Selling your own products can be a tough journey, with nearly 50% of creators earning less than $10,000 a year and many struggling for years without seeing a single dollar. This episode reveals the harsh realities of monetizing content, highlighting the significant disparities in earnings across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

However, there's a glimmer of hope with Pensight, a platform that offers affordable tools for creators to sell digital products, coaching, and more without the hefty fees associated with other services like Kajabi. With Pensight's $29 monthly plan and a free trial option, creators can test their ideas and start earning with minimal upfront investment. Join Dave Jackson as he delves into the complexities of content monetization and introduces Pensight as a potential game-changer for aspiring entrepreneurs.

The Stat That Kajabi Missed

As Kajabi is $169/month and Pensight is $29/month Kajabi is over 400% higher. You can sell products on the free plan on Pensight to get proof of concept. 

Takeaways:

• Selling your own products can be challenging, with many creators earning less than $10,000 annually.
• Kajabi is a comprehensive platform but is often seen as overpriced compared to alternatives.
• Pensight offers a more affordable solution for effectively selling digital products and services.
• Creators can face long periods without income, highlighting the difficulty of monetization in content creation.
• Building a substantial following is essential for most creators before seeing significant earnings.
• Understanding the financial dynamics of platforms like TikTok and Instagram is crucial for creators.

Links referenced in this episode:

• Original Post https://kajabi.com/reality-check
• profitfromyourpodcast.com/book
• Pensight
• Kajabi

Mentioned in this episode:

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If you want to sell your own stuff, the company Kajabi thinks you need a reality check.

Yeah.

Welcome to Profit from youm Podcast.

Proven Strategies to Turn listeners into a Livelihood.

Here's your host, Dave Jackson.

So I just saw this page on Kajabi, and if you're new to Kajabi, it is kind of the Cadillac, or at least as seen as the Cadillac of the all in one tool.

It does email marketing, it does landing pages, it does courses, it does everything.

It slices, it dices, it even juliennes.

And they came out with this report that said it's a reality check.

So they had all these stats and hang tight, because I got one stat that is not from Kajabi that I don't think they would like, but it said nearly 50% of creators earn less than $10,000 in a single year.

And I'll have a link to where you can read this.

For every $100 that TikTok earns, how much do you think of that goes to the actual, you know, creator?

You ready?

$6.25.

That's pretty horrible.

Who do you think you are, Spotify?

Geez.

Nearly a quarter of creators grind for two years before seeing a single dollar.

That's 730 days without a paycheck.

And I would say that's true.

I usually tell people three years, not before you make a single dollar, but before you start making serious money.

The percentage of revenue that creators keep, well, on Instagram, that would be zero.

On YouTube, it's 55%.

And on, of course, Kajabi, it's a hundred percent.

That is, of course, after you pay them 80 bucks, a single TikTok view is only worth on average.00,004.

So that is a fraction of a cent.

So yes, this is probably one of those where like you can make money from day one.

Yeah, as long as you don't mind making.000.

They say on average Kajabi creators earned.

And this is of course with a thousand subscribers annually, which is not something easy to do, by the way.

577% more than Instagram creators.

Well, they just said Instagram, you make zero.

So how do you end up with, okay, 357% more than TikTok creators and 288% more than YouTube creators.

Now, anytime somebody quotes me percentage, I always kind of want to go, what are the numbers on that?

And so for instance, if I make a dollar and you make $5, that is a 400% increase.

So it sounds impressive, but in the end it's four bucks.

Kajabi creators can earn $100,000.

Notice there, the word is can not do.

But they can create $100,000 by converting 350 customers.

So let's do the math on that, shall we?

So wait a minute.

So if I am making, what is it again?

$100,000.

And if we divide that by 350, that means whatever product we're selling is $28 or $29.

And then of course the question is, well, how many downloads do you have to have to get?

350 people to sign up.

And if you use my stat of 3%, that's 11,667 downloads per episode.

There are 200 million creators on social platforms and 0% of them own their channel.

Then this is one of their big points.

And I agree with this.

If you're on YouTube and we're going to talk about this and you get kicked off, you're kind of screwed.

They say 40, 42% of YouTubes of their high earning creators would lose about, well, 50,000 plus a year if they lost access to YouTube.

So you know, if you get kicked off, don't say booger.

They get mad when you say booger.

38% of Instagram of their high earning creators, which again I still.

How do you earn when you get to keep 0%?

But okay, you're, you're earning through other things.

I'm assuming sponsored spots and stuff.

Again, 50,000 plus and 37% of high earning creators would lose 50,000 plus on TikTok.

All right, so now this is, I've never really been a huge Kajabi fan.

I know many people that use it and they really like it.

And so it's not because it's a bad product, I just think it's overpriced.

So let's say we're going monthly.

Now they say zero transaction fees.

Yeah, because you just gave them 160 bucks.

We have unlimited landing pages, unlimited marketing emails, 25,000 contacts and 15 products in one website.

So I get that.

But again there is a limit.

You can have 10,000 active customers.

That would be really, I don't think you're ever going to run out of that.

And so when I looked at this and I'm like, okay, 160 bucks.

And like I said, I know people that use Kajabi and they think it's great, but I'm just saying there are other services and I'm going to actually launch a small course on a tool called Switchy and I'm going to use Pensite for this.

And why?

Because you get to sell digital products.

You can sell coaching, one to one sessions, unlimited courses, unlimited kind of bundles.

You can sell group events, you can do video Q&As, you can do memberships, These are all built in.

You can do group programs and payment plans, subscription payments, pay what you want.

You can drip a course, you can accelerated payouts, custom intake forms.

You can have comments in your courses, which kind of everybody does, but email broadcast, email automations, marketing automations, upselling funnels, and your own affiliate program, which Kajabi does as well.

You can have external links on your website, you can have text, video and images, you can collect emails.

I mean, I could go on and on.

And the fun part of this is they do have video calls, by the way.

This is really meant for coaches that sell digital products.

It integrates with your Google Calendar.

I did play with the free version of this and that was really impressive.

And when it comes to analytics, you can tie in Google Analytics.

They work with Zapier.

You can do the Metapixel, the TikTok, pixel, blah, blah.

Okay, Dave, enough.

What's the price for Pensite?

There's a seven day free trial and then it's, are you ready for this?

And it's almost that.

Okay, there's got to be something wrong with it.

Which is why I want to make a course just to put it on here.

It's $29 a month.

Yeah.

And I'm like, wait, what?

$29 a month?

And Kajabi was what, 160 when it's not on sale?

And so I appreciate the work that Kajabi went into, explaining how the best way to make money with your podcast is to sell your own stuff, sell your own products and services, coaching services, all these different ways that, you know, you could basically have a group event, sell tickets to it, and then take the finished video file and sell that as a digital product.

And when I saw it, I was like, I really thought, oh, this is probably one of those places where you have to go get like a Venmo account, not Venmo, Vimeo account.

Or use YouTube for the hosting.

Nope, hosting's built in.

Oh, then there's gotta be a limit on the number of courses.

Nope, it's just every time I think what's the catch?

There isn't one.

They do have a $99 a month plan, but all it basically does is they will basically move your courses for you and you get a bi weekly call with a growth manager.

So if you want some coaching, I guess.

But I just, I couldn't believe it.

So I thought when I saw this, I'm like, well, good on Kajabi for pointing this out.

The only thing for me is I still think Kajabi is overpriced when you got things like Pensite.

So when it comes time to make money with your podcast, I will say it over and over, the number one way to do it.

Not that the other ways are bad, but the most profitable.

In fact, I did some math.

I was speaking at a podcast event, Pod Indy this weekend and if I sold one course to one student for 99 bucks, if I was doing the programmatic ads, I would have to have 25,000 downloads to be the equivalent of selling one course to one student for 99 bucks.

If you've never sold a product or if you're not sure somebody wants your product, in just a second I'm going to tell you why Penn site is an amazing choice.

What I love about this is yes, they have a free plan that still lets you charge.

Now they're going to take 3% and some of the extra like payment options.

But if you just want to sell something for one fee, like, hey, it's 19 bucks pay here, you can do this.

So why is that so amazing?

If you have a product and you're like, I think I could sell this.

I'm not really sure.

You could easily set it up here on their free plan and then just pay them the 3%, they'll host the file, all the above.

It's a great way to test an idea.

It is proof of concept.

When you have people start to buy, then you can pay the 29 bucks a month and get all the other bells and whistles to really put some fire on this thing.

But when I saw that, I was like, that's amazing.

So I have links, by the way, there is an affiliate program for Pensite.

There is an affiliate program for Kajabi.

I'm just not part of that because kind of in true Kajabi fashion, you have to pay to be an affiliate.

But I'm not promoting Penn site because they have an affiliate.

I'm promoting them because somebody said, hey, have you ever heard of this?

This looks too good to be true.

And when I went over and did some research I was like, this is kind of too good to be true.

And then I saw at the bottom of the page, they have an affiliate.

So if you use that, I earn a small commission and it doesn't cost you a dime.

If you're interested in making more money from your podcast, check out the book profit from your podcast by going to profitfromyourpodcast.com book as I get done, right now, I'm going over to record another chapter in the audiobook.

I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do, and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together.