Please Don’t Just Create a Course

Episode 14 of the Self-Made Mamas Podcast

Today I want to talk to you about something that I constantly see being marketed to brand new online business owners or those who want to become entrepreneurs—this idea that you can pop out of nowhere, build an online course, and make a substantial income from selling it. Now, I am the last person in the world to say courses are a bad idea. I actually love them as a revenue generator, but I think the marketing of courses as a business is hugely misleading. Today I want to address that and share with you my reasoning and what I believe is a better path to sustainable success.

 

 

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If you are running or launching a client-based business and want to sell out your services and create profitable digital products, then listen close. The doors to my flagship program, aka my third baby, The Self-Made Mama Society are opening soon and I want you to get on the VIP Waitlist so you don’t miss out. The Society is the only program of its kind on the market—designed specifically to be accessible, hands-on, and results-oriented. I know there is no one-size-fits-all magic pill in online business, and that’s why The Society is a combination of cutting-edge curriculum, weekly group coaching, hands-on FB group support, and one-on-one sessions with me. If you want the best community, the most transparent and genuine support, and direct access to real expertise and action-focused coaching, head to theselfmademama.com/society to get on the list and get access to an exclusive VIP bonus when the doors open.

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I think I may ruffle some feathers today. Hopefully not too much, but I really feel we need to talk about this so just stick with me and I promise you’ll understand where I’m coming from by the end of it.

 

Every single day of my life I am targeted by ads (many of which I know you also see because our digital behaviour is similar) telling me to buy a course platform like Kajabi or Thinkific or telling me to sign up for someone’s webinar or product so that I can learn how to create an online course and make hundreds of thousands of dollars just like the beautiful course creators featured in the ad.

 

Every single day on Instagram, I see the same products being marketed—create a digital course, stop serving clients and start selling courses, that kind of thing. That’s cool, I love courses. E-learning is a multi-billion dollar industry and growing. Online courses are not going anywhere, and neither are other information products. However, what I never see disclosed upfront is the reality of the situation, which is this: 

 

You can’t just create a course.

 

Well, you can. Anyone can make a course, but it doesn’t do you much good if your course is collecting dust on an expensive course platform and not actually selling, which is exactly what will happen if you just launch one out of nowhere.

 

Here’s the thing…to successfully sell an online course, you need one or all of the following:

1. 1. An aligned audience who is primed to buy your product; and/or
   2. A substantial ads budget; and/or
   3. An in with a very relevant JV partner who has one or both of the above

 

If you have successfully built a large, aligned audience for your course or information product already but you don’t sell services, there is definitely still a benefit to working with people one-on-one or in groups before launching passive products! You don’t have to, because if your audience is primed to buy then of course you should be able to sell them your product. Just know that an audience of people who are used to following you for coupon clipping advice is not going to be falling over themselves to buy a product that isn’t specifically related to that, so make sure you stay aligned.

 

 

The Problem With Online Courses

 

What I’m seeing, over and over again, is brand new business owners with teeny tiny audiences or no audience, with no cash flow to reinvest into ads and no connections to viable Joint Venture Partners being sold this idea that they can just create a course or program and it will magically sell. I know it’s a tough pill to swallow, but that’s just not going to happen.

 

A good course solves a problem for the person who takes it. In order to make money with a course, you need people who have that problem to sell it to. If you do not already have an engaged audience full of people who have that problem, you need to reach them another way. That means capturing leads via targeted ads or tapping into someone else’s audience through a partnership.

 

That’s it. It’s not a complicated recipe, but if you’re missing a key ingredient, that cake is not going to bake.

 

I can’t tell you how many people I know who have paid to learn how to create courses or memberships and have been unable to generate more than a few single sales because they did not have these things in place. It’s not because their course sucks or because they’re not good at what they do. It’s because they don’t have anyone to sell it to.

 

Personally, I don’t think it’s fair to sell people the dream of making a living selling online courses and information products without being super transparent about the fact that you need these things in place to be successful at it.

 

I’m going to walk you through an example using industry averages, just to make sure you fully understand what you’re getting into here. Let’s say for example you have created a course that you want to sell for $250 and you have a small Instagram following of 500 people. Some of them are friends and family, some are competitors, some are potential customers. Let’s be generous and say 300 of them are potential customers. Now let’s say you plan to sell your course on a webinar, so you set aside $500 to run ads for your webinar. You’ve got your 500 ad budget, you somehow manage to get your ads converting on the first try (which, honestly, almost never happens) and you’re getting webinar registrations. These cost $10-$15 on average nowadays, sometimes more if it’s business to business and not business to consumer. If your webinar registrations cost around $15, let’s say you get 35 registrations from your ads. Now let’s say 2% of your 300 relevant Instagram followers register for the webinar (which again is quite generous, you’re more likely looking at 1-1.5% depending on your engagement rate) so 2% of 300 is 6. Now we have 41 webinar registrations. Of those 41 people, only 20-30% will actually show up or watch the replay based on industry averages. Let’s go with 30% which is 12.3 people, and we’ll round up to 13, so 13 people watch your webinar. A reasonable expectation for your webinar conversion is around 7% if you do it live, which means 1 sale. Let’s say you knock it out of the park and convert at 14%. That means 2 sales. 

 

At 7% conversion you’re out $250 and all the time and effort you put in. At 14% you’ve broken even on your ads investment but not made a profit. At 20+ %, which is almost unheard of, you’ve made $250.

 

I’m not sharing this to discourage you, but to set realistic expectations. Yes, you can sell a much more expensive program to increase your profits, but your conversions will be lower that way (almost certainly under 10%) so you have to take that into account.

 

In a perfect world, we could create a bomb ass course, fill a brand new webinar or sales event with thousands of leads for a low cost, knock it out of the park on the first try, and convert a huge percentage of them to customers. In the real world, getting your lead gen ads right, nailing your sales event, and converting tons of leads into buying customers takes practice and experience. You are very, very unlikely to get it on the first try. That’s not because you’re not smart and skilled and competent, it’s because it’s a lot effing harder than it looks!

 

Is it impossible to make a living off of an online course right out of the gate? No. Nothing is impossible, especially on the internet. Is it probable? Not really. That’s why I believe so strongly in starting out by selling services and then adding information products to your business if you want to.

 

 

Selling Out Your Services

 

You don’t really need an audience to start selling services. You can start by reaching out to your personal network and asking for referrals, you can look for subcontracts from established service providers, and you can promote yourself to a teeny tiny following and still make a full-time income. You are going to generate much more cash per sale, have a much higher lifetime customer value if you do a good job because they’ll likely come back to you, and as you gain experience and build trust, you can actually charge a premium price for your services even if they don’t take you very long to deliver because you’ll be able to get results for people more easily and more quickly as time goes on.

 

Establishing yourself as a trusted service provider builds your reputation, expands your expertise and experience, and creates cash flow for your business. While you’re working towards selling out your services, you will be building an audience, even if it’s a small one. You will be learning the ins and outs of getting results for your clients, you’ll be getting so good at what you do that your confidence and expertise will be overflowing, and you’ll be seeing patterns and common themes emerging within your client roster that will allow you to build a course or information product that can really have an impact for people that don’t work with you in a service capacity.

 

When you’re ready to create and sell an information product, you’ll have people to sell it to— whether that’s an email list, a social media following, and/or cash from your business you can invest in lead generation without losing money. Your service-based business will form a rock-solid, profitable foundation for more passive streams of income, like information products. Most people don’t want to hear that, though. We want the sexy, flashy outcome. We want to quit our jobs and drink mojitos on the beach while the sales roll in, and that is completely possible for you. Right now, I make money while I’m sleeping most nights, which is still incredible to me, but good things take time. In business, they also take trial and error. 

 

My job here is to help financially empower you by teaching you to leverage your skills and expertise in the most profitable, sustainable way. While I love information products and online courses, I know that the reality of trying to start out with them is not how it’s portrayed online at the moment.

 

The promise of The Self-Made Mama Society is to help you sell out your services and add profitable passive products, in that order. That’s intentional and very deliberate because I want to set you up for the most sustainable, scalable success. I don’t want you scrambling for sales of a passive product when you could be pulling in your dream income with properly packaged services. I want you to have cash coming into your business every single month so you are in a position to grow your revenue by reinvesting in your own marketing. Whether it’s by hiring help so you can turn your attention to developing more passive offers, or creating an ads budget to consistently grow your audience so you have people to buy your products at scale, or both. Cash flow is king, and the fastest way to make the most profit is by selling services, end of story.

 

If you want to learn exactly how to do that and have personalized support every step of the way, make sure you get on the VIP Waitlist as soon as possible. The waitlist closes on Sunday and the doors to The Society open to the waitlist only on Monday, so you’ve only got a few more days to join. If you’re not on the waitlist and you decide to enroll when the doors open to the public, you’ll miss out on the VIP Bonus Gift, which includes some extra 1:1 time to work on your business with me, so make sure you get on that ASAP.

 

That’s all for today, see you next episode!

 

Action Items

 

A. To successfully sell an online course, you need one or all of the following:

1. 1. An aligned audience who is primed to buy your product; and/or
   2. A substantial ads budget; and/or
   3. An in with a very relevant JV partner who has one or both of the above.

 

B. A good course solves a problem for the person who takes it.

1. 1. In order to make money with a course, you need people who have that problem to sell it to.
   2. If you do not already have an engaged audience full of people who have that problem, you need to reach them another way.
   3. This could mean capturing leads via targeted ads or tapping into someone else’s audience through a partnership.

 

C. Putting the idea of an online course aside, you don’t need an established audience to start selling services.

1. 1. Start by reaching out to your personal network and asking for referrals.
   2. Look for subcontracts from established service providers.
   3. Promote yourself to a very small audience and generate more cash per sale, have higher lifetime customer value if you do a good job because they’ll likely come back to you, and charge a premium price for your services because you can get results for people easier and quicker.

 

D. Establishing yourself as a trusted service provider builds your reputation, expands your expertise and experience, and creates cash flow for your business.

 

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Self-Made Mamas Podcast. You can find more information about working with us at theselfmademama.com or connect with us on Instagram at @selfmademama_. I can’t wait to chat.