What I Learned Building an Online Course That Sold out in 10 Days

Creating an online course that sells out isn’t based on luck.

What many people don’t know is I tried to launch online courses twice before and failed, badly. Like a dumb dog I tried again for the third time.

Each time I sold a course the process was radically different. Doing the same thing over and over, and getting the exact same results, and being surprised, is the definition of stupidity.

This time I launched an online course differently. It sold out in 10 days and is now closed. It taught me that anybody can become a teacher, even you. Learning taught by real people is in high-demand, especially with the demise of traditional universities.

Here’s what you can learn from my experimentation with online courses.

Community is more important than content

Most online courses are boring.

What I love most about online learning is the human interaction. With my course I decided to lead with a community feature rather than the course itself. Why?

The content is pointless if you don’t apply it and you can’t ask questions. By attaching a community to a course you introduce group learning and a place for people to gain feedback. You also help people build relationships so the process of learning and acquiring the skill you’re teaching isn’t so lonely. Loneliness can kill your creativity.

In the niche of writing there are lots of communities. The problem? They’re mostly toxic. They’re full of people wanting to take shortcuts that don’t exist. This leads to lots of blaming and complaining — about everything. It’s hard to be creative when you’re full of negativity you acquired from an online community. I chose to buck the trend.

Curation is a powerful tool. So secretly behind the scenes I was careful about who I let into the course and made sure everybody understood the point of the community. The message: build each other up.

You will plant a seed and watch it turn into a bamboo forest

This one makes me incredibly emotional. After the first few days there was just me and Todd in the writer’s community. I woke up on day three and the group was full of students.

The students were talking with each other, introducing themselves, sharing stories and already learning from each other. I realized that I’d planted a small seed in the form of an online course and it had grown into a bamboo forest overnight. Many of the students in the course will go on to become writers who change the world in some small way.

When you take a tiny action that creates a community, who transcends you and your work, it will overwhelm you with emotion. You’ll realize you too can make a difference.

Launch a course without any content

Potential students shared with me their problems, hopes, dreams, and goals which I could layer into the creation of the course. In a way, it allowed me to crowdsource the content for my course rather than trying to decide all by myself what students would find valuable.

Don’t do a webinar

The typical way to sell a course for more than $100 is to do a free webinar. I decided not to do any webinar. For me, a webinar is clearly going to be a sales pitch. There’s nothing wrong with selling except it can be exhausting to certain segments of an audience.

Instead, I chose to launch a free 3-day email course. The difference was I gave away a lot of good stuff for free over the three days rather than saving up all the good stuff for the paid course that cost $500 USD.

People found the free course valuable so this validated that I would be a worthwhile teacher to learn from. Selling to the people who did the free email course was the highest-selling channel. Why? It was genuine content, no fluff, no false promises and no B.S.

People who buy your eBook will buy your course

The other channel that helped attract students to my course was my eBook. People who spent $20 on my eBook were all too happy to buy my course.

Going from an eBook to an online course is a natural progression for someone wanting to learn a skill from you.

Two teachers for the price of one

My course is different. I decided to do the course in collaboration with Todd Brison. Why? Because two teachers for the price of one is better value for the student.

And because I needed someone to help me push through the resistance. What I found by working with Todd is that we bounced off each other’s energy. Todd forced me to go deep on many different topics. He acted as a co-teacher and shared his own experiences. The skills he had were the opposite of mine so we complemented each other nicely.

If I’d done the course by myself then the content would have been dry, dull and uninspiring. What worked about our co-teaching relationship were these things:

• Trust
• Respect
• Skin in the game
• A willingness to teach
• A high quality standard
• The ability to inspire

Survey your audience to find out what they want

Before launching a course it pays to know what your audience wants.

Todd insisted we survey the audience twice to get right down into where they were at, what they wanted and what matters to them. We used the answers from these surveys on the sales page and included them in the final course.

Don’t guess what people want. Ask them.

Choose decent tech

Running an online course requires you to invest in a few tools. You can turn your home office into a classroom. Here are the tools I chose:

• Teachable as the eLearning platform. I chose this product because it was dead simple to use and I knew other teachers using it who I could ask questions to if anything went wrong. It was one hell of process to look at all the platforms and make a decision. There were so many features to compare.

• ConvertKit for sending emails. To sell an online course you will need to email people. The ideal software has the ability to segment and preconfigure email sequences. After Mailchimp banned me for life for no reason, I moved across to Convertkit. It turned out to be a blessing.

• PayPal for collecting money. It’s expensive and dinosaur tech, but it works. Lots of people know how to use PayPal and there are many different payment methods they accept. My course is sold in USD so I had to convert my PayPal account into a business one to have the money land in my account in USD, not AUD; otherwise the banker in me would go nuts. The bad part about this option is that PayPal holds onto the course money for 30 days before they pay you. But my girlfriend did the research and found that it was still cheaper than using a payment gateway. Once the money cleared the plan was to send the funds for Todd’s cut via PayPal in USD once a month to minimize fees.

• Transferwise for paying subscriptions. All this software to run an online course adds up. My Visa debit card is in Australian dollars but all the subscriptions for software were in USD. The only way to avoid the 5%+ conversion fee was to get a USD debit card. I chose the Transferwise debit card because I could load it up with AUD and have the funds converted in real-time as they were needed for around 0.4%. The conversion fee was transparent and highly competitive. There was even a calculator showing me what the transaction would cost with their competitors. Paying in the correct currency saves you a lot of money.

• Logitech Brio Webcam for recording video. When Todd and I had our first call to plan the course, I looked like a serial killer hiding in the dark. The face of a teacher is important for students to see and it makes your course look professional. The iMac and Macbook have terrible webcams so a Brio can help solve the problem and make you look like a pro.

• Amazon lighting kit. Lighting is the secret to recording any video. Without proper lighting you may as well forget about doing video. It doesn’t cost much to brighten up your videos. I bought two 10-watt Neewer lights from Amazon for $60. It did the trick.

• Loom for recording your screen. Video recording software can get complicated. Open a software tool like Final Cut Pro and prepare to be overwhelmed like the Photoshop days all over again. Loom is a simple way to record your screen and it costs $10 per month.

Payment plans vs paid in full

There is the option to have people pay in full or in installments when you sell an online course. I quickly learned from other teachers I knew that payment plans are a bad idea.

Many people never pay their debt, so you get the first payment and nothing else. I decided to offer a payment plan but charge more so it would offset the costs of the people who never paid all their money.

Differentiate your course

The number one question I got when selling the course was “why should I pick your course over another?”

It turns out that effort and hard work are a great way to separate yourself from the pack. All I had to do was say “6 years writing, 100M+ views, featured in many major publications, published 1000s of blog posts.”

No cheap sales tricks were needed. When you’ve learned a skill and practiced it in public for long enough, you separate yourself from the other online courses in your niche.

Always be kind to everybody you meet

I had several people who reached out to me and simply couldn’t afford the course. Rather than be an asshole, I sent a few of them long replies to help them on their journey and gave away a few books to say thank you.

You can always be kind and treat people ridiculously well.

Your future course sales may even come from these people who didn’t do your first course. Or these same people may refer others to your course because you showed them love, not arrogance.

Back yourself. Believe in your product.

There were many mornings I woke up and felt like an imposter. I felt like “who am I to offer a course?” The key with selling an online course is to back yourself. You are good enough and anybody can teach a skill they have mastered without having superpowers.

If you believe in yourself then so will the students who sign up for your course.

Segment your audience

Online courses are sold via a few channels:

Your email list

Email lists you borrow (and pay an affiliate commission for)

Others in your niche who don’t have the time to create a course

Your free content that has a call to action in it

The reason the course performed well is because Todd segmented the audience. The philosophy was simple: those who engaged with the email sequence or free course heard more about the course, and those who didn’t heard nothing.

It pays to respect email subscribers.

Segment your audience so you can avoid spamming people who don’t want to buy your online course or who don’t know you well enough yet.

Email sequences are powerful

Email sequences nurture a person through your content.

ConvertKit makes email sequences easy for tech dummies like me. It’s the idea of “if this happens, do this.”

You can automate what emails go to whom based on what the email subscriber does. This is a feature you must have to sell an online course and many platforms make it complex, unnecessarily. Choose one that doesn’t and makes the process visual.

Learn from other teachers

I had no idea about online courses. That’s why I did Dave Schools writing course and asked Tom Kuegler who had successfully launched four courses.

There’s no point starting from scratch when you don’t have to. Take the best bits of other online courses and riff on them to create your own.

There will be lots of questions. Answer each one personally.

The higher the cost of the course the more questions people will have.

Auto-pilot courses are a lie.

A lot of people will want to ask questions before they spend money on a course. Let them. I made this process even easier. I emailed those from my list who were interested in the course and told them to ask me questions.

Then I replied as best as I could and followed up. The key approach was to think to myself “what would I want to know if I was in their shoes?” Even better, “what would I be afraid of if I was them?”

Leading with vulnerability and empathizing with potential students is an important part of the process.

Become a teacher and money will become secondary.

Many of my friends thought successfully selling an online course was all about the money. The process has taught me that transitioning from a writer to a teacher feels much better than any payday.

Money all looks the same when it hits your bank account.

The real highlight of creating an online course is you get to leave a legacy. You get to inspire people to maximize their potential, breakthrough fear, believe in themselves, and do something they never thought was possible.

Choose fulfillment over money. The feeling lasts longer.

What I’d do differently

• The sales page of the course had one paragraph which mentioned the global economy. It had a touch too much fear.

• The landing page for my call to action was terrible. It’s five years old and could convert much better than it did. It pays to spend time on your landing page.

• I wish I’d included a scholarship feature. There are people who have been harmed badly by the economy and it would have been nice to surprise a few of them with free entrance to the course. What I’ve learned is that it pays to invest in the underdogs. People that may have been struck down or are doing it tough will inspire you with their work ethic and sense of hope.

Final Thought

Anybody can create an online course. The days of paying $100,000+ for a university education that doesn’t lead to any paid work is changing.

Humanity loves learning from home, and online courses are a great way to take what you’ve learned, share it, and earn a living from it. If a skinny dude from Australia who lives in a student apartment and drives an old Honda Civic can do it, then I’m sure you can too.

Search your life for lessons and then turn them into an online course so you can stress less, earn a living, transform into a teacher, and teach the next generation of people in your niche.

Watch people take what you teach, transcend your existence, and help you create a legacy for your life’s work through an online course.

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Disclaimer

The original version of this story was published on another platform.

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