80/20 rule. 80 percent of your profits come from 20 percent of your customers. Usually these businesses are set up with a funnel, where there is a very low ticket impulse buy type of item that most everyone on the list has purchased. By making a single purchase - often a loss leader or break even product after the advertising - these people have shown a willingness to spend money on this company and had an experience of going through a sale, so they can see that the company is reliable. Then, there is a high value offer that is affordably priced - say, an e-learning course for $59 that is packed with a lot of great information the customers are interested in. Only a percentage of the list will purchase this. Itās another opportunity for the business to create a relationship with customers who are showing an interest. Finally, there is a very high ticket item - a business conference, one on one mentoring by videoconference, an exclusive mastermind program, a structured comprehensive course showing how to make your website really sell at a profit - and that might be several thousand dollars. Maybe 20% of the list buys into this, or 5%, but really thatās like any business. Thereās some customer who visits the hardware store every week and follows all their sales, and then thereās me who walks in just when I need a hammer.
This makes sense. This works out to a thousand people spending $800 each on average, and the rest chipping in $50 each on average. It still sounds pretty daunting though. Itās not insignificant money at all, and all of these people would have already spent money. The list is all paying customers and no looky-loos, even if most of the customers wonāt be repeat customers. If you have 5000 people who have given you money, or would at least would be willing to give you money, wouldnāt the hard part pretty much be done already?
That being said, Iād gladly pay $60 or so for an online course, assuming Iām sure Iād get something of value from it. If someone else was footing the bill, Iād probably pay even more.
People charge a lot for the online courses when there is ongoing support. For example, I just paid $1200 for a course from Amy Porterfield on creating online courses designed to sell. I create online courses for my day job, but I donāt have to sell them. And itās a lot of work to create one. So, it was very helpful to have a course that teaches the way to make sure the course has a market in advance of doing all the work, and also how to do all the sales pages. In her course, she has tech support from all the different vendors that support the hosting, etc. Sheās in every week on Live answering questions. I have connected with other people who are also making courses in similar areas, who will Beta test for me, or who will promote my course to their Facebook groups. So far Iāve been involved about a year into her program. Itās useful to have people come in who follow her system and are making money and reporting that back.
There are other people who charge $3000, $5000 for online courses. Or, they host a conference.
Iād definitely buy from Amy Porterfield again. It is a good program. Sheās very professional. The networking is valuable to a business. I can write these things off on my taxes.
So, in conclusion, if people are into you, they will spend over and over again, or refer people to you.
I really like this business model. Most people give away a lot of content for free and do a lot of educating as they work to build a business, so, yes, thereās a path to make money, but also, you just get to be a nice person teaching people stuff, you have a platform.
The more successful people make a lot of money off affiliate sales, too. If you have 5000 people on your list who are really engaged and trust you, and you promote someone elseās course or product, you might get $3, 400 for each person you refer. These people have tight networks.
They also have automated systems set up to constantly bring in new people through Facebook ads, Google Ads that feed into their automated online courses with automated emails pushing out to engage the new people and get them into the high ticket offers.
It takes time to set it all up; itās a ton of work, but there is a certain point where you have momentum with it and it all kind of feeds itself and thereās a steady stream of income.
Depends on the niche and whoās paying. A price that would be ridiculous to a person paying out of pocket, when viewed as a tax-deductible business expense that could result in a competitive advantage potentially leading to landing multiple $100k+ contracts, and can be listed as āprofessional development benefitsā when hiring - that market can pay a lot.
I forgot that I had seen some of that in the past - although I was more familiar with ones where hype men were getting rich quick selling snake oil solutions that were obsolete by the time they finished recording the videos. They had the salesman patter down. You got full sets of DVDs, access to exclusive areas of their website, weekly updates via email, and discounts at a convention. āBut wait, thereās more! If you call nowā¦ā 
Companies looking for that competitive edge bought into it at a price of thousands. (Interestingly, their stuff was worthwhile in a totally unexpected way. After watching it, we decided to drop that line of business entirely instead of trying to get better at it and pursue other things that turned out to be much more profitable and the company did much better in the long run.)
But as @ChickieD describes, there are some that provide legitimate business value and aim at that justified company expense budget, and thatās a very different price point from selling to people studying something for personal interest or even their own personal career.
Very late I notice this, and add āpeople who drive manuals because they think this somehow gives them added status as drivers, but I get stuck behind them at the lights while they fiddle with that antiquated machinery.ā
āpivot to videoā
I donāt (generally speaking) want to watch a video. When itās a video that would have been better as an article, that ticks me off no end. My SO had me watch a video that was 3 minutes of slides, which could have been replaced by 10 bullet points, readable in 30 seconds. I was peeved, he was insistent, and I gritted my teeth. Guh.
Oh I so agree! I like model railroading and have always loved the magazines on the subject. One of them (Model Railroader) has really gone in for on-line stuff, especially videos. The paper magazine is a pale shadow of its former self ā last one only 70 pages. I donāt want to watch a video to learn some new technique or see a review of a new kit ā I want to ponder an article with pictures and drawings.
Edit: correct word order.
Seems like a trend. Last weekend one of my nieces asked me to make her a BB8 (Star Wars) hat for her Halloweāen costume. No problem, I found a free pattern on-line ā but itās in the form of a Youtube video.
So Iām going to have to watch it, make notes on materials and gauge, then watch it again, pausing it as I work each section.
I can think of two drivers for this: a) āmultimedia is cooler than nasty old printā is still a thing, despite plenty of evidence that the real axiom should be āuse the right medium for the jobā and b) itās a sneaky way to generate ad revenue via YouTube.
Yeah! I find this a stilted way to present such things. Video is so linear. With a printed plan and instructions and drawings you can go back and forth, pause at something complex, stop and think, all with your eyes. With video, like you said, you have to pause, take notes (or remember, something Iām not good at, go back and forth, etc. The only comparable downside with a magazine article is having to turn the page.
I recall hearing about a kid who figured out to fix something by watching a Youtube video six times. That would drive me crazy. Maybe VR is the solution? You try whatever you want to learn in the virtual world, using instructions floating in front of you, or with audio, or by a video, and so on. Then take the headphones off, and do it for real. Of course that would take even more production time than either a printed version or a video!
VR would work for learning a set of steps, like piano scales or maybe driving. But not for making something, like a model railroad landscape or that hat I need to make. I donāt need to know how to make the hat end to end, all at once. I just need to know what to do for the current round and a few rounds ahead so I can plan accordingly.
I also donāt need to remember how to make the hat after Iām done. The core set of skills is needing to know how to crochet, work with multiple colours in crochet, and how to darn in ends. I already have all those in memory.
I have found Youtube videos useful for learning new techniques, especially if I can find more than one worth watching. That way I can see the technique demonstrated by several different people and figure out which version goes best with what I already do.
You may be better off with ar.
That is really cool! How come they donāt use that on the Enterprise? It would be neat for crafts and models, but weād need really easy (and cheap) ways to create it in the first place. Someday! (or is it out there and I just donāt know about it?)
It was supposed to have come out for windows 10. Seems to have dropped by the wayside.
Apparently it is avaliable if you have the money to burn.
Well, isnāt that always the case. But thanks for the tip. The software looks intriguing.
Depreciated command line options that used to work but now donāt for FSM knows reasons.
Much of the push now has gone to the Peripheral Headsets that attach to a full sized PC.
BUTā¦ With Windows on ARM coming soon, the Real HoloLens may be making a comeback
It just happened again.
Person calls me, and they have the wrong number. That part is cool. We all do it, and there are at least 4 area codes in the local calling area, so itās bound to happen.
The part that ticks me off is when I politely tell them they have the wrong number and they start arguing with me about it. You want to talk to whoever. Thatās great. Heās not here.
Not to mention robocalls in general. 
We even got them where I used to work, calling a red emergency phone that had no keypad.
Especially the weird āyou have won a tripā ones.
Maybe thatās why this last wrong number annoyed me so much. A few days ago I had one of those robocalls. I just hung up, didnāt press anything on the phoneās keypad, but a few hours later I had an awkward conversation with a woman who wanted to know why I had called her. I explained I hadnāt. She at least noticed that our phone numbers were sequentially close together; the robocall seemed to be using the last picked up number as the spoof number for the next call or something.