How my business went from ☠️ to 🚀
Today, I am going to give you an inside look at the changes I made to take my online course sales from ☠️ to 🚀. Side note - I’ve sold $900 worth of courses in the past two days.
I’ve been an educator at heart for decades.
My first “teaching” role was acting as head instructor at a martial arts gym.
I’ve been offered a teaching role in the Entrepreneurship school at my alma mater, the University of Tennessee.
As a business owner and Senior Executive, I spend a lot of time teaching my team members the things I’ve learned during my 25+ years scaling businesses.
I write this blog to teach readers like you the things I’ve learned in those 25+ years.
Another way I teach is through my online courses.
When I first started selling those online courses, my business was dead ☠️.
There was months of zero revenue and very few people even visiting my landing pages. There were years of making less than $1,000.
Then, one day, my course sales took off 🚀.
I’m going to tell you how I did it.
Before we get into the specifics, I want to be clear.
I’m not claiming to be an “online guru.”
You won’t find me in an Instagram ad promoting how to quite your day job through online sales.
But, my online course sales have made me north of $40,000. I suspect that number is big enough to get your attention.
If so, and you have considered building your own online course, keep reading, because I’m going to give you the inside scoop on how I did it.
The TLDR is:
- I picked a course topic that was about making money. Something a lot of people need/want to do.
- I picked a name that implied the ability for a quick, easy start - i.e. “Out of the Box.”
- I picked a hosting platform that wasn’t so costly.
- I promoted the course through existing channels, but focused on channels where I was getting the most eyeballs and conversions, i.e. I made data-driven decisions.
- I focus on a pricing structure that was affordable to mass markets and lower than my competitors, yet still got me a strong return.
For more details read on.
Better course topic
My first courses were focused on sharing my startup experience. They taught people how to obtain capital from startup investors.
While lots of people are interested in entrepreneurship, not everyone is looking to fundraise. So, my target market was limited.
One day I was doing some research about the types of courses people are attracted to and I noticed a theme. People were drawn towards two main topics - health and wealth.
Meaning, people wanted to either get in better shape, “Get Ripped Abs in 90 days”, or they wanted to know how to make money, “Make $10k a month as a Freelancer.”
A few years back I did a project for Microsoft where they were focused on developing products for freelancers. Back then my research uncovered statistics that claimed by 2025 70% of people would have a side hustle. That made sense to me since I have side hustled for a decade.
So, it was no surprise to me that people were looking for businesses to start, part-time.
That was when I realized I should build a course around one of my side hustles - using my banking experience to broker commercial loans.
Today, that course outperforms all of my startup courses combined, by a 5x margin.
Better naming
I was originally going to call the commercial loan brokering course, “How to Be a Commercial Loan Broker.” But, that felt stale. Then I remember that I had once come across a business called RIA in a Box, which helps people start Registered Investment Advisory businesses.
That’s how Commercial Loan Broker in a Box was born.
Better hosting platform
When I first started producing online courses I decided to host them on Udemy.
The benefit to Udemy was that they had built in distribution. There was already an audience on the platform that was looking for educational content. But, the tradeoff was that my courses got steeply discounted.
A few years ago I found Gumroad. You can host any type of online content on their platform and they only take a percentage for each sale. So, for that same $49 course on Udemy, a sale on Gumroad might net me $45.
All of my books, courses, services, and templates are now on Gumroad and I’m slowing taking them off of Udemy.
By moving to Gumroad I was giving up some of the distribution effects that Udemy can offer. Still, Gumroad will promote your products and they have made some sales for me by recommending my products to their website visitors.
For context, here’s a comparison between the two platforms.
Time on platform: Udemy = around 10 years; Gumroad = around 3 years
Number of sales: Udemy = around 13,859; Gumroad = 632
Earnings per platform: Udemy = $15,295.98; Gumroad = $24330.60
Avg. $ per student= Udemy = $1.10; Gumroad = $38.50
So, on Gumroad, I make a 35x larger return.
Better promotion
Moving to Gumroad meant I needed to be better at driving leads and converting those leads into sales.
I didn’t want to compete in the online ad space because that can get expensive.
I have a distribution of around 14,000 people across my online presence.
My courses started to soar when I got serious about reviewing my previous sales analytics. It looked like sales were coming from two sources - my email list and YouTube.
So, I decided to double down on YouTube and started creating content around my top selling course - Commercial Loan Broker in a Box.
I started recording videos talking about being a commercial loan broker. Today, two of my five most popular videos are “How to Make Money as a Commercial Loan Broker”, with 13k views, and “A Day in the Life of a Commercial Loan Broker”, with 12k views. In the description for those videos I link to the course.
This one step, creating targeted content on YouTube, is the biggest reason for the growth in sales.
Better pricing
I’ve tinkered with pricing for the course for a while. At first, I had the base course priced at a premium level, $497, but still far below what my competitors charge, which is typically $2,000-$20,000.
Over time, I have experimented with different price points. When the course is priced over the $300 mark, I tend to see far fewer sales. So, I took my daughter’s advice. Start the course at a lower cost and increase it, gradually, over time until the amount of sales is lower than I’d want.
Where I landed was on a pricing structure that made the decision to buy the course a no-brainer (the Alex Hormozi method).
Today, the base course is $47. To get the accompanying templates its $147, and to get all of that plus an hour of coaching from me is $347.
I like those price points because 1) it makes the course affordable for just about anyone; 2) people can quickly earn a strong ROI on their investment. One small business loan ($30,000) easily pays for the course.
To this day, I still have people telling me to charge more.
Better course design
My earlier courses only included video lessons. But, when I was building out Commercial Loan Broker in a Box, I decided to include some extras. After all, people love when they feel like they are getting a lot of value for their money.
So, I built out a bunch of free templates that people could leverage to get started in their business quickly. Including:
- a loan broker contract
- email templates for outreach to 1) customers; 2) referral sources; 3) lenders
- an email sequence brokers can use on their lead gathering landing page
One of the biggest challenges people have is feeling like they can get started quickly in a new venture. These templates enable them to do that and I believe are one of the main reasons the course sells so well.
I did stop offering one perk. I had originally offered a Slack group where people could network and ask each other for advice. That became a lot to manage, so I have paused that part of the offering, for now.
Wrapping up
If you have ever considered selling your own online course, I recommend it, as long as you have realistic expectations.
It took me a lot of trial and error to get my course sales to the point they are at. Again, I’m not getting rich, but the $1,300 I’ve made in the past month is the easiest money I make. Granted it took some effort to get the course created.
Still, I love getting the email notification of another sale. Plus, I love it when one of my students tells me they closed a loan and made some money.
If you have any questions about course creation, shoot them to jonathan@jonathanmillspatrick.com and I’ll try to help you out.
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