Review of the Teaching Sells Program

Teaching Sells is a program ideal for established authorities in their field and apply what they learn right away by offering programs where one capitalizes on knowledge. Otherwise, it is a helpful program to understand the business of paid membership sites and grow from there, either through capitalizing on existing skill or tap other resources.

That is my observation after signing up for the 7-day trial of Teaching Sells yesterday. I spent the whole day, up to this morning checking out the site's content.

(Note that I tried this program for two months, May to June 2008, and already unsubscribe from it.)

I was skeptic when I first heard of the program last December. I've been operating a paid club membership site, that started in December 2003. I capitalize on personal connections and knowledge in building it. It is challenging to sustain a community especially as some members will outgrow you, sooner or later.

When Teaching Sells came out, I partly got worried as those who'll be taking the program might assume that it is an easy thing to do, "just like that", and offer it at a price like $97 per month which I find to be expensive.

However, after checking out the Teaching Sells program yesterday, I finally realize where its value is and learned a lot from it.
  1. The program presents the necessary components in order to build a training program on the Web. It utilized a combination of audio, presentations, and text to discuss this.

  2. The site has a library where around 300 e-books are available for download. The said resource can be used by members to understand the business of paid content and pick up materials that can be useful for their own endeavors.

  3. The site also has an affiliate program where a minimum referral of 3 members may already be sufficient to sustain your monthly membership in the site. It also plans to have a private label program soon.
The challenges I find in the program includes:
  1. I partly believe that the subject "online teaching" is limited looking at the materials available at the site. By the time I reached the advanced courses, I felt a sense of repetition and the content approach begins to sound like an "academic" paper. I'm sure that the pressure for content developers are high.

  2. Will the subscribers stay long in the site? The only incentive I see for staying long is if there are new upcoming exciting programs and/or the affiliate program started working for the member - where the monthly fees required are already met by the affiliate commission.

  3. Program for advance members. I think there'll be folks who'll be joining the program that have started their own paid membership programs already. Our concerns may already be different and e-books on private label rights offered by some of the known Internet marketing gurus are not enough.
I'm sure the founders have a lot of plans in the site that are not being announced to members yet. It will be interesting to see if the following are offered:
  • A community badge.
    Something that can attest that a paid membership site program has been reviewed and recognized in the Teaching Sells community. As the badge points to an affiliate link, those who are curious to build one of their own may take the program. I haven't seen a body that reviews paid membership-based sites at this time.

  • Marketing opportunities.
    Promote members and help them grow like having member sites who joined the program be listed in a page or have their banners appear in rotation to the founders' high profile sites. I think that will be beneficial and helpful for members.
I have many more to add but I think the above two will already make the program a big deal to encourage member retention.

As to the ideas I picked up, I got inspired to start updating my club membership site this weekend to add the following sections:
  • e-commerce glossary
  • E-Commerce for Entrepreneurs book chapters and make them as actual training pages (with links to the forum for Q&A)
  • Blogging from Home book chapters and make them as actual training pages (with links to the forum for Q&A)
  • offer a one-month, three-months, six-months membership fee choices as I will increase the fees after posting the materials above.
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