Moving my online teaching brand and business to the STEEM blockchain is not an easy task. There are many factors to think about and providing an optimal solution for both my Students and my revenue stream has been a challenging obstacle. But I believe blockchain holds the secrets to making education free for all. I just hope that STEEM is the right block.
My biggest fear is reputation. 10 years I am working online, growing and nurturing my business. Engaging online to become an influencer in my field of expertise and working hard to convert followers to buyers. One wrong move and I could lose many of the followers I have gained. Steemit with such a difficult learning curve and the wait for an account, if not done right, could be that wrong move.
My second fear is loss of revenue. With lost of reputation, my course sales will go down, and if I were to move to a model where the courses are available free here on the STEEM block, who will vote my content to ensure I have an income?
I am sure many of you are wondering, if I have such fears, why I am making this move? One of my reasons is the large cut taken by centralised organisations. A good portion of my revenue each month comes for Udemy and other online learning sites. These are third party centralized platforms and they come with many problems. 
Although I am a best-selling instructor on Udemy, I make $2.5 per course sale and the learner pays 4 times that at minimum (Udemy is a constant sale where all course are $10). They really don’t make it easy for instructors.
What Have I done So Far?
So far, I have done the following:
1. Recently set up the account 
2. Installed Steempress.io to my website for cross posting
3. Ensured 
4. Upload a full free course to DLive (along with other material). This course was existing content that I had. However, on my own site and also on Udemy the videos are bit sized. I did not see to much value in adding 30+ videos to Dlive so instead I edited the videos into their modules, having 5 longer videos instead. Exercises and other course material is also available via the posts. However, downloads are hosted on dropbox at the moment as steemit does not currently offer a file share option.
5. Ran a test webinar on DLive – this webinar was aimed at Steemit users that wanted to learn how to use SteemSQL and Excel to get Steemit earnings information.
Moving to Marketing
With all this in place, all I need is some students. So, I have come up with a concept to attract learners and have begun a marketing campaign around it.
The concept is simple. Although not a learning management system, the Steem blockchain gives me the ability to reward learners for their efforts in the course by way of upvotes. And so was born #learnandearn.
After looking around the internet for some time, I could not find anyone offering a way student can learn and earn at the same time on a decentralised platform. Do I have a Worlds First, Learn and Earn FREE online Excel course? It seems I do 😊
Imagine a world where cost and finance are no barrier to education. This is an exciting experimental opportunity to improve your skills and earn $ at the same time. Removing cost as a barrier to education
The limitation posed by Steemit 7 day payout rule was also an obstacle. One of the things about online courses is the reoccurring revenue. To overcome this, I have devised a course deliver format in line with #learnandearn
Each week a #LearnandEarn post will be published from
https://steemit.com/excel/@theexcelclub/learn-and-earn-basic-excel-for-basic-bookkeeping-week-1
Now with a course ready, a #learnandearn post I am ready to get some students. First, I wrote a post on my own site and with Steempress I also published to Steemit. The aim of this post was to make people aware of this #learnandearn experiment and to be a touchpoint and landing page for further marketing. Again, I would love your feedback and hope that you take a read, its not to late for me to make changes 😊
https://steemit.com/steempress/@theexcelclub/worldsfirstlearnandearnexcelonlinecourse-nogkgrtzfz
I intend on using traditional social media marketing to market this #learnandearn Excel course. I started with a video and posted it across a number of platforms. Over the next while I will push this to as many funnels as I can.
For the paid advertising I started with a very focused Facebook campaign.
And will be rolling out other paid campaigns too.
This is the video used
The Future
I reckon its going to take about 8 weeks of pushing this before I see any benefits. One of the obstacles is the waiting period for a Steemit account. So the marketing for this week may only generate activity on the third or forth #learnandearn post. This leaves me with a problem of ‘social proof’ on the posts and that’s where you can help. It would be really nice for people looking at the posts to see some engaging comments and activity, so if you have a few minutes spare you could really help me by leaving a comment (not spammy) on the #learnandearn posts by 
I also need some power behind
Taking this further
Steemit is an experimental platform and this idea is also an experiment. If I can pull it off it will be awesome. I am also interested in the ideas of tokenizing #learnandearn and maybe even creating a DAPP that could compete with Udemy and other teaching platforms. The problem is, I don’t have the coding skills to do this. So, if there is someone out there that thinks this is a viable project and would like to work in making it a reality I would love to hear from you. Can STEEM offer a world where costs are not a barrier to education?
Shameless Promotion
@steemcommunity is a witness project from myself and @abh12345. There are many good witnesses out there and doing your research is important. I hope you will take the time to read our witness introduction post and consider us as one of your steemit witnesses .