Listen up.
If you're thinking about creating an online course, this email could save you years of frustration, not to mention put quite a bit of dough in your pocket.
First, you need this:
Click here to get a blueprint for building a million-dollar course.
Go get it. It's amazing. I'll explain in a minute.
In the meantime, here are some lessons I've learned from selling online courses over the past decade.
(I don't actually know if it's $7 million in sales. Probably quite a bit more, but I figured that's a safe guess.)
The biggest lesson:
You can't sell people what they don't want.
I can't tell you how many times I've had a student come to me and ask for feedback on their sales letter because their course just isn't selling.
But the sales letter is never the problem.
The problem is people don't want what they are selling, and no amount of marketing can convince them to want it.
You see, this is the fundamental misunderstanding people have about marketing.
People think emails and sales letters and ads make people want things. If the marketing is good enough, everybody will want it.
This is totally WRONG.
Here's what actually happens: people want a particular outcome BEFORE they see any marketing at all, but then the marketing comes along and pitches a product or service as a way to achieve that outcome.
In other words, somebody wants to get skinny. Marketing convinces them an exercise bike is a get skinny. So they buy the exercise bike.
In other words, marketing connects products to outcomes. Nothing more.
If you create a course around an outcome nobody wants OR it's not clear what outcome they are going to get, then it will not sell. Not even the most brilliant marketer in the world can change that.
On the other hand, you can have a very simple sales letter explaining the outcome your course will achieve, and if people want that outcome, plus believe your course can help them achieve it, they will buy it. No fancy marketing required.
This lesson trumps all others. Do not ignore it.
If they aren't spending money on it already, they don't want it.
Years ago, we did a survey asking our audience about their biggest challenge.
Something like 45% of respondents said "getting traffic." Needless to say, I was delighted, because I'm one of the foremost traffic experts in the world.
So, I created a course about how to get traffic. It was a work of genius. I was certain it was going to become a blockbuster.
But it flopped. Worst selling product I've ever released, by a mile.
In the moment, I was stunned and heartbroken, but this eventually taught me the second most valuable lesson of creating courses:
People lack self-awareness. They have no idea what their biggest challenge is.
On the other hand, they love to complain, so if you ask them for their biggest challenge, they are going to complain about the first thing that comes to mind.
But here's the magic follow-up question:
"What products and services have you bought to overcome that challenge?"
The vast majority of survey respondents will answer NONE.
That's because they don't really want to solve it. They just want to complain about it.
Once I figured this out, I became obsessed with learning what products and services our audience was already buying. I then did research to discover what outcomes people wanted when they purchased those products.
And then I created our own products around those outcomes, but I focused on doing a better job.
The result?
Millions and millions of dollars in sales.
Lesson #3: The success rate of your course REALLY matters
Here are some shocking stats for you:
About 30% of people who purchase an online course will ask for a refund within 30 days because they get overwhelmed and want to quit 20% of students won't even login to watch the first lesson, because they get distracted with other stuff Less than 1 out of 10 students will ever do a single homework assignment and less than 1 out of 100 will get the promised outcome, even if your course is good.
Pretty depressing, right?
But those are the average numbers for most courses. It's TERRIBLE.
If you want to succeed online, you have to change these numbers, and here's why:
The success rate of your students directly affects how much money you will make over the long term.
Eventually, people want to see case studies. They want to see other students your course has worked for.
If you can't deliver, your sales will tank. Everybody stops believing you can help them achieve the outcome, and they move onto one of your competitors.
So, the question is… how do you create a course that gets people results?
And that's why I linked to Marisa at the beginning of this email.
She's better at getting results for students than anybody I've ever seen. She has over 800 (not a typo) case studies and testimonials!
And I've personally consulted with her to improve the results our courses get.
The results have been stunning. We cut our refund rate in half, more than doubled engagement, and we crushed our goal for how many students we want to graduate like five months early.
And I was already really good at this stuff! Marisa and her team just made us a lot better.
So, go take a look at her blueprint. Pay attention to her models. Everything she is going to teach you is solid gold.
I'll be back soon with more info.
Jon
PS: I'm going to be talking a lot about online courses for the next few days. If you already know you DON'T want to create one, go ahead and click this link to skip them until we return to our "regularly scheduled programming."
