Online Education Landscaping Pt. 2 aka researching the competition
Spoilers! If you haven’t seen Cloud Atlas yet
In my last post I outlined a few SaaS (software as a service/solution) products for creating online courses. Re-reading it just now it feels almost futile—a drop in the ocean. But what is the ocean if not a multitude of drops. ONWARDS!
Let’s start to landscape other course offerers, preferably in the startup/entrepreneur space.
So relaxing!
Lurn has a confusing group of courses, some are free and are probably akin to our masterclass offerings (Coaching and Consulting Bootcamp, Outsourcing Secrets, Chatbot Marketing 101); some are on the cheaper side ($197 and $397, $597), and some are priced like ours at $997
What's the difference in pricing? Unclear! A $397 course called Influencer Academy has 5hrs32min of content spread out over 6 modules. Whereas a $997 course called Kindle Cash Flow University claims to have 59 hours of content over 213 lessons! Visually, this course looks completely overwhelming, with bonus lessons added on to other bonus lessons. This is what happens when a product is evergreen and continues to get "relaunched" over and over--and a good lesson for things like SAS. We need to prune the bushes and consolidate our lessons over time or they will become unwieldy.
8 instructors, one of whom teaches 27 courses! Doesn't look well curated at all.
I joined a free course called "Coaching and Consulting Bootcamp". Some impressions:
The interface for looking at modules/lessons feels better than ours. I can select a lesson in any order. There is also far more depth than what we offer in our free masterclass. This feels like a real course, not a pure sales tool.
I picked a lesson at random to see how the actual content was--a case study within the course. The teacher used a tool called Deskscribble while he was talking. Case study was with Andy Brackpool on how he built a 45k/month agency. It's basically a podcast episode--no talking head video--with the instructor taking notes on the desktop using Deskscribble. Not sure why they wouldn't have some talking head video as well--it would make this experience nicer.
Within the course I can also take notes. This interface is really stupid. I'm not going to leave the lesson I'm taking, create a new note, type it in, then return to learning. I need a note-taking widget that runs side-by-side with the course player so I can notes as I watch.
The advanced note-taking feature within Lurn. When I want to take a note I have to leave the course, go to the notes section, indicate which lesson I want to create a new note for…well you get the idea.
This has a much clearer value proposition, right from the start. Four courses, that all look focused on the "creating content for revenue" space. How to make things go viral, making video ads, etc.
I love their success story page, looks great:
I signed up for "Viral Academy" but I have to watch the lessons in the order they want me to, and I have to wait a day in-between each lesson. The first video is just a long story about the founder of Jumpcut (or the instructor for this course? Can't tell). I also can't see how long the video is while I'm watching it, which is super annoying.
They have a facebook plugin that allows all the comments to show up right below the video, which is kind of nice I guess? Don't have to go a different browser tab to ask a question--but the interface is still the terrible FB board, which isn't great.
Started at 1:44pm
This is just a long masterclass-feeling sales pitch. I hate it. Long drone shots of him driving a fancy car by the beach. He surprises a bunch of students with some super fancy retreat in Laguna Beach. UGH this is awful, why do I have to watch this? Honestly, if I WANTED to spend money on a course like this I would have left by now to go spend money somewhere else. Although one of is students is Sven (this guy edits) who's awesome and has a youtube channel I've spent a lot of time on.
Now I'm part of the email sequence--this sequence feels so hackneyed at this point, we have to teach something more interesting in our Email Marketing course. We can't just teach this same sequencing that everyone does now.
Okay I've switched to 2x speed.
Watching this just makes me dislike our own masterclass even more. He's basically teaching the "1000 true fans" philosophy--even using clips from Kevin Kelley talking on other people's podcasts.
It's now 2pm and I'm only halfway through it! Okay I can't watch anymore :)
1000 true fans approach to selling—so you don’t have to take the entire course!
Digitalmarketer.com
Workshops priced at $295 Surprisingly, I can't learn more about individual workshops. I can't see the course curriculum or the teacher bio, I can only "add to cart". So in order to find out what’s being taught in a course I have to buy it. That’s some serious scarcity economics right there. I MUST BUY THIS COURSE.
One thing they’re doing better than Foundr is appealing to different kinds of stakeholders. We need to start building courses for companies to license internally, or at least for small groups of people like small Agencies.
They also have certifications. The main one is for Digital Marketing Mastery and is $999. The other 11 are each for $495. These "certification" courses are our direct competitor.
They also have playbooks, which a group of checklists, templates, etc. Each one is $27.
Finally they have the membership, which is $95 and includes:
All the playbooks and all the workshops they've done in the past, which I imagine are similar to our masterclasses. So they don't include the certification courses in the membership.
You really have to read the fine print to see that membership costs $95 a month, which is outrageous considering it doesn't even include the certification courses.
https://www.growthtribe.io/
This interface feels so much nicer than the previous ones.
Their courses are grouped by 3 day courses vs. 6-12 week courses
Some of the longer courses they offer
Growth Hacking is $2000 euro (the 6-week option), but that covers the following:
I would much rather invest 2000 euro in a course that gives me 18 hours of live content vs $1000 for 7-8 hours of pre-recorded content. Plus I get 2 coaching sessions.
I LOVE this idea. A personality scan (otherwise known as a skills assessment) to determine where you’re at professionally, which then creates a customized course syllabus and a coach with the relevant experience? Brilliant.
