went in and I spent a few hours changing that content, modernizing that content, changing some of the verbiage. I changed a couple of the quiz questions. Three, four hours tops, right? Well, to your point, Jonathan, I spent that three or four hours doing that, but it wasn’t to serve one customer. It was to serve these 10 that I’m working with right now. Now, and it’s going to serve the next 30 or 40 that come through, right? And so if you look at what they’ve paid for this education, that time, instead of being worth $50 an hour to me, is worth, I hate to say online, but it’s probably worth 2,500, $2,500, $2,500, $3,000 an hour if you break down revenue versus the time you spend making that change.
[00:36:52.710] – Kurt von Ahnen
You can succeed in the membership business online with what you spend watching Netflix. You can still have a full-time job, give up watching Netflix, and build a six-figure income on the side if you are purpose-driven, focused, and follow the steps.
[00:37:11.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I work crazy hours, folks, because I’m a bit of a scattered brain. I can concentrate on stuff if I really commit myself, but I can work in spurts of about a couple of hours, and then I need a break of half hour or a Five minutes, and then I work another. So I’m happy to have ridiculously long days, but I’m not working intensely because I can’t do it because I’m so scattered. So I work from 8:30 to 9:00, 10:00 at night. But I’m not going to tell you I’m hammering away all the time because I’m not. Some days I don’t do anything. Other days I’m hammering away all day, but then I tend to… It’s because I’m having the day off the next day. Right. Email list. Now, this is really important, but I’ve got to be honest with you, listeners. You, the listener. It’s confession day. I’ve not been highly successful on the email list. I’ve got about a 500 list. I’ve got it up to 2000 at one time, but it was focused at a totally different. My business changed from regional local web development, web design, to what WP Tonic and the Membership Machine Show has turned into.
[00:38:58.980] – Jonathan Denwood
So I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on building a list. All I know, it’s bloody damn hard. But on the other hand, you don’t need an enormous list of tens of thousands. That’s a load of cobblers. What you need, and it’s linked, and I observed it, reflecting back, I can see the mistakes I’ve made, and hopefully by sharing this and being totally honest with you, folks, you won’t make the same mistakes. It’s really linked to what we discussed in the first part of this show, folks, is finding your niche, finding the language, finding the key problems. And if your newsletter and the verbiage to get people to sign up the newsletter is aimed at that niche, they will sign up. If it’s not aimed at that niche and there’s no problems, there’s no When you’re not talking to those people in your newsletter, they’re going to unsubscribe anyway. But if it is, you’re going to build up a powerful list that you can market other courses to. But it’s getting the right, finding the niche, and then your newsletter is about that niche. If it isn’t, But on the other hand, I know no area…
[00:40:32.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I take that pack, almost all online marketing advice, most of it’s Tosh, in my opinion. But email and building up email is really important. But I know no area where that more nonsense is talked about. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:40:58.730] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think this is an area where you and I will be separated a little bit. I really think it comes down to use case and how big or small your niche is. For instance, we’ve all heard of Groupon before. You can’t have a Groupon region of your own unless you have 25,000 recognizable emails, right? So you can’t have junk and hard bounces. So if you have 25,000 emails in a region, Groupon Well, you are equitable. You are someone that could survive in the discount game. But think about it, that’s not a niche. They put out this thing that says, buy a ticket to Disney or get a $2 off on a coffee, or it’s all over the place. Then you start driving down and you go, Okay, so here’s my niche. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Once you understand the percentage of population that your niche facilitates, and then you think about the geographic area that you want to serve, you can pick a goal number. I have a mail list of 3,000 people for Mañana No Mas. At one point, it was 8,000. I think I did the same thing Jonathan did. I took a look I took that list and I said, What’s my open rate?
[00:42:18.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
My open rate was horrible. Then I started looking at the names in the list, and it was like, I worked with that person 12 years ago, or I knew that person at church nine years ago. I said, These are not potential clients. Clients. These aren’t leads. All I’m doing is spamming people that used to be friends. So I threw it away. It sounds painful and stupid, but I just deleted the whole list and started from scratch. And now I’m where I’m at now, but my My in rate is much better and my messaging is focused on the right audience. And when I look at my niche in the online space for being memberships and online learning, and I look at my potential for population, I think I’m in a really good spot.
[00:42:59.420] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you made some excellent points there. Just to finish off on the bright spot is that what we pointed out to you, folks, is that if you get your niche, get your vocabulary, build your minimum viable course, get input from that initial small group of students, build your next course based on your minimum viable course, which you’re going to use as a highly converted lead magnet. Then, base some of that content on your next course, which will be your money-making course. At $497, you only need 250 to 500 students to make some considerable income. You don’t want to listen to my original behalf, which Kirek was so tactfully pointed out. You can make… That’s possible, folks. I’m not saying it’s easy. It isn’t easy, but when you do the basic math and think about it, if you do the initial work, folks, you get the correct vocabulary. You just don’t build the bloody course without doing anything we’ve outlined in this podcast video; your chances of success have increased enormously, in my opinion. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:44:36.670] – Kurt von Ahnen
I liken it to MMA, boxing, or any of these extreme sports. If you get into the ring and you think you’re going to fight another expert, but you haven’t done the road work, you haven’t been running, you haven’t been skipping rope, you haven’t been hit in the bag, you haven’t been sparring at the gym, you’re going to get clocked. It’s the same thing in the internet space. It’s like being in a fight with professional fighters. You are putting your product out there and saying, Hey, look at me, look at me, look at me, which sounds silly, especially for introverts. But you have to get eyes on your product. And if you don’t do the road work if you don’t… I hate Slack. I’m just going to say it. I am not a fan of using Slack, but I am in Slack. I’m in six or seven different Slack channels, answering questions, adding value, putting myself forward as an expert in the things that I’m an expert in, and I’m getting leads to work on projects or have people come and take my courses at Manana Nomas because of that effort.
[00:45:43.970] – Kurt von Ahnen
You got to do the road work. You have to put yourself where the audience is and not necessarily sell. You’re not pitching people all the time, but you are positioning yourself as an expert in this category and letting people know that you have the resources to help them become the expert you have become. You’re just passing information along, and people see value in that. That’s the road work to become a success.
[00:46:08.730] – Jonathan Denwood
The other thing I want to point out before we end the show, folks, is that there’s always a message about entrepreneurship, that the people who succeed are significant risk-takers. There’s always some risk in anything I think you’ll get a reward for. However, most successful businessmen and women do everything to reduce the risk of failure. That’s why they’re sharp: they understand their audience figures, know where they’re competing, and do everything to minimize risk, not increase it. So they’re practically… It’s like being a general going into battle, folks. When the battle starts, all plans go up in the air. But the best generals won the battle before it even started. They outclass the enemy in the materials and training of their troops. They understand the landscape of the battlefield. They’ve researched their opponent, put themselves in their opponent’s mind, looked at their opponent’s general tactics, and understood the tactics. So, past battles can’t guarantee it, but they’re good signposts of how your opponent will react to your battle tactics. So they’ve done all this work, folks.
[00:48:10.440] – Jonathan Denwood
So they’ve practically won the battle before they even started it. But that’s what you have to do with what we’ve discussed in this episode. Hopefully, you found it helpful. Give us some feedback, and leave some comments on YouTube. If you’re on the podcast, please subscribe to the WP-Tonic YouTube channel and leave some comments there. Give us some feedback. If you want me to write this out and provide a PDF, like I said, go to the WP-Tonic Membership Machine YouTube or join the Facebook group and leave a comment, and I’ll look this up and I’ll send it to you. We will be back next week with another great show. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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