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I’ve made the difficult decision to shut down The Copyblogger Academy.
In today’s issue, I will give you all the details on why I made the decision, what went wrong, what went right, and we we go from here.
LFG. 🔥
Why Am I Shutting Down The Academy?
Okay, I’ll get real.
When I bought Copyblogger, the first thing I did was use the website to generate leads for the agency. I teamed up with Jonny Nastor, and we formed Digital Commerce Partners. It was an immediate success, and through Copyblogger, we grew to over $1M a year.
This was during Covid, and if you remember, there was massive hype around online communities. Since everyone was online all day, community builders jumped on the opportunity, and I succumbed to the hype. I made the choice to pivot away from Digital Commerce and focus entirely on building a community instead.
Now here’s the truth.
Building an online membership community is, without question, the hardest business venture I’ve ever embarked upon. You need a specific personality type to manage communities long-term. I am not patient enough, nor do I enjoy customer service enough to do it well.
Luckily, I partnered with Charles, and he thrived at building the community. But once Charles decided to go a different direction, the culture started to suffer. I tried a few things to revive the brand, but ultimately, the momentum was gone.
If I could do it all over again, I would have focused 100% of my energy on Digital Commerce Partners and left it at that. My big dumb brain got in the way, and my ego told me I needed a public-facing community to show off.
I don’t have the bandwidth to manage a community, so the best thing I can do for everyone involved is to sunset the platform.
What Am I Doing With Copyblogger?
I want to be specific here, because there is an important distinction to make.
I still firmly believe that people are willing to pay for premier content, especially if it helps them level up. Courses, memberships, and coaching businesses are still highly profitable and deeply valuable.
It’s specifically the community management aspect that I don’t enjoy.
Because of that, I am migrating all Copyblogger Academy members over to my personal membership at TimStodz.com.
My personal membership is much simpler and more direct. It doesn’t require live events, daily engagement, or ongoing community management. I simply record a weekly lesson, publish it to my members, and leave it at that. Substack is the perfect platform for this model.
Moving forward, I am combining our audiences. Everyone on the Copyblogger email list will be grandfathered into the TimStodz list. One email list, one platform, and one ecosystem.
I will still publish free blog posts and resources on Copyblogger.com because that site changed my life, and I want to keep paying it forward. But from now on, Copyblogger.com is strictly a free resource, while the email list, membership, and paid products will run through TimStodz.com.
Do I Regret Building Copyblogger Academy?
No. Not one bit.
Life is a journey, and you can only learn by doing. Do I look back and wish I made a few choices differently? Of course I do. But that isn’t the same as regret.
Copyblogger brought tremendous value into my life:
Revenue: I made good money. Even if I never rebuilt Copyblogger into the juggernaut it was in its prime, it was still a great business.
Relationships: Partnering with Charles was a massive blessing. He remains a huge part of my life, and if meeting him was the only outcome of this experience, it was still worth it.
Skills: I learned a ton about coaching and modern audiences. When I was in flow, I really felt the mastery of that skill set. It made me better at every other area of my business.
Opportunities: Through Copyblogger, I gained access to investments, strategic partnerships, speaking engagements, and new deals. If you evaluate business solely through short-term monetary ROI, you miss out on those intangible gifts.
Purpose: I took on Copyblogger out of a sense of duty. Before I found Copyblogger almost 17 years ago, I was lost. Reading the site every day, and learning from Brian taught me content marketing, online sales, email marketing, and authority building.
I feel like I accomplished my mission of passing the torch, and I am grateful for the entire experience.
In Conclusion: I Feel More Focused Than Ever
I’ve struggled throughout my career with shiny object syndrome. If an idea looked fun or profitable, I usually jumped at it without much second thought.
Now that I have a family, my time and attention are far more constrained.
I am more locked in than ever. My primary operational focus is scaling Quantum Leads, my healthcare marketing agency. TimStodz.com is my media platform where I’ll continue building my personal brand, with Copyblogger now integrated directly into it.
Ultimately, Copyblogger Academy was a success, but it ran its course. Sometimes the hard choice and the right choice are the exact same thing. At this stage in my life, streamlining everything into TimStodz.com is the right move.
I’ll close this issue with the tagline Brian Clark used to end every Copyblogger newsletter:
Keep going.
I will keep going, and I hope you do as well.
Love you guys. Talk to you next week.
Tim
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