How I Earned $269,761 from my Online Courses in 18 months
Find out what's worked, as well as what didn't.
That novel, Entrepreneurial You, has just been released from Harvard Business Review Press. The book outlines exactly my experiences and highlights how regular professionals can apply those same principles to create fresh revenue streams for themselves.
In my case, as a direct result from implementing the lessons I've discovered while reading in the text, I brought more than $270,000 in extra revenue over the last 18 months. I also created three online courses (such like this one about Rapid Content Creation) and organizing multiple live and paid activities for participants of the course.
The toughest part, of course it's always trying to figure out how to get started. Below, you'll find an adaption of Entrepreneurial You that outlines the first steps I took to launch.
First, Survey Your Audience
To create Entrepreneurial You In the book, I interviewedRyan Levesque, who manages high-level mastermind groups. He gained notoriety through the development of his "Ask" methodology, which advocates surveying your clients before attempting to offer them something. That's exactly my approach.
In December 2015, I sent an email out to my subscribers. The survey began with the question that Levesque believes is the most critical most important question: "What's your single biggest current professional issue?" That allows respondents to reply in the way they'd like, unbiased by your subsequent line of questioning.
There are many assumptions about their struggles, but this initial query allows you to determine which messages and services will be the most salient for their needs. Then, I asked a couple of fundamental questions about demographics (age, gender, etc.) and asked them to rate which topics I had written about popular with them.
percentage points greater than other subject. This is interesting, however, Levesque warns, not sufficient.
What you're seeking isn't just general sentiment You're trying to find the topics that you have the most passionate supporters. One way to determine that interest, says the author, is to quantify the duration of their answers The longer they answer, the more invested they are with the subject. Indeed, if you're asking about their most pressing problem, it's natural to assume that someone who responds simply "hiring" or "burnout" is not as invested than the person who takes time to compose a deep and thoughtful answer.
It took me a few weeks to go through and catalog the free-form answers and the results were valuable. It was clear that there could there was enough interest to warrant a course on becoming an acknowledged expert. However, I wasn't ready to launch an actual pilot. In the meantime I contacted fifty people who had indicated that, based on another of Levesque's suggestions to ask if they'd be interested to speak with me further.
I wrote a message to them to ask them to look at a one-page description of a class I was thinking of offering and tell me what their thoughts were about it?
I asked them whether they'd be interested in a course on how to establish themselves as an expert, what information should be the most crucial for the course, and what they liked most as well as least about the descriptions of the course that I had shared.
I also asked if anyone would consider enrolling in the class in the event that it costs $500, as well as the reasons why they wouldn't. 15 people replied, and five agreed. As the entrepreneur Bryan Harris shared in a podcast interview with Pat Flynn, if you have the ability to convince 10 percent of the people you polled to purchase your product this is a good evidence that there's enough demand for your product. I finally felt confident enough to go ahead with my first pilot.
Next, Offer a Pilot
Nearly five months after surveying my followers and sending out an email with the same subject, but this time entitled, "A Chance to Work With Me--Special Pilot Offering." In the body of the message I had explained the details: I was opening up forty slots in a training course for becoming an acknowledged expert. The course will comprise six webinars that would be live over a five-week period.
The topics would range from "Finding Your breakthrough idea" up to "Building an Effective Network." For sharing frequent feedback about the program (and maybe a review following the course if they liked the course), participants would get more personal access to me and would pay a significantly lower rate in the amount of $500, as opposed to $2,000 for the course. will cost once it is began officially.
(You are able to download a no-cost copy of the exact email I used to market my online pilot course here. )
In the moment before you hit "send," you can never be sure how your message will be received. Course sold out in 45 minutes.
After spending hundreds of dollars in the past on ideas that I didn't thoroughly test, I had finally figured out how to identify the needs of my customers. In less than an hour, I earned $33,500.
That was only the start the online course development has subsequently become a major part of my business model.
Dorie Clark works as a marketing strategist , professional speaker and consultant who is a professor in Duke's Fuqua School of Business. She is the writer of Entrepreneurial You Reinventing You and Stand out. Get her book for free. Entrepreneurial You self-assessment.