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Today I talk with Sharyn Sheldon about how you can create white label courses for companies. Sharyn has quite a unique model compared to most other course creators. Typical course creators create a course for themselves and sell it to the audience. Others are contracted to create a course for a company and that company sells the content to the audience. What Sharyn does is quite different but very intriguing. She owns contentsparks.com, where she offers business coaches and consultants with professional quality, brandable training programs and marketing materials. Sharyn’s content is the time-saving secret her customers use to expand their reputation, attract new leads, and raise their income. Let’s hear from Sharyn and her thoughts on creating white label online courses for companies: What is your background? Sharyn: My journey to online courses began when I was working for a consulting company. They were doing learning and consulting for big companies. As a consultant, I worked with places like Mary Lynch, MetLife, UBS, JP Morgan and many other financial and insurance institutions. I used to love the job because it was all about designing learning solutions at a strategic level, and that was really where my course creation started. Gradually online became the norm with things like online marketing and content marketing booming. Then I came across Private Label Rights (PLR), where I saw the opportunity to start my business.
You have an interesting business model, how did you think of it and how has it changed throughout the years?Sharyn: Well, my thinking was that coaches, consultants, and small business owner shouldn’t have to waste time creating course content when they can be directly helping their clients in sharing their expertise. They don’t need to create the courses themselves but rather benefit from our team of experienced professionals, who have been creating programs for big companies and small businesses for the last 25 years. So, we provide all the needed materials to teach various courses and all a course creator has to do is tailor it for their market. They can add their names, branding, and inject their own voice and insights. Basically, we help course creators help others.
What process do you take to find out what courses to create?Sharyn: Picking topics is always a challenge. At the moment because I have a large customer base, I always start by requesting what they or their customers want to know. Another thing I look at is what sold well in the past and I regularly check online for those hot topics. Most importantly, I focus on evergreen topics that will last long.
How long should each lesson be and why?Sharyn: Most of my lessons are about 2 to 7 minutes long. I would say that a video lesson shouldn’t be more than 10 minutes. The reason is that people start losing focus with very long videos, yet to want them to remember the content. That is for online but if I’m doing something like a webinar, I wouldn’t want to spend more than a minute on one slide. For offline lessons, I advise not to go more than 15 minutes before you start asking questions and getting interactions.
What are some marketing strategies that you’ve had that worked over the years?Sharyn: I must say that the way I got my first big break was from referrals. Luckily, I had an affiliate program set up and so it was easy for my colleagues to refer people to my site. Since then, email marketing has always worked for me. My email list then led to content marketing. And when I re-branded to Contentsparks, I created a Facebook group for my existing customers. The group has helped me a lot in making repeat sales. I also create a waiting list which I use to notify customers about a new course and that way I get to close sales from the moment I launch a new course.
What is the process you quickly use to create courses?Sharyn: Actually ours is not that quick process. But, whenever we want to do it quickly, the key is to start at that high-level outline without writing up a lot of the stuff. When we know the topic, we don't have to write in all the details - bullet points just suffice.
What would you tell someone that's created a course but hasn't seen it get the results they were hoping for?Sharyn: When it comes to results, there are two types; monetary and student success. The first one is if you are making sales while the latter is based on whether your students are getting value from your courses. So I will advise that you get feedback from your students so you know what they need to hear. Once you understand your student's needs, then it's easy for you to customize a course for them. When your students know they are getting value from your course, then they're likely to buy it and, in turn, you make money too.
Where can we learn more about you and what you do?Sharyn: You can find me at onlinecoursecouch.com/contentsparks, where I also offer my courses. We focus primarily on business coaches and consultants although we do have other people too. At the moment, we are hoping to create a curriculum that pulls together various topics. So, we're looking to create a membership site where people will learn a wide range of things from the courses.
