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Now that you've established a strong readership and SEO, do you ever think about expanding your beat into other accounting based software like Excel, or do you think that would be a bad strategic idea?

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Hi Mike, I do think about expanding into other topics. There is still so much for me to write about in Google Sheets itself though, so I have a lot more I want to cover with it. I do write about other Google tools that combine with Sheets, like Apps Script, Google Forms, BigQuery and Data Studio and I want to create more tutorials and courses on those topics in due course. The other question I think about a lot is how to apply Sheets to different industries. For example, Google Sheets has 50 built-in finance functions and over 130 statistical functions, and I'd like to cover those topics in some depth (finance and statistics) using Sheets as my lens.

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This is a thoroughly enlightening interview, Simon! Ben's transition from forensic accounting to becoming a Google Sheets expert is a testament to how diversifying one's skill set can lead to unforeseen success. His strategy of offering free courses as lead magnets is ingenious and clearly effective. It's a great reminder that value-driven content can help grow an audience. On a side note, as someone who frequently engages with long-form content, I've found transcription software, for instance https://rythmex.com/, to be incredibly helpful in capturing and organizing information from interviews and podcasts. It might be something worth exploring for those wanting to repurpose their content in different formats.

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How do you price your courses? How price sensitive are your customers?

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Hi Jessica. Individual courses are priced between $99 and $299, depending on the topic and how comprehensive the course is. This is similar to other online technical courses. I have pricing options for students from developing countries to make the courses more affordable for them and offer discount to non-profit organizations. Pricing is a huge topic and a strong signal of value. Psychologically, if two identical items were price at $10 and $1000, we'd all be convinced that the $1000 is better. I wanted to price my courses to indicate that they're high value, but hopefully not too expensive that folks can't afford them.

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Do you build out any community features for your readership, like a Facebook Group or Slack channel? Seems like the kind of thing where readers could create a lot of value by asking and answering each other's questions about specific Google Sheets functionality.

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Hi Emily. Yes, I have a Facebook group for students of my paid courses, which provides a space for students to ask questions and help each other out with answers. I check in too, to add my perspective if it helps. On the website, many of the tutorials have comments where readers ask questions and help each other. I used to answer them all but it's not practical any longer. I try to answer when I can and my readers often post solutions to each others problems too, which is great to see.

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