3 Smart Ways To Turn Your Expertise Into Sellable Products Online
Talented but starving? Follow these proven hacks to build your own fortune.
Have you ever wondered why heaps of talented people wallow in poverty — just like the starving artist?
A lot of reasons have been given. The most confounding among them is the stereotype that has existed for thousands of centuries. A terrible myth that makes us believe: “creative talent are meant to starve”.
This myth is long hardwired in our brain, such that consecutive generations of talent lived (and still do) miserably.
What is the way out from the starving artist myth?
The first solution is ditching that nefarious stereotype itself. Second, building a creative yet commercial mindset that bolsters financial goals. Lastly, following the right path to achieve profitable goals. In all, make no mistake; turning your expertise into sellable products has never been easier. Thanks to the Internet.
Jeff Goins gives a very powerful message, saying, “Now you have a choice. You can go the way of the tired, frustrated artist who struggles to keep creating. Or you can embrace an important but challenging truth that just might set you free from such thinking. You don’t have to starve. You can thrive. The world is waiting for you to create your best work. Please don’t let us down.”
If that sounds resonating, you may want to ask me “how do I start thriving?” “Where do I start from?”
In this article, I’m going to explain three practical ways to turn your expertise into a moneymaking machine — just with 3 tools: your expertise, the Internet, and a die-hard passion.
Here they are:
1. Know what sells where
Even with your talent, you may continue to live the “starving artist” life if you don’t know where to sell what. So what do you do?
Start rightly. Earl Prevette gives a valuable hint in his book, entitled, “How to Turn Your Ability Into Cash,” where he noted that the first step is to analyze your area of expertise (problems you can solve with your talent) and crosscheck it with market demands (what’s actually in need). In fact, you can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to make the best decision by using tools like Google Trends to discover if there’s demand for your expertise.
If you have an expertise that fits any of the millions of demands out there, you have a potential goldmine. For instance, New York Times best-selling authors and famous Fortune 500 CEOs make, per engagement, $25-$50,000 through public speaking.
Not only them. Among several other options (that are similarly profitable or even more) is online tutoring. A South Korean tutor, Kim Ki-Hoon earns $4 million a year. What does he do? He teaches English Language via paid Internet videos.
In today’s world, knowledge sharing and acquisition is a big deal. Every day, over 3.5 billion people go online to learn. For this enormous number of browsers, isn’t it interesting that you can trade some values for huge income by offering web-based classes?
You can start a blog, and build it to a level where you can offer online courses, or even start an online university like Michael Hyatt. But to be honest, that’s not a day job.
Instead, Kajabi is a popular all-in-one and ready-made tutoring platform you can use to market, sell, and deliver your knowledge online. As Healthy Habit Happy Moms puts it, “The reason that we went with Kajabi is because it’s all in one. We don’t have to go plug this in and plug that in — it’s all there in one place.”
The pic below shows the regions where “online tutoring” is selling fast right now. However, you may want to go for consulting, freelance writing, webinar, podcast show, etc. Whichever, experts rely on this technological process to conduct market feasibility studies.
2. Offer quality product and use (only) proven process
Whatever you decide to offer online, quality is king.
As we all know — every tom dick and harry claim expertise in the Internet world. As such, you need quality as your hallmark if you want to separate yourself from the crowd and earn public trust (plus amazing income of course).
To achieve this, you have to carry out repeated experiments and verify what works better. In addition, you can learn from successful people who’ve been there done that.
Quality products, simply put, are the services/products that “consistently meet or exceed customer requirements or expectations.”
Personally, I’ve spent some bucks, buying eBooks and online courses. Sometimes I feel like diverting those investments to the nearest Gucci store. But the values I get from my preferred choice wouldn’t permit such. The truth is, other millions of people are in my shoe. If you must get their money, you must offer premium service!
3. Promote your brand
One big mistake routinely made by starving artists is the divorce from the entrepreneurial mindset. As always, they produce top-notch stuff. But what follows? They hoard it, waiting for someone to discover and promote it for them.
It doesn’t work that way.
If you want your expertise to pay the bills, you have to market it. And there are a number of ways to go about this. Either on your personal blog, top publications, popular podcasts, social channels, AMA, or through networking events, you just have to promote that expert-based product you’ve got to offer.
This is the only way to get noticed, talked about, and attract increasing prospects.
The starving artist is a myth that must die. To start turning your talent/expertise into a profitable venture, I’ll leave you with a quote from Ashton Kutcher:
“I didn’t really go the starving artist route. I kind of went and did massive, commercial things.”
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Shakir Akorede is a writer, digital entrepreneur, agenda contributor to the World Economic Forum, and founder of 501 Words. He also writes for Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Forbes Africa, etc. You can connect with him on Twitter.
