Voomly Blog

We’ve made Voomly better over the past month. With hundreds of “Vexperts” (as Vexpert JLM calls them) on the platform now, your feedback and ideas are driving our development. Bad for the love lives of our developers, good for your Voomly business.

Here are the highlights:

Expanded billing options for your product! http://blog.voomly.com/post/43000024929/billing-options

Explore Voomly promotes top sellers (you want to be on this list!): http://explore.voomly.com/

Also fixed formatting— now you can put a line-break in the Profile (under Settings) and Edit Services (under Edit Product) areas so that you can make your voomly page look better.

Thanks for being Voomly’s Valentine. We love having you on our team.

Win.

Voomly has added new billing cycle options.

Check it out…

Now you can set your product to be:

Free:  No charge to your subscribers

Monthly:  Subscribers billed automatically every 30 days

Yearly:  Subscribers billed automatically every year

One Time:  Subscribers billed once and only once — perfect for your online course

Of course, with any of the above options, both Seller and Buyer have full control to cancel any subscription any time and never be billed again.

Voomly already has so many great sellers we just couldn’t wait to share them with you.

So we put together a nice little Explore Voomly page.

Take a peak around.  There might be someone offering the kind of expertise you’re looking for…. or it might spark an idea of how you could become a voomly seller…

Either way, you’re winning.

p.s. We’re also highlighting some of our favorites at the bottom of the voomly homepage…

One of the most effective ways to gain Voomly subscribers is to add a p.s. message to your emails or blog posts.  These REALLY drive sales by making sure your readers know what you’re offering on Voomly.

Examples:

p.s.  If you’re looking for a little extra help in the kitchen, I am available for one-on-one Q&A and consulting via email for only $7/month.  Just click here to find out more and subscribe!

p.s.  My email-based “Zero to Marathon” training system is only $19/month.  Get started toward mile 26 right now!

p.s.  You can get my premium stock picks newsletter every morning for just $9/month…it includes full access to me via email…let’s do it!

Your Voomly business will do much better if you build a reputation for consistency and deliver a product that your buyers can count on.  

Here are a few tips:

1. Have a plan:  Whether you are sending out a premium newsletter, starting an online course, or focused mostly on private Q&A… it’s important to set buyer expectations in a way that you can deliver.  Is your newsletter weekly?  Daily?  Does your course have a new lesson every ___ days?   Knowing what you want to deliver is critical to a positive experience for your buyers.
2. Utilize the technology:  Scheduling your premium newsletter is an easy way to add consistency.  Likewise, you can use auto-sequence messages to send out friendly reminders or other prompts to your buyers… it’s not just for lessons!   And setting Q&A up emails go to your phone is an awesome way to insure fast replies for your buyer.
3. Be honest with yourself and potential buyers:  Setting the proper expectations on your sales page is critical.  If you’re not able to respond to Q&A during a certain time of day, say so!  If your newsletter will go out in the mornings, say so.  People love getting what they thought they were buying.  

Bottom line:  Set your expectations for yourself and make sure your buyers understand what you’ll deliver, when you’ll deliver it and when you’re available for Q&A.  The best Voomly businesses take a long-term approach to building both your reputation and your relationship with buyers.

Here’s a bit of a deeper look at setting up a Online Course business with Voomly:

Chosen by:  

• Established experts with an online following (twitter, facebook, forums, etc)
• Experts that want to monetize a specific step-by-step system
• Bloggers seeking to expand revenue via automatic premium content
• Busy people seeking an easy-to-setup income stream

Pros:

• Automatic:  Once you’ve set up the automatic sequence emails, Voomly takes care of the rest.  New subscribers will automatically get your welcome letter and each lesson as they move through your course.
   
• Easy:  Once you set up your Voomly, we handle the rest.  Billings, subscriptions, message delivery.  You just focus on getting your followers to your sales page and creating great content for your subscribers!
   
• Excellent sales conversion:   People love learning from experts that they already follow and trust.  
   

Cons:  

• Tougher to get started:  Your buyers expect to get a complete course, so it’s best to start selling your voomly course only after you have a good idea of what the course will contain — and the first couple of weeks lessons already queued in the system.  
  
  
• More interactive than you think:  Your students/subscribers will have questions!  Luckily, the Voomly platform makes it easy for you to stand out by allowing simple interaction with subscribers via our private Q&A technology.  Wouldn’t you be more likely to subscribe if you knew you could ask questions of the course teacher?

Bottom line:

Voomly is the perfect platform for monetizing your reputation with an online course because we make it fast to setup, easy to manage and more valuable via interactive Q&A.

As you get more experience with your Voomly business, you may see demand for more real-time alerts and content.  That’s a great reason to add a premium newsletter to your offering… and maybe up your price!

Here’s a bit of a deeper look at setting up a Premium Newsletter business on Voomly:

Chosen by:  

• Established experts with an online following (twitter, facebook, forums, etc)
• Bloggers seeking to expand revenue via premium content
• Busy people seeking an easy-to-setup income stream

Pros:

• Fast startup time:  Just publish your sales page and start sending emails to your subscribers using our BLAST ALL email technology.
   
• Easy:  Once you set up your Voomly, we handle the rest.  Billings, subscriptions, message delivery.  You just focus on getting your followers to your sales page and creating great content for your subscribers!
   
• “Natural” sale:  Your followers and readers will be interested in premium content that is deeper or more time-sensitive than the general public gets for free.
   
• Simple & Easy:  What’s more natural than sending emails from your current inbox?
   
• Unlimited customer lifecycle:  Your buyers are paying monthly for your premium content.

Cons:  

• Needs consistency and attention:  Your buyers expect to get what they pay for…don’t disappoint!  Top sellers generally have established times (scheduled) or trigger events (iphone launch!) when subscribers can count on hearing from them.
  
  
• Lots of competition:  Premium newsletters are everywhere.  One thing that can help yours stand out is the interaction with subscribers via our private Q&A technology.  Wouldn’t you be more likely to subscribe if you knew you could ask questions of the newsletter expert?

Bottom line:

Voomly is the perfect platform for monetizing your reputation with a premium newsletter because we make it fast to setup, easy to manage and more valuable via interactive Q&A.

As you get more experience with your Voomly business, you may see the same requests from buyers over and over or a general desire for more content from your subscribers.  At that point, it may make sense to start an automatic course to add value to your offering.

Spending a few minutes to set up a Voomly that can make you money for years while you simply answer emails from your normal inbox?  Sweet deal!

Here’s a bit of a deeper look at setting up a Q&A business on Voomly:

Chosen by:  

• Established experts with an online following (twitter, facebook, forums, etc)
• Professionals seeking to upsell existing clients for greater access/support
• Busy people seeking an easy-to-setup income stream

Pros:

• Fastest startup time:  Just publish your sales page and reply to emails as you get them
   
• “Natural” sale:  Established and popular experts can easily ask their fans to subscribe on Voomly for more personal and interactive access
   
• Simple & Easy:  What’s more natural than replying to emails from your current inbox?
   
• Unlimited customer lifecycle:  Your buyers are paying monthly for ability to email you.  No defined endpoint.

Cons:  

• Offer can seem “empty”:  Generally, buyers like knowing they will get something specific.  Even popular, established experts should consider adding value through auto-sequence or weekly newsletter blast
  
  
• Less predictable:  Some days you may get far more emails from buyers than other days.

Bottom line:

Q&A only is fast to get started and easy to deal with.  We think our Private Q&A platform is an awesome starting place for almost every Voomly seller.

As you get more experience with your Voomly business, you may see the same requests from buyers over and over or a general desire for more content from your subscribers.  At that point, it may make sense to start an automatic course or premium newsletter to add value to your offering.

Deciding what price to charge your subscribers is probably the most difficult part of starting your Voomly product.

Here are a few tips:

Start low.  The initial goal should be to get people subscribing so that you can get feedback a feel for what your product will become.

Consider your time.  If your product is mostly Q&A based and you are promising fast replies, it might require a higher price than if you’ve setup an automatic course or premium newsletter that requires the same amount of effort whether 3 or 1000 people subscribe.

Focus on lifetime value.   A fair price with consistent, high-quality content and individualized support via Private Q&A will keep subscribers for a long time. 

Experiment.   After a few months, you’ll have a feeling if your price is too high or too low.  Don’t be afraid to change it.  Note: Existing subscribers will be grandfathered-in at the price they signed up for, and the new pricing will take effect for anyone that subscribes from then on….starting low and moving higher builds loyalty.

Increase value instead of decreasing price.  If your product isn’t selling well, don’t automatically assume it’s a price issue.  You just might not be offering enough value.  A stronger commitment to private Q&A or an automatic online course could take sales from zero to hero overnight.  

The bottom line:  Pricing is a guessing game.  But by consistently providing a high quality product and experience for your subscribers, you’ll be sure to have a growing and lucrative business.

Get started with your voomly business for free today.

Welcoming new subscribers to your product is essential in creating a good relationship off the bat.

Voomly makes sending a welcome letter easy and automatic.  Just write the welcome letter and save it as a SEQUENCE message with the day set to “0”:

This will automatically send the email as soon as your subscriber has signed up.

Remember, this is your first impression with someone that is paying you money!  So here are a few tips:

• Be excited to work with them
• Explain a little about what they can expect
• Give them something to do (link to a video or file they can download)
• Encourage them to contact you using our Private Q&A feature

Remember, a welcome letter is just a sequenced message set to day 0.  Make sure you have one!

Teaching people in an online course can be extremely profitable and valuable.  

Voomly makes it easy and automatic.

Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up with Voomly, set your price and create your page
2. Write your first few lessons and set their sequence
3. Promote your page, get subscribers and make money

Your online course will be…

Automatic

Every time someone subscribes to your product, they will automatically receive your lessons in the sequence and timing that you have set for them.  You literally do nothing more than withdraw money to your bank account.

Individualized

To make your course more valuable, your subscribers can email you directly and privately with their questions using our Private Q&A feature.  

Comprehensive

You can include links to password protected videos on Vimeo, files in Google Drive, or anything else that will help make your course the best in its niche.

Unlimited

You don’t have to have everything written before you start taking subscribers.  You just need to have your sequence ahead of your most mature subscriber.  The week 15 lesson doesn’t need to be completed until someone is on week 14.  

In other words, you can get started today with a solid plan and 1-2 weeks worth of lessons and grow from there.  New subscribers will automatically start at the beginning of the course, and you can focus on providing more and more expertise to more advanced students that have been with you longer.

Editable

If you find that your subscribers are having trouble (or worse—quitting!) at a certain point, you can always edit that material or add supporting lessons around it.  Your online course is never set in stone.

Here are a few examples of experts that are offering popular online courses with Voomly:

Joe’s 50 days to XYZ

Andy’s zero to marathon course

Karen’s 52 weeks to Paris

It’s time to turn your followers into subscribers.  Starting an online course is easy, fast and free with Voomly.  

Voomly allows you to add attachments to your BLAST ALL emails.

Simply attach the file to your BLAST ALL email and we’ll pass it through with the email to all of your subscribers.

We are currently working on adding attachment support to emails written in the WRITE tab of the voomly platform (scheduled, sequence, etc).  

For now, we suggest using Google Drive or one of these file-sharing services so that you can add a link in scheduled or sequenced messages that subscribers can click to download.

Every Voomly product has a unique email address associated with it like yourname@voomly.com.  It is automatically set to match your Voomly URL.

This is the email address that your subscribers can use to communicate with you directly and privately, as part of our Private Q&A feature.

Note:  THIS IS NOT another email inbox that you have to worry with.  

Here’s how it works:

1. One of your subscribers wants to ask you a question, so he emails yourname@voomly.com
2. We check to make sure he is a paying subscriber to your voomly product
3. If he is a subscriber, we then send the email to your personal email address where you can simply click “reply” to reverse the process and send him an answer.

Neither party knows the other’s personal email address, everyone uses their preferred email service, and only paying subscribers can contact you directly.  Pretty cool!

Your Voomly product will have its own URL like voomly.com/yourname

You can choose whatever you like for that URL, as long as it hasn’t been taken yet.

Here are a few tips:

• Try to keep it short
• Tie it to your name or brand
• Make it easy to remember

You will also be assigned a Voomly “short URL” like voom.ly/EH8762.  These are perfect for using on twitter or other services where space is at a premium.  

Both URLs are displayed and easy to copy from the “Important Addresses” section of the Voomly Dashboard:

If you need to change your Voomly URL for some reason… keep in mind that we DO NOT recommend changing it…but if it is absolutely necessary, please contact us.

Not all premium content needs to go out right away.  In fact, sending your newsletter or an update email on a predictable schedule can be very valuable in some industries.  

Voomly allows you to schedule your message for a specific time and date in the future from the WRITE tab inside of your Voomly platform:

Once your message is scheduled, it will appear in the “Scheduled” tab along with all other scheduled messages:

From there, you can click on the title to review it, “remove to drafts” to take it out of the schedule for editing/re-scheduling, or delete the message permanently.