Creating an Online Course Marketplace on WordPress with Rebecca Gill

Joe Casabona: Hey everybody. Thanks for listening to How I Built It. Today’s episode is brought to you by LearnDash.

Easily transform your WordPress site into a powerful learning management system using LearnDash. Sell e-learning courses, track user progress, deliver certificates, and much more. LearnDash is trusted by major universities, million-dollar marketers, training organizations, bloggers worldwide, and your humble host here. So check out LearnDash today. Discover more at learndash.com. 

Thanks for listening.

Hey everybody. Welcome to How I Built It, a podcast that asks, how did you build that? Today, I’m here with Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing and DIY SEO Courses. Hey, Rebecca, how are you doing?

Rebecca Gill: Good. Thanks so much for having me.

Joe Casabona: Thanks for being on the show. So today we’re going to be talking about your DIY SEO Courses, right? You recently launched a learning site where people can go and learn all about SEO. So, we’ll just launch right into the questions I normally ask. So, why don’t you tell us a little bit about you, your product and how did you come up with this idea?

Rebecca Gill: So, I am the founder of web-savvy marketing, which is a Michigan-based design and SEO agency. And we’ve been around since 2009. The idea for this course was not actually mine. It was Cory Miller at iThemes who came up with the idea and really encouraged me to do it. And it was after we did SEO week and iThemes, I think it was in December. It was in November, December of last year. And so it was a four-part webinar series where we did a webinar Monday through Thursday. And there was such a great response from the iThemes community. And we had so many people interested in it and just had Cory had record numbers of people attending the webinars that he was encouraging me to do more education, you know, for SEO.  And he was encouraging me to do a course. And he’s like, “You have the content.” He goes, “You have all the content ready. It’s in your head. You’ve got a really solid process. People could benefit from that set process, and you need to really get that idea out there so other people can learn it and be able to implement it. And, you know, ’cause you’ve empowered me. I want you to empower them.” 

And I really said no for a while, just like I did with, you know, the other products that we’ve launched. And then I thought, you know, what? He’s right. I actually really do have this content already ready and I really could put my process into a course. And then I started to map it out just a little bit of an outline and I looked at it and I said, “Yeah. I got a lot here.” So that’s how it all started. I’d love to be able to take credit for it, but it wasn’t. It was my friend Cory.

Joe Casabona: Man, well he of course is full of great information. And a spoiler alert for those listening, he’ll be on in two weeks. So make sure to subscribe so you see that. So, one of my follow-up questions was actually, it looks like you have 84 videos or something like that.

Rebecca Gill: So the course is broken up into modules and lessons. So there’s like five or six core modules. And then in each module is a bunch of lessons. Lessons may or may not have video. So the lessons contain videos, written tutorials,  template downloads,  quizzes at the end. So it’s a variety of content. And a lot of the videos are specifically from Google because they reinforce the topic that we’re talking about. So it’s not necessarily just me talking. I can talk, you know, as much as I want, but I would rather people see the source of the information. So they understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. You know, we talk about best practice and we talk about a process in doing, you know, certain things. Cause that’s really what SEO is about. I use those videos to reinforce the information, especially when we’re getting to things like small businesses where, you know, they struggle with SEO and allocating the time to it. But when you see a video from Google specifically saying, “here’s why it’s important, here’s why we want you to do it”, it makes that education much more important, and actionable for people. So that’s why I took that approach. 

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Okay. So that makes perfect sense. That’s great. You didn’t have a hard time coming up with the content, or I don’t want to, I guess I don’t want to devalue your time there, but you had all the content in your head. How did you kind of organize it?

Rebecca Gill: So if you are unfamiliar with me, the person, you don’t realize I’m really OCD. And I just am, I have things symmetrical, active things, really clean. So for me, giving me a test to, you know, map out the courses, that’s like candy for me. Right. Because I like organization. So, and that’s what I did. I started mapping it out. Then I started to think about the different elements within each module or lesson. And honestly, as soon as I started doing it, I wrote first on a paper. And then I started whipping it right into LearnDash, which is an LMS plugin for WordPress. And that kind of helped me frame it out because then I could see it online in WordPress and you know, on a website.

So, yes. I did have all the content in my head because I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and I have a very firm process that I’ve been doing for 15 years. It’s very little. But getting that content into a course did take a lot of time. I’m not going to sugarcoat that for anybody. I spent a lot of nights, and weekends, and anytime I had free time during the workday, I would jump in and write a lesson or, you know, or write a full module. So it is a lot of time.

The course itself has got eight hours of education, plus, you know, you have templates and you’ve got homework to do. So it’s really a lot more than eight hours. I mean, to get to that, that’s a lot of time. But you know, it’s worth it. And there were days where I wanted to throw it in where I thought Cory is crazy. I should not, this is just taking way too much time. But then I finished and I looked back and you know, I was proud of what I produced. And I think that that’s, you know, if you’re proud of what you’re producing and you really look at it, and you take a step back, you know you did good and it was worth it in the end.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I can definitely attest to the fact that developing course material and teaching course material takes a lot longer than just the classroom bits, right? Like I’ve heard people my age say, you know, “Oh, I want to be a teacher because, you know, you get in at seven and you leave at three.” That’s not teaching. Like you’re not teaching. You want to be a babysitter. Teaching is working from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM or 7:00 PM and grades and figuring out.

Rebecca Gill: And you have to love it. you really have to really love what you’re talking about. I mean, I can’t imagine trying to create a course at this size and not really having a passion for what I’m talking about, you know, or in-depth knowledge. But I just, can’t imagine doing it because it would be so hard. 

Joe Casabona: Absolutely. I mean, I feel the exact same way about, you know, teaching in a classroom. You have to love that stuff. I mean, you know, you’re dealing with, especially in college, you’re dealing with people who might not want to take the course. But you’re dealing with people who are really excited to take the course. And it’s a good mix, and you really have to love it.

So, what kind of research did you do? You know, before, if any, before launching this site that’s not like a, you just went in like, you know, ready to go. But I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long time. So.

Rebecca Gill: I did research. So even before I actually started it, I vetted the idea. I looked around online, you know, everything we have ever done with the business and even prior to the business has always been data-driven. Because I used to work for an ERP software company. So data is just part of my core. So everything, you know, is data-driven. So I looked at competitors, I looked at volumes of search for these kinds of, you know, inquiries that would lead to the course. I looked at, you know, what were the competitors offering? Can I compete with it? Is there something specific for WordPress? And even though my course isn’t specific for WordPress, it does, you know, have a lot of education that can be used for WordPress. so I did research on all of that.

Then as I wrote my content, I spent a lot of time researching and saying, “Okay. Well, I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I know it’s the right thing. Can I find a place on the internet that will validate that?” And then that’s where I was starting to pull in those videos from Google to say yes. And here’s why, and I would pull in quotes from Google to say, you know, like, because for example, you know, this is an SEO course. Google says that SEO is an incremental change to your website. They’re small. And that’s really what it is. It’s things over time. And I have been saying that, but I want it to really show that they’re saying that. So, yeah. So there is research involved because you want to be able to back up what you’re saying and to show your students that there’s truth to it. And it’s not just something that you believe. There’s, you know, it’s got merit and it is reality.

Joe Casabona: That’s perfect. So you have your idea, you have your research, you talked to Cory. Did you talk to anybody else about Features business advice, direction? You know, you sell it, you sell a lot of themes, you do a lot of SEO consulting and things like that. Right. So, you know, did you pull from that pool to make sure that you’re making the best courses you can?

Rebecca Gill: The person I always get things through is my husband. And that’s because he knows me, he knows our business, but then he also has he’s outside of the industry. I mean, I just took him to his first WordCamp last weekend. So he looks at things in a different manner and he’s worked at small businesses up through fortune 500 companies. So I always try to get his opinion on it. Right. Is it, do you think it’s viable? You know, what am I missing? And he liked the idea right away. Although we kind of looked at me as if I was crazy that I was actually gonna dedicate this much time to it. And he definitely got annoyed with me for spending so much time. So yeah. He’s always my first.

And then I did mention it to a few other people and I talked to Justin at LearnDash. So, LearnDash is the, so the learning management software that I use to build the course. And I sat down with him at WordCamp Ann Arbor before I even started it. Right. I had a conversation with him and I said, “I really liked to do this, you know, what do you think? And I told him the concept, and he definitely encouraged me. He gave me some tips. He’s a wonderful person, you know. And so that helped validate as well, you know? I mean, it’s just, it really helped. 

So, yes. I think that you need to talk to people that are close to what you do, and that are outside of what you do. Because that outside perspective can be extremely valuable, right? Just to give you a different perspective, especially for someone like me, who’s been doing this almost my entire career, you know, you’ve been doing it for 15 years. You’re really ingrained in it.

So the other thing I did was I showed the course to my sister once I had it written. Right. She always likes internet marketing, but she’s not in marketing. And I wanted to get her opinion on whether it makes sense? Right. Am I talking at the right level for somebody that’s not an SEO consultant?  And then I try to bring in pieces, like my sister-in-law, just if you can see my family’s all around me. My sister-in-law just started a small business. It’s like a Pilates studio, right? She didn’t know what you all meant. You know, so I talked to her about her website, she actually uses our Kristi theme. That’s her name for her website. She didn’t know what a URL was, but knowing that kind of information and trying to get that Feedback and putting that back into the course is really invaluable because she just taught me. I mean, she spent 20 years in Vegas. She was a dancer in Vegas. She’s not a software person. But she had to know what she didn’t know about websites because of her new business. But knowing that that’s my audience, potentially my audience was really valuable. And then I read and after I did talk to her about that, as I was writing lessons, I kept thinking to myself, “Okay, is this going to make sense to Kristi? It’s just going to make sense to my sister, Suzanne. You know, will my husband get this because that’s the people that I really want it to resonate with. You know, those who are not always in WordPress. I’ve had a lot of WordPress developers purchase the course and take the course. But you need to make sure you need to start at the lowest level of education and make sure that they’re going to understand, and then move up from there. At least that was my experience. And that was my plan. And that’s what I really tried to do.

Joe Casabona: Nice. Yeah. I agree with that. You know, when I teach WordPress to people and I remember the first time I tried explaining the difference between a post and. page, I got looks. I got looks, one of my students raised her hand and was like, “What are you talking about? Like, and I realized I’ve been doing WordPress work already. Years, you know. That’s second nature to me. But so you’re absolutely right. You know, start with, especially with an online course. If something’s too basic for the student or the person taking the course, they can skip that video.

Rebecca Gill: Yeah. Well, and the one thing about writing an online course that’s challenging is that there’s no biofeedback. So, you know, years ago I used to do week-long training sessions for the URP software that my company sold. But you had a room full of people. They could see their faces. And when you started talking about complex topics, you could see their eyes glass over, and you knew that you needed to take a step back. You know, and go more basic, and build up from there, and you don’t have that with an online course. So I did like that. So at the end of the course is a request for feedback. You know, is there something that we can improve? Is there something that wasn’t clear so that as I got that, and you know, that feedback, I could try to put that back into the course and make it better?  So that is one challenge and it’s just, you just have to try to do your best to mitigate that as much as you can.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, do you find a lot of people are willing to give that feedback to you to incentivize it at all?

Rebecca Gill: I don’t give them a reward for doing it. But I have gotten a lot of feedback, which has been really good. Yeah. The funny thing is people will give you back feedback and email and forums. But they don’t actually go to the product and leave a review on the product, which is just funny. It’s this, I don’t know what that step is that is public, but, you know, and the feedback’s been extremely good, which ijust encourage you to want to do more. Right. You want to keep going and add to it or create additional courses. 

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. So, I actually, so you mentioned that you talked to Justin at a WordCamp Ann Arbor last year. We’re coming up on that, on WordCamp Ann Arbor this year. So how long did it take for you to develop this course? 

Rebecca Gill: So it took me about two straight months.

Joe Casabona: Okay.

Rebecca Gill: Yeah. Because I had the idea of the course. I just thought about bits and pieces of the course and had been talking about Cory. And then when we did the SEO week, he’s like, “You really got to do it. Right.” So, and that was in November, December. And so I started writing the course right after Cory pushed me into it. Right. And thank you, Cory, by the way for doing that publicly. 

And I launched it in January. So I probably spent 45 days, but that was hardcore writing. Right. I live in Michigan. It’s winter. It’s cold. I don’t like the cold. So to give me a reason to sit inside and write lessons on a Saturday or my husband and my son are ice fishing. I’m perfectly okay with that. And thank you. Thanks, Kevin. I had that opportunity. So, I mean, I hardcore wrote and researched, you know, and put it together for about 45 days. 

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. That’s I mean, I think that’s the mistake I’m making. I’m developing this course in the middle of the summer in the Northeast. So it’s not always nice. I got to take advantage of the nice weather. So, you do…

Rebecca Gill: Yeah. I would have really struggled and I wouldn’t have gotten it done if it was, if I started to do it during the summer. I mean, I just, I’ve got to kind of do the lake. I’m not going to do that.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. That’s yeah. So. I won’t feel so bad now. Yeah, definitely longer than I thought. So I think it’s time for the title question. So I mean, you put the website together, and you built the content, and we’ve talked about the content already. So how did you build out this DIY SEO Courses?

Rebecca Gill: So the URL for this, you know, it’s separate from our Web Savvy URL. Because it is really, you know,  a different type of beast. I use the Web Savvy theme. I just brought it over. That was already ready for WooCommerce. I dropped in LearnDash. I had my team style LearnDash to match the theme cause we’ve done lots of projects with LearnDash. We love that plugin so it was really, that part was easy, you know. And because I had the content already there, so they had everything to work with.  So it was really fairly easy to launch, you know. So, my tools are Gravity Forms because I love Gravity Forms, and I love Carl. WooCommerce, WooCommerce subscriptions, LearnDash, you know, WordPress, the Genesis Framework, my Child Theme. And then I use a couple of additional plugins, one of them which I really would encourage anyone using WooCommerce to use is called Follow-up Emails. So here’s the nice thing about this. As soon as somebody buys a course, they are receiving, you know, the order confirmation. But that doesn’t give them a good feeling to start. And I like that onboarding process so I immediately kick out an email like a couple of minutes later that, you know, welcomes them into the course. Kind of prepares them that this is going to work because it is work, right. I mean, it is work and, you know, sets the mindset that this is a journey. It’s not a race you’re going to work through it as time allows. And I try to set that and I’ve gotten good feedback on that email. 

And I think that having some type of onboarding process is important. I do that with our theme store as well. The theme store actually gives you like two or three emails once you purchase it. And I have them spaced out. So that’s called Follow-up Emails.

Joe Casabona: Well, I’m definitely gonna check that one out. Cause you know, like you said, an onboarding process is so important. Right. I mean, I’ve downloaded plugins that have zero onboarding process, and more often than not, 30 seconds later, those plugins are deactivated and deleted.

Rebecca Gill: And you know, when I learned it when I was doing the theme store, so, you know, with e-commerce I had the craziest questions and I was bombarded by questions from theme buyers after they bought. And I thought, “What am I doing? I can fix this.” You know. So I just took all of those questions and I started putting them into emails that would go out to people. Any pre-sales questions you have, you throw them on the FAQ page so people can find those answers themselves and not have to come to you. And there’s a lot you can do to make the sales. And then the execution process is easier for people for online purchases. 

Joe Casabona:  Yeah. And I mean, with a plugin, like Follow-up Emails, right. I don’t know how much it costs. But whatever it costs is going to save you however many hours of support and stuff like that. 

Rebecca Gill: It’s worth its weight in gold.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Awesome. so you built this website out, you had the content, and you launched in January, you said. Right. So the site is less than a year old. Has it gone through, or is it going through any transformations? Are you adding anything to it? Any exclusive announcements for How I Built It?

Rebecca Gill: I added an additional course for selling SEO services. That’s kind of like an add-on. I have started industry-specific courses, which would be add-ons to the main course. So it kind of does some of the homework for you for different industries and kind of gives people a jumpstart. Although I’ll admit I got sidetracked by that because we are in the middle of launching seobootcamp.com, which is a two-day intensive workshop Training onsite in Dallas. So I definitely got sidetracked on that because that’s launching, oh! It’ll be launched by the time, you know, this comes out. So.

Joe Casabona:  All right. seobootcamp.com, you said? 

Rebecca Gill: Yes.

Joe Casabona: All right. I’ll include that in the show notes. And I think you told me who you were doing it with.

Rebecca Gill: That’s a collaboration with Carrie Dils and Cory Miller. Cory, you’ll notice that both of them are my cheerleaders and they’re great. They’re just wonderful friends and, you know, it’s one thing to have me kind of stand up there and talk and educate. Like, you know, I’ve done for years. But it’s nice when you’ve got trusted people that can be with you to both help with the execution. But also know my process at, you know, worked with me, and can help students make sure that they’re understanding core concepts. And, you know, they’re taking away as much as they can from the course or the workshop I mean.

Joe Casabona: That’s absolutely great. And I mean, they’re both awesome. They’re both going to be on the show. That’s very exciting. I’m glad to have all three of you on the show at some point. So, it’ll be spread out a little bit. So hopefully you can all talk about different stages of how the workshop is going and stuff like that. So that’s awesome. I’m really excited to see how that plays out because live workshops are tough. Right. But I mean, you guys are well-equipped to handle stuff like that.

Rebecca Gill: Well, I mean, if you think about it, it’s the same process that I’ve been doing for 15 years. Right. So now it’s, instead of having the online version of it, now I get to have students on-site with me back to the core that I love of that in-person training, you know, where you can have them do exercises and you can go through them right there with it. And kind of, you know, it’s showing where they’ve gone wrong or, you know, showing them where they’ve excelled, and then continuing that process forward. So it’s then that’s why it’s two days. I mean, there’s so much to cover in two days. And then we’re following up with the third day of, you know, you can book one-on-one sessions with me for personal coaching, or you can just collaborate together as a group because we’re going to keep that meeting space open for another half day.

Joe Casabona:  Really excited to see everything that happens to that. And I guess so we’ve kind of talked a little bit about this year. Your plans for the future, it sounds like it’s this workshop. It’s a few courses on industry-specific stuff 

Rebecca Gill: That just won’t come until winter comes, and I can allocate more time to them.

Joe Casabona:  Great. Well, hopefully, some of my courses that are industry-specific will be out by that point. So I can say, you took this course. Head on over to DIY SEO Courses to learn how to SEO your brand new website. 

Rebecca Gill: Perfect.

Joe Casabona: So here’s, this has been awesome. And here’s the last question that I like to ask? Do you have any trade secrets for us?

Rebecca Gill: Trade secrets. I’ll tell you my trade secret. And it’s what has driven me to any success that I’ve ever had. And that’s work hard.

My grandparents raised me. I grew up in the snow belt of Northern Michigan and I was taught to work hard and be ethical. And I think that has done well with me with SEO and everything I’ve done. Because you know, and I say that because you receive emails from people who are new to internet marketing or anything with the internet. And they have these big eyes like they’re going into Hollywood, and they’re seeing the Hollywood sign, and they’re going to be actors, and so they think it’s magical, and it’s going to be so easy. And it’s like, “No. It’s not. It’s so doable. And there’s so much success you can have, but you got to work hard to get it.” And I, you know, that’s my trade secret. And I wouldn’t tell you that I probably have any other one, besides that, you know.

Joe Casabona: Well, I think that’s a great one. Cause I mean, like you said, work hard. You know, people see the…I was just thinking about this, you know, the Olympics are going on as we record this and we see the greatness, the gold, we see the gold medal. But we don’t see any of the practice that comes with it.

Rebecca Gill: And all the sacrifices they’ve made. I mean, think of all the things that they haven’t done. Right? Because they’ve done so much of their life and they focus so much of their efforts on that goal of the Olympics and their sport. And they’ve done it because they’re passionate about it, and they love it, and they enjoy it, you know. But they’ve worked hard, and that’s a great analogy. I mean, that is, you know, we’re not Olympians, but we do have choices. And we do have to put a lot of effort into crafting, you know, our digital art in what we do.

Joe Casabona: We see the success, but we don’t see the thing that goes into, you know, it’s, I mean, look at Easy Digital Downloads, or any major website, you know, or Pokemon Go is really popular. Right? The guy who made Pokemon Go, who said it took him 20 years to become an overnight success. So.

Rebecca Gill: I’ve read an article about him. And I thought that was so interesting.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. So work hard, and have passion. That is a great trade secret. Rebecca Gill. Thank you so much once again, for joining me today. Make sure to check out her SEO course at diyseocourses.com.

Thank you to LearnDash for sponsoring the episode. Check them out at learndash.com.

And make sure to tune in next week where I’ll be talking to Brian Krogsgard about how he built Post Status.

So until then. Have a great week.