What to do if your first online course idea flops: a $28,000 case study
Hello! And welcome to another episode of the Simplify Your Sales podcast!
And I want to start off this episode by getting straight to the point: My first online course idea flat-out FAILED.
Now I’m going to go into the details about WHY that happened in a minute, but I think it’s really important to talk about failure as an online course creator because I’m willing to bet that THAT’S at least part of what’s holding you back right now-- if not the entire reason.
And you’ve probably got the following thought process looping on autopilot in your brain:
What if people don’t buy?
What if I put it out into the world and it’s just *crickets*?
What if I invest all this time + energy into something that just…isn’t good?
What if I don’t even know where to begin?!
SO MANY QUESTIONS and just fears. And I’m guessing you’re having some of these questions because they’re EXACTLY the questions that I was asking myself, too, when I first started out.
But I’m here to tell you that if you’re even thinking about creating an online course, that’s a thought that isn’t going to leave you until you actually try it. So either get really comfortable with that negative thought process playing on repeat.
Or DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! And be okay with the potential for failure.
Because that’s something I had to learn head on.
So back to my story.
Back in 2017, I was doing my Etsy thing, right? I was making multiple six-figures from my Etsy shop and getting A LOT of questions about how I was marketing my Etsy shop to make 30-40 sales/day (which-- pro tip-- if you’re getting asked the same questions over and over and over again, that is probably a GREAT online course idea).
Okay, but back to my story. So I kept getting these questions over and over again “What is your marketing strategy?” “How do you utilize Pinterest to make sales on Etsy?” “Where are you spending most of your marketing efforts?” All asked in different ways, but all basically alluding to the same concept-- “How are you marketing your shop to actually make sales?”
And because I got tired of writing these long-winded responses to answer their questions-- because I really did want to genuinely answer their questions-- I decided that on the side of my Etsy shop, I was going to create an online course that helped Etsy sellers with this very thing. It was going to be this awesome way to sell a digital product and earn passive income on the side from a skill set I already had and was already helping people with.
I was going to call it $1K in 60 days and it was going to teach a potential Etsy seller how to create a shop, list products, do SEO, and then market their Etsy shop.
And to me-- in my head-- this seemed really logical. Because in order to market your Etsy shop, you had to have a shop to begin with, right?! And so it made sense to focus on teaching + including that part first-- and then getting to the marketing aspect later.
I created a scrappy sales page in a Google doc-- something we teach you how to easily do in Simplify Your Sales-- and outlined the entire program-- all the modules, lessons I had planned, and any bonus resources that I had thought to include. I thought it looked amazing! Very thorough and well planned out and you literally could have an idea in your head and it would walk you through how to set everything up from scratch.
Except that’s NOT what my audience wanted. And let me share how I found this out.
So I’d been growing my email list slowly during this time-- it was like at 300 something subscribers that I’d gotten simply from tapping into my current networks-- both personal and with my Etsy shop.
And my business coach at the time encouraged me to send an email out to a segment of that list and ask them for some feedback on my course outline. I thought it seemed a little over-the-top and just some extra work for me-- I mean, I KNEW what I was doing so it HAD to be good, right?!-- but I trusted her and sent out the scrappy sales page for my course + asked for their feedback.
Every single person that responded-- I think I had like 28-32 responses out of the 50 people I had emailed-- said that it looked well thought out, but that they didn’t need to learn how to start an Etsy shop-- they just wanted to learn how to MARKET it.
So Modules 1-3 looked “nice,” but were basically deemed irrelevant by my audience. They were only interested in Module 4: the Marketing module.
They only wanted to know how to make sales.
And it was a complete lightbulb moment for me. Now, looking back it SHOULD have been obvious, right?! The fact that I was only being asked marketing questions?!
But because *I* thought that this more “beginner” approach was better, that’s what I’d mapped out.
But that wasn’t what they wanted or needed.
I’ll be honest and say I totally had a little pity party for myself at that moment-- feeling bummed that I was so off in my idea. But then the entrepreneur-spirit took over-- the one that keeps making you get back up and try again-- and I set out with a new plan for my online course idea.
And so I completely scrapped the outlined plan for Modules 1-3 and took Module 4 and expounded upon it and created a marketing-specific Etsy course-- Mastermind Your Marketing.
1 month later (it should have been sooner, but life got in the way) I re-introduced that offer to my email subscribers-- the ones I had originally sent it to and then some others. I got resounding “This is EXACTLY what I need” responses.
I got some initial pre-sales right then + there (around 10), and then a month and a half later when I officially “launched” it into the world, I made $28,000 from this $247 course.
I am 100% certain that I would NOT have had those sales if I had stuck with my original idea of $1K in 60 days. Because that’s not what they wanted. And yes, I could have stuck with it because I believed that *I* knew best, but it wouldn’t have been profitable.
So 3 takeaways here that I want you to ponder on:
Your online course is NOT about you. At all. It is 100% about your customer and their wants + needs. Be open to the idea that YOUR idea may not be what people want to buy-- and then willing to adjust it accordingly. Don’t create your course before you have validated that it’s what people want!
You have to LISTEN to what your audience is saying and then be willing to create + act accordingly. If you have been building a business in a vacuum by yourself using YOUR ideas and stuck in YOUR head, it’s time to . Without your audience, you have no sales. They are an INTEGRAL part of your business success equation.
Be resilient. Your first course idea may not be a box-office hit. Give yourself some grace! You’re still getting your “sea legs,” so to speak and it is critical that you make these mistakes early in the process so that you can learn to bounce back and come back stronger-- with more knowledge on how to do it better the next time.
And I’ll just finish by saying that that course I created from listening to my audience + willing to adjust MY plan-- Mastermind Your Marketing-- earned me over $1.5 MILLION dollars in revenue over the past 4 years.
And it all happened because I was willing to LISTEN to my audience instead of going full steam ahead with what *I* thought was best. Once I let go of my ego and truly listened, that’s when things started to click and creating my online course truly felt easy.
So my challenge to you today? TALK TO YOUR PEOPLE! Don’t “assume” you know what they want-- ASK THEM. I promise your online course business will be 1 bajillion times more profitable because of it.
Thanks for catching this week’s episode. See you next week-- same time, same place here on the Simplify Your Sales podcast!