How to make money from your online course idea in less than 2 weeks!
Hello + welcome to another episode of the Simplify Your Sales podcast!
In this episode, I wanted to talk about just how quickly you can go from simply having an online course idea → making money from it. And truthfully, it’s A LOT faster than you think.
And that’s great news, because I don’t know about you, but it is HARD to stay motivated and making progress in your business if you’re not earning money. In fact, it’s just downright discouraging. It’s hard to keep chugging along with something that doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to pay off in the end.
And so today’s episode is to give you HOPE!
Hope that if you have thoughts of creating an online course, you don’t have to wait 90+ days like all the gurus out there will tell you to plan for. The first course I took that taught me how to create + sell an online course had a 90-120 roadmap from start to finish.
I don’t want that for you. You SHOULDN’T have to wait that long to be profitable from that amazing idea in your head.
In fact, you could be making your first sales from your simple IDEA that is floating around in your head RIGHT NOW in as soon as 2 weeks.
How?
The secret is this: Stay scrappy.
Now I don’t know who first determined that a launch has to include XYZ-- the fancy sales page and the pitch-perfect webinar and tons of technical automations and tagging and bells and whistles that are enough to make your head spin.
And if you’re a first-time course creator, that kind of launch can seem DANG intimidating. In fact, my first launch back in 2017 was supposed to be that way. It was supposed to have 3 months of weekly pre-launch content, then a 5-day livestream series AND a webinar, and then the offer itself has a 3 different price points and a 2 fast-action bonuses distributed at different times of the launch period, and then the traditional daily emails, and 3-4 additional livestreams DURING the actual launch period.
And then once the launch period was over, there was also a “downsell.” So you burn yourself out at both ends for the entire launch experience, and then you have another 48 hours where you’re selling a COMPLETELY different product. Forget that family you have because you’re not going to see them for about a month. It’s ridiculous
And if your head is spinning at all those terms, stick with me here because I PROMISE that I am not all about that kind of stuff at all. Even 4 years into the course creation game and I still don’t implement half the stuff that I was taught originally was a “must have” in order to profit.
I’m all about keeping things simple.
And your first launch should absolutely be that: Simple.
In fact, I like to call it a “minimum viable launch.”
Meaning that you’re only doing the fast + dirty version of what a “traditional” launch might look like. You don’t need a fancy-designed sales page or 70 livestream videos scripts. Or even an elaborate email sequence.
You really just need about 2 weeks.
So, I give you an in-detail step-by-step blueprint about about to implement all of this inside my paid program-- and the scripts and troubleshooting guide and all that jazz to make it as easy as possible, but I’m going to break it down for you here, too, because I think it’s REALLY important for you to see that it doesn’t have to be a crazy-complicated launch for you to make sales.
There are only 4 things you need in place for your minimum viable launch:
An email list
An offer page
A way for people to pay you (a checkout page)
A way to deliver your course
And that’s literally it. You don’t need fancy countdown software or livestream scripts or a full-blown webinar. You can add all that stuff in later down the road when you’re more comfortable (or even choose to keep it scrappy as long as you want!), but right now, it’s all about the basics.
And you certainly DON’T need a completed course. In fact, I strongly encourage AGAINST that because we want to make sure your idea will make you sales before you spend all your time + energy creating it.
So let’s go through each of these elements:
1-An email list
This is pretty straightforward-- you need a list of people that you can actually sell your course to.
Now if you don’t have an email list, first things first-- I recommend you create one ASAP. You should NOT be growing an online business without prioritizing this asset if you are serious about making money. Your email list is your most profitable weapon and has the highest sales conversions of any marketing format out there.
So if you’ve been spending all your time + energy growing an Instagram or Facebook following, you can absolutely still do that, but place a high priority on getting those followers on your email list ASAP-- you never know when the social media giants are going to change things up and leave you high and dry again-- and having an email list is a resource that you own-- unlike your Instagram following.
2-An offer page
Your first launch DOESN’T need a fancy designed sales page with a video embedded and a fancy chat box pop-up or animated graphics. Absolutely not!
In fact, I pre-sold my first course offer with nothing more than a simple Google doc-- and I actually just recently did that again with the beta launch of one of our newer programs because I was strapped on time but wanted to get something up ASAP.
So I like to call this your “super scrappy sales page” because that’s really all it is-- but without all the hassle of trying to get the wording “just right” and trying to incorporate fancy design elements into it-- because you don’t need those things. You just need a place to explain your offer. And a Google doc can absolutely do that for you!
You’ll want to include in this Google doc a breakdown of everything you’ve got mapped out for your course--your course curriculum, module + framework breakdown, bonuses, pricing, FAQ’s, and making it REALLY clear who it’s for and how they will benefit from it. Yes, include the features, but focus SO much on the benefits your course will provide; you’re not simply selling modules and lessons-- nobody wants to buy that. You’re selling a TRANSFORMATION. And that transformation is the key element to making profit from your online course.
You’ll also want to include a timeline of when you’ll be releasing the content, since you’re pre-selling your course right now.
3-A place to host your course
Next, you need to determine WHERE you’ll be hosting your course. If you’ve ever taken an online course, you’ve probably logged into Teachable or Thinkific or what we use + love-- Kartra. And if you’re ready to host your course there, go for it!
But that’s not even necessary for a minimum viable launch-- you can stay as scrappy as you like for the first round of your course and even choose to host it in a FREE FB group-- simply doing livestreams for the lessons, or even uploaded pre-recorded video or text lessons into the “guides” section of the group. I’ve even seen some people host their course through a weekly email series and link to private Youtube videos for their tutorials. You can absolutely get creative + scrappy here and come up with a solution that will be simple for you to implement but still be able to deliver your course material and get your students results.
4-A way for people to pay you
And finally, you need a way to collect money-- something like a simple checkout page set up.
Teachable and Thinkific have these options, in the past I’ve used Thrivecart, but now we run nearly 100% of our business assets-- like our course, our email list, our pages, our checkout software-- through Kartra because it’s all-in-one.
In fact, I’ll include a link to it in the show notes for this episode in case you want to try it out for a free 14-day trial just to see if it’s your jam.
(Click here to try out Kartra!)
It doesn’t matter HOW you collect payments-- you can even simply use generic Paypal buttons-- it simply matters that you have a way to collect those payments. And any of the options I mentioned above will absolutely work.
With these 4 elements in place, you have absolutely EVERYTHING you need to run your first minimum viable launch and start earning money from your online course idea!