How Mignon Fogarty launched a massively successful series of online courses

She isn’t just one of the world’s most popular podcasters, she’s also an incredibly innovative media entrepreneur.

Mignon Fogarty isn’t just one of the world’s most popular podcasters, she’s also an incredibly innovative media entrepreneur. She launched her Grammar Girl podcast 18 years ago, and the success of that propelled her book onto the New York Times bestseller list. She also founded Quick & Dirty Tips, a media network she now runs in partnership with Macmillan Publishers.

To round out her media business even more, she’s launched around seven courses, all geared toward being a better communicator and writer. Thousands of people have taken them, and they’ve opened her up to an entirely new customer base for her content.

In a recent interview, Mignon explained how she entered the courses market, what goes into putting together a course, and why she decided to partner with powerful distributors like LinkedIn Learning rather than create the courses by herself:

LinkedIn  just approached me, too, because I have a relatively big LinkedIn group and following and someone was familiar with my work. So they initially approached me about first doing that really general writing course. And they are great. They are just the most professional people I have ever worked with. I just have nothing but amazing things to say about the LinkedIn Learning team there. You know, they understand how to do online education. They're positive. They're just great.

So the first one I did, I flew down to their studios in Carpinteria, California. They have movie studio sets, it's amazing. Like with the full lights and setup and you do makeup and hair, and before that you work for a couple of months at least with your scripts with a really great professional editing team.

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Transcript

Hey, Mignon. Thanks for joining us.

Hey, Simon. Good to see you.

So I want to dive deep into talking about your online courses. But first, for the few people who don't know who you are, let's start with just a little bit of background on you. So you host a podcast called Grammar Girl. What's it about and what's the format?

Right, Grammar Girl. It started as Quick and Dirty Tips To Help You Write Better. It started as a three to five minute podcast about some writing topic, like how to use a semicolon or something like that, 18 years ago now, believe it or not. And over the years, it's expanded. 

Yeah, you're one of the OGs. 

So over the years, it's expanded. So now it runs more like 15 minutes. It has two segments. I do talk about those writing tips, but now I also talk a lot about etymology, fun idioms, language history, linguistics, things like that. So it's really expanded to be more encompassing about language.

We say at the beginning, it's about writing history, rules, and cool stuff. Because I don't know, I just think it's a lot more interesting that way and a lot more fun. At least it is for me and I hope for the listeners too.

It's a scripted podcast, right?

It is. Although recently, just three or four months ago, we launched a second interview-based episode. So now every week with occasional breaks, I also interview someone.

And who are the kinds of people you interview, like linguists and language specialists and stuff like that?

Yeah, it's funny. When my partners, when we were talking about this, they asked me the same question. And I'm like, just people I think are cool. And they're like, that can't be our message. So it's about, I can't remember the messaging they asked me to use. It's people who are somehow connected to language who I think are fun and interesting. So, you know, lexicographers, linguists, people who have books out about language. It's always language related, but it's a wide variety of people.

And you said you launched it 18 years ago.

The podcast, yes.

And so, Grammar Girl is part of something larger called the Quick and Dirty Tips Network, which you also founded. What is that?

Right. So when Grammar Girl took off 18 years ago, I believed it was the format that made it so popular at the time. It was, you know, scripted, tight, one tip per show. And you can apply that to a lot of different topics.

And, you know, I had spent some time in Silicon Valley, so I really believed that, even though the business model for podcasting wasn't as clear back then, I believed I had a business. So I enlisted people to start other shows. So we had a parenting podcast and a money podcast and a legal podcast. And so Quick and Dirty Tips was a network of shows about different topics, all with one tip that helped you do something better or learn something interesting that week. And, yeah, so that's the Quick and Dirty Tips Network. And then after, oh, gosh, I think it was about nine months in when I partnered with Macmillan, the publisher, o grow the business. I think I had five or six shows at that time.

Yeah, so it's a whole network of evergreen news you can use is the term that they used when I was at U.S. News & World Report, where it's evergreen content that's actually applicable to most people's lives. And then it also has a website where the scripts are published as articles, basically. You get a lot of content that's published in the podcast network because people may not even know it's a podcast and are just reading article content.

Absolutely, and I think the evergreen nature is what makes it really different from a lot of other podcasts and podcast networks. We have a massive archive of shows and they still get a lot of traffic, so our back catalog is really important to the business in a way it isn't for many other podcasters.

And in addition to the podcast you have published at least one, if not multiple, New York Times bestselling grammar books?

One New York Times bestseller, and depending on how you count them, seven to ten other books total.

And would it be fair to say that for the first several years, most of your income from your content came from a mixture of book sales and then advertising revenue?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's true.

Okay, so we got all the basics back out of the way. Now let's talk about your courses. So how did you come to develop your first course? Like, so it wasn't your idea. It was someone else's idea first, right?

Right. All the courses I do, we were approached by someone else. So the first course I did, I had been doing – one of the reasons I hesitated when you asked about my revenue sources is that speaking was also not a major source of revenue, but sort of a significant source of revenue. And I was speaking at conferences for Regan Communications, a firm that specializes in, well, a lot of different things, but for our purposes, they do have a big PR practice. People who work in PR and communications are a big constituency of theirs. So I was speaking at their conferences, and then they asked me if I wanted to do online courses with them.

And, you know, great, I don't have to travel, you know, and I can still kind of do the same thing. And so that was how I got started first. And I think I did some general writing advice courses for them. And I've sort of settled in to doing a course about AP style, Associated Press style twice a year, one beginning and one advanced.

So Regan approached you and said, can you make like a recorded course for us? Or like, what were they actually asking you to do?

Yeah, they asked me to make a recorded course, and for the first one I flew to Chicago and did it in a studio with them there. It sort of evolved over time, and now I do it live from here. This is what you see. Actually, what I do has a lot of slides.

Was that first course live, or was it just something someone could purchase?

It was just something someone could purchase.

And were they selling it on their own website, or where were they selling it?

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Yeah, they were selling it on their own website and using their lists to market it.

Yeah, so Regan Communications had some kind of courses program where they had on their website a place where you could produce courses and purchase courses on an individual basis. When was that first course made?

Oh man. Oh gosh. It had to have been, I don't remember. It was probably eight, 10 years ago.

And so, for that, you recorded just like a series of videos about AP style?

Yeah, well, no, no, the first one was just general writing tips. So I was talking about parallelism and subject verb agreement and commonly confused words and, you know, all the stuff I did in the podcast at the time anyway.

Yeah. And so someone who purchased this would just receive access to a series of videos that are almost like chapters where they would just kind of watch it on their own time.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. For a while, I thought, like, why would someone pay for this? They can get it in my podcast. It's in my books. You know, why are people paying, you know, hundreds of dollars to just watch a video of me walking them through what I already provide free everywhere else? I've come to learn that you meet people where they are, if they want to be walked through it, if that's what they want, like, why not? You know, I went from feeling like, oh, I don't know, this doesn't feel right to like, okay, I'm providing a service that people want. 

I think there is some kind of appeal to a start and end time of like, I'm going to learn this thing. And rather than just openly subscribing to something and just kind of slowly learning it, just being like, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to take this course for one hour every day or something like that. And at the end of it, I will be proficient at X, Y, Z or something. I think there is some kind of appeal to that.

Yeah, it's a very efficient way to learn the best tips.

So do you remember what they were charging for a course back then?

I want to say it was somewhere between 250 and 350. 

And so you obviously went on to do several more courses. Would you say that you liked the format of the course or the kind of finite nature of it? Like what appealed to you about doing that first course?

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Yeah, I mean, it was really straightforward and simple for me to do because it is just repackaging what I've already done. Although at the time it always feels like a lot of work, it's not a huge, it wasn't a huge lift. And yeah, it was just a nice thing to add to the mix. They kept asking, I kept saying yes.

Yeah, so what happened after that? Did you continue making courses for them?

Yeah. And at some point, I don't remember at what point it was that it started being live. I know it was, well, the AP Style one started being live because AP Style changes every year. But I think it was right around the beginning of the pandemic, a little before or a little after when we sort of switched to the live format. And I know it's a lot less work for them because there's not as much production work, right? And so I think it's just part of an efficiency push on how they can get more courses out.

So what is the live format? It's just you showing up at a certain time each week or something like that for a set period of time and you're just doing the lessons but over some kind of video call platform or something like that and they're watching passively? 

Yeah, I guess I should add that it's also recorded and resold on a on-demand basis after we do it live. So it is available to buy afterward. But yeah, I create my presentation, the slides and everything, and then I show up. And if it's the beginning course, it's an hour. If it's the advanced, it's an hour and a half typically. And people show up and watch live. And then they get access to the link so they can watch it later if they miss the live or they want to revisit it.

And for these Regan courses, like how much were you expected to help promote them? Obviously you have a very large following, not just for your podcast, but social media, Twitter, stuff like that. Like, were you kind of expected to help promote it or was this something where they were handling all of that?

Yeah, I was absolutely expected to help promote it. But they sell a lot more than I do. I know because we use tracking codes, and if people are considering what they can learn about doing courses, you might be able to find a partner who has an audience that's more willing to pay for what you offer. Because they are so focused on the PR and communications professionals, you know, my audience is not enriched for that. My audience is everything from school teachers to truck drivers to. Their list is so targeted. They sell far more seats at those webinars than we do. And so when you're thinking about a partnership, you could feel like, oh, like I'm giving up so much by doing this partnership. But if you can find the right partner, it can be a better situation. 

So you eventually started making courses for LinkedIn Learning, I believe. How did you transition from working with Regan to the LinkedIn stuff?

Right. I mean, they just approached me, too, because I have a relatively big LinkedIn group and following and someone was familiar with my work. So they initially approached me about first doing that really general writing course. And they are great. They are just the most professional people I have ever worked with. I just have nothing but amazing things to say about the LinkedIn Learning team there. You know, they understand how to do online education. They're positive. They're just great.

So the first one I did, I flew down to their studios in Carpinteria, California. They have movie studio sets, it's amazing. Like with the full lights and setup and you do makeup and hair, and before that you work for a couple of months at least with your scripts with a really great professional editing team.

So they were really hands-on. They weren't just handling the production, they were handling even script level feedback and stuff like that?

Yeah, super hands on. And then after you're done, they send it to beta viewers and you get feedback. When you're filming, I think there were five people in the room filming, they had like two editors who were marking every point I misspoke, and it's a whole production. It's not like that now. It's actually really interesting because since the pandemic, they realized that they figured out how to get people to do it at home.

But still, when I'm doing it at home, they ship me equipment. I have a great podcasting setup, but they have their equipment, and that's what they want me to use. And it, again, is a very organized system. 

So they asked me to do the general topic. And again, I think it was about an hour, and we just put together this incredibly polished thing and then that did well enough that they've asked me to do six more, I think I have seven total now.

And  the way that LinkedIn works is you don't buy one-off courses. It's like a subscription where you subscribe and you get access to all of their courses. Is that the way it works?

Correct. You used to be able to buy a la carte, but not anymore.

Yeah. And so obviously LinkedIn, it's similar to the advantage Regan had in that LinkedIn is a huge platform with over a billion users. How did that dynamic change in terms of the potential audience? 

Yeah, it's been great. And it's funny because they are so big, essentially nothing I do promotionally really seems to matter. You know, like I've gone through periods where I've promoted it really hard. I've gone through periods where I do nothing and the traffic seems to be the same. I'm an individual. They're a massive corporation. So if they feature it, it goes wild. If they don't, it settles into its regular level. Every course has settled into its traffic level and it seems to just consistently do that unless they do some kind of promotion.

And what has that done for your own LinkedIn following and engagement, like having such popular courses on the platform? Have there been any kind of downstream effects where you started to notice an uptick in engagement or following on LinkedIn?

I can't say that I really have. Yeah, I mean, I don't check my stats there very often, so it could have, but it hasn't been so dramatic that it has jumped to my attention. I imagine it must. I imagine it contributes to the slow build, you know?

Is LinkedIn like a platform where you get a lot of engagement? What platforms do you get the most engagement?

Yeah. You know, since the fall of Twitter, it's been kind of chaos. Threads has been really great for me lately. I'm really surprised I've been doing really well on Threads. Mastodon.

Because the Threads algorithm loves that non-political kind of generic content. 

I know. I know. It's the most positive of the networks that I'm on, you know, for better and for worse. I'm really active on Mastodon, but that's – and I get good engagement there, but, you know – Yeah, I mean, I have the biggest following on Facebook. I have like 675,000 Facebook followers.

So when I devote time to Facebook, I probably do best there. But I prefer for business purposes, I prefer LinkedIn. So if I'm going to post links and talk about business stuff, like LinkedIn is good.

And I know that you said that LinkedIn itself, they drive more audience to your courses than you do through your own personal channels. But when you are trying to build awareness or hype around an upcoming course or even courses that are in your back catalog, what are some of the strategies that you use?

Yeah, one of the things I like best about LinkedIn is there are a lot of ways for people to get your course free. And I love it. It's so easy to advertise something people can get for free. So I can make the course free for people who aren't LinkedIn Learning subscribers.

And so when I'm actively trying to promote it, I do that. So I create posts on LinkedIn that give people free access to the course. And then I see people watch it, but I don't always see the huge bump in traffic. The courses do really well, so there's probably a bump, but it's so little that I don't see it in the chart, you know? But yeah, making the course free, talking on other social platforms about all the ways people can get it free. I've been doing a big push this summer trying to get educators to use it in their courses because, you know, what teacher doesn't want their students to use commas better or get their subject verb agreement right? And so I've been doing a really big push this summer trying to mention it every week in my email newsletter and making it free really often and mentioning it.

I mentioned it in the podcast every week for the last six weeks or so. So school is just starting now. So I'm really, really curious to see if that will have paid off. I feel like I might be able to see a difference if schools start assigning it to their students.

And do you get a sense from talking to people whether the LinkedIn people who take your courses versus those who interact with your podcast – are they completely mainly two different audiences? Like I'm always surprised by how many people either say they read my newsletter or listen to my podcast, but don't really have any kind of crossover between the two. Is it kind of the same for you?

Yeah, I feel like there's very little crossover probably. And, you know, on LinkedIn, you get a certificate and then you can post it. And so I get a notice. I see the people who are posting certificates and most of them that I see look like they are English language learners. So people from other countries who are trying to improve their English. That's not all of them, but it's a good chunk of it.

And companies will pay for their employees to get certifications and stuff like that. Do you get a sense that that's driving it at all?

Yeah, I can see the top companies from which people are watching the course. And, you know, there are big companies where the employees all have access. And those are at the top of that list. So definitely, yeah, those corporate users are watching it, too.

And I get the sense that you basically got the white glove treatment from LinkedIn, the sense that you're a well-known figure. And so they specifically courted you. So maybe it's different from you than the average person who's uploading a course on LinkedIn. Is it... Do you know, can anybody just upload a course to LinkedIn Learning?

I don't think they can. I was just going to say, I don't think they can. And in fact, I've recommended some friends, told the LinkedIn people, you might want to have this person create a course. They're really good. And that's never turned into anything.

Oh, interesting. So they're selective. They're not trying to do the platform play where anybody can create a course. So obviously, I was just interviewed about LinkedIn newsletters and the pros and cons of that. And the pro is that you get to tap into LinkedIn's huge platform to build your audience. The con is that you don't actually own your list or anything like that, and they can take away that distribution at any point. I've talked to lots of course creators. A lot of them use white label platforms. services where they have 100% ownership over the course and they handle their own distribution. What are your thoughts on hosting your course on your own website where it's some white label service or teachable or something like that versus relying so heavily on LinkedIn for distribution? What are the things that you weigh in your head for that?

Yeah, I worry about being so reliant on a single platform. I know from experience that's bad, you know, that it can go away tomorrow. And it's always in my mind that it can. In my planning, I have it going away in the future, you know, and I've thought a lot about making my own course on my own platform with Teachable or something like that. The LinkedIn people, they just make it so easy and pleasant. And, you know, and it does so well, you know, it's just, it's really, plus I also have a non-compete, so I can't create a class about the same thing. I've done seven with them, like how much is there left for me to say? It'd be sort of the crumbs that I'd be creating, it feels like. So, you know, there's a lot of disincentives and for now it's great.

Yeah, so you have your own audience on other platforms. So if there ever comes a day where LinkedIn just doesn't make sense for you anymore, you could continue with your courses and just create your own owned and operated courses. So it's not something that you worry about, especially since you already have direct access to your own audience on other platforms.

Right. And I think my non-compete is eight years or 10 years or something like that. We're probably getting kind of close to the end for the first course even. 

Interesting. And then going back to your other hats that you wear with podcaster, writer, author and stuff like that. What is  the benefit of courses versus those other business models? What do you like about courses versus hosting an advertising-focused podcast or writing a book where you get royalties and stuff like that?

The best thing about courses and books is that you do the work and then it's like an annuity. You just keep getting paid as long as people keep engaging with it. In a different life, I worked at a pharmaceutical consulting company, and they had custom clients where they did custom projects. And then during the slow times, they did these marketing reports that we wrote and then they went up for sale. And it was a great business mix to have the big hits and then the ongoing steady income. And I've always wanted to have that kind of business model.

And I feel like that's what the courses and the books provide is that sort of steady income. And then you sort of focus on the other things that sort of come as they come like advertising.

Yeah. I mean, you've got a great business just because even your advertising funded content is also evergreen as well. So it's like you really could step away and not feel like you're stepping off the treadmill or whatever, because your content will continue to produce dividends even when you're not constantly feeding that fire.

Yeah, it's been great. In the beginning, it was frustrating for years and years because we had all this content and advertisers would only buy in the newly released show. The development of dynamic ad insertion in podcasting was hugely important for our business because it let us tap into that archive of traffic that we get every month.