Film Composer Jonny Armandary Shares the Importance of Serving the Right Audience

Jeremy Deighan
Hey, everyone. Thanks for checking out the podcast. Today, we have Jonny Armandary from soundtrack.academy, who is going to talk about his journey into online courses and is in a really cool niche, the film scoring niche, which I think is a great interest in itself. How are you doing today, Jonny?

Jonny Armandary
I'm good, Jeremy. Thanks. How are you?

Jeremy Deighan
I'm doing great. It's a good day. And I'm happy to have you on the podcast. We've been friends for a while and it's great to see your growth. I love your blog. You have a really cool layout on your blog with the way that you have the text and the fonts and stuff. I think it looks really cool.

So, yeah, man. I'm excited to have you here and just want to hear your story and talk about online courses and the strategies and the things that have worked and the things that haven't worked for you. But before we get started, let's just hear a little bit about yourself. What were you doing before you found online courses and got into online business?

Jonny Armandary
Wow, that's a good question. I'll try and keep it short. I was a film composer. That's what I studied at university. I went straight into film composition and had some good successes early on, and then decided to take a little bit of teaching on the side.

I thought maybe an hour a week or something just to top up or to lay a foundation so I'd carry on composing. But that quickly became full time. So I was teaching at universities for quite a while before the fees and everything tripled in the UK and it made it difficult for the kinds of people I wanted to teach to attend anymore. It kind of out priced them a little bit.

Around about that time as well, I mean, it's a long story, but there was all kinds of stuff going on in my life. One of the things was leading us to want to leave the UK and move to Canada. And at that point, I just started saying yes to a few more things.

Another one of our mutual friends contacted me and he said he does online courses, and would I be interested in working with him on an online course? And I said, "Yeah, why not?" So we put together this film music course. And I remember being in his house, and I knew nothing about online courses at the time.

And I said to him, "What is this world about? Do you make money from it? Do you cover much of your rent or anything like that?" And he looked at me and said, "Yeah, I do alright."

It's only then that I discovered the whole world of online courses and how people are not only helping and being able to access a whole load more people, including the types of people you might want to work with, but also actually sustaining themselves from it as well.

So we ended up moving to Canada. I looked a bit more into the online course world and then the move to Canada didn't work out. So we return to Europe. I'm actually in Poland now; not sure how long we'll stay here for. And that's when I decided to set up soundtrack.academy and go all in.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome. When you started out, what was the first course that you created? Was it with him or did you create one on your own?

Jonny Armandary
The first course I made was with him —Thomas George, if anybody wants to know who it was, who's a great guy — and that was film scoring in Logic Pro X. So particularly looking at Logic Pro X because that's really what he focuses on. He's got all kinds of courses on while Ableton and Logic and the music production side of things, so the film scoring side complimented that quite nicely.

Then once I decided to dab my toe in a little bit further and have a go myself, I decided to take the simplest route possible for me. I figured that as a first course, just to test things out, I would basically create a digital version of stuff that I'd already been teaching at college and university.

So, the first course I made, the one that sort of translated over the easiest was actually a popular music history course, which is to show how little I knew about studying what people might want. People want to learn how to write songs, not so much study the history. But it's there and that's the one I made.

And it was a good course to make because it was easy for me to start with. I already had all the slides and I had everything there. It was just a case of figuring out how to translate it into digital content.

And then that allowed me to learn what worked when you translate courses and what doesn't work when you translate them so that I was ready when I actually started moving more towards film scoring. I'm always learning new stuff and always testing out different things as well.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's the life of an entrepreneur, right? Something breaks or something doesn't work and you just gotta find a new way around it. It's great getting started with someone else, I feel like, because they can help guide you along.

A lot of people will go into this industry and they just go at it alone at first. And you can really waste a lot of time and do a lot of things wrong. So it was cool. I know Thomas. He's a great guy and I'm sure he really showed you the ropes and showed you how to do some things.

Once you created the history course and you realized that that wasn't going really well, did you decide, "Okay, I should probably pick something that I know more about or try to find an audience that would be better for film scoring."?

Jonny Armandary
Yes. The pit pop history course, like I said, I hadn't really set up the soundtrack.academy by then. It was just a foray into seeing what worked. Then I suppose it just felt like the natural move for me. I had a film scoring course with Thomas already, and it's what I'd done, it's what I studied, it's what I was passionate about, and what I'm passionate about.

So yeah, the film scoring thing, we were just talking about this before we started recording on the call, but it's kind of I came in the backwoods route, I suppose. I started with what I know rather than what I knew people were asking for. So I started off with, I knew that I wanted to do film scoring.

And since then, it's been kind of a rocky road in terms of working out exactly what I'm going to teach. I started in film scoring, but part of film scoring is things like music production, music orchestration, and music composition, which are all really big and really popular topics.

So I did create a few courses around those topics as well thinking that I'll try and reach a broad audience by doing a general string orchestration course, for example. And that course, I sell them on marketplaces and it does alright. But from then on is where I've really decided to niche down and really focus more specifically on film scoring, and that's where the car is moving to.

So, initially, the main stuff I was doing was around film scoring. And the idea with the soundtrack.academy is that I would eventually be able to expand out into all forms of soundtrack like sound design, and writing songs and movies and all kinds of things. That was the initial plan. But actually, I've gone the opposite way and really tried to focus more and more specifically into one area instead.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, cool. So you're narrowing down that focus, and I would assume that you're finding maybe a better audience because we all know that the more you niche down, the kind of tighter the audience you're going to get. You might not find as many people, but those people who are looking for that information are really invested, right?

Jonny Armandary
100%. The moment that I really started focusing on film scoring and talking in that language and focusing on that is the moment that people actually started replying to me emails and getting in touch with me. I suddenly felt like I have some kind of small tribe building up around the academy.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, right, definitely. So you set up the soundtrack.academy website, and you were going to start general, and you kind of started niching down. Now, are you putting your courses from the marketplaces on your own website also or are you directing people back to the marketplace?

Jonny Armandary
At the moment, directing people back to the marketplace? I don't know how much longer that will continue for.

Jeremy Deighan
Now, how is that working? I know from talking with others and from personal experience that when you send traffic into the marketplace, it actually can be very beneficial because they see that as a trigger that your course is doing well; that you're sending people from the outside.

Are you seeing that also? Are you seeing an increase in enrollment or revenue from sending people from your website to the marketplace?

Jonny Armandary
It's interesting that question because I don't have anything set up at the moment, which is an evergreen funnel that directs people. I don't set up everything so that if someone sees one video on orchestration, they then get a lead magnet on orchestration or they're then directed towards the orchestration course. I don't really have it set up in that way.

I tried that to start with, but I found I wasn't really getting much conversion. So I felt it was better to just try and get people onto the list in the first place. So really, when I say I direct people to the marketplace, it's more for course launches and any sales that I do, like Black Friday sale, for example, or when I release a new course.

I've never not done that so I can't say I've A/B tested it, but I think it helps get the foundation set when the course is launched. You get the course out there, you get a good chunk of students straightaway, some reviews straight away from people that know and trust you already. So the reviews are more likely to be favorable from the get go.

And that helps the course sell in the marketplace. And like you say, I presume it helps me with my ranking on those marketplaces as well so that then more people find it organically from then onwards, basically.

Jeremy Deighan
Oh, yeah, definitely. That makes a lot of sense. I like the point about the reviews. I never thought about that, that you have a much better audience, probably on your own website, then just random people searching on the marketplace. So the people coming over from there are probably going to give you a much better rating because they already know you. That's awesome.

Jonny Armandary
And I think that helps with later reviews as well because when someone sees a course is five stars, and they see loads of hype around it, I think when they purchase it going in, even if they might not think it's worth that much, I think there's some psychology behind that where they just think, "Other people think it's a five-star course, therefore, it must be great." They're more likely to leave a positive review as well. You see that on Amazon products and all kinds of stuff.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, social proof in those terms is very powerful. That's why it's important, if you're on a marketplace, getting those reviews. And if you're off of a marketplace, you have to mimic that in some way. And the best way that I found to do that is with testimonials; having other people say, especially if you can get a video testimonial.

I mean, written testimonials are great, but if you have a landing page with someone who's got a video saying, "Jonny's awesome. You got to take his course," that's essentially doing the same thing.

Jonny Armandary
Yeah. Do you know much about using things like Trustpilot on websites as well?

Jeremy Deighan
No, I haven't looked into it. Is it a review or rating type application?

Jonny Armandary
Yeah. Trustpilot is like a website where people can... I think initially set up, obviously, for trust, so people can trust companies and things. I've seen a few people including your Trustpilot rating on your landing page or whatever, again, just another form of social proof. It shows that you're trustworthy and people like the course, I guess.

Jeremy Deighan
Oh, nice. I'll check it out.

Jonny Armandary
It's something that I was toying with the idea of my next venture.

Jeremy Deighan
Now, you said that you probably wouldn't have the courses on the marketplace forever; that you'd consider putting them on your own site. Is that something that you're moving towards just getting all your courses on your own platform?

Jonny Armandary
Yeah. I mean, I don't like speaking indefinitely because I know what I'm like and I have a problem with shiny objects syndrome. Like most people, I set off on one path and then I see how it goes. And if it's not quite going the way that I want, then I'll change direction a little bit.

The plan for now is the marketplace model is propping me up alright, for the time being. I'm busy launching, and by the time this podcast is released, it should have launched already as well, but launching my kind of flagship course on my own site.

I'm hoping that becomes the main thing for now, to be honest, and I can refocus on driving traffic there. And if it does, then hopefully, I can move away slightly from that marketplace model purely because I don't think I can serve people as best as I'd like to on those types of things. The broader courses are perhaps bringing people into my world that aren't going to be that interested in the other stuff that I'm doing as well.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's kind of a double-edged sword when you have those broader courses. It's great because you're bringing in people who might find you who have never heard of you before, but on the other hand, you might be getting the wrong audience, too.

Jonny Armandary
Yeah, exactly.

Jeremy Deighan
Are there any reasons why you want to get on your own platform? You said you're able to serve that student a lot better by having them on your own platform. What do you mean by that? Is it just being able to communicate with them better or?

Jonny Armandary
Yeah. I did a beta launch for this program earlier this year. And the engagement from the students was amazing. It's something you don't see so much from marketplaces. Now, I feel there's a balance.

I'm sure people would love it if I wanted to take one-on-one calls all day with them and be live in groups with them all day and everything like that, but I don't have the time to be doing that. At the same space, being able to see people go through a program and know where they are in the journey, and see the results they're getting and feel like you're part of those results is much nicer than someone just buying something, taking the course.

You never know who they are, where they are, what they're doing. So it's nice to have that contact a little bit more with them.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, definitely. I've seen some people have communities like a forum type community, where they will offer a course and then have a private community, not necessarily a Facebook community, but like its own form. And I think that works out really good.

I forget the name of the program, but there's one that does it really well, where it's a much tighter knit group of people, I think, than just some of the random people you would get on Facebook or the marketplaces.

Jonny Armandary
Sure. It's something like Mighty Networks, is it?

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, Mighty Networks. Yeah, I've seen a couple of people utilize that very well. One company uses Mighty Networks and offers a private podcast, which I thought was really interesting because I love podcasting.

I love this idea so I gotta tell you about this. They have this course, and of course, when you make the course, things are going to change, if you're talking about software, unless it's a very evergreen topic, like maybe piano. The piano hasn't changed in 100s or 1000s of years.

But most things are going to change a little bit, especially this website, I think, is into marketing and online business. So things change pretty rapidly. So when you record those videos, six months or a year down the road, some of those things have changed. Well, they have a private podcast, where they keep you updated with the newest information.

And I thought that was a really cool technique to keep something a little more evergreen. Things that are going to change, they might not be able to go back and record those lessons every week, but they can do a weekly podcast and say, "Hey, this is how we were doing it before. We changed our methods a little bit." I thought that was a really cool idea.

Jonny Armandary
That's great. I heard that micro subscriptions are going to be one of the next big things as well, that type of thing. People subscribe to a podcast' they pay a small monthly fee to get the content or to get extra content as well.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, using things like Patreon, where you're providing free information, but also giving people the opportunity to subscribe to you I think is really powerful. I'm actually subscribed to some Patreon accounts. Yeah, it's really crazy. There are so many different ways that you can go about it.

When you were starting off, thinking about the audience who's listening, people who want to create a course, or are struggling to create courses, or they need help marketing or selling their course, thinking back to when you were just starting out and everything was new to you, what are some of the mistakes that you made that you would caution others about, who are starting out?

Jonny Armandary
Don't do a pop history course. No, but I mean, seriously, the lessons learned from that, again, is something we briefly chatted about before. And it's the same advice that everybody tells you. But for some reason, until you've made the mistakes yourself, you don't want to listen to it.

But it's to find out what people really want in your industry or in your niche, in your space first, and then create the content that serves them and that helps them. And I think being genuinely giving; people really appreciate that. The communication I get; it's almost like the reciprocity principle. People want to repay you.

I've had people email me who said they've purchased one of my courses purely because they liked all of the free content of the stuff that I'm putting out. And they like how genuine and honest I am. And they've purchased the course almost with no intention of really taking it; just that they want to give back.

So I think those are the big things: be genuinely giving, and make sure you're offering stuff that people actually want. And again, to reiterate a point that I made earlier, I started off by thinking if I went broad, that would be better. But then actually by going more and more niche, I found more and more success, more and more community.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, I like all of those. I want to see if I can try to hit all of these. The first one, well, you mentioned researching. We'll talk about it in a second, but you were talking about giving and it made me think about we mentioned Pat Flynn from the Smart Passive Income earlier. He's someone who I followed for a very long time and didn't buy anything from him.

Now, I might not have known that I clicked an affiliate link and purchased something, but I couldn't tell you that. But he's the type of person that I always really liked his style and always liked what he stood for.

And he gave away so much free great content that I found myself, years later, when I would go buy some software or maybe something online that I knew that he had an affiliate link for, I would actually go back and purchase from him because I felt like it's the least that I could do.

This guy really changed my whole world with his podcast. And he probably made money off of advertisements and sponsorships and different ways. But I just felt like I could go back and sign up. I'm going to get this software anyways, I'm going to get ConvertKit anyways, let me go back to Pat Flynn and sign up under his affiliate link. So I totally agree with the reciprocity.

And then you talked about researching your market. That is definitely one of the main things that I hear a lot is that we have a passion, or we have a hobby, or we have something that we really love. And we learn about this world; you can make money teaching or you can make money creating a product online on something that you know.

So, the first thing that we do is we say, "Okay, what do we know that we can teach?" And we go out there. We spend all this time making this thing, a pop history course, and realize that no one really cares about that, or it's not the right market, or you're not in the right place. A pop history course might actually do really great somewhere else; maybe we're just in the wrong place.

So I always believe that it's pretty important to go and ask those questions and find out what the market wants, and then create that product. So what are some good ways that you would think of to do that? How can we go out and get those questions answered before we make an online course?

Jonny Armandary
That's something that I'm terrible at. I kind of know what I should be doing, I'm just not very good at doing it, but talking with people in your niche. A lot of the people that I follow to learn about creating stuff from say to just get people on the phone, posting in a Facebook group in your niche or in your area.

Just post in there and say, "I am looking to do some small 15-minute consultations with people. I can help in these kinds of areas. If anybody's interested, let me know and we'll jump on a call." And then just ask them questions; find out what they're struggling with. It's not just market research for you. These are kind of mini consultations.

So just take note of the kinds of things people are asking and then see if there's any recurring themes that are coming up and go deep when people ask you stuff. Try and find out where they've looked to find that information before. Where are they searching?

Because not only that tells you whether or not the information is there, but it also tells you where your target audience are looking for information. That will tell you whether or not you should be creating a YouTube channel or blogging or podcast, whatever else.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's awesome. I really like the idea about the consultation. It seems like if you could get someone on the phone and really have a one-to-one conversation with them not over Facebook or texting, you'll probably learn a lot more.

Jonny Armandary
Yeah. I think that's the thing. I think people in this world, when you start trying to find out what to do and things, everybody's talking about automation and making these evergreen and building these massive sales funnels and all that kind of stuff. But there's some advice I heard recently that said, to start with, you have to do the things that don't scale.

You have to do those one-to-one things, the thing that does take up your personal time. You're not going to be able to create an automatic system for it, but right now, that's what you have to do; the stuff that doesn't scale before you can then do the evergreen systems.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah. I'm in a coaching program myself and he talks about in that program that you have got to have a converting offer, like you said before, you can scale it, before you can go evergreen. And if you can't get your offer to convert at the very simplest level, then all the funnels, all the graphic design, all the things in the world aren't going to help because the foundation of your offer just isn't strong enough.

Jonny Armandary
Yeah. That's right.

Jeremy Deighan
That's cool. I really like that. You're in my group and so you know I'm always asking questions and trying to pick people's brains to figure out what they want, so that you can give it to them. I mean, that's what this is. Find out what people want to learn, and then go teach that to them.

Now, that's not to say that you can't say, "I love guitar, I'm going to create a guitar course." Yeah, you're probably going to find people to buy your guitar course. But if you can go talk to those people and find out specifically what they're looking for, and then present that back to them, you're probably going to have a much better chance of success, right?

Jonny Armandary
I think that's part of that niching down thing. I think we get caught in sometimes, particularly when you start out and you're thinking about doing a course on Udemy, for example, you look at the other courses on Udemy and you see "The Complete Masterclass Guitar Playing."

And it's like they're trying to teach you everything, literally everything from start to end about guitar playing. It's a 25-hour plus course and whatever else. And that doesn't help people. It doesn't get results. It's not what people are looking for. Maybe people are specifically looking for guitar on very specific alternate picking techniques, for example.

So that's what you create. You create the course on alternate picking techniques. This is an example. And it's much more focused, it's much more niche, and it's enough. That's what they were really looking for. And that's the mistake I made starting with film scoring.

You think, "I'm going to teach literally everything about film scoring." And I see lots of people in my niche doing this where it's "We'll teach you how to build up your studio, what samples libraries you need, how to build a template," everything else. And by the time you've gone through all that stuff, even all the setup stuff, you're burned out.

There's not enough real transformational content at any point of that. It's just one massive splurge of information. Whereas it's really niching it down more and more and more and more. Every time I create a course, I get more and more niche.

And every time I've finished creating, I think I did too much not because I want to give people less, but because I know that there's just too much information in there for people to take action on. It means that it just becomes a wash of information rather than, "Okay, first do this, then do this, and then do that. And then you are where you want to be. I've taken you on that transformation."

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, I like that. One thing that we struggle with as online course graders is completion rates. And what you described, I think, really defines a lot of why people don't complete courses is because they are so overwhelmed with all the material. And the way you described it, some of that material might be unnecessary.

Someone who's taking a film scoring course might not need to know how to set up a studio. Maybe they already have a studio, but you won't know that if you didn't go ask those people and talk to them.

Jonny Armandary
Maybe they want the part where you start talking about mixing, but they've got the whole bit where you're talking about building a studio, but basically two separate things.

Jeremy Deighan
Have you ever thought about creating micro courses where you are just picking a very specific topic and just really honing in on that one thing? Like, "I'm just going to teach you this one technique of film scoring instead of the whole kitten caboodle?

Jonny Armandary
Yeah, that's the balance; not doing too little and not doing too much. The micro course idea is something that I have thought quite a lot about, if I was planning on going deep on the marketplace model. I think, in my niche in particular, I think that would be really good, almost like a micro subscription.

I released one new low-price course every month, and you buy every month, or you can subscribe and get a new course every month on a very specific topic. I worry, with that, you'd end up with, and this is one of the things I think a lot of people do struggle with the marketplace model; you end up with that course creation burnout.

You're just churning out content all the time, and a lot goes into making an online course. There are ways of doing it simply. The way that I do it, I over complicate things. I know that, but it's a big thing with scripting and then creating all the graphics and whatever else and then editing and then all the extra stuff like sales pages and trailers and cool graphics and all that kind of stuff. It's a lot that goes into it and doing that on a conveyor belt system is hard.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, I saw someone do something similar very well off of marketplaces like Udemy. I am into Photoshop and taught it for a long time. And there's a guy that I followed Aaron Nace from PHLEARN. And I always reference him because I liked what he did.

He started off simple, but he picked very niche topics. It's like what we were talking about: how to do beauty retouching in Photoshop. So he wasn't teaching you how to photo Photoshop. He was teaching you a very specific skill.

And this was on his own platform. This wasn't on the marketplaces. He was hosting these on his own site. So he created that one. Then he did a couple more, a couple more. Eventually, he had a catalog of courses, maybe 10, or 12, and he was selling them all individually $37, $47, $97.

Then he got to the point where he said, "Well, I have enough content, I'm going to turn this into a membership type thing where you can buy the courses individually or you can save money by getting a subscription and have access to everything," which I think is a great idea. If you're the type of person that likes creating multiple courses, that's one way to go about it.

Start off with a couple, and then when you have a catalog, you can do a membership. But then he took it a step further, and then he started having other people teach courses on that topic because it's a branded company like soundtrack.academy. His company is PHLEARN. So anyone can create a course on that website.

And as long as it's good enough, he can put it under that membership. So I thought it was a really cool way of him taking what you said, and then branching that off into a place where now he's got, I think, it's solely membership. I haven't found the website in a while, but I think the last time I checked, you couldn't even buy individual courses.

You had to get a membership, but you had access to hundreds of courses on Photoshop, and all kinds of different teachers. It's almost like he made his own little mini marketplace.

Jonny Armandary
Yeah, and that's great. I said about course burnout and how there's a lot that goes into it. I think a lot of it just depends on your style of creating and your style of teaching. I'm very much research-driven, and thinking-driven, which is why so much goes into creating a course for me.

I suppose it's very content-heavy, it's very talking-heavy, very presentation-heavy. That's how I've always taught; it's all through presentation. But some people I admire, not in the online space, but in the real world, people who I learned from. People like Brian Morel, for example. He's a musical genius.

I mean, he has perfect pitch and he just transcribes stuff instantaneously. So someone like him, he could easily do a monthly course like that because it's just like, "This week, let's analyze the score from Jurassic Park." And you can do it in no problems, get that content out, and that's a great model.

It depends on how you teach, like you said the Photoshop thing as well. It's like; you know how to use Photoshop. Let's look at this specific tool in Photoshop for this month's training.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, very good. That's a great way of going about it. And I think you're right. I think everyone has different teaching styles and likes to go out a different way. Some people like creating lots of courses, some people like creating one course and focusing solely on that, maybe it's just what meshes well with you.

So let's talk for a quick minute about traffic. What kind of strategies are you using for traffic? Are you blogging, podcasting, YouTubing, Facebook ads? Are you using any kind of organic or paid traffic methods right now?

Jonny Armandary
Another big mistake that I made is trying everything straight away. And I think it's a trap that a lot of people fall into. Again, it's another one of those pieces of advice where I just tell myself, "If only I had listened to everything I was listening to at the time." Because everybody says it; don't go too broad.

So yeah, I'm still working on figuring out exactly where I want my main source of traffic to come from. And the minute, it does trickle in from all over the place. I have articles that I create on the website for a long time. I'm still focusing on very long-form, very deep content. I need to work on making shorter, quicker articles as well, I think, so there's a balance.

But I also have a YouTube channel. Again, when I started, I said, "I'm going to podcast every week." So I was releasing a podcast every week. So, when I first launched, it was a new post every week, a new video every week, and a new podcast every week. And yeah, that was hard, plus trying to create courses on top of that, as well.

So if there was advice I'd have in that space, it is pick one and focus on it. They're all good traffic sources. The thing that I'm personally battling with at the minute is deciding over what I enjoy doing and where I know my audience is.

I know that a lot of film scoring people find their information from YouTube because it's quite nice. That's a great way to learn, particularly when it's like music production tutorials and over-the-shoulder competition kind of stuff.

So, I know a lot of my audience is on YouTube, but I prefer creating, and I'm better, I think, personally at creating written content like articles and blogs. So that's my balance at the minute is working out which direction to really focus on.

Jeremy Deighan
How is the traffic on the blog? Because you've had it up for a couple years. Correct? You've had this business for a couple years. So, a lot of your articles have gone through the sandbox of Google search analysis. How are the articles doing now?

Jonny Armandary
It's interesting. There's stuff that I really expect is going to do really well and it doesn't. And then stuff that I've thrown out and think I'm not sure if this holds up, which has done really well. It's again, the balance of... I'm trying to think of the best things that I've learned from this and how to describe it.

Some content that you create is very good for your authority and your writing style and for your website, but it might not rank very well. Other stuff ranks very well, but it doesn't really bring much business value to you. I have a couple of posts that rank quite well on my site. It's the best digital audio workstation for film scoring, or the best free sample libraries for film scoring.

Those ones are the best articles and they rank quite well. And people do sign up for the mailing list from that as well, but the business value for those articles isn't huge, particularly because I don't do any affiliate marketing or anything.

So those links don't link out to affiliate links or anything like that. It's purely just stuff that I found that I'm sharing. So yeah, that's the tricky balance with stuff that ranks well versus stuff that's good for you.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, it goes back to what we talked about earlier about a general audience versus a more niche audience because you could have the best microphone for film scoring, but some people might read that. But it might not translate well to your course because they're really not interested in getting a course. They just want that microphone.

Jonny Armandary
Exactly. Yeah.

Jeremy Deighan
I was going to say, I've seen this myself before. Sometimes I'll create little niche websites. And I know exactly what you're talking about, as you have different levels of traffic. And it's so weird to see how the articles that you put your heart and soul into don't ever seem to produce as much as the crummy ones where you're like, "I'm just writing this real quick." And those end up taking off. Why is that?

Jonny Armandary
Yeah. I think the thing that I find quite frustrating is when there's a topic that I know I have something to say on and it's something of value. I know that the stuff that's already out there, it's good, but it's not specifically geared towards film scoring, or specifically what I can add to that.

But the people that rank for those keywords are all quite high authority websites, like Classic FM and things like that, who I have no chance of really competing with, at this stage anyway. So I think that's where it's frustrating. I really want to say something on that topic, but I know it's almost not worth trying.

Jeremy Deighan
You gotta keep that one until you get a little higher domain authority. Well, cool, man. So where do you see soundtrack.academy going in the future? If you could have all your dreams come true, what would you like for the business and the brand going forward?

Jonny Armandary
That's a really great question as well. As I said, my direction has changed rapidly and many times over the last couple of years. But going forward, I would love to just like you mentioned about Flynn company, who brings in experts and things like that.

I'd love the academy to go in that way, where I can really start to consolidate knowledge from lots of other experts and bring other experts in to share their knowledge. Almost create a mini masterclass site purely around film composers, different film composers to come in and give mini master classes and many things. That's a way that I would really quite like to see the academy going.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome, man. No, that's cool, man. I hope you have tremendous success in your business and your brand. Like I said, I love the branding of your website. I always thought it was kind of cool. I've read a couple of your articles.

And yeah, man, it's great to just see you create these courses and help these people out. And I just hope you have tremendous success in the future. If people wanted to find out more about you and your business, where would be the best place to do that?

Jonny Armandary
Just at soundtrack.academy

Jeremy Deighan
Cool. Nice and simple. I like it. Jonny, thanks for coming on the podcast today. And it's a pleasure having you here.

Jonny Armandary
Thanks so much for having me, Jeremy.