Need advise with a unique niche

Hi guys, this is something that spin in my head for a long time. I read a lot of stuff in BHW forum and I'm going all in with my project and need advice from you if possible.
First, sorry for my English I'm unfortunately a French talking guys
I read a lots here on the forum and I understand that peoples want to help without providing there niche or URL example but in my case there
is nothing to copy easily so I will be very transparent about my case.

THE NICHE

A year from now my sister started here in Quebec (Canada) a mother at home 3D cake bakery business. She have a lots of talent and got really
well know by now here, they call here "The Machine". She is at around 500 cakes done in a year and she is refusing around 4-5 cakes per week.
She made cakes for TV star here in Montreal also. She is a mother of 4 girls, she is doing marathon and now on top of this she decided to give cake courses.
She give cake baking courses at about 1-2 every months and she charge 300$ each. She made good money giving courses because sometime she have 3-4 women's
at the same time so a 1200$ for 8h is not bad at all ! A month back she asked me to do is new web site for the company because the first one I made was not up to date.
After reading a lot on BHW forum I decided to propose to my sister not a simple web site but a complete web platform integrating many worth money parts.


THE STATS

2-3 months back I decided to try understanding the stats that she have on facebook and make some test about it.
This is where we are now.

Total fans: 3300
Friends of fans: 715,000
Weekly total reach: 8900
Most of the post are saw by: 2500 persons
Talk about this: most of the time around 800-1000 persons
Fans are 91.8% women

In march I paid 130$ of FB ads and that's boosted the stats to:
Weekly total reach: 10-20 new fans a week, 133,000 paid and 24,000 viral (Woman talking French in Quebec, so very targeted campaign)

Soooo for a FB page of a women that make cake part time and have no idea how to boost is FB traffic other than writing post every 1-2 days I thought that it is a good start to explore more but my knowledge are limited for now in SEO/WH/IM and others.

The real point in this stats is the fact that the fans are 91.8% women's that are so much addict to is page!
They are women with small kids and they dream to make 3D birthday cake.

I thought this must worth money so this is what I was thinking to do with my sister to make real money of this.

THE IDEAS

The main ideas that I hope can make tons of cash...
After seeing that giving courses equal to real fast money and that she have tons of fans that want to come get courses but are too far away or my sister don't have so much time to spend giving it, so I decided to produce movies of the courses so that we can sell it on the web site. After a couple of test we were happy with the result and fans loved so much the test videos that we started filming all the courses. It's not completed yet because this is a lot of time but we are progressing very well
that everything must be on video in about 1-2 months. Ok the video are in french but I already paid a freelancer in the US to dub it in english and I think it's not bad at all so all video will be in french and english!

What I can be done.

Redo all the web site with this.
- Main web site that look girlie because 92% of the fans are girlie between 24-35 years old.
- A section of the site that is an Amazon affiliated store so we will put in this store bakery stuff
that she use in the courses for fans to buy online.
- A section of the site that is free videos, at each special calendar events like Valentin, Mother?s Day, etc. we will
produce a free video for the fans to help them create cakes for those events and try to convert to paying section.
- A section of the site that will be private paying videos. So... this will have all his current available courses and we will add 1-2 smaller video each month to make it grow constantly and retain fans in the private section.
- The site will also have a public and private forum. Private forum will answer to ALL questions.
- Online booking calendar so she can stop respond to tons of call and email for dates that are already full.


THE QUESTIONS

So with all that stuff possible I'm not an expert at internet marketing so I have questions for you guys to help me have ideas to make money with this niche.
Has much as possible I will be transparent and come back post results to eventually help other person with other niche that can work with the ideas that we will implement.

Is it a good idea to go with an Amazon store embedded in the site or there is more money to do with is personal store like shopify or others with all the trouble of having inventory and dealing with shipping...

Is it a good idea to have is current facebook page in french and create a english page for english fans and always post on the two site each time?

For the courses there is many possibilities that I can't point the good one...
- Ask X$ per month to get access to the private section (Was thinking 19.99$ = 240$/year)
- Ask X$ per year to get access to the private section (Was thinking 189$/year)
- Paid per video so each video worth X$ so get the one you need.
- Sell DVD's or Bluray?s of the courses.

We need to consider the fact that fans have friends and may send over to friend credentials and split the price. (Is this a real problem?)
We also need to consider that we will be able to put 1-2 new videos per month to make it more attractive and convert.

It is a good idea also when everything ready to create an affiliated source on clickbank and paid affiliate to drive traffic to the private section?

Also after everything is ready, I will need all the best trick to try that will generate traffic and hopefully convert.

I really think that I found my muse and everything is align to make money with it, so I will be very glad if peoples with experiences like you can help me align the good way to go for this.

In give back, I will come here and post result, stats,etc of what's working and not.
Him not sure if I can post URL here so?

To find the web site it?s a standard domain and the name is imaginacake.
To find the facebook page and explore why she is doing well just search for Imaginacake in FB.
To find test examples of the videos you can go search on youtube for is channel Imaginacake, there is french and dubbing english videos also.
I really hope that I will be able to do something good with this because I lost my job and now I?m focusing on this project to quickly make this profitable.
Hope to get good advices from you and I will let you know what?s working and not. J
Thanks,
OZRay911

Wow, you wrote in so much detail. I don't have much experience or insight, just wanted to wish you luck on the project. Keep us posted on how it goes!

In my opinion, your target market is not only the Mum's who would want to learn to bake the cakes, but also the women who would want to set up a business replicating your sister's.
I would, therefore, also create a course for these women, for a higher price, of course (something like $1997 should work well), where there is a whole business set up taught (teach the new business owner how to bake, how to teach baking, how to promote their course in their own area/city/country, and how to "run a business, in general").
Sort of like a franchising setup, business-in-a-box type thing which can be run by women, part-time, mothers, etc.
You could then release two CB products, the "learn to bake" product (selling memberships on your site for women who wish to bake), and the "set up a home-based cakes business" product, selling the business idea (including some products, teaching materials, perhaps spreadsheets to run the accounting side, etc).
Remember that if you need extra funds to achieve everything you want to setup (perhaps to pay outsourcers, translators, videographers/photographers, SEO, promotion, etc) you can always set something up on a crowdfunding site (kickstarter or similar) to access those funds, and direct your sister's "fans" towards your crowdfunding links.

Sounds great, nice business and nice ideas, and fabulous detail in your OP...wish you the very best of luck with it!

Don't target women only. I am a man and recently learned to bake a simple cake. I am looking for ways to learn more complex cakes so you should NOT dismiss the males.

Thanks Daniel for the tips, I think that to be able to make decent money we have to think like you. See all the possibilities as a whole that's what I understand now with your post. You opened my eyes for something that I never thought! The CB idea about selling a business model to someone interested to start a cake baking shop at home is so a good advise. We already go through all that and now have a lots of experience in doing this that for sure we can create a CB package for affiliates.
I also like the idea of not financing the whole setup and pre-sale it with kickstarter. So fan's can go paid for the future online courses and when the project if funded and the platform is ready they already have paid for it. There is so much to do but huge potential I think.

Thanks for the great tips!

Hey mzonas yes sure!!! Man will not be ignored I am the one that helped my sister start this because I was doing 3D cake first for fun not for business
Then my sister started also for fun but so many persons was asking her to do cake that she decided to start a small business with it.

thanks for the comment

What is interesting and that I'm now looking for is to start projects that your not selling time (services). So at the moment my sister sales time.
She can't do more cakes per week then that so how to make this more profitable... Hire employees=So complicated or find a way to sale online the
expertise she have! So I think that I have a great opportunity and with the BHW community I will try to make this happen.

If you guys have expertise in marketing product I will be glade to have advise.

The problem that I will face soon is to fix a price for the online VIP section... Monthly, yearly and fix a good price that peoples will buy it but what is the balance
of too high=selling less too low=lot's of traffic but not worth all the effort for the price...
How to fix a price? How to find the threshold that convert...

Thanks

OZRay911 said:

The problem that I will face soon is to fix a price for the online VIP section... Monthly, yearly and fix a good price that peoples will buy it but what is the balance
of too high=selling less too low=lot's of traffic but not worth all the effort for the price...
How to fix a price? How to find the threshold that convert...

Thanks

Click to expand...

Split-testing! Read up all you can about it, but, as soon as you release your product/s you HAVE to have a tracking solution in place, and it should be as good as you can possibly make it (doesn't mean you have to spend, Prosper202 is great).
Then, set landing pages, different salescopy, different price points, upsell offers, downsell offers, and track, track, track.
Once you gather enough data, you'll be able to analyze and tweak and optimize, to finally find the "sweet spots".

IMO, prices for a cake-baking course (i.e. learn how to bake the things, only), should be around $27-$47, with monthly subs at around $9.97 to $12.97 for those on continuity.
The "create a business" course should be at a much higher price level, no lower than $497, and should be offered as an upsell, although not necessarily to people seeking to learn how to bake, it should be targeted more towards those looking to start a business (or earn an income) from home. Clickbank won't allow you to use those higher prices, so you'll probably need to sell this via some other processor, but you can certainly upsell from a lower-priced CB starter product.
Keep in mind that the suggested prices are JUST my opinion, you need to seek out the opinions of others before coming to any sort of decision

Make sure that you also set up an email list...at the end of the day, the money will be in the list

Thanks for the tracking tips.
In fact the course is a lot more then baking a cake, the live courses that my sister give is around 3 courses of 8h each! So we are talking of
around 25-30h of course that we will put video's of it in a private web site section that people will be able to listen to everything!! And each months we will
be adding more videos of specific techniques. Right now one course is 300$ that's why at first I wanted to go with 189$ for a all you can view VIP section... :/

But before getting all the stuff online my concern on price is that in marketing/psychology what can be a good starting point for pricing... Cheaper and get more conversion (quantity)
or higher price, less conversion but more money each... What will convert better...

Because as soon that I flip the switch at that time the FB fans may be around 4000 real addict fans of the page... So if I convert well by any chance 10%-20% we are talking
about 400-800 persons! I can't change the price in the middle of the process too risky to loose fans... 400 conversion at 189$ if around 75,000$ 20% we are talking of over 100K$
And this is only with no pushing NOTHING spread over the web straight current FB fans!
I can't start with a price and change in the middle...
Or maybe around 19.95$/months that will be around 8000$/months with 10% conversion but my concern about per month is that people paid for one month and listen to all the stuff than
unsubscribe...

I really don't know what's the best shot.

But you really have good point to consider.

Thanks

OZRay911

You could consider drip-feeding (there are WP membership plugins which would handle this for you).
Say you have videos numbered 1-30, you sell a membership @19.95 per month...you would allow your members, in their first month, to access videos 1-5, in their second month, videos 6-10, etc, which means that, if a member wants to follow the whole course, they would stay for 6 months, which is a pretty good retention rate.
Obviously, each month, you would add additional videos, covering specific techniques, and you would decide which "level" (level = what month they are on) members get access to these additional videos - this provides value for people to consider staying on beyond the 6 months, as they would continue to have access to the full 30 videos, and to whichever new videos get created and posted.
This is the best route towards recurring income, the WP plugins manage everything for you once set up, and all you need to do is add extra content from time to time.
You also need some sort of system, so if a user refers a friend, they maybe get a few dollars off their subscription - if they refer enough friends, they can remain a member at no cost (their membership cost is funded by what their referrals are doing). This can be a referral plugin, or an affiliate plugin, and some of the WP plugins which handle memberships and drip-feeding may also handle this additional system, automatically tracking referrals and assigning discounts.
Under this type of setup, you can also offer other options, say, $197 for a year's access (just over $40 off), or $297 for lifetime access, or X referrals to the yearly price for a "free year" membership, or XX referrals to the "lifetime" price for a "free lifetime" membership.

Do some research on continuity or micro-continuity - there's a lot of stuff out there that will break down these methods for you, and point you towards the best plugins or systems to use to run it all.

Good luck, keep us posted with how the venture progresses!

Wow! Again thanks for sharing those good tips!!

We are still filming to get as many video as we can before launching the platform to justify the price.
All the platform will be custom made but for sure I will integrate those tips in it!

I like the idea of reward for customers that refer and the lifetime price !

Thanks, I will post progression as soon as we have something as said we are now concentrated on video's

Regards,

OZRay911