Seth Williams is an entrepreneur with a passion for land investing.
After he got a few years of experience under his belt, he decided the time had come to share his expertise, so he created his website, REtipster.
He went on to create some digital products, including a course, to diversify his income. He peaked at $60k in one month, but he normally brings home $20k-30k a month.
In this interview, he talks about building his brand and creating his course and podcast, but perhaps most importantly he talks about leading with value and giving priority to creating great content that helps people.
Watch the Interview
Seth Williams begins by sharing his backstory and talking about how he initially got into real estate investing and land investing.
After his initial success, he decided to launch a blog, REtipster, and with it, a brand.
He shares the story behind his first digital products and what led him to eventually create what was probably the first online course in land investing.Â
Seth talks about diversifying his business as well as the challenges of staying on top of the best techniques in an industry that is constantly changing.
He shares what he thinks it takes to be successful in the industry today, which is totally different from what it looked like when he started.
He then shares more about his brand, from the blog to the podcast, his metrics, and the type of content he creates.
Seth also talks about the surprising thing that happened when he lost 40% of his traffic overnight.
He shares how he knew it was a good idea to create and market his land investing course and, importantly, how he decided to price it.
He also shares advice for other people interested in creating their own course, along with his plans for the future.
Topics Seth Williams Covers
- Real estate/land investing
- Starting his blog
- Developing digital products
- Using social media to grow his brand
- Creating and marketing his course
- Deciding on the price of his course
- How to create your own course
- His plans going forward
Links & Resources
Transcription
Jared: All right. Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman. Today, we are joined by Seth Williams with retipster. com. Seth, welcome on board. Hey, Jared. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Uh, very excited for today. We’re talking about your website, but really you’re in kind of your entire brand.
It’s origin stories all the way to where it’s at today, how you’ve grown it. And, um, as I told you before we started recording, I’m just Excited to knuckle down on real estate stuff. I love real estate as a topic. I know that’s just a personal thing on my part, but that’s just, um, I’m very excited for today for that reason too.
Um, you know, before we get into all the details about REtipster, how you’ve grown at what you’re doing, that’s successful, can you give us some backstory on who you are and how you, what you were doing before you landed on this?
Seth: Yeah, sure. Yeah. So for me, I guess maybe I’ll start with real estate and then how that eventually led into REtipster.
So it was back in 2006 ish when I was in college and I read the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Yeah. Yeah. He’s talking all about real estate in that book and how that’s like, you know, one of the paths to wealth. But he didn’t really explain any specifics of like what exactly to do. He just kind of talked about real estate.
So, um, but I was, my mind was blown by that book as many people have probably experienced that. Um, and you know, I’m in college, I’m about to graduate. And I realized like, maybe I don’t have to get a job like everybody else does. Maybe I can do this real estate thing. So, the next couple of years, I spent hundreds of hours trying to find deals on houses that I could buy and flip or rent out.
And, uh, Total waste of time. I couldn’t find anything that even came close to a deal. The numbers just never worked, like not by a long shot. And, uh, part of my problem was, uh, I was looking where everybody else was looking. What I needed to do was, uh, find people that owned real estate, but they didn’t have a first sale sign in their yard.
And make them an offer off market. And especially if I could find highly motivated sellers, people who had some kind of problem and I wanted to get rid of it. So I learned how to do that in 2008, 2009. And specifically, I started doing this with vacant land, which at first, um, you know, most people, including myself might hear vacant land, like, what, why would you do that?
That makes no sense. Like, how does that make money? Just a piece of dirt there. But the reason it made sense was because I was making very, very, very low offers to people, like 20 percent of the property’s market value. And when you make offers that low on anything that has tangible value, it’s pretty easy to make money on that thing.
You just list it for a price that’s closer to its actual market value once you own it and then Sell it that way. And, um, because it was just land, I didn’t have to like deal with tenants or any of that stuff. So, land was really the first thing I ever found success in as a real estate investor. And after a few years of doing that, I realized, you know, I kind of, I kind of have like a good mental library of knowledge now about how to do this.
And it was around that time that I came across Pat Flynn at smartpassiveincome. com. And I saw what he was doing for his audience. And I was just like, holy cow, like, I love how I never feel like I’m being sold on anything and yet I’m getting a ton of value. And I also love how he’s making a ton of money when it doesn’t seem like he’s ever selling anything.
And I was just like, I could totally do that, but for what I know in the real estate space. So in 2012, I started retipster. com and it was totally an experiment. I just started writing blog posts and eventually I started making YouTube videos. Thank you guys. Just explaining what I knew with no ask, just helping, and that was it.
And it wasn’t long until, uh, what do you call it, long, but it was probably like six or eight months, uh, when it really started to pick up steam in terms of like people continually coming back to it and engaging with the content and, you know, Um, it was around that time that I made my first product for sale.
It was my postcard templates that I would mail out to, uh, property owners to ask if they wanted to sell their property. It’s kind of like the catalyst that would start every deal going. And I put it on my website for 7. You can buy the same postcard templates that I use and that I’ve gotten a lot of success with.
And I sold my first package that day for 7. And I was like, holy cow, somebody actually just gave me money for this. This is crazy. And I started making more of those kinds of things, just like assets that I used in my business and putting them on there. Eventually, I started increasing the price of those things and they kept selling.
Um, and. Eventually, I made a course, like a whole A to Z land investing course explaining everything. This was in 2015 that included all of those assets that I created and videos and all this stuff. Um, and that went through an interesting evolution. Originally, I started trying to sell it as like a monthly membership for like 45 bucks a month.
And I realized after about a year of doing that, that was not the right way to do it at that point in time, because people would, very routinely just sign up for a few months and then get out of there and never come back. Um, it wasn’t like a software product where people needed to use it continually.
It’s more like, okay, I, I got what I need. I’m gone now. So, uh, about a year or so later, I changed it to more of like a one time fee to get in. Um, I think it was originally 1200 bucks. I don’t remember what the original price was. Uh, currently it’s 24. 97 to get in. Um, and yeah, it’s, uh, historically has sold pretty well.
Although this year I’ll say, uh, has probably been the worst year I’ve had in a while. Just in terms of, there’s a lot of, uh, other competitors in the space now that weren’t there before. And, uh, I don’t know. Uh, YouTube has changed. Google has changed. Real estate has changed. Yeah. Real estate has changed a lot.
Yeah. That’s, that’s a huge one too. Um, so a lot of stuff has changed. I don’t really know what to make of it or how to like fix it or how to, uh, get back to equilibrium, whatever that looks like. Something’s got to change, but, um. Yeah, so this has been the first year in several years that like, I’m just trying to figure out what the new normal is.
And, uh, it’s kind of weird, like I’ll have a good month and then a terrible month and a good month and a terrible, whereas it used to just be consistently good all the time. Um, so, but, and I will say that’s just, uh, that’s just the core side of things that probably makes up like half of the revenue for REtipster.
The other half is like various affiliate promotions we do, or like ad space that we sell on podcasts or any. Special promotions and that kind of thing. So, luckily, not all of our eggs are in the course basket, but several of them are. Um, and we’ve got a number of different courses, but the Land Investing Masterclass, uh, landinvestingmasterclass.
com, that’s kind of like the big flagship course that has historically sold the most. So, the other courses are kind of, uh, I don’t know why. I think they’re actually really good, but they’re just, they don’t have as much like steam behind them. I haven’t been talking about them as much for as long. So, um, But yeah, but overall, it’s been an awesome business.
I love being a content creator. Like I genuinely cannot wait to get started at work every day. It’s something that I, it’d be hard to imagine a better way to spend my life and my working time because I just, my brain works really well with that. Um, and I’d say if anything is like a struggle or has been a consistent struggle over the years, It’s been trying to balance, okay, how do I remain an active land investor while also spending so much time making all this content?
Because both things are very time consuming and I don’t know what it’s possible to do an awesome job at both things. Even if you have teams working on both businesses, it still requires attention and management of those teams. So, that’s kind of been like, One of the common challenges I’ve had, and I think anybody can probably relate to that if they’re trying to, uh, teach about something that’s not blogging, because you have to like develop your own expertise in this totally unrelated thing and then, you know, figure out how to have the expertise of explaining that to people.
So, but yeah, I know there’s a lot I just threw at you there, but, uh, Well, great Baxter.
Jared: I mean, you’re in good hands here if you’re trying to figure out the new norm because we’re all trying to figure that out as well. So we talk about that every week on the news podcast and it bleeds its way over into all the interviews like 2024 and beyond going to be some new norms there.
I think I’ll just say, and I know we’ll get into this a lot because it’s on our agenda, but you’re trying to figure out new norm volatility fluctuations. But because you’ve diversified and have different streams of revenue from this brand, it is impacting you, but it’s not like a fatal impact or it’s not as critical path.
And so, you know, that’s something we talk a lot about on the podcast of late is, is that diversification and having people on like you who have done that. So. And, um, yeah, no, your backstory is awesome. I do have a couple of questions. I mean, you listed off all the favorites. I mean, I feel like, you know, we got rich dad, Porta, we got smart, passive income, and I’m, I mean, all we need is a four hour, all we need is a four hour work week reference and we would have like completely trifecta there, you know?
Um, You know, you, you, you touched on a bit. 2006 is when you got started in doing deals. 2012 is when you started the website. Now I don’t want to go too much into history there, but how much does what’s happening in the real estate industry? How much has that impacted your success in your online world?
Because we, During that 2006, 2012 time period. That’s when we had real estate completely flip itself on its head. And I think a lot of people are maybe going through that as well. If they’re, you know, um, if they have a brand about X and X has volatility in it, how do, how did you grow that through the volatility of the real estate industry?
Seth: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great question. I’m sure there is a crossover in terms of one thing impacts the other thing. Um, It’s hard to say how direct that impact is or like how long it takes for what’s happening in the real estate market to eventually bleed over into like the education side of things. Um, I don’t think it happens like instantly.
There’s at least like a number of months or maybe even years in there in terms of that kind of thing. But, um, but yeah, for example, like When I started the blog in 2012, really since I started investing in real estate at all, I started in 2009, which was just like the worst of the worst times. Right. And ever since then, it’s been just kind of going up and up and up and up.
And then when 2020 hit, that was like, for everybody, obviously, it was a very crazy year. But, um, originally I thought, oh no, like real estate is going to be, In really bad shape, but it ended up turning into like a huge boom and that includes the land investing space. A lot of people are getting into land around that time.
And things kind of took off. And I think in correlation to that, there were a lot of people who like, uh, were trying to consume content about land. And I had probably the most content of anybody on the internet at that point in time. Um, and it was also during that time that, uh, probably like 2020 or 2021, that kind of era.
That’s when. new land, land investing educators came into it because they had been doing it for about a year or so and had some success in it. And they’re like, Hey, I’m going to throw my hat in this too. Um, and it just became a lot more popular to talk about. And, um, and I think, yeah, like, like, as I’m looking at 2024, um, I mean, things are definitely getting harder, but like that’s, I could have said that for the past two to three years easily.
It’s been consistently getting harder year by year to do all of this stuff really. And when I say harder, I just mean like it’s a lot more competitive for all real estate investors land included to find deals using the same old marketing methods. So basically what that means is that for me as an educator, I have to stay on top of that and figure out, okay, so if it’s going to be harder to do it the same old way, what are some new ways we can do this?
Thanks. Or what should your expectations be now? Like, um, you know, 10 Â years ago, you could have sent out 500 postcards and had at least one deal out of that. Today, it’s more like you better be sending at least 3, 000 to 5, 000 of those to get one deal. Maybe you’ll get that deal. So it’s just, uh, it’s about like setting expectations and being aware of that and going back to old historical content and like changing it.
Like if it said that I don’t want somebody to read. Some eight year old blog post. I think that’s still true today. Um, so that’s been another big challenge as a educator is like, uh, staying on top of this. And I’d say like month to month, it’s changing. It’s not like, yeah, we’ll change this every year. It’s like, no, no, like that literally worked last month and it doesn’t work as well this month.
So that’s been a hard thing. Uh, I think not, not an impossible thing, but just time consuming in terms of like, you know, being aware of the things that are changing and then retroactively going to all these places and making sure that’s saying the correct thing now and knowing that even that is going to change probably in the next six months.
So, um, yeah, that took you a question. I, I think there is, um, impact in terms of like, when it’s harder to do this business, that means that fewer people are going to get into it and stay in it. Um, it doesn’t mean it’s not possible. It just means like I used to say this was something anybody can do. And I don’t know if I’d say that anymore.
It’s like, no, you kind of have to have a certain level of intelligence and wherewithal and stick to itiveness, or you’re probably not going to make it. And it’s also about trying to be transparent about that too and helping people understand like, Okay. very much. If you’re not the type of person who has resilience, like if you do one mail campaign or text campaign or whatever you’re doing and if it doesn’t work and you’re going to quit, like if that’s you, then just save yourself the trouble and don’t do this.
So, yeah.
Jared: Why don’t you give us a little bit of context for everybody listening in terms of what the brand is composed of right now. I mean, I know preparing, I was looking at your YouTube channel, you got a podcast episodes in on that, lots of videos, your website ranks for, for um, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Multiple tens of thousands of keywords with tons of content on there.
And then if you could anything just on, um, you know, maybe some monthly metrics or anything you’re comfortable sharing in terms of revenue or something, just to give you an idea of the scope of what you built up over the last, I mean, geez, I guess almost 15, 20 years now.
Seth: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, the REtipster brand, it’s really, um, it consists of the stuff that I’m interested in ultimately, like if, if I think it’s worth talking about or if it’s some business that I want to get into or that I have been doing, then it belongs on the site because I don’t write all the content, but I’ve probably written like 90 percent of it, um, or in some way had a lot of influence on what content goes on there.
Okay. And, uh, if it’s about something, I don’t know, some obscure thing or just anything that like, I don’t have a passion for, then like the passion is not going to come through and or the knowledge isn’t going to be there because I don’t know anything about it. Um, and interestingly, so a lot of like the mainstream stuff that most people think about with real estate, like buying houses or apartment buildings and that kind of thing.
So that’s covered really well by BiggerPockets. They’re great at, uh, you know, if people aren’t familiar, that’s just, it’s a huge behemoth, biggest website on the internet for real estate investors. They’ve done a great job of catering to the stuff that most people are out there looking for. Uh, REtipster is more focused on kind of the nichey stuff that, uh, that really does need a lot more specialized knowledge to do it the right way.
Like for example, the way that you would go after a land deal, the conversation you would have with that seller is very different than how you do this for a house. And if you’re trying to take the house, and apply that to land. Some of it’s going to be true, but you’re going to miss some stuff because there’s just oddities about land that you don’t have to deal with in the house world.
So, Um, I tried to really, um, explain this stuff so that anybody with an eighth grade education could understand it. And luckily, I’m actually a pretty slow learner, like it takes me a while to figure things out. I usually have to be told something three times for it to stick. Maybe it’ll stick. So given how slow I am, it, uh, it’s actually lent itself well to being able to explain complicated things to anybody because.
In order for me to get it, most other people will get it too. And that sort of comes through. Um, so yeah, but, uh, in terms of the brand, so land investing, self storage is another thing that I’ve been making more content about because I’ve gotten into that business. Um, other things like I used to own, uh, duplexes and that kind of thing.
So I have some experience and stuff I can talk about on that front. And also, I always kind of like staying up to date on like the tech in the real estate world, like the websites that are most helpful, software that’s really helpful for people. Some of those things have affiliate opportunities where I can promote them and earn some revenue from that as well.
So I’m always looking out for that kind of stuff. And also a lot of the things that I talk about doesn’t just apply to real estate. Like any working professional can use this stuff. And I try to explain it in such a way that like, I’m not specifically calling out land investors with everything I say, like they’re going to get it.
But other people can get it too. Like for example, uh, like Mercury, Mercury, it’s like a online banking service or relay. Like these are things any small business owner can benefit from. So I want them to be able to find that on YouTube and With those kinds of things where I know it applies to other circles, I don’t want to like pigeonhole just land investors on that stuff.
If it’s something that only land investors need, then I’m going to say that. But, you know, I try to just strategically do things that a lot of people can use. Um, and in terms of like metrics and that kind of thing. So, uh, There was a time years ago when we got a lot of traffic, at least a lot by my standards, but maybe not everybody’s, but it was like a couple of hundred thousand visitors per month.
And I don’t know what happened, but in, I think it was 2019 in July or something like that, in that timeframe, all of a sudden we lost like 40 percent of our traffic overnight. And, uh, interestingly at first, when this happened, I was kind of like panicking, like, oh no, like what, what did I do wrong? Did I mess something up?
Um, but as time went on, I found that it had. Absolutely no correlation with our revenue, like revenue didn’t drop at all. So it was like, it was kind of just like a vanity metric that was making me feel good, but it didn’t really matter. And in hindsight, I guess that’s kind of comforting to know that traffic isn’t everything.
I mean, it’s nice to see, but, um, so, but that was kind of just a weird, Uh, I guess up until that point, my blog had just been growing year over year over year, just like going up and up and up. And in my mind, it was like, this is going to go forever. Like someday I’m going to have millions of people visiting and maybe tens of millions.
But that was one of these, uh, you know, harsh reality moments of like, nope, sorry, it’s not going to happen unless you fundamentally change a lot, which I still don’t even know what that would be. It’s just not ever going to be that kind of website. Um, and then, uh, as the COVID real estate boom and the land investing boom happened in 2020 and beyond.
Um, you know, probably the most I’ve ever made in a month from all the stuff combined is about that 60 grand, uh, number. And these days, like in 2024, a good month is more like 20 grand. So it’s come down quite a bit. Um, I’d say like an average month looking over the past, like five years would 30, 30 grand a month from everything.
Um, And that’s a mixture of course stuff and affiliate stuff and advertising stuff that we do and other random things that come in. And, uh, you know, I was watching actually just before we got on this call, uh, A YouTube video on the Niche Pursuits YouTube channel talking about, you know, the ups and the downs and the rollercoaster.
And I can totally relate to that. Um, I think the nice thing about what I’ve tried to build is that the income does come from many different sources. So like when I go through a time where the core sales just stop, like it’s not the end of the world. Um, because there’s, you know, plenty of like affiliate income coming in and that kind of thing.
But, uh, I guess now more than ever though, it’s kind of underscored like, that’s a good idea, Seth, keep doing that. Like keep, keep, keep getting stuff from other places that are not your course. Because you never know when like, Interest is just going to go away or, I mean, it’s like anything, any of these sources of income can disappear for unforeseen reasons.
And that’s probably true for affiliate stuff too. I mean, there’s certain great affiliate partnerships that could just disappear overnight as well. But the more different things you can have. And, uh, the less, like the smaller those pieces of the pie can be, in my mind, that’s kind of a good thing.
Jared: I’m so glad you went through all that because it probably for everyone listening, or at least most people listening, there’s something in that timeline and in that story arc that touches on something everybody’s feeling.
I, I, I want to drill in on a couple of things you said. I’ll start with this. There’s a couple of things you said that I wrote down in my notes and I want to drill it down on. Yeah. One of them is. If you didn’t notice a downturn in revenue, when you had a downturn in traffic, what was, what, what revenue sources had you built up to that point?
Like, were you able to figure out like, Oh, my traffic plummeted, i. e. a lot of people are thinking that right now who are listening to podcasts with all the Google changes that have happened recently, like my traffic plummeted, but my revenue didn’t, what sources of traffic were generating your revenue that you weren’t aware of at that time?
Seth: That’s a great question. I have, I’m doing a much better job today of tracking all that stuff. Back then I, it was basically just, what does Google analytics tell me? Which wasn’t that detailed really. Um, but I think, uh,
Jared: Like, well, revenue doesn’t drop, so let’s not touch a good thing while we have it.
Seth: Sort of.
Yeah. But, uh, um, so I think part of what was going on there. was that back then a larger percentage of the income was coming from course sales. And for that, for the land investing masterclass, I think at the time back then, it was selling for maybe 2, 000 ish bucks or somewhere in that price range. And somebody who’s going to spend that kind of money, like they kind of need to be pretty sure about what, what they’re doing.
Like they need to.
Jared: They’re not a random top of the funnel, Google traffic kind of source. Yeah.
Seth: They don’t randomly discover me and then buy it that day. It’s more like, okay, this is pretty cool. I’m going to follow along. And maybe a couple of months later, maybe they’ll do it. Um, and so. I think just because that intent is there, like if anybody’s going to buy it, there has to be a lot of intent to do that.
It’s not an impulse buy. Um, whereas a lot of the traffic I think I lost was kind of just like traffic that maybe should have never come to my website in the first place. Like it wasn’t that targeted of traffic. If anything, Google was probably just fixing something in terms of like, yeah, we want to make sure these people don’t waste time with you because that’s not really what they’re looking for.
They need something else. I don’t know. But, um, so maybe there’s some of that going on, but also. YouTube had become, and it still is, a pretty important part of my business in terms of, like a lot of these affiliate sales that happen, they never even make it to my blog. They just watch the YouTube video.
They click the link in the description and there you go. And I always include links to the blog posts and relevant stuff in the description, but that doesn’t mean they’re ever going to actually show up as traffic to my main site. That’s something I’ve probably not done the best job of is like including good calls to action in those videos to sign up for my email list and like actually retain those people.
A lot of people probably just come and go. Um, and maybe they might buy something, but um, I probably would have benefited if I had earlier on made a bigger deal. Like, Hey, don’t just subscribe here. Don’t just like it, like sign up for this thing because it’s going to help you a lot. That kind of thing. And I’m not really much of a big Instagram guy.
I’ve got an account there, but I just, I don’t spend a lot of time on that platform. Facebook, for whatever reason, is a pretty huge deal for my audience, for land investors specifically. Um, I have a Facebook group or a couple of more, a lot of activity happens there too. So that’s also been a pretty good opportunity to promote stuff.
I have a forum as well, uh, through retipster. com. We recently just migrated all the software to discourse, um, which I love that software a lot more than what we were using, but our forum traffic, I don’t know what happened exactly, but it kind of dropped off a lot. I think what, what happened there is when we migrated everything.
All of the users have to reset their password to get back in and not everybody understands that. So, it just kind of like put this big roadblock in front of people. So, I guess that’s another thing, if anybody out there has a forum or wants to start a forum, to the extent that you can, try to never migrate away from that because it’s a huge pain to do it.
I can only imagine.
Jared: Um, let’s talk about this course, uh, or maybe going all the way back in history. When did you transition from having a website and a blog? Into having a course and what was the impetus? Like what were the signs that you were looking at? And again, I, I feel like a lot of people know about courses, but don’t necessarily look at their brand as something that, that they can make a course from or they can sell.
And you’ve clearly done a very good job. We’ll talk about price points in a little bit. I have some questions on that as well, but how did you know that was a transition that, um, that you should take and take advantage of and, you know, maybe talk us through the early days of building the course and how you marketed it.
Seth: Yeah. Um, so. I think the light bulb moment happened when a friend of mine who had been following my blog since I started it, he just like, Seth, you got to make a course. Well, you’re crazy for not having one already. And, uh, and he was kind of right. Like there was a lot of, I basically had all the content for the course on the blog.
It just wasn’t organized that well. It was just a matter of figuring out what platform to have this on and then putting it in the right order, adding content where it needed to be added, uh, just giving people like this is everything you need right here. There you go. Um, and so. Sort of, sort of that. And also other people in the audience had been asking specifically for something like that.
And it was a really interesting discovery to know that, uh, for the most part, like, People will pay for stuff that’s already free on your blog. They just want it organized. And, um, that was kind of interesting. And even to this day, that’s kind of how a lot of our courses work is the origin of the content in the course is from something on the blog.
So, we might do something to like sweeten it a little bit, like maybe add a video where there isn’t one on the blog or something, but, um, or maybe like where there is normally a paid download on the blog, you just put that in the course for free. So, like it, They’re going to get it if they just go to the course and that kind of thing.
Um, but yeah, it was really just people from the audience telling me to do it. And, uh, at the time there were, uh, only two other land investing courses in existence. And then, uh, I actually, interestingly, launched mine the exact same day as another educator. So then there were four on the market for a while.
And then after 2020, I think there’s like 30 of them out there now, there’s tons of people trying to do this. So it’s gotten very, very crowded, which has made it a lot harder to be heard than it used to be before. Like I used to be able to make a video about land investing and like, Pretty much everybody would see it.
And now it’s like, eh, maybe 20 percent of people might see it, maybe. Um, so that’s been kind of a challenge I’m trying to figure out as well. But, uh, um, but in terms of like marketing the thing, so I honestly don’t know if I would take advice from me on that. I think I did a pretty bad job of it, but even then, like it still worked, even though I did a bad job of it.
Um, and there’s part of that
Jared: too, to be clear, like just doing it and putting it out there. And even if you do a bad job on it, not saying it always goes that way, but in your case, or at least the way you describe it, it still worked really well.
Seth: Yeah. Yeah. And I think part of why it worked was because at the time, there wasn’t a ton of competition in this space for this thing.
The most of the people that bought it, like they got to know me really well. Like, I didn’t even, they didn’t even know I had a course until they like followed along for a while and realized, Oh, Seth’s got a course, maybe I’ll do it. Um, but I’ve heard feedback now years later from people that they were like, man, Seth, I wish I would’ve known you had this course, but like, you didn’t say anything about it anywhere.
Like it wasn’t, it was hard to find where this thing even was. Um, so I’ve since fixed that, I think, kind of, um, but I think I just had a lot of, um, kind of this artist’s curse of like, I don’t want to sell out. I don’t want to be somebody who’s always, you know, trying to pitch people on stuff. And I think I didn’t realize like.
A lot of times when you pitch people on stuff, most people aren’t even gonna see that ’cause they’re not paying attention at that moment. When you said that thing, like if you really want people to know about it, you gotta go nuts. Like hit ’em on every channel multiple times, and even then they’ll still probably miss it and it might annoy some people, but it’s like whatever.
You know, apparently they weren’t super fans and they weren’t like, you know, they didn’t love what you were doing in the first place. So, um, that’s something that, uh. And even with all these, uh, different social media channels out there, like I still kind of struggle with like, am I hitting everybody? Like did I post this in the Facebook groups and like YouTube community and on Twitter and on LinkedIn and on Instagram and on just like thing after thing after thing, it’s really hard to like get it everywhere and then do it multiple times everywhere.
I don’t have that mastered still, but. And then, you know, I think a lot of the, uh, the other people in this space now, part of what’s my theory anyway, part of what’s making it harder is that, uh, They sort of come from, uh, like the e commerce world or they’re, they were educators in other, uh, uh, real estate niches that were a lot more competitive and they really understand Facebook and, uh, Google ads and they do it and they spend a lot of money on it.
And I don’t do it at all because historically I’ve relied on just organic search and it’s worked for me, but it’s working less now than it ever has before. Ed. You know, I was just looking on Google this morning. Um, my, my course ranks pretty high up there. Like, I think it’s like a number two organic search result, but there’s like, you got to scroll through all these ads, even to see that stuff.
And most people probably aren’t going to do it. So, and that’s kind of theory. I don’t necessarily know that, but I know that it didn’t used to, it didn’t used to look like that. Like years ago, there were no ads, land investing courses and that kind of thing. So, um, it’s just kind of a different environment now.
And I’m still trying to figure out how to make it work. Yeah. How did you land on the price point?
Jared: Cause it’s, um, well, it’s not that it’s super high, but I would say that it’s in a class of like very advanced level, um, course pricing. Is that because that’s what the market bears? Is that because it’s like 190 chapters?
Is that because. The deal size and investment size is so big that it substantiates a course that that’s expensive. I’m just curious how you’ve landed on that, how you’ve tweaked it, you know, cause course pricing is a science in and of itself.
Seth: Yeah, no, for sure. It really is. I still don’t know that I’m a hundred percent confident, even in the current price, to be honest with you.
Cause I know there are, uh, there’s people out there selling courses that I know I’ve been through them. I know they’re, you know, Not half as good. And they’re charging like 5, 000 for them. It’s a weird thing. And there’s other people who are giving away their course for free. And that’s another interesting thing because if somebody sees two land investing courses, one’s free, one is 2, 500, why would they not do the free one?
I mean, even if the value is like, if the quality is completely different, they’re not going to know. Why would they roll the dice on 2, 500 to find out? So, I think that kind of thing has made it harder as well. Um, so back when I first started making this course thing, like I mentioned, I, I tried to do this monthly subscription model, which I found out didn’t make sense at all.
And it was super annoying because, because even as I mean, it was a laughably cheap price that I was asking for it and people would, you know, miss payments all the time, got to follow up with them. And it’s just like, come on, it’s not hard people. So, um, we stopped doing that and changed it to, to a annual subscription.
And that probably worked even worse in terms of people continuing to pay. But, um, when we changed it to that, I think that was when it was, gosh, what’s the price? Like 1, 184, some random, uh, annual subscription number. And that was a similar issue though, where once the second year came up, people would like disappear and ghost us and they wouldn’t pay and that kind of thing.
So that was when I was like, okay, forget this. Uh, I see these other land educators are charging about 2, 000 for their course as a one time payment. Let’s do that. It’s working for them. I’ll try it here.
Jared: Yeah.
Seth: And, uh, and even today, like if I were to change the price, I would definitely look at like other land courses and see like, what are they doing?
What’s working for them? And that would, it would play at least some role in me deciding what it would be. And, um, yeah, I’ve tried other stuff with like, uh, like webinar, uh, promotions where we, I bundle all of our courses for like, it ends up being like, uh, 4, 000 or 3, 997 for all the courses. But it’s cheaper than if you were to buy them all individually, that kind of thing.
So you kind of have this value stack that you do. And, um, that’s worked to some degree. Um, but I don’t think I’ve been doing it for long enough to really know for sure. But that’s another strategy you could try.
Jared: I don’t want to read too far into it, but in preparing for today, I was on your website, poking around, homepage, about page, getting into some of the content.
I would say that it feels like you’re definitely funneling people Into your newsletter and a lot of your free content. And then the course must get pitched later on. Cause I didn’t see much about the course. No, that’s
Seth: great feedback.
Jared: Well, I don’t know. Is that like, I’m just curious. Is that strategic?
Because funneling is a big deal and you’ve talked so much about how. No one’s going to land on your website and buy a 2, 000, 3, 000, 4, 000 course out of the gate. And it makes so much sense to me as I perused your website in preparation for today. I’m like, I didn’t see much about this expensive course. I saw a lot of stuff about how to get information right now.
That’s going to help today. That’s kind of free and value add. Is there a lot of funneling that goes into it? Are you creating email funnels and, um, and, and, and, uh, buyer funnels for your course or what’s been the best process for you as you’ve grown this over the years?
Seth: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I appreciate the feedback.
That’s, that’s good to hear. Um, so yeah, for the longest time, uh, what I would do is I just had a, a little WordPress widget that showed up at the end of every single blog post that was basically an ad for the land investing masterclass. And people would discover it that way. There’s also a, a store, a button in our navigation bar where you can find all our courses there.
Um, and I’ve also got like a couple of random, uh, autoresponder emails or, you know, uh, auto, what do you call it? When they subscribe and they get a series of like 25 emails for a year or something like that. But some of those emails mention it, but otherwise that’s kind of it. Uh, I’ve also got, I guess, some random, uh, podcast pre roll ads that have aired in the past that kind of mention it.
So, but to your point, I mean, I could probably do a better job of just like mentioning it more or giving it better, uh, airplay. The other stuff that I’m doing now, which I should probably reevaluate it because I know at least one of them isn’t working that well, is instead of just sending them directly to the landing page for the Land Investing Masterclass, one of these things goes to a webinar where they see all about it and you know, that kind of thing.
And that has had kind of mixed results. It hasn’t worked as well as I thought it would have. Uh, the other one is a, it’s a free five day email course where they can kind of learn more about it and kind of overcomes objections and that kind of thing. And, uh, I haven’t looked at the stats closely enough to know how well that’s working, if at all.
Um, but yeah, that’s a good, a good point though. I’ve got to revisit that to figure out, is that working? I set both of them up less than a year ago, so I just want to see if I got a check in. No, and it’s less
Jared: of a comment and more of an opportunity to like, um, learn from you about high end, high ticket sales.
I mean, that’s really what I’m drilling down on here is. It’s one thing to launch a course for your content for 2. 97. It’s another thing to launch a course for 24. 97. And there’s so much we can learn from you who have kind of moved your course up in price throughout the years as you’ve seen what’s working and what’s not.
And, um, I, I do think there’s something to be said for what you’re echoing. And I don’t want to read too far into it, so tell me if I am, but like, You really do come across as someone who leads with value first and spends more time in the value than you do on creating the perfect funnel or the perfect landing page or the perfect metric that backs up the, this, the, that, and there’s something to be said for it.
Like, yeah, I’m sure you could be doing better on that. But to your earlier point, there’s only so many hours of the day that you can focus on this. You still have to be an active real estate investor to provide that value. You’re focusing on those kinds of things. I just think there’s a great juxtaposition there that you’re kind of uncovering, like the value you’re providing is your focus over.
a super detailed funnel, maybe.
Seth: Yeah, it’s, it’s really true. Um, and I think like something to know about the real estate investing space online. Um, and this is kind of like harpooned pretty well by bigger pockets over the years, but I think the issue existed before them, but they just kind of did a really good job of creating a The mindset, but there’s a, uh, kind of a, like real estate gurus or educators are almost seen as bad guys.
Like these are people who are like, they’re a sham. Like they’re just trying to scam you out of your money. And You know, they’re the enemy kind of thing, which not everybody thinks that, but, but there is that thought out there. Like, as soon as you start offering a course for 2000 bucks, oh, I see, you’re one of those guys.
And like, I don’t want to be seen as one of those guys. And to a fault, to the point that it just probably lost me a ton of money over the years. Uh, I think that’s kind of what subconsciously keeps me from mentioning it more is because I don’t want to like lead with the sales pitch. I want to lead with like, look how I can help you, you know, and don’t, don’t even give me anything.
You don’t have to opt in anything. It’s just, it’s all here. And, uh, you know, on one hand I will say like, A lot of the people that I meet, like they are, I don’t mean to like be all narcissistic or anything, but like, they love me. Like, like it creates these amazing fans and people that, you know, come up to you and say like, Seth, you changed my life.
So like, I love that just from an emotional side, but like financially, like a lot of these people whose lives I’ve supposedly changed, I’ve made not a penny from them. And on one hand, it’s like, I guess that’s, that’s fine. On the other hand, it’s like, man, but like, they, they probably would have paid me something if I had just done a better job of like letting them know that there was an opportunity to.
So. Um, I don’t have that figured out on a second, probably do a lot better at it
Jared: when it comes to the podcast that you started. That’s not a channel that a lot of people often think to go into YouTube, blogging. These are maybe more common channels, right? You talk about Facebook, these kinds of channels, what, uh, when did you land on starting the podcast and why?
And how do you think that has contributed to your overall growth and brand?
Seth: Yeah. So that was back in 2019 when I started that. And it was similar to the course. I just heard enough people asking for it. And, um, I actually hesitated for a while on this because I’m not great at just like freestyle talking  by myself for an hour.
Like I, it just sounds like a nightmare to me. Like I need the energy from another person in the room to kind of keep it going. So I tried to do my first handful of episodes with just me and realized like, this is way too hard. I need to interview people. So, I’ve been doing that for the most part, um, and it’s actually been awesome, like in terms of.
Um, I didn’t know that it’s like my favorite thing to do necessarily. Um, but I know for sure a lot of people, the only thing they will ever hear from me is if I put it on the podcast, like they will not watch YouTube. They will not go to the blog. If it’s not on the podcast, they’re never going to know about it.
And that’s actually another kind of discovery I made over the years is like, if you really want people to know about something, like put it everywhere, because some people focus on one thing, like maybe it’s just YouTube and nothing else. Um, so there’s that, but, uh, the audience for our podcast is, I don’t know, it’s relatively small.
We used to get probably two to 3, 000 downloads an episode. Now it’s more like 500 per episode. And I think it’s a function of Again, there’s a lot more podcasts out there now, a lot more land investing podcasts, that kind of thing. Um, but I think, uh, I didn’t even know this when I started doing it, but apparently I hear this again and again from people.
I’m pretty good at like, um, really drilling down to issues. Like not just hearing the answer and moving on, but like getting several layers deep to really uncover what’s going on and like what the people aren’t telling me. So it’s kind of, I’m actually, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Colby assessment, it’s like a personality test you can take.
But when I took that, I found out I’m apparently a very strong fact finder. Like I want to really get all the information out on the table and not take anything for granted, not assume anything. And that kind of comes through. It’s kind of fun for me to really understand everything about why a person says and does what they do.
So, but yeah, the podcast, I don’t know that it. So it makes a little bit of money. Occasionally, I will, uh, get paid by companies that want to get to our audience and will run like pre roll ads and that kind of thing. But other than that kind of thing, I don’t know of any directly monetizable way that it’s made me money.
So, yeah.
Jared: Fair enough. But people love you and recognize you from it.
Seth: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That’s where something
Jared: paid. What do they call it? Get paid in hugs and hugs and kisses. Yeah,
Seth: exactly. I’ll take
Jared: them Hey for people listening who? might be interested in Developing a course for their audience What are the big tips that you would want to share with them or that you could share with them?
From I mean almost a decade now of doing it You
Seth: Well, uh, one kind of mistake I made back in the day was I tried to create the course on a WordPress site, using a WordPress theme and like plugins to handle all the payments and all this stuff. And it was fine. It worked for a couple of years, but man, it Maybe it was just the themes and plugins I was using, but it was a huge pain.
It kept like breaking and stuff, and it would load really slow. And a few years later, I realized like, there’s platforms that do this, like they special like Kajabi or what’s Cartrot. The one I use is Kajabi and I’ve been pretty happy with it. And when I moved to that, it simplified so many things for me.
It just saved me a lot of grief that I was dealing with before. Um, and if you want to integrate any kind of a forum with your course, I know there’s different ones out there, like school, I think is one that has a really good forum functionality built into it. Uh, I think Kajabi has that now too, although I’m not using it.
I’m using my public discourse forum. Discourse is the open source software we’re using, so it’s free to use and it works pretty well. Um, but if you choose to do a forum, like do your best to, Pick the right thing from the outset. So you don’t have to migrate it because that’s a huge pain and definitely messes things up when you try to switch that.
Um, and yeah, I mean, kind of, as we’ve talked about here, like, don’t be too bashful about, you know, sales pitches and advertising and talking up your stuff because nobody else is going to do it for you. I mean, they might, but like, you can’t count on that. Um, I mean, really you need to be your advocate in terms of letting people know that it’s there and letting them know why it’s in their best interest.
Some people are going to have no problem with this, but I apparently have a problem with it even today. Um, but, uh, just realizing like, this isn’t just about like, You’re going to be not making as much money. This is about like, people can get ahead in life a lot faster if they know about your thing. Like you’re actually hurting them too by not letting them know about it.
And uh, yeah, that’s, it’s just one of those things like, uh, it’s like a weird mental block that I’ve always had. And um, The sooner you can get over that, the better.
Jared: I hope everyone listening can hear some of those things. Cause I think a lot of people that are in the spaces we’re in are comfortable hiding behind a keyboard.
Um, and I, I don’t mean hiding to, to, to, to, to put, um, fault to it. Like it’s, it’s uncomfortable to put yourself out there, put your face on a course and tell people to go buy it. And that’s hard. And, but hearing you kind of navigate through how you’ve found ways to be comfortable with that. Like that’s something that pretty much everybody probably is going to have that imposter syndrome to some degree of in, in create a course.
And, and we could just sit here and talk only about how much to charge for it. And, you know, don’t do a plugin, do a, do a learning, an LMS platform and, and the tactics behind it. But there’s also that mental block that comes with putting yourself out there and needing to overcome that in order to sell the course on an ongoing basis.
Seth: For sure. Yeah. And it’s, uh, yeah, even I, um, putting my face on a video, I wouldn’t say it’s hard necessarily, but, uh, it definitely takes an extra step to do that. It’s a lot, it’s a lot more work and discomfort, so to speak, than just typing stuff out on the blog. No.
Jared: Daniel Pink has a great book that I read a while ago.
Everyone’s in sales or something like that. Everyone’s a salesman.
Seth: Yeah.
Jared: Um, it’s really good. If you’re looking to. Kind of get a book to help you on it. Yeah, it sounds accurate for sure. Don’t get it. Yeah Yeah, it’s a really great book. Anyways total side note Um, hey going back to something you said earlier and as we kind of start to bring this thing home you talked about how?
Hey, it’s changed dramatically in the last couple of years. There’s so much more competition There’s less eyeballs and you are working Towards trying new things. What is, what does going forward look like for you? What are some different things you are looking to try or have already tried and maybe are seeing some successes with to add revenue, to diversify, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Seth: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So yeah, I’m actually got a little note here on my computer, just full of things to try this year. It’s a. Yeah, like you said, some of them have worked, some of them have not. Uh, some of the things I’m trying, I just like playing around with pricing just to see like, do people bite if the price is different somehow, if there’s a payment plan or if it’s cheaper or if they get something else or.
You know, that kind of thing. Um, you know, I don’t know that I’ve found some like successful hack that makes it just suddenly work necessarily. So I’m curious still out on that. Other things though are, um, I have heard from various places that people are less willing to pay for an expensive course these days instead of what they’re looking for is more of like coaching help or like a group coaching format or like software to make things more convenient for them.
So, um, I’ve been looking at trying to like, uh, almost like partner with different software companies, whether it’s like a higher paying affiliate thing or like being an actual part owner of the software company, if it’s a software I really believe in. And there’s also this idea, I’ve tried doing a little bit of group coaching this year, which is something I historically have not done.
And that has worked in terms of like people have been willing to pay for that and they could pay a lot more for it. But I still don’t know if I love it. Like, it’s not something I. Like want to dive headfirst into it. It’s more of like, okay, if I got to do it, I will. But I don’t necessarily know that that’s my preferred future.
Um, I’ve also been looking at partnering with other coaches in our space. So it’s like, I’ll refer the people to you and you can do the coaching and you pay me a referral fee. That kind of thing. So, we’re still sort of meeting that need, but I don’t have to actually do that work. And they’re happy to do it.
Um, other things are, uh, doing like more Facebook and YouTube live stream things where we’re like doing a presentation and then there’s something to sell at the end. But even if people don’t buy it, they’re still going to get a nice piece of content from it where they’ll learn something, that kind of thing.
I’m actually doing one of those later today. So, we’ll, we’ll see how that goes. Um, so yeah, there’s, and there’s Other ideas, I’m sure, but those are kind of the things on the immediate hit list that we’re going to give a shot to.
Jared: Well, I think it’s really interesting to have you on the podcast at the time you’re in, cause you’ve gotten this track record of success in let’s be honest.
I think a pretty niched down. Area like real estate investing is huge. I would classify real estate in general, but like Specific I guess real estate’s big real estate investments a niche of that And then land investing is probably even more of a niche of of that And you know, you’ve done really well with it and you’ve done it in A variety of different platforms along the way.
So it’s, it’s, it’s really interesting to watch that. I think a lot of people are interested right now in hearing success stories from creating a brand that works across many platforms to all funnel into its success. And you know, it’s also humbling to hear all the things you’re trying. Cause I think a lot of people are at the point where, Hey, let’s try stuff and let’s see what works and let’s collaborate on what’s working.
Seth: Yeah. And I will say it’s kind of weird to think this, uh, I don’t love when things stop working as well as they once did, but there is a silver lining to it. Because when I look at where I was at 12 months ago, um, it almost kind of felt like things were a little too easy. Like it was just working on its own, which is really cool.
On one hand, it’s awesome, but like, it’s really easy to get complacent when things just work and you don’t have to struggle. And as things have gotten tighter and harder in different ways, it’s kind of like reinvigorated me a bit. It reminds me of like years ago, and I was much earlier in this process, like just, I had this fire to make this work.
Like I really wanted this to happen. And it was amazing when it did happen. So, it just kind of reminds me of those days a little bit in terms of like, uh, it’s almost more exciting in a way. So, it’s not, it’s not all bad. Um, and I think ultimately it’ll probably be. A better person for it whenever I do figure this out.
So, yeah,
Jared: it’s interesting too. I mean, I’ve interviewed people who have websites and brands in the travel space, for example, and they had a very similar sharp uptick when the world kind of reopened. Now they had quite the downturn in 2020 followed by quite the sharp uptick. And a lot of those brands are maybe they would say coming back down to earth.
And it feels like Their brand is has been on the decline for a year or two But perhaps a better reality is that it’s just going back to where it always was Yeah, now that that boom is over and so there’s got to be some healthy perspective there where
Seth: yeah For sure
Jared: certainly the real estate industry was riding high as many industries did coming out of covid um, and many industries Changed dramatically.
And that was a couple of, in that couple of year period, but you know, perhaps you have landed back to the trajectory that you were always on and now it’s reinvigorating you to take it to the next level of a true next growth phase.
Seth: Yeah, for sure. Could be
Jared: a glass half full. So we know the website’s REtipster.
com where else can people follow along with what you’re doing? Any other places that people can go to learn more about you?
Seth: Yes. If you’re on any social platform, if you look for REtipster, You’ll probably find me there, uh, Facebook, uh, X or LinkedIn or whatever. And, uh, landinvestingmasterclass. com. That’s kind of like the main, uh, landing page for the main flagship product that I’ve mentioned a few times.
And, uh, also totally unrelated thing. I also have a kid’s story podcast called the story. Yeah, it’s called the Story Land Podcast, where I just make up kids stories and put sound effects and music to them. Interestingly. It’s about 30 times more popular than the REtipster podcast is. I’m not surprised
Jared: at all.
I’m not surprised.
Seth: Yeah. I get like 50, 000 downloads a week from it. It’s crazy. And also, interestingly, I’ve not made a single penny from it. Because again, like we talked about, I’m terrible at selling stuff. But, uh, it’s also a lot of fun too.
Jared: That is, that, my wife’s a school counselor. She will probably be your next podcast I hope so.
She absolutely loves that kind of stuff. That would be a whole separate podcast, I feel like. For sure. Uh, that’s cool, man, you dropped that at the very end. We’re done. I know it’s all right. We’ll save that for another day. Seth, thank you for coming on the niche proceeds podcast. You
Seth: bet
Jared: much continued success.
I appreciate everything you’ve shared. Thanks for coming on. Thanks,
Seth: Jared. Thanks. Great to talk to you.
