Why Most People Shouldn't Sell Online Courses
I have a lot of people come to me with hopes and aspirations of making money with online courses.
But there’s a sick reality they’ve been sold by the gurus.
That anyone can do it.
What the gurus don’t tell you is what the success of an info product is actually based on, and then the TRUE costs of the “model” it takes to sell online courses.
In this article we will talk about the mechanisms of success and the different models for selling stuff online.
I also include links to a few of my own resources and a bunch of other resources that have helped me tremendously.
What Success is Based On
The first thing that success is based on is the offer itself.
Offers are kind of a complex topic to understand but I’ll give some simple example here:
Free - Who can turn down free?
Buy one, get one free
Buy one, get one free PLUS we send a pair of shoes to someone in a 3rd world country
Solve your problem 2x as fast
Getting an idea? The offer isn’t what the product is. It’s what and how the thing helps someone actually do.
(If you want to learn how to make great offers, Todd Brown’s E5 Method helped me a ton as well as Frank Kern’s course bundle here. They’re both super cheap and excellent material.)
If you don’t have a good offer, great copy won’t fix it. You can’t put lipstick on a cockroach.
The second thing success is based on is great copy.
You can hire a talented copywriter, but it costs many thousands of dollars.
And then after you hire them, you need to drive traffic.
Driving traffic through paid ads usually means and investment in someone who can run ads and run them well as well as the cost you actually put into ads (“ad spend”).
So you start driving traffic. Now you’ve got to hope that the particular advertising angle you took with your product lands. If it doesn’t land… What now?
You’re betting thousands of $$$ on an unproven idea when you go at this without process.
The True Costs
When you’re selling stuff online, you’re dealing with one of two models.
Model 1 - The “Cost per Lead” model. (CPL)
Model 2 - The “Cost per Acquisition” model. (CPA)
Online courses typically fall into the CPL model.
eCom and sales pages are usually in the CPA model.
Price typically dictates the kind of funnel you will use and most people selling online courses will choose a webinar/VSL to do so.
The typical webinar lead costs $5. In the business space, you usually pay $7 - $11.
Over all of the launches I’ve done, I’ve calculated something I call “Total Launch Conversion Rate” (TLC) which looks at the number of leads you get versus the number of buyers.
The range I’ve seen for that number is 0.4% to 1.2% for webinar funnels.
(To be clear - This is NOT the conversion from WEBINAR to BUYER. It’s from LEAD to BUYER.)
Now that you know those two numbers, you can do some math…
Either way - I’ve gone ahead and done it for you.
Click to expand. Debunking “If I make my product cheaper, more people will buy.” A low price does not make the offer good. A good offer makes the offer good.
A lot of people will lower their product price thinking that “if I make the price lower, more people will buy.”
There is some truth to that, but there are also practical matters of math at play.
If your CPL stays the same, you are taking a gamble that your conversion rate will increase on your webinar (sales presentation).
A lot of people LOSE with webinars because they don’t understand the simple math going into it.
Renowned Copywriter Justin Goff recommends you have $15,000 to invest on just ads when launching your first offer.
Other Launch Strategies
What if I use a Sales Page?
I don’t recommend most beginners use sales pages because they are predicated entirely on having GREAT copy and a GREAT offer. Prove the offer and copy with your list first, then look at doing a sales page.
When selling (small) offers to my list, I frequently link directly to the checkout page with just a few bullet points.
Further, most sales pages do not require an email to access meaning if you invest in paid traffic and your sales page doesn’t convert, you also haven’t captured a single email that you can remarket to.
“What if I require an email to view my sales page?”
You can do this, but it’s really not standard. Investing the time to learn how to write decent email copy and monetize your list will outlast the value of you investing in someone to write a sales page for you so you can try and get some quick cash from a promotion you’re likely to fail with if it’s your first go.
Lifetime value of email subscriber > single sale
“What if I launch through affiliates?”
Yes, you can totally launch through affiliates!
Just be ready to provide them with copy to lead into your funnel. Make it as EASY as possible for them.
If you’re a newbie coming into the game, be prepared to offer a large percentage of your sale to buy your way in the door.
The other way to do it is to buy into affiliate networking groups. However a frequent prerequisite to joining these groups is having an email list in the first place. Many people don’t just send affiliate emails, rather, they do trades. “I’ll mail for you if you mail for me” type deal.
I did an intro call with East and 5th’s Traffic Tribe and was quite impressed. It’s a paid group.
Bottom line: Having a list = MASSIVE leverage in the internet marketing space
Can you Guarantee Success?
Just because you have a good story or great results doesn’t mean it will work.
The market (anybody you are selling to) is ruthless. They vote with their wallet. They only care about themselves. They don’t care about you. You always need to write to them.
And having a huge audience won’t save you.
I heard a story of someone selling at Grant Cardone’s 10X Conference who made zero sales. (Apologies, I can’t go dig for the story right now.)
Again, if the offer sucks, great copy or a large audience won’t fix it.
You have to have a good copy and audience research process.
My Recommended Process:
Build an email list (better than a social media following)
Learn copywriting (I recommend you start here)
Survey your list and ask them what they want (Please don’t segment the f out of your list. Not worth it if you have a small list.)
Make that thing
Launch your product to your list
Review launch stats and dial in copy and offer more
Building an email list by investing $300 per month ($5/day) on ads is something you should work on getting running as soon as possible. Step 1 of my recommended process includes ALL of the tools to teach you this. It’s exactly what I do for a lot of my clients.
If you can’t do that, you need to continue increasing the profitability of your core business first.
Dreaming and Winning
This article is by no means meant to discourage you from having a go at this.
If you can get it working, internet money is some of the best money you’ll ever have in your entire life.
Just know that it’s a long road. Keep first things first. Plan your work and work your plan.
It’s possible. I’ve done it for my clients - but it only works when you have all of the right things in place.
>>> $30,000 Launch Case Study <<<
And if you want some help, feel free to reach out to me here.