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hi, i'm tyra

tyradelosreyes@gmail.com

Masterclass

My Role

Content Writer

Researcher

Content Type

Course Review

Affiliate Content

Industry

B2C

E-Learning

Duration

2019 - 2022

Project Overview

I developed a series of in-depth course reviews for e-learning platforms Masterclass and Mindvalley. I worked with Ideapod and Hackspirit founder, Lachlan and Brendan Brown, in outperforming existing reviews and becoming the go-to resource for individual Masterclass and Mindvalley courses.

The Brown brothers own Ideapod (2M monthly visits), Hackspirit (13M monthly visits), and Lovepanky (9M monthly visits) - which are the biggest “practical philosophy” and relationship websites.

Content Goal

Output and Deliverables

I worked with Masterclass and Mindvalley affiliate partners in creating the following articles:

Mindvalley

Masterclass

Note: Some of the Masterclass and Mindvalley course reviews we published are no longer available online at the time of writing because:

This project went from 2019-2022. Titles that refer to a 2023 date are the original content I worked on, updated to reflect new content available in the courses.

Content tone

These resources are:

Review articles have to toe the balance of being knowledgeable enough that you’re a credible source, and relatable enough that the readers see your “learning something” as a testament to the course’s value and quality.

Good content gives readers something to “bite on”. Using very specific examples and mentioning beliefs and judgments that users may have makes them feel understood -- which makes them think this content is 100% for them.

E-learning platforms like Masterclass brand themselves on self-development and improvement. In keeping with the brand values, I try to hint at realistic opportunities for self-development in the content and address how they may participate even if they feel discouraged.

Key Objectives

I started this project by editing an already-existing article where I fleshed out the headers according to my approach.

We collaborated on more articles, with me writing from scratch, following that same approach and positioning.

Tasks Performed

Challenges

How do we write in-depth reviews for hyper specific audiences, when we are not a part of that community?

I’m using the deadmau5 Masterclass as an example, but this approach applies to all course reviews.

Understand how the community finds information

Some communities are happy looking at aggregated lists from media outlets; most would prefer peer reviews from verified sources such as LinkedIn, or at the very least, open forums such as Reddit.

In writing the deadmau5 MasterClass Review, I learned that there was a dedicated subreddit for edm production. There are also popular Youtubers specifically on EDM production for beginners.

Starting the research by seeing where the end-user gets their information from, especially if you’re not within that community, helps you understand:

Learn the community “meta”

Opinions differ but there are commonly repeated themes.

The goal isn’t to pick a side and speak from that position in the course reviews; the goal is to identify the stories and “common knowledge” circulated within the group.

What are their inside jokes? What’s accepted as “common knowledge?” Is deadmau5 considered a good producer? Why or why not?

Learning the meta ensures that you’re writing the content from their POV, not an outsider’s.

What’s the meta?

What concerns does the community typically have?

How does that translate to content?

Approach

Good course reviews don’t focus on why the material is great - they focus on how it can make the buyer great.

“How does it relate to me? How does it make my life better after I purchase the course?”

In course reviews, buyers are looking for the following tangible information:

But what about their intangible reservations?

Is a clear $90 price tag enough to determine a course’s worth?

In answering the more intangible aspects, I addressed the following:

Buyers convert when they are confident their concerns are well-represented.

Providing concrete information such as pricing, lesson plan, and information about the course, as well as positioning the content to come from their POV is the key to great reviews.

Masterclass and Mindvalley are lifestyle courses, hence the approach.

I would focus more on the methodology and the technical aspects of the review if the courses were around more technical topics, or if the target audience were more advanced.

Topic Ideation

The topics were provided by the Brown brothers. I was in-charge of figuring out how to structure the article based on the given title and search intent.

I was in charge of figuring out relevant H2 tags/subtopics to include, and how to flesh out the rest of the article.

Content outline and structure

The articles typically followed the format above, with the goal of meeting the reader’s objections, beliefs, and considerations.

Addressing their concerns and speaking to their reservations or problems directly are great ways to instill trust, and encourage users to make a purchase.

Results and impact

Affiliate conversion (how many subscriptions Masterclass and Mindvalley got, routed specifically from the course reviews) is a great way to measure if the content actually performs and brings in revenue. Unfortunately that’s not a metric I had access to.

What is publicly available would be the backlinks and domain rating of the individual pages. I have here 6 articles from bigger sites like Ideapod and Hackspirit, and smaller sites like Nomadrs and Expert Editor.

Backlinks indicate that other websites see your content as a reputable resource, linking back to your original article.

I think stand-alone metrics like these don’t really mean anything, no matter how successful, if they don’t contribute directly to revenue. Unfortunately I don’t have a way to reflect on that because I don’t have access to that metric, so I will speak of what this means in terms of brand awareness and website health in general.

In this context, the sheer volume of backlinks contribute to a higher domain rating. With cumulative articles like this earning the same backlinks, Google associates the site as a reputable, helpful resource in the niche.

It’s good for:

Would this still work in 2024+, with GPT and Tiktok?

That depends on the target audience and their buying behavior.

Masterclass and Mindvalley don’t have dedicated “discovery” groups - their communities are platform-exclusive, meaning users need to have already purchased a subscription before interacting with other buyers and seeing what they thought of the programs.

So where do they go before buying? Reddit and review sites like these.

This approach works when information isn’t democratized. End-users who are looking for in-depth reviews won’t find them on Reddit, so this strategy is a viable option.

This would likely not work for platforms where: