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An Excel TikToker manifested her way to making six figures a day

Author: Jugurtha

Score: 63

Comments: 38

Date: 2021-12-02 09:35:17

Web Link

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janesvilleseo wrote at 2021-12-02 13:17:28:

The HN crowd not her target audience. We all have been in offices where people are not able to use what most of us would consider basic functions of Excel.

I know even in my group once I learned vloolup I was considered the excel wizard. What I knew was that I was far from an actual Wizard. There is so much more.

Either way there are millions of people that her courses are ideal for. Good for her.

ren_engineer wrote at 2021-12-02 14:57:37:

the thing that might be more interesting for HN users is that she basically has no presence on Twitter or Facebook. Instagram and TikTok seem to be king for monetizing anything. Twitter and Facebook have horrible organic reach and make it hard to grow without paying.

TikTok is especially good because they'll promote your video based on quality and account size really isn't a factor, that's how this person went from 0 to 1,000,000 followers in a year. Something to keep in mind for your own business

wheelinsupial wrote at 2021-12-02 16:27:57:

I’m not sure how monetization is being used here, but the intro to the interview says that Instagram and TikTok are used for advertisement.

In the podcast (I think the transcript is taken from there) it’s mentioned that most (95%) of the money is generated from course sales that happen on the thinkific website:

https://miss-excel.thinkific.com/collections

Jugurtha wrote at 2021-12-02 14:15:15:

"You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

illwrks wrote at 2021-12-02 13:31:58:

Pivot tables are the real tools of an excel wizard ;)

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote at 2021-12-02 13:51:09:

Makes me kind of sad that OLAP cubes are going out of style. Pivot tables are incredibly powerful tools that a layman can use without much difficulty. One of my previous jobs made it pretty easy to get a cube into Excel pivot tables and the amount of statistical analysis that could be done over a few minutes of dragging things around in the pivot table was just staggering.

donny2018 wrote at 2021-12-02 14:13:07:

“An Excel TikToker” and “Microsoft Excel influencer”. These are the most unexpected sentences I’ve read in a long time.

tfehring wrote at 2021-12-02 23:03:13:

If you haven't worked on a business team, it's hard to fully describe the utility or importance of Excel. I think the best analogy for programmers is, imagine Vim if all the commands were easily discoverable through a GUI, and if everybody on your team and all the teams you work with also used it.

Approximately any third-year (audit|financial|supply chain|actuarial) analyst will be able to fly around a workbook too quickly for an observer to follow along, and a lot of them will have custom commands and utilities set up. And those power users are using exactly the same tool as the person who point-and-clicks on every cell and button, so they can look over their shoulder and say, "You can just jump to the upstream cell with Ctrl+[" or "Have you tried using INDEX/MATCH for that?"

I haven't touched a Windows machine for two years or been in an Excel-first role for five, but the muscle memory for the Windows-specific keystroke sequences for all the common commands is still there.

pindogu wrote at 2021-12-02 10:46:30:

So shes selling over 330 courses a day, which cost around 300 dollars on average? Those are absolutely amazing numbers. I imagine its hard to find that many people that are willing to pay this much?

ren_engineer wrote at 2021-12-02 14:52:59:

not sure about the quality of the course but in theory if it saves you a few hours over the rest of your career or lets you get a better job it was a good investment. I've paid for programming related courses that paid for themselves 100X in terms of higher income and just being more productive

plus I'd imagine the target audience gets an annual education budget they have to spend anyway

fetzu wrote at 2021-12-02 13:01:59:

The interview is quite interesting, and she definitely comes off as a very smart and articulate person.

Then, out of curiosity, I decided to click on that TikTok link on her website. I really am baffled how somebody can make 6 figures a day by promoting their courses via lip-synced 10 seconds video pointing out the most obvious “tricks” that exist. What is the appeal of having someone lip-sync and dance over a tutorial? Am I really so out of touch with the general public?

cosmojg wrote at 2021-12-02 13:43:02:

> Am I really so out of touch with the general public?

Well, for starters, you did just post a comment on "Hacker News."

fetzu wrote at 2021-12-02 16:17:35:

I get the appeal of making that joke; but that proves what? Because I am posting here can I also not get my other news from Facebook memes or something?

eslav wrote at 2021-12-02 15:34:47:

Oof

kesselvon wrote at 2021-12-02 15:40:40:

Yes. The vast majority of the population has no idea how excel works, or have ever had any kind of training in it. I've personally worked with people that would do the formulas by a hand calculator and type the results into the cell.

She makes her classes very accessible and the videos just make it easy to engage with; Excel courses usually don't try to do this.

fetzu wrote at 2021-12-02 16:22:26:

It’s not the usefulness of having Excel tutorials I am questioning, but their form.

Is there really an appeal to having your tutorial (or at least its ad) being someone dancing and lip-syncing over totally unrelated music with the tips being overlaid as text boxes? Is this the “final form” of the tutorial format? I personally don’t find this “accessible” at all, it’s un-engaging/distracting at best and cringe inducing at worst; and I am baffled as to how someone would find this better than a well written book/guide or even a well made screencast type tutorial.

ttymck wrote at 2021-12-03 07:46:07:

The answer, still, is yes. But that was clear, based on the revenue numbers that prompted your question.

It might be more productive to ask "how" you (and I) became so "out of touch" (relatively), and if it's such a bad thing.

fetzu wrote at 2021-12-03 14:07:13:

You are absolutely correct, and I was trying to imply the “how” in my post. I’m in my thirties, grew up on computers and “social media” (from forums/IRC to Facebook et al.) and never considered myself to be _that_ out of touch. If I had to guess the target audience for these kind of “lessons”, I’d say that they are people in the 25-35 range… not teens. I would have never thought that a 25-35 year old viewer would find any appeal in that kind of format, and that having those TikTok clips as promotional material would work on them.

Foremost, this makes me wonder how education is going to be like in 20+ years when current schoolchildren become teachers and teachers’ teachers. Are all students going to be “home schooled” (online) in periods of 30 seconds to 2 minutes by some teacher lip syncing and dancing to the latest pop hit?

cudima wrote at 2021-12-02 17:03:31:

I agree with you. It’s hard to imagine that this is good for learning. If you look at the course preview video it’s not as bad, still very gimmicky and ‘engaging’ though. Maybe this has to do with age - people who grew up with social media might perceive this differently.

illwrks wrote at 2021-12-02 15:32:05:

The design and marketing angle is fantastic:

https://www.instagram.com/miss.excel/

Very clearly targeting young aspirational women.

kirykl wrote at 2021-12-02 14:32:38:

Are you making six figures every day?

No, not every day.

ivanche wrote at 2021-12-02 11:08:50:

I am amazed that there are so many people willing to pay $297 for one course and $997 for a bundle!

mckirk wrote at 2021-12-02 11:20:18:

I suspect Excel et al. are the absolutely perfect topic to target people at the intersection of 'affluent' and 'overwhelmed'.

hoseja wrote at 2021-12-02 12:04:49:

What other ways could there be to fleece middle managers...

OldHand2018 wrote at 2021-12-02 15:23:08:

If I understand the article correctly, these are one-time charges for lifetime access to the videos she produces.

I'm obviously not the target market, but I really appreciate people that don't gate repeated access to content with monthly subscriptions.

kesselvon wrote at 2021-12-02 16:10:52:

There are a lot of places that offer an education budget of a few hundred dollars. This kind of thing would fit perfectly into that.

tootahe45 wrote at 2021-12-02 13:34:25:

This is why big corps are keen to 'solve' the pay gap. It's a secret (until you get married) that when women get money they spend it very quickly on questionable choices. And my guess is most of her followers are women.

mgrandl wrote at 2021-12-02 13:37:08:

This is the most sexist shit I had to read in ages…

bush-bby wrote at 2021-12-02 14:17:05:

Hahaha right! Well he’s right about one thing, that’s definitely a “secret”

PickledHotdog wrote at 2021-12-02 14:14:36:

I didn't realize HN existed in the 50s

nicbou wrote at 2021-12-02 12:55:34:

That's really good. I like that she's talking about all the hard work she has done, but doesn't hide her own surprise. She struck gold, but was also exactly the right kind of person to exploit that.

mdrzn wrote at 2021-12-02 13:13:07:

I think I randomly saw some of her video on IG Reels, and they are interesting (even tho they cover the basics of excel).

Great for her!

moneywoes wrote at 2021-12-02 14:01:29:

I imagine the TikTok market must be the perfect demographic

fm2606 wrote at 2021-12-02 15:13:52:

What's the marketing platform for 51 y/o with a wife, 2 kids and 3 dogs?

BizarroLand wrote at 2021-12-02 19:00:36:

Reddit, probably.

thunkshift1 wrote at 2021-12-02 18:39:04:

Does it help if you are good looking?

Decker87 wrote at 2021-12-03 00:24:07:

In general that helps with everything.

diveanon wrote at 2021-12-02 20:03:31:

Feel bad for the people buying these courses without realizing that people like us are working every day to optimize away their jobs.

dirtyid wrote at 2021-12-02 12:21:49:

Incredible.