Customer Success Story

How AccessAlly Helped Increase My Income Without Working More

“With AccessAlly I was able to move all my courses into one main hub – what I decided to call a “school”. And from that point forward everything changed for the better!” –Leah Kalamakis.

There’s no better stage in business than when you’re ready to make the switch to creating passive income streams through courses and programs.

As a web designer, I knew that online courses were the key to seriously increasing my income. I needed to have a product available that wouldn’t take a ton of additional time on my part to deliver.

So I did just that … and it worked!

However, after launching my first few courses successfully, I realized that launching an online course again and again wasn’t my cup of tea.

Because even though I’d get a big influx of cash when I launched a course (and got to take it easy in the non-launch months), the rest of the year I simply didn’t have the income I could count on without having to constantly hustle. Sound familiar?

I decided to make my courses evergreen and put systems and funnels in place to keep selling them regularly.

But results were lacking. I was pretty burnt-out.

I felt like to increase sales I had to keep creating new courses… and we all know how exhausting that can be.

Basically, I ran into 3 main problems with my evergreen launch model:

  1. My audience didn’t see my various courses enough as they were on different branded domains. I could only promote one of them at a time on social or in blog posts.
  2. I was spending a ton of time interacting and updating the various course websites and domains.
  3. My audience would typically only buy one course, not realizing that I had others.

Then I discovered Nathalie’s AccessAlly plugin and a whole new business model back-end was born in my mind.

With AccessAlly I was able to move all my courses into one main hub – what I decided to call a “school”. And from that point forward everything changed for the better!

Not only did this move save me time and money but it also substantially increased my monthly recurring income.

Here’s how having all your courses in one hub with Access Ally can change the game for you as it did for me:

laptop displaying the login page for Leah's Freelance to Freedom School

How I Saved Time

Having all my courses in one central hub meant several things for me when it came to time savings and money earnings:

I no longer had to manage and update multiple websites and domains.

Updating WordPress, paying for domain registration, keeping track of different course branding, updating content – having it all in one place means less time spent switching back and forth and less money I’m paying my assistant to do it for me.

Fewer Support Emails

I lowered the number of support emails from people losing their passwords and having trouble accessing course content because they had the same login no matter what course they had access to and AccessAlly made it super easy to manage in Ontraport.

Streamlined Marketing Efforts

I’m able to streamline my marketing efforts by promoting the whole school, rather than individual courses that might not be a fit for the person seeing the marketing messaging.

This means less time spent on marketing each individual course and a higher chance that the people I market to will find something they’re interested in.

I’m able to quickly and easily give access to multiple courses with one login if I sell a bundle or include access as a bonus for other services I offer like mentorship or consulting. And it’s all streamlined between AccessAlly’s Ontraport integration for ease.

Quicker Course Creation

I’m able to create new courses much quicker because the course hub is already setup.

No need to buy a new domain, install WordPress and a membership plugin, and create new branding. I have the base all setup with AccessAlly and their course creation wizard makes it a breeze.

This not only saves me so much time, but it means the only thing stopping me from creating something new is putting together the content itself.

With AccessAlly, the only thing stopping me from creating a course is putting the content together.

If you’ve ever created an online course, you know that getting all the details set up usually takes more time than creating the content itself.

Game-changer.

Ontraport Integration

Oh, and it all works seamlessly with Ontraport, my CRM of choice, so I’m not having to manage and pay for multiple tools to get everything working for me.

How I Increased My Income

So that’s how AccessAlly has been an incredible time saver for me. But my increase in monthly recurring income can be directly related to having everything in one hub with AccessAlly.

Easy Upselling and Cross-Selling

It’s increased the number of people who purchase multiple courses from me.

With one hub within AccessAlly, all the available courses are shown on the member’s dashboard.

They can see which ones they have access to and which ones they don’t… and this piques their interest and creates some FOMO (fear of missing out). When they click on one they don’t have access to, it directs them to the sales page where they can purchase it.

Coherent Experience

I’m also able to mention and link to other courses within the course content, and the customer doesn’t get sent to a completely different site with different branding that they might save for later but never come back to.

I’m able to pump out free trainings that are also accessed within the school. So people that sign up for free training will see the paid courses they could buy rather than me having to rely on email marketing to get those courses in front of them later. And it’s all automatic with AccessAlly.

Easily Regulated Access Through Ontraport Tags

I’m able to easily create bundles to sell multiple courses as special promotions and don’t have to manage giving people different access to different membership sites. The tags are already created in Ontraport from AccessAlly and I just have to add the rules in Ontraport to combine it automatically after a sale.

I can package everything up into a fully functioning monthly membership site where people have access to everything or it’s dripped to them as long as they stay a member. This is what I currently have in the works and am very excited about it. It would have been a beast to create if I previously had everything separate without AccessAlly.

Is this the right solution for you?

Whether or not having one course hub is right for you depends on your current offerings and plans for the future.

You can certainly get started like I did, having one course in one place using different tools to manage it all (although there’s a lot of benefits to doing that with AccessAlly, too).

But if you have multiple courses and plans for more in the future, or would like to create a membership site where people can pay monthly for access, bringing everything together in one hub using a plugin like AccessAlly WILL save you time and money and potentially increase your income as it did for me.

If you’d like to check out how it could look for you, sign up for Nathalie’s 30 Day List Building Challenge or one of my free courses like the Freelance Jump Start to get a peak on the back-end of a site using AccessAlly.

More About Leah:

LeahKalamakis-headshot500 Leah Kalamakis wants to live in a world where anyone can find freedom in freelancing. As a web designer and founder of The Freelance To Freedom Project, she helps creatives start, grow and scale a freelance service-based business. When she’s not hanging out online, you can find her sipping’ on some red wine, people watching or strolling’ down the streets of NYC. Check out her Freelance School and grab her free Freelancer’s Toolkit.

Leah Kalamakis

"AccessAlly is a game-changer!"

With AccessAlly I was able to move all my courses into one main hub – what I decided to call a “school”. And from that point forward everything changed for the better!

With AccessAlly, the only thing stopping me from creating a course is putting the content together.

If you’ve ever created an online course, you know that getting all the details set up usually takes more time than creating the content itself.

Game-changer.

Location: Washington, USA

AccessAlly Client Since: 2015

Switched from: Several Websites

CRM: Ontraport

AccessAlly is the most powerful WordPress solution for scaling online courses & memberships

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Then take advantage of the flexible course builder to design the learning experience you’ve always dreamed of. 

Add on the power of gamification, progress tracking, and teams to give even more momentum to your members.

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