The way communities helped Ariane Tenfold Her Course The Rates of Completion
Ariane Cap is passionate about playing the bass guitar -in such a way that she's set out to teach others how to play too.
As a child, Cap played piano and the flute with a wide range of funk, blues, popand rock groups. After one of the bands lost their bass player, Cap tried filling in. "I didn't look back," she says. "I immediately fell in love with the instrument ."
As well as her enthusiasm in music, she grew into a teacher who was equally enthusiastic in her teens. As a teen, she was a tutor for others in mathematics and languages in order to earn extra money. After becoming a professional musician later in her late twenties, she began teaching music as well.
Between shows in conjunction with Cirque du Soleil, she'd teach students outside of her house. Due to the demand for her teaching rising, she took a two-story building and quickly transformed her company into an extremely successful music school with several other music teachers. "It was a pretty big business," she says. " But then everything began to move into the internet worldand I jumped on the train fairly early. .">
In 2012, she moved her business to a virtual form: Ari's bass Blog. While increasing the demand for online instruction, pivoting her business online helped her to stay close to her students even when on the road.
Now, Cap has a team and a variety of online courses and is doing what she enjoys each day. One of the biggest contributors to Cap's recent successes is the creation of an online community for her bass students; not only did this community help to increase her course rate of completion, but it also helped to provide an open and supportive environment in which students can better understand. Here's how she did it.
Jump ahead:
- Her students are hosted by her on
- She provides both online and self-paced classes
- She supports alumni to become coaches
- She is engaged with her students by utilizing Communities
- She continuously expands her followers on multiple platforms
- She gets as much as she can about her audience
- She is a creator of actionable content
- She isn't cheap with her education
- She uses Payments
- She is focused on her students' success
Her students are hosted by her on
To help her students develop into musician, Cap wrote and self-published the music book, Music Theory for the Bass Player: A Complete and Practical guide to playing with more confidence and freedom which was published in the year the year 2015. In the following year, she created videos to accompany it. The book became a best-selling item on Amazon. In 2021, she wrote and self-published her book, The Pattern System for Bass Players Learn to Sharpen Your Mind By Practicing Fretboard Skills, Improvisation and Mental Practice, which included videos of instruction.
At first she offered videos on WordPress however, this configuration wasn't the best. Since her following increased and she began to see the need at a platform for hosting courses. In 2017, she moved all her videos to . "I have done extensive research on platforms such as Kajabi as well as Teachable," she says. "I brought a number of students with me who had access to the courses for free included in my book. I was looking for a platform to be able to accommodate them. ."
The first time she came across it her way to the website, she was convinced it was a platform with a lot of user-friendliness. Additionally, she said customer service was responsive. Right away, her content was well-received by her readers. "On WordPress, students couldn't write down the sections they'd finished and the lessons didn't flow like they did with other sites ," she explains.
She offers both online and self-paced classes
In addition to her book's video lessons, Cap now has several online courses that she hosts on .
Her offerings include live and self-paced offerings. Her best-known course is her self-paced 20-unit theoretic course which is sold in five-unit bundles with the help of the bundle function. Students can purchase each bundle for $250 USD, or all 20 units for 850 dollars. Students can enroll in this course whenever they want and can also enroll as part of Cap's annual New Year's cohort, in which she brings together a bunch of musicians who's new year's goals are to learn how to play the bass guitar.
There are four other smaller self-paced classes that are priced at a lower cost -- starting at $29.99 USD -- and that can be completed fairly quickly.
She then runs group practice sessions that are live. Students can either enter a ten-week live practice group for just $370 USD. In where students meet on a weekly basis for practice sessions over Zoom. Alternatively, they can join live practice groups using a subscription format and pay the monthly fee of $75 USD. If people want even more support, they can hire her for a one-on-one instruction.
She assists alumni to become 'coaches'
Because it is difficult to keep motivation up for self-paced learning, Cap wanted to find an approach to motivate students to be accountable. "We found out early that it is a specific sort of person to make it through the course on their own," she says.
She decided to ask students who completed the class if they'd be interested in serving as coaches for students who were not there. It worked; each student was given to a coach.
Students were also required to post biweekly their homework to a bulletin board Cap had a developer create and then input into the class.
However, the bulletin board was "clunky," as Cap's teammate, Fred Pucci, describes the board. Although the coaches helped to improve engagement and percentages of completion, it wasn't enough. After the launch, Community was a success . According to Cap, integrating Communities can increase involvement through "much less technology burden ."
Her students are engaged through Communities
In addition to allowing alumni coaching Cap's students the integration of Communities has increased the rate of completion of her 20-unit course -- from 4% to over 50 percentage.
While drip scheduling and the sequencing of emails, as well as giving an award at the conclusion of the course helped previously, the instructor says that Communities were the main factor in improving her rates of completion by 10 times.
"We can say with total conviction that the addition of the element of community helped people get further into the course. Even if they didn't complete the course, we significantly enhanced the statistics of finishing ."
In the present, instead of posting their assignments to the bulletin board, they submit it in the community. "Here, they have an possibility to write their own stories and put themselves out there -- even if it's imperfect and they fight to get through the task," she says.
Cap thinks that Communities can help students realize that all students are expected to be struggling at the start of their learning process. She believes that when someone is learning a new skill there are expectations that they're supposed to understand something right away.
"This reality check has been helpful for a lot of people. It's helped to give them optimism and make them realize that it's normal to likely to be struggling and taking several wrong turns until they find the right ."
Communities offers Cap the opportunity to offer her students an environment that is safe for them to discuss their experiences learning. Additionally, it allows her to offer feedback -- which she feels is vital to an individual's experience of learning. She is cautious to structure feedback in a supportive way. It was her experience that people become discouraged if there is too much information at once and she gives people the chance to reject it.
She consistently grows her following through a variety of channels
Her audience is mainly made by middle-aged people. Many are hobbyists, while others want to go down a professional direction. Additionally, she instructs the elderly who have extra time and are looking for something new to do.
However, Cap's followers didn't increase overnight; she's gained popularity as an educator through a many ways. At first, she was aware of the importance of being the guest creator of content on other people's platforms. "There's always an online publication or website that is popular with an enormous audience that seeks content" Cap says.
In her situation she began with a biweekly post on an influential music website which led to her writing some content to an online magazine about bass. "That provided me with a lot of chances to appear in front of people," she says.
Her books were also instrumental in bringing new people into her world. In addition she's been blogging since she was 16 and has been a regular participant on sites like Quora which is where she responds to the questions of users and directs them to her classes.
She also leans heavily on social media to promote her courses; The group on Facebook has over 6400 members. Her Instagram account is awash with more than 7,700 followers, her Twitter account has nearly 2,500 followers. Her YouTube channel has over 7,800 users.
When building an audience, the best advice from Cap is to remain consistent. "It's easy to get into the game with a lot of energy and big dreams, only to burn yourself out within just a few short months and abandon the cause," she says. "Start small. You shouldn't be blogging every week. blog every other week. Every now and then you can join a forum and post a message. Keep posting your information ."
She is able to learn as much as she can about her target audience
Once prospective students find her classes and visit her website, Cap tries to learn about her courses. "I like engaging individuals," she says.
"I am eager to gain as much information as I possibly can from my audience."
There is a form on her website that solicits questions from people, such as their playing level and whether they like learning solo or in a group. "Then we'll guide them in which direction to take," she says. "We want to determine if it's a good fit ."
When they complete the application, Ari's Bass Blog sends an email to them automatically. The drip's main purpose is to welcome new members into the Ari's Bass Blog community, gauge their interest, and then urge them to sign-up for a course.
She is a creator of actionable content
Cap believes that quality trumps quantities when it comes to content creation.
She designs online course material in order to meet the needs of her students in her mind. "I've learned to make sure that the student immediately sees the impact and results that will benefit their game," she says.
Over the years she's developed a program which she believes is the best path to learning the bass guitar. She develops the content along with her husband, who is also a bassist, also tries out new exercises and content during her practice sessions live. Additionally, her teammate, Pucci, helps her to edit content, coach students, and help moderate the online community. She also has other team members, like social media managers, graphic designers and IT folks who help to ensure that her content -- as well as the all of her operations run seamlessly.
She suggests that the creators of online courses focus on creating content that can be used and that provides worth. "Create content in a way that's relevant and suitable to students' next step," she says.
She doesn't cheapen her education
When Cap first launched her courses, she priced them for "way far too much" due to her nervousness as a beginner. "That was quite difficult to get out of," she says.
While she's raised her prices because she gives students the option of paying in installments to make the courses more affordable. "I wish for as many as possible to be able to take part in this," she continues. "And your bass lesson budget might not be something you've had stored away. The spread of payments can make it easier for a lot of people to ."
Plus, she gives the students lifetime access to her online courses along with a money back guarantee; if they aren't happy with her course within the first 30 days the course, she will give them an entire refund.
She's also experimented with putting the courses she offers on sale, and making use of the coupon feature. It began to hit her that every time she discounted her courses, it reduced her offerings. "I am certain that what we're offering works, and that we are passionately concerned about the achievement of our students" she says.
If you want to boost the number of students who take classes, she advises course creators ask people for recommendations to promote organic"word-of-mouth" marketing. It is also recommended that they position their expertise as an expert and provide input to online boards, Facebook groups, as well as forums. "Quora proved to be extremely successful with us,"" She explains. "I frequently got asked to respond to certain queries. ."
She is using payments
She was using HTML0 Stripe as well as PayPal at the time she started out, however she has since used Payments for the purpose of "keep items close to home."
While using Stripe and the difficult chore of changing subscriptions and credit card transactions, as well as offering refunds wasn't intuitive to her. "Stripe is a bit of an enigma," she continues "When I was told that they the platform would allow this from within the platform, I jumped on it ."
The Payments app is easy for her to make use of. "It's all accessible in one spot," she adds. "I know what a person's payment history is and I could refund them right away. It's been wonderful."
She also plays with 's after purchase flow, and purchase bumps. "We composed a bunch of ringtones. This is an add-on that we've been playing with," she says.
She is focused on the success of her students
As she thinks about her journey to create online courses, Cap believes that the most challenging part has been keeping up with the ways in which the Internet evolves constantly. The success of her students is what inspires her to keep going.
"Never be a fool to take things for granted because the Internet changes. It's important to pay attention to how learning alters, what people's requirements change, and what they might be missing out on from online online course ."
Pucci believes that in order for the creator of online courses to be successful, they must not only be able to keep up with the constantly changing changes in the Internet but also ensure that their content is prioritized -- and then make it the best quality they can. " Make sure content tops the list," states Pucci. "It's easy to drift distracted and concentrate on those things that don't work to keep people in the course ."
Although Cap is a thriving enterprise, it's far from being over. Cap hopes to develop an even more comprehensive learning pathway and claims that she has a few more books up her sleeve she's planning on writing. "It's in the process of unfolding," she explains, with excitement.
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