Issue#64: Building $1K - $10K MRR Micro Opportunities around Cohort Based Learning - Part 2
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No fluffy content. If your goal is to build a $100m ARR business, this is not the right post. Here I am are NOT going to talk about building the next Facebook or Twitter. If your goal is to make a $1K to $10K MRR, continue reading.
This post will cover one SAAS area and talk about multiple niches in this space. This post also explains how to do tech implementation, do market analysis, how the current players are doing, and ends with a cost analysis to understand the overall cost for 100 users.
Let’s see some of the successful Cohort based learning courses/workshops. This is Part-2.
TheBlockChainSchool: Building Blockchain Education & Careers for Everyone. One-stop platform for everything Blockchain. Join 25,000+ learners and kickstart the Blockchain journey by joining regular cohorts.
14DayPM: 14 Day PM is a cohort-based course teaching you the fundamentals of product management. But instead of just learning passively, you will put your learnings into practice by conceptualizing, building, and sharing your product journey for 14 straight days with a community of product managers.
DevNest: The 5 Months Course to get the best tech job. Runs as a cohort course. From resume preparation to mock interviews everything, DevNest makes sure cohort audience perform confidently.
ModernCopyWriter: A 5-week project-based modern copywriting Bootcamp to boost your creativity, create stellar copies, and build your copywriting portfolio.
AltMBA: The altMBA is a 31-day online leadership workshop founded in 2015 by Seth Godin. It celebrates our shared humanity and provides students with the skills they need to be impactful leaders and make meaningful change.
DesignMBA: Level up your design career. Cohort-based courses to level up your career by helping you to understand the ecosystem of designers.
StoaMBA: Get in the top 1%, work at India's best startups. Cohort-based training program to teach you everything around the business.
10KDesigners: The design school of the future. A new kind of internet university – one that is focused on helping anyone to build a network, learn new skills, and build the right mindset.
HackReactor: Software Engineering Coding Bootcamp. After the 12-week coding Bootcamp cohort, the audience will become software engineers, fully capable of tackling unique and unfamiliar problems and building complex applications on the job.
FrontEndMasteryBootcamp: Change your fife with code. Become a frontend software developer within 3 months with cohort-based training.
BuildInPublicMastery: Show your work and grow a business with raving fans. Understand how to build in public and get traction. A 3-week cohort-based course to give you the mindset, frameworks & tools to tell your own stories to grow a business in public.
TeachFloor: Cohort-based courses platform. Create and sell online live courses under your own brand. Run live classes on Zoom, collect online payments, and manage your students. The estimated revenue is $155K per year.
SuperPeer: Host cohort-based courses, live events, or 1:1 sessions. Superpeer is an all-in-one video platform that gives you the tools you need to engage with your audience through video and connect more authentically. Raised $8M in funding in 2020. The estimated revenue is $4.5 M per year.
Virtually: The easiest way to manage Zoom events for your cohort-based course Moving the classroom online was revolutionary - but it created a logistical nightmare. Virtually solves the problem by putting program's calendar on autopilot. Raised $2M in funding.
Negative Nancy says - “Do cohort-based training really generate any revenue?”
Me - Video courses and cohort-based training courses are not mutually exclusive. You can convert your first recorded cohort training workshop/session into a static video course that can still give you money and an audience. It could be the other way round too. You can first create a video course and use that as a lead generator for cohort-based courses.
Negative Nancy says - “I don’t have so much deep knowledge to run a cohort and train?”
Me - You may be under estimating yourself. There are people who want to learn various things and you don’t have to be a super expert. Being an expert drives more credibility but you can run cohort at any level and charge accordingly. Instead of thinking to wait and build the biggest cohort course, try experimenting with smaller ones. For example, build a ‘Data science for beginners’ and target for beginners and build a Level 100 course instead of Level 500 course for experts.
Negative Nancy says - “How can I add more value and build a long term relation with course takers?”
Me - Convert the audience from ‘cohort-based training’ to ‘a community’ for the alumni members who took the course.
Deep-dive
What next? - Go back to the drawing board and make a list of things you know that you can convert to a cohort-based training program. It could be a small one or a big one. It could be for a short schedule or a long schedule. It could be a free one or a paid one. The goal is to start, experiment, and refine.
Do it by yourself before you teach others. This is the only way to build credibility and get more traction for your cohort-based course. For example, if you want to run a cohort-based course on “how to build profitable Newsletters”, first understand the ecosystem of Newsletters and create a profitable newsletter and use that as credibility to get your users. The same is the case with any other cohort-based course. Credibility and proof that you have experience in that niche are extremely important.
Do you need to run the cohort case all by yourself?
No, not really. There can be multiple hosts/instructors too in cohorts so that you can provide coverage of multiple topics. For example, the course ‘MarkersMark’ is run by both Brandon and Aadit.
Even if you do not have expertise on a given topic, in most cases within less than a year you should be able to pick any topic and get expertise on that to start a cohort-based course. Or launch it together with someone.
Some niches
Web 3/Crypto Cohort: The growth of Web 3, Blockchain and Crypto-related niches are growing day by day. Almost all companies are trying to create NFTs, moving to the blockchain, and need resources who know about these. There are hundreds of videos coming on Youtube to teach about Web3. In less than a year, Aprilynne Alter started to make $3000 revenue every month with Youtube just by concentrating on Web 3 related niche. Create cohort-based learning where people can learn things related to Web3, Crypto, Blockchain, etc. You can create multiple courses at multiple levels too like Level 100, Level 200, Level 300, Level 400, etc. Also, note that Web3 is huge and there are several topics in Web3. CryptoAcademy made thousands of dollars by teaching crypto fundamentals in cohort-based courses. Another example is TheBlockChainSchool is used by 25K learners. For example, the keyword ‘what is Web3’ has 22000 searches every month. See below the huge growth for Web3 in 2022.
Create a platform for cohort-based course creators: While there are tools like Notion, Google Docs, Zoom, Whereby, PPTs, etc to run Cohorts, there is still a need for platforms that automate most of the things needed for running cohorts. To run cohorts, there are a lot of things needed like building a webpage to sell the cohort course, adding members, sending emails, tracking attendance, accepting payments, receiving payments, asking for feedback, accepting reviews, etc. Create a platform that handles all these things exclusively for cohort-based courses. SuperPeer in a similar space has raised $8M in funding in 2020 and is currently at estimated revenue of $4.5 M per year. Virtually in similar niche has raised $2M in funding. TeachFloor another tool for cohort-based course creators has an estimated revenue of $155K per year.
Cohort on how to start Podcasts: The concept of podcasts is still popular. There are 60K searches per month for the keyword ‘how to start a podcast’. Many people want to start podcasts but just don’t know where to start. There are many blogs and Youtube videos on how to start podcasts. Creating a cohort-based course on how to start a podcast by actually doing it and showing it live will help many people who want to start their podcasts. With 60K searches per month for the keyword ‘how to start a podcast’, it is evident that many people want to know how to run a podcast.
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Technical chops
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Marketing chops
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Cost Analysis for 100 customers
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