How Chinese With Mike Makes Money
By Richard
Oh wow! I wanted to bring you guys a language teaching example, and since I was personally thinking of doing a course on introduction Chinese Mandarin, I Googled around a bit to scope out the competition. It’s fairly smooth sailing I might say!
All the sites out there are either from the 18th century, or content-light sites put up by the BBC, Chinese TV etc. The one site I came across that offered funny, interesting video lessons though, was Chinese with Mike. It’s a site led by you guessed, Mike.
He’s a mullet-sporting American and a big fan on infotainment. Mike’s videos at first give you the impression he is on another planet (I like the big ass personality, because you can’t click away…hello engaged user!), but then he whips out pitch perfect tonal Chinese the next minute. Love it.
Now Mike has recorded about 80 videos for the site, and as with any passive income business, all that hard work up front means he now has a site that is passively generating traffic. But is it generating passive income too? I’m not so sure to be honest.
Mike seems to have worked so hard on the content, but spent almost no time working out a monetization strategy. He has an Amazon books page that probably nets him $100…a year. And he has the donation button there. And some merchandise, which I’m fairly sure is a joke. Where’s the structured video course for upsale? Where’s the $20 vocab resources using digital flashcards? Where’s the Mike sits with student and practices Chinese together (like those Teach Yourself CDs)? Where’s Mike in everyday situations speaking with someone in Chinese, and the English coming up on the screen (FYI situational conversations like this are the best way to learn, bar going in country yourself)? Where’s the affiliate links to onling Skype-based tutoring services like MyChineseTutor? Or even affiliate links to upsell students into big courses like Rosetta Stone for Chinese? Miiiike! So I have put this case study in to show you what to do; do Mike’s content and branding, paired with my few monetization ideas.
Visit Chinese with Mike