How Ron from OneHourProfessor Earned Over $1,000,000 Blogging Without Knowing How to Code

• Course Instructor: Ron Stefanski

• Website: https://www.onehourprofessor.com/

• Course Topic: Repurposing Content and Outsourcing

• Interesting Stats: I have a portfolio of sites that get visited millions of times every year.  I’ve made over $200,000 per year for many years in a row.  I have over 70,000 Udemy students and sold a website for mid-six-figures in 2021. 

1. Who are you?

Ron is an entrepreneur and college marketing professor who has a passion for helping people and creating communities.  He spent 8+ years in the corporate marketing space until he became self-employed in 2014. He owns a media company which consists of a portfolio of websites ranging from 250,000 visitors to a couple thousand visitors monthly.  His true passion is teaching others how to create and market online businesses. 

2. What’s your course all about?

My IGNITION is completely free and helps people understand all of the steps required to create a blog from scratch.  It walks students through the process of coming up with ideas, how to monetize, getting a domain name, and buying/setting up their site on WordPress. 

Try Thinkific for free here.

3. What makes you an expert in this field?

I’ve grown a portfolio of my own blogs/websites and have made over $1,000,000 in the process all due to my work.

4. What is the transformation your course offers to the students?

My IGNITION course allows students to finally create a blog without struggling through each step of the way.  Whether it’s someone who’s tech-challenged, or someone who has a lot of self-doubt, my course will walk them through each part of the blog creation process in a way that’s easy to understand.

5. Which market does your online course serve and how did you get into it?

My course mainly helps those who are beginners in the field and are looking to get started.  I’ve been in the “online business” field since I started in 2014, but I really started focusing on courses in 2020 when my YouTube channel started to grow and I was getting a lot of questions about how to correctly launch a blog. 

6. Why is it important to you to serve this market?

While revenue is always a consideration with any business, the most important thing to me is to help people leave their corporate job like I was able to do.  After doing this myself, I strongly feel that, as human beings, we are not meant to sit in cubicles all day taking orders from others.  My goal is to give people freedom from having to work for someone else as well as helping them make more money working for themselves than they ever did in corporate America. 

Try Thinkific for free here.

7. Describe the moment when you decided to create your own course. Where were you, what happened and why did you decide to do it?

For me, after getting roughly 50 messages from people asking about various aspects of creating a blog, I realized it would simply be easier if I put together a free course to walk them through the process step-by-step.  It really was an accumulation of answering similar questions via email and realizing that my audience needed it, so I took the time to create it.  I think that’s an important lesson too.  I didn’t create it first and then look for the audience, my audience told me what they needed and I created it for them. 

8. How did you overcome doubtful moments during your course creation journey?

Generally speaking, I approach any courses I create with confidence in my ability to teach.  The doubt comes with the (potential) sales of the course and this is usually what scares me a bit.  But instead of letting that doubt stop me, I basically tell myself that I’ll do my absolute best to sell it and help as many people as possible and I essentially ignore doubt to continue on.

9. What are some of your tricks to deal with imposter syndrome?

For me, it’s been looking around and seeing how many other people are able to do what I can.  There are some that do it better, many that can’t do it as well, and that helps me feel better about sharing my knowledge.  That, and the fact that I get emails/Youtube comments daily of people asking for my advice on things. 

10. How long did it take you to create your course?

I was able to complete my IGNITION course in about a week.  This course is purely email based and is delivered over 10 days.  I first had to plan the course, and then the copywriting is what took the bulk of my time.

11. How did your first launch go?

I launched it out to my list of about 550 people and was able to make affiliate commissions from 21 different people.  Again, this was a free course that required action from the students, so I think that’s a decent outcome considering. 

12. How do you structure your launches in general now?

At this point, I’m focused on creating free courses that make me money through affiliate marketing.  Basically I have a highly-trafficked blog post and offer a course as an opt-in to visitors of that post and make money through the autoresponder series I set up.  Each “launch” is me making an autoresponder live.  Though I do intend on more formal launches in 2021 and I will be creating evergreen courses launched to my list. 

13. Where does your traffic come from?

My traffic comes mainly from my website, but my Youtube channel drives a lot of eyeballs to my brand and builds the affinity that people have to me.  

14. Which content do you like producing the most?

I’d say I most enjoy creating blog posts because, unlike Youtube, I don’t have to sit in front of a camera while doing it.  In addition, I can craft the words and insert links where it’ll be most beneficial for my business, which is not as easy to do with videos.

15. What online course platform are you using?

As of now, just Active Campaign for my email courses.  But I also have a handful of courses on Udemy and a retired course on Thinkific.  I intend on building my courses on Thinkific in the future.

Try Thinkific for free here.

16. What is amazing about this platform?

I think the best part about the platform is how easy they make it to structure everything.  In addition, I like how they have an affiliate program built into the core functionality. 

17. Which features do you wish this platform would have?

I can’t think of anything it’s missing. 

18. Why did you choose this platform over other platforms?

I choose Thinkific because they have a free version of the platform.  I started with it years ago, and I’ve stuck with it since then because it’s what I’m comfortable with. 

19. Which other tools do you use to keep your online business running?

WordPress, Thrive Themes, Siteground hosting, Active Campaign for emails.

Try Thinkific for free here.

20. How many students have you served so far?

Across all platforms, over 80,000.

21. How much revenue have you created during your first launch, and ongoing?

In my first “launch”, which was me introducing my free course to my email list, I made about $3000 off of affiliate commissions.  Ongoing, I make around $1000 a month. 

22. What are you running costs to keep the online course business going?

Mostly it’s my hosting and email marketing platform.  This comes out to about $120/month.

23. What are some of the biggest mistakes you made along the way?

When it comes to online business, I’ve had plenty of mistakes I’ve made that most veterans would have shaken their heads at.  But, to be honest, I don’t regret them at all.  All of those mistakes helped me understand what I should do and what I shouldn’t over the years.  I’d say that my biggest mistakes include;

Starting too many projects at one time:  This one is super common and is always a mistake when it happens.  Spreading yourself too thin doesn’t allow you to put your energy into one project and when this happens, it’s never as successful as it could be.

Being Cheap:  When I started my business, I was very cheap and scared to invest anything.  Then, when I got over that fear and started to, my growth was exponential.  Now I see outsourcing as an absolute requirement with anything I start.

24. How has your business changed since implementing an online course into the business model?

Generally speaking, I’ve been able to build much more of a community and I’ve develop great connections and even some friends via email in the process.  While it’s great to make a little extra money, the real beauty is the community I’m creating.

25. How has your personal life changed?

One of the best things on a personal level is that my wife and I really haven’t had to keep budgets or worry about money since I started to have success.  We’re by no means rich, but we already live frugally and being able to make as much money as I have while doing this has enabled freedom that I’ve never had in the past. 

26. What’s the greatest transformational story you can tell about one (or more) of your students?

The biggest transformational story was from an individual who was in the health niche with a website he owned.  Interestingly, he had already built a site up and was getting around 8-10k page views every single month, but really only under $50.  He took my course and soon after asked a few more questions about his strategy and what he needed to do.  

After our discussion, we determined that a full pivot was required due to the audience he was catering to and he ended up creating a whole new website with this change.  

After that, to his credit, he put in the work required and continued to follow the steps I outlined in my course.  

Since then, he’s had a baby girl, gotten married, and makes an extra $2500/month the last I heard.  This is incredible because you have to remember that before him and I talked, he had roughly 4 years of very minimal success and he was really struggling to make things work.  

Now, he’s able to cover his mortgage with his website earnings and the site continues to grow every single month. 

27. If you could use a time machine and send yourself back to the time before you started out, what advice would you give yourself, knowing what you know now?

My biggest regret is pretty simple, I should have gotten started sooner.  I really dove into entrepreneurship when I was 30 years old and had I of done it when I was 25 years old, I would be that much further ahead.  So, if I had a time machine, I would have urged myself to start earlier and focus hard as it isn’t impossible. 

28. What is your million dollar piece of advice to those who are just getting started in their online course journey OR for those who are looking to scale?

My answer is the same for both of them.  Never stop and always focus on growth.  Whether someone is new or has moderate success, it’s sometimes very easy to start to see a little bit of success and let off the gas pedal.  In my opinion, once you see any level of success, that’s when you really want to push twice as hard to grow because you’ve proven the concept.  Never be okay with mediocrity, do your best in everything you do and focus all of your efforts on growth.