Kyle:  We have been talking to people who run events, people who run classes, we’ve been talking in particular about yoga teachers, fitness teachers just as it’s an easy example and lots of us go to these classes.

But the techniques and tools we have been discussing apply to anybody who gets a bunch of people in the room, provides the service and gets paid for that business.

We’ve been talking about during the current lockdown. It’s hard obviously to do this, you can’t get a group of people into a room to pay you for your services.

We’ve been talking about how we make this transition from the off-line world of an event into the online world.

Some businesses are already set up for this and they’re doing really well right now because they have the infrastructure to go online and to run their business online.

Other people have been hit by this all of a sudden. 

All the revenue or profit has dried up.

Specifically we’ve been talking about creating an ultimate guide, an ultimate resource list for people who are interested in what you teach.

You become the host of the party, you become the person who is controlling the conversation and helping the people out there to continue learning yoga, to continue learning pottery whatever it is.

By giving away your expertise, by giving away your value.

We’re going to be talking about how we start to generate revenue from the work we’ve been doing,

Harms: Because we’ve got two choices here.

One is that if you can sustain your business in regards to what we discussed previously, and you don’t have to get paid for it. 

You may say, actually I can spend the next two, maybe three guides without that revenue coming in just completely serving the online community and continue to put that content up for free.

That’s great, it’s amazing, but for the people that do need the payment or do need to start generating revenue, there is no judgement here. 

Just like Kyle said there are bills to pay, food shopping.

The reason we get into business is part of the passion and the enjoyment with what we do, so we generate revenue. For example, a business owner who has pursued maybe a couple of businesses in the past and they haven’t been successful.

That is not an easy process.

Many business owners are probably like, actually, there’s no way I’m going to be putting all of this effort in if there’s not going to be a return because I’ve got bills to pay.

If you are at that road where you say actually I’m happy to do it for free for now, but this would be quite interesting to know how I can monetise it in the future. 

If you are in the place where I need revenue right now then absolutely continue reading this guide, it does benefit both sides.

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Kyle: This is always going to be a balancing act.

We’re using a marketing framework or business framework called BATON which we’ve alluded to a few times over the guide. 

That is, business, audience, tribe, offer and network, this is where we lay the foundations.

What is the value we’re providing the world?

Audience is how we get that value out into the world, tribe is how we start to bring people into our orbit, how we get people to join our group. 

Now we’re talking about Offer, talking about generating revenue from our tribe from the audience.

There’s always going to be this balancing act.

If you spend more time here building up your audience and building up your tribe and less time selling, less time in your offer section you’re going to have more people to talk to. 

You are going to have a much larger group of people when it does come to a time when you want to generate revenue.

However, if you jump to revenue earlier it’s harder to build up the goodwill in this audience in the tribe, but you do need to get paid, so it’s going to be a balancing act.

Do you give away stuff and ask people to pay you later?

Or do you ask for payment now, which is going to limit the number of people you can talk to at any one time.

Harms: Network is a cool one. 

It’s where we typically scale and we do more once we approve the concept and we will cover this.

Here is stuff that we can share with you because the network always depends on what your situation is.

Kyle: It requires you to have something that’s working, so you need to have business, audience, tribe, offer lined up and working.

There’s no point scaling up based on a business model that doesn’t work.

What’s the first offer? – 5 different strategies

Harms: We’ve got five different ways in which you can generate and I put the title respectfully from the audience because this is respectful because we are going through coronavirus, people are locked down and in isolation.

We just had potentially 25% of the GDP and economy wiped out, job losses, people applying for universal credit, all sorts of stuff that people may have not done before. It could be the first time and they’re uncomfortable with it.

So when we sell in this environment and our business makes money in this environment we need to do it in a respectful way.

Because we don’t want to be seen to be taking advantage but we have to find the balancing act of somebody feeling like we’re taking advantage, and there are always going to be those people who think that.

But just let them think that and also do it completely for free when we know we’ve got bills to pay. 

We need to find something in between.

Kyle: There is also the fact that businesses need to keep working so that we don’t have this massive recession. 

We need people to get paid so people like yourselves, people running small businesses, I think self-employed businesses are 25% so a large chunk.

Going forward, we need these businesses to be in operation as otherwise it will get worse.

Harms: If you’re a sole trader, I think the thing that people often miss is an individual may hire two people. 

An individual may provide a service to a business which is critical so that business can function and then that flow of money which flows through the system.

Once the money stops flowing to certain businesses and individuals, then this is why things start to fall apart.

I think employees don’t appreciate it massively.

Certainly 10 years ago when I was working in employment, I didn’t appreciate it. 

I didn’t realise how intricate the flow of money is and if you start to create these dams in the process it causes havoc and chaos.

Kyle: When you are asking people to pay you yes, to feed yourself, but also so you can feed employees, so you can keep that money flowing into the system so that other people are getting paid as well.

It’s not just you money grabbing, if you do have a mental block about this I understand that, I get that totally and there are people out in the world right now who think that anyone charging anything is morally heinous.

But the problem is if we think about that then our economy will not bounce back and it’s going to get much worse over the next few years, even after the virus.

Harms: Because not all businesses fall into the category of the government help scheme. 

If your business is structured in a certain way, if it’s a start-up and you don’t have a years’ worth of accounts or whatever the criteria is, it’s evolving all the time but not everybody applies.

Not everybody would also understand your business and people still don’t understand what an online business is and how you can generate revenue from it.

Hopefully we will demystify that.

1. First, start charging for free sessions

Let’s dive into five different strategies and in regards to the easiest way to do it is simply sell something online.

The easiest thing to do for your particular niche that we’ve been discussing is to sell a class or a course, or a series online.

That’s simple.

We spoke about how they’re already getting free information, classes, and live videos from you. If this is already free, then what are they supposed to pay for?

Kyle: The free lessons that we’re providing in the tribe, we suggest that you build this Facebook group to get as many people into it as possible using your ultimate resource list.

Then once a day or once every couple of days you provide a free version of your product, you hop on Facebook live using a webcam or using the telephone or whatever it is, and provide a yoga class or business coaching or whatever it is you do, you do that for free into a group.

The problem Harms brought up is well if you’re doing this for free why is anyone ever going to pay you for it?

That’s what we’re going to be talking about.

We’ve used the free value, the free lesson to get as many people to us as possible. 

Now we want to see if we can generate revenue from that. The first thing you can do is let’s say you’ve got one hundred people who are now attending your free lessons.

First thing you could do is change it from free to paid.

You’re going to get a drop off if you are currently servicing one hundred people.

Maybe only 10 of them are going to be willing to pay for it, it depends on how valuable your service is. It depends on how much you price that class as well.

Now this is going to be one of the simplest options.

It’s also the most likely to annoy people. If you bought people under one pretence, I’m going to be doing free lessons every single day and suddenly you’re like it’s one pound or £10 or £20, some people are going to be annoyed.

You have to be very clear about the messaging here.

Harms: Don’t say it’s free forever, that’s the key and this is marketing just be careful of what you promise.

It is messaging here, so you are using free lessons and free content to get people to but you are saying, at some point I’m going to be charging for these. 

Maybe even asking the community how valuable is this for you guys, it takes my time to do it every day. Would you be comfortable paying a £2 a lesson.

You could do a survey and say how much you would be willing to pay for these live classes and then you could have options – £1, £3, £5, £8, £10, £15.

Kyle: When you make your previously free content paid you need to have something in place to replace a free content.

Let’s say you’re making your live sessions paid. There will still be people in your group and attracted to you who don’t want to pay anything.

You need to make sure they still have something so what we would suggest is you’re going to make the live sessions paid, so if they want to see you and ask questions or they have the additional accountability of being live with you on screen.

If there was that then they need to pay a few pounds, but then you make that live stream available for free as a recorded video let’s say a few days later or a guide later.

You’re still giving similar free content to the people who don’t want anything, but they just get it a bit later, that’s one way to do it.

Harms: Think of this like in regards to access when new people come in they get the recordings for free and as they mature, start to love you, like you and realise that this is great stuff, they can then experience live interaction with you for a paid service.

That can be whatever it is and that depends on what the niche is as well and what you can charge and how powerful your brand is, all of those are variable factors.

Kyle: it is going to be a matter of balance.

How many people do you want to give free material and how many people do you want to be paying for your material?

Again that’s going to be how much you charge for it and what additional value there is in a live session.

If there is interaction then that’s worth a lot more people to be in the live session and actually willing to pay.

Harms: It could be something like this and this is a made-up ratio but it could be 10% of this entire audience or tribe actually pay, and 90% continue to enjoy the free content. 

People sign up for gym memberships who go once or they don’t turn up again, so there’s going to be that percentage of people as well.

Kyle: You don’t need that many people in the group for it to pay you and we’re going to talk about different ways.

But I’m going to use a thousand people in your group as a benchmark.

That is just charging.

That is just saying, okay, my live sessions I’ve been doing for free I’m now going to charge this is the cost, and you experiment with different costs.

You ask the community.

You say how much would you be willing to pay?

You make them part of that process and you explain to them why you’re doing it and why it’s still beneficial for them to do live sessions with you.

2. Add donations

Harms: Number two is you can essentially rather than go direct to paid and have this level of access going on.

You can maintain one group, but what you say to the group is, are you willing to donate whatever you want and give them the open option to donate whatever they want.

They can essentially donate and say I want to support what you’re doing. 

There are lots of new words coming, one is donate, one is support and patron.

For example, Kyle is a pottery, masterclass teacher. He is creating this piece of pottery live and demonstrating it, so what we could then do is say, okay Kyle, I love what you do, you’re providing value to me every day and I appreciate you’ve got bills to pay. 

I will donate to you.

This is like an online version of say if somebody is busking, you’re listening to their music, or they’re doing a magic trick on the streets and this stuff is awesome and you donate something to them for that piece of work, art creation that they’ve just provided into the world.

It is an online version of that now the donations are pretty cool because you can set what you like, or you can give them the option. 

It can be a one-off donation or it could be a monthly recurring donation as well.

Some apps can facilitate this.

Kyle: It depends on what platform you are using. 

If you’re on Facebook, there are ways to set up Facebook supporters and for YouTube, it’s YouTube tips.

Each of these social media platforms tends to have a built-in way for people to donate to you. If you’re on twitch it would be through subscriptions, Facebook it will be the supporters and YouTube tips.

We don’t use this at the moment but what we do is we can tell you about these things as an option. So each of the platforms will have their own way for you to gather donations.

There are also third-party platforms like Patreon which allows you again to take from donations.

Harms: Within each level you can add an additional perk. 

That’s what Patreon is very good at.

If you get to level one you get to chat to me, if you get to level two I’ll send you a piece of merchandise every year. If you get to level three I’ll come to your house and give you a high five. There are levels to benefit and perk you’re going to give depending on how much they donate.

The simplest way is just to keep it flat so you can donate whatever you want, but the benefits are, because we’re just starting out the perks you’re going to get are standard.

Say for example, if me and Kyle put a price on our slack group, we would say this is the price. Pay what you want, but regardless of what you pay the only perk is we will answer your questions and have in-depth discussions and you get a like-minded community within the slack group.

Kyle: You used the example of busking earlier but there are already lots of yoga groups in London who are on a donation basis. They will say the yoga class is free if you can’t afford to pay up fine, we still want to be bringing this service to you, we want to help your mental and physical health.

However we do take donations and the suggested donation is £5, £7.

The idea of a suggested donation is extremely powerful.

I used to do big charity board game events where people would come and we ran them for the mental health charity and it was free to come. Bring your own food and drinks but then I would stand up, give a speech and then send around a bucket basically and a card reader and say, the suggested donation is £5.

The compliance rate was huge, and most people will pay exactly that £5.

Whereas if I just sent the bucket and I used to do this before suggesting a price the average donation will be about one pound, but as soon as you say this is what everybody else’s donating.

This is what we suggest you donate everybody is like okay. It is still optional but you are anchoring, you’re giving that price point which people will tend to adhere to.

If you are taking donations, yes, you can say it’s free if you can’t afford to pay for it, not a problem. If you can afford, then the suggested donation is and you give a price.

Harms: The only thing you’re probably thinking is, doesn’t donation sound very charity based?

I would say to swap out the wording, patreon doesn’t use donations, they are supporters.

I’m keen on supporters because I am supporting your art, your work, your industry and your output. I’m supporting that.

Kyle: Tips sound like something extra and donation has legal and tax ramifications as well. Donation is treated under the tax law so yes, if it is for a service, then you might want to call it support or pay what you want is another term.

You’re still paying but you allow them to set the price.

Harms: Also the word tips for example and it’s not to be disrespectful but and another business who is not may be in the restaurant industry, we’ve got to think what does that word typically associate with, it associates with restaurants, bars and you’re tipping for service.

If you’re sitting in between and you’re like I need to make money, but I don’t want to take advantage in this situation and how can I help in addition?

You could also let your tribe know that during the coronavirus time 50% of your supporters’ fees, your tips or your donations are going to go to a charity and then you can select what that charity is.

That’s a nice way to be in between that if that’s where you’re coming from in terms of a place.

Kyle: That’s also if you are feeling uncomfortable with growing and charging and becoming big online and making money from this online.

If 50% of that or 70% or whatever percentage is going to a charity of your choice, then it helps you morally to grow and to do.

Harms: The more supporters you get, the more charitable you can be.

3. Add in additional paid sessions

Kyle: Previously we talked about taking your free sessions and converting them into paid sessions.

The other thing you can do is you can add in additional sessions on top of your free session.

You have your free session let’s say at midday, every day you do that you work with people, you deliver whatever value it is you as an expert have.

Then at 1 PM you have a second session which is paid and it’s only for people who are paying or donating, it’s an additional session.

This means more work for you, but it’s a nice way to continue to provide free value to the people who want free value and have a secondary paid element on top.

Again if you’re stuck at home doing two hours’ worth is not going to be that much but it depends on your personal situation of course.

Harms: Think of it as a beginners class which is free for everybody and then there’s an advanced class afterwards which anybody paying for can also attend, which may happen in a separate group.

To do that practically you have a beginners group and you may have an advance group but keeping it simple let’s say there’s a beginners group and it’s free, and then there’s an advance group that is paid.

Kyle: That is one way to do it.

You have the beginners class for everybody and then we have intermediate or advanced, that will depend entirely on what your niche is.

If you’re doing high intensity training and you do an hour and then you have a second class that is an hour most people won’t be able to do a second class. 

It’s going to depend entirely on what it is you are providing.

It could be you do the basic version where it’s you broadcasting you delivering content, and then the second session is more of an interactive session, where people get to ask you questions specific to whatever problems they are having.

They’re paying for the access at that point.

Another method is to have a structured course which is paid.

You have open sessions every day where you do general content again depending on what your expertise is. 

But then you also have the paid sessions which are more structured, so it might be a seven-day course in how to build your yoga practice or 30 days how to build a business online if you are a business consultant.

It would be a specific structured program that maybe you start once a guide or once a month and you guide through a set of students.

Again you have the general free lessons where it could be just a half an hour workout, then you have the paid structured 30-day program, a weight loss program. 

Where you’re working through with a group paid.

Harms: This could be for anything even if you’re a chef and you do live cooking classes you could have a beginners cooking 101, constantly running every day for free and then the advance people come join you whenever twice a guide for an advance cooking session.

Because they are not beginners and they’re paying they’re only going to join you in the advanced group.

It’s all about promoting your followers, your tribe, your customers from free into paying into a different access level altogether.

Kyle:  It requires more work on your part because you are doing something in addition to the free work, whether or not you have the time for that up to you, but that’s a nice structure, a nice way to separate the free and paid levels.

There is one thing before we move on to the fourth I just wanted to throw in a quick note that for the first three we talked about, so paying for sessions, donations for sessions and then there are additional classes or additional sessions.

For all of these you could charge one offs, so £3 or £5 for a session. You could charge one off, one at a time. 

Or for all three of these you can make them recurring so it can be you pay £10 per month and you have access to all of the live sessions, or you donate £10 a month or £5 a month and you have access.

If you put them on the recurring donation there’s a lot of benefits here, but that allows them as one of your followers, viewers to access all of your content for a relatively low price.

Let’s say it’s £5 you get to go to every single advanced session five days a guide, that is 20 advanced sessions £5 a month is nothing. 

Also when somebody has started to subscribe, subscriptions tend to go on much longer and it’s far easier to build up a sustainable revenue base.

Whereas if you are each and every day saying make sure you pay for your session it’s just a lot of headache on your side.

Whereas if you get people on the low-cost subscription and then they get automatic access to all of your stuff every single day, then it’s a lot easier to build up a recurring, and you have to worry less about this revenue source.

For all three pricing models we’ve been talking about so far if you can, make it a subscription and make them recurring.

Harms: Also the tools and techniques in regards to patreon, tips supporters club they allow that as part of their tool.

Kyle: Yes that’s built-in because it’s a more sensible model as well.

Think about a group of people who are paying you every single month to continue to do the work that you do. 

That’s where we want to get to and you can use relative pricing here.

You might say, okay, one session is £5, but if you sign up for a month, a monthly subscription is £10 a month but you get access to 20 sessions. 

Suddenly people are thinking one session is £5 but now I have 20 sessions for £10, that’s a better deal and people will go for that.

There is no additional cost for you necessarily to provide for more people as you’re doing it online, you’re not getting them into a room. 

If you get more subscribers that’s better.

Harms: That way you know you’ve got your business locked in and you can start taking it to another level in terms of education.

You know you’re going to get more customers, more viewers and then you can give them more, knowing that this is a sustainable income coming in.

4. One on one, Consultation, Coaching

Number four Kyle is quite an obvious one, but people often don’t use it.

I know people in my community that are accessing this now. 

One is for yes for the revenue stream also because they’ve got the skill set in order to help other people within the industry and that is very much consulting, mentoring, coaching, one-on-one like live video like this.

For example, if Kyle was coaching me and I said, Kyle I want one-on-one service about online business, digital marketing. I need an hour of consultancy just to understand what you guys are talking about on the BBO show.

I’ll ask Kyle for his fee and typically we would charge a client £250 if we’re talking about an agency.

£250 to spend an hour with us and we say that is the fee. 

Great, I’ll pay that fee and then Kyle and I will join each other on a video call like this and I’d talk about my online business and Kyle would say you need to do this.

We’re accessing the coaching, mentoring and each of these have their own nuance.

You will know within your industry or niche what a coach is, what a mentor is, what a one-to-one service means. 

What a consultancy service means maybe they need somebody to do some technical work, maybe a technical provider and that’s the kind of thing that they’re paying for.

Kyle:  It fits really easily into what we’ve been doing, you’ve been positioning yourself as an expert in your particular industry and as an expert that opens up the doors to one-on-one consultations, mentoring, coaching.

Again these are all slightly different and it will depend on your niche and your experience too.

The main challenge people have with this is people will sell classes, people buy books, courses whatever it is, but they won’t necessarily think to advertise the fact that they also do mentoring, coaching and one on one.

Normally a lot of people fall into this role because somebody comes to them and says, you know a lot about online business. Or hey, you know a lot about pottery or whatever it is I want to learn from you.

We’re suggesting instead of waiting for people to come to you if you set up a website or page, or just a PDF where you say I also provide these services, consultations, mentoring, etcetera.

You have a list of your packages and your pricing and you give people a way to contact you about the services.

If you are already sitting on top of a big community, a tribe of people who know you’re an expert in this field it makes sense just to have a resource where they can learn about how they access you one-on-one as a mentor or coach.

Harms: Coaches are needed.

Mentors are needed.

Think about the amount people going through a career change, emotional change, time management changes.

If you were a coach normally and you would see your clients face-to-face or they’d come to your office and you’d coach them, this is a really good time to switch online.

You can charge less; you can charge the same.

If you’re a yoga instructor you may even open up a new avenue like Kyle has mentioned where you do a one-on-one session.

Think about your day in terms of the start is the free access to beginners then have your advanced class and then you have your four slots, so in the advanced session you are saying, guys I’ve got my five slots now with my coaching clients. 

If you’re interested in this head over to this link and you can book in that time with me.

At the top level you maybe have four slots for one-to-one yoga classes, pottery classes and coaches as well.

The amount of people who will be going through an emotional challenge or just not understanding they could have been in a career for 10 years or 15 years, 20 years and suddenly the industry has closed down and they’re like, I need to shift.

This is an opportunity to shift industry and career and that’s where they need a coach to help guide them.

Kyle: It’s a time of transition so if you are an expert in your field maybe there’s something you can do to people through whatever that transition is.

Harms: I like it because sometimes people don’t realise that actually somebody would pay for one-on-one service and why not?

I’ve done it on multiple occasions.

5. Affiliate Bonus

Harms: Number five the final one

Kyle: This is more of a bonus.

If this all works and the ultimate resource list is popular and starts spreading. 

If the tribe, our Facebook group starts to fill up with people, all of a sudden we’re going to be in front of a lot of individuals who are interested in learning.

They’re interested in developing the skill we teach, so you have lots of interest and lots of traffic.

One additional business model that does open up to you is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is the easiest way to talk about this on

Harms: Amazon.

Kyle: Going back to the yoga mat back in my ultimate yoga resource list I have recommended three different yoga mats for different types of yogis, people who are learning yoga.

I can make the links in the ultimate resource guide special Amazon links which means when someone clicks on it and then buys that yoga mat, I will also be paid. 

The customer will pay Amazon let’s say £10 for the yoga mat and Amazon will send me money because I’ve sent that customer to them in the first place.

I did a quick bit of research on the percentage of health products, which includes yoga mats is 7%. So let’s say I recommend a yoga mat that is £20, somebody clicks on that link in my ultimate guide and they buy that yoga mat for £20. Amazon is going to send me £1.40 as an affiliate fee.

That’s not much by itself, but let’s say 1,000 people buy that mat because they’ve seen my ultimate resource guide. 

That is now £1,400 so it can add up, it takes a bit of time but this is the bonus revenue source you can add on to any online business.

Whenever you have attention, whenever you have people who are interested in your expertise, what it is you have to say, you can always add in these affiliate links. You do need to be clear about that.

If you are going to do this you should add it to your ultimate list or if you post them in your Facebook group you should say these are affiliate links and I will get paid a small amount for referring these products.

Sometimes they’re legally required depending on the platform that’s also just the right thing to do if you’re telling people I’m going to get paid if you buy these things, I think that’s fair.

Harms: The way people phrase it is it’s not going to cost you more by buying through this link

Kyle: But it supports me and the work we are doing, and these are the things I actually recommend. We looked at some of the reviews of yoga mats and there was a list of 10 yoga mats all Amazon affiliate links.

There was no commentary, it was just the whole purpose of the page was to get you to go to that page, choose a yoga mat, click the link and then the website owner gets paid a small amount by Amazon.

There was no value there, we are making sure we make genuine recommendations. And yes, if we get paid £1.40 when someone goes to Amazon that’s fine as long as we are upfront about it.

Harms: This model works for any company not just Amazon.

Kyle: There is also something called indirect qualifying purchases.

If somebody clicks on the link on my yoga mat, they go to Amazon to buy the yoga mat but they also fill their basket with a bunch of other things. 

Some of those items I will also be paid a small percentage on, I will be paid 1.5% of those items.

Let’s say they go on a shopping spree and they add 50 items. You’ll potentially be rewarded for that because you have sent them to Amazon, you have sent them and they’ve gone on a shopping spree.

Amazon rewards you with a 1.5%, indirect affiliate fee, it will depend, not on all products.

Harms: If you’re wondering when I go onto a blog why does every blog have a top 10 list that sends me to Amazon.

This is why, because to help support their blog and to create these lists and can continue to review these products, we have to support them somehow. 

The way they do that is through affiliate systems and programs.

You don’t get charged any more than that, but they help compile a list of things for you, so they’re doing a lot of the work for

Kyle: you. They should have used their expertise to put together this list, some websites don’t; they just grab stuff from Amazon and write a bit of blurb.

But that’s not what we recommend you do when you create the ultimate resource list, it is genuinely putting your expertise and your value add into this, into what you’re creating.

If somebody clicks on your yoga mat and goes to Amazon doesn’t necessarily buy it they don’t even add it to their cart, but later they go back and they add it to the cart then you will still make money.

Harms: In simple terms, they are tracking the movement that you are making through the Internet and where you made that movement from.

That’s a benefit of cookies and there’s pros and cons for it as well.

What you have learned so far:

• 5 different ways you can make money from your online community
• How to offer your service/product to your community during COVID-19 in a respectful and optional way

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