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The title of this post is a quote from an excellent free ebook I just read. It’s written Brian Clark of Copyblogger. Also, you can listen to it on mp3. The ebook and mp3 is called Teaching Sells and you can get it free at TeachingSells.com. You have to give your name and email, but you can always unsubscribe from Brian’s list if his business strategies are not for you.

Brian’s report has helped me realize the best way to make money online is to charge for it. Simple, huh? He writes on page 2:

We often expend large amounts of time and effort creating elaborate solutions to problems when a simple answer is right under our noses.

I think many of you are free content publishers. Does this mean you should stop publishing free content and start selling it? Brian covers this point by talking about blogging. Blogging is one of the most popular publishing methods. However, Brian sees blogging as primarily a means to sell actual products instead of advertising. He says the problem with the advertising based model is that it often gets in the way of quality content. He writes on page 9:

The people who do manage to make money with niche content and AdSense have to be quite ruthless about getting people to click away as soon and as often as possible. Beyond aggressive positioning of ad units that obscure the actual content, there is no motivation to make the content engaging or even useful.

Think about it—quality content might get in the way of the action the publisher really wants, which is a click to somewhere else via AdSense.

And it’s not just AdSense. Intrusive graphical ads, paid text links disguised as editorial navigation, sponsored blog posts… advertising makes content less useful and less trustworthy.

Sure, creating your own quality product requires more work upfront, but when you think about it, the long term monetary and branding rewards are greater. Instead of having to find advertisers and sponsors - which may not integrate well with your site and which may not offer a lot of money, you can sell a product and charge whatever price you want while integrating it well with your free content.

If you’re wondering if people will pay for content, Brian has a good example about the viability of the paid content model. He compares free content and paid content with free network television and cable. Millions of people are willing to pay for cable because the cable shows are often much better than free network TV shows (read: The Sopranos).

Brian has more relevant information. He writes about getting targeted traffic to your product by working with free content publishers. He talks about creating a product where you are an online teacher that provides an learning experience and community, hence his site name, Teaching Sells. And he advises on using media other than text because of these stats:

• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• 57% of new books are not read to completion.
• Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

Finally, I leave you this quote on page 20. It’s a practical example of making money by creating a virtual learning environment with you as the online teacher.

Let’s say you’re a big fan of productivity books. You could create a course that acts as a review or combination of the very best ideas and techniques from all the top productivity gurus. You can fully give credit to the source material, because you’re adding value by editing, organizing and reformatting the content for better learner comprehension, retention and use.

Think about a teacher in the classroom. He or she doesn’t write the textbook (at least not usually). He teaches the concepts contained in the textbook pursuant to a curriculum he designs and implements, with the aid of audio / visual teaching aids, testing and classroom interaction.

That’s what you’re trying to simulate in a virtual learning environment. It works for the benefit of the learners, and that’s why it’s well worth paying for.

As you can tell, I really liked this ebook. I plan on using Brian’s strategies. To learn more, get your own copy at Teaching Sells.

Also, feel free to leave a comment about the ebook once you’ve read it.

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