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Building my first online course

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Samer Bechara

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May 9, 2018
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For the past few months, I've been working on building my own online course. I make enough money to live comfortably, and although I don't trade time for money (I get paid weekly by my clients) , I'm just so sick of having to be tied all day to my computer/phone, because I have to keep monitoring Slack and reply to my clients, team members... I am unable to take a few days off of technology unless I'm on vacation. Although I've come a long way, I don't feel that I'm fully my own boss yet.

My goal: Reach a place where I am making more money than ever, and can work whatever times I want, without having to worry about replying to clients.

How I will achieve it: By selling a course that helps entrepreneurs build and scale their technology faster and cheaper

What I've done so far: I've created the course and have a funnel in place. I've also started running ads

What I still have to do: Optimize ads, funnel...

Currently we are having a very low conversion on our opt-in page (less than 1%). I will be working with my marketing consultant in order to increase the conversions. I will be reporting here on my progress.
 
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Andy Black

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May 20, 2014
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For the past few months, I've been working on building my own online course. I make enough money to live comfortably, and although I don't trade time for money (I get paid weekly by my clients) , I'm just so sick of having to be tied all day to my computer/phone, because I have to keep monitoring Slack and reply to my clients, team members... I am unable to take a few days off of technology unless I'm on vacation. Although I've come a long way, I don't feel that I'm fully my own boss yet.

My goal: Reach a place where I am making more money than ever, and can work whatever times I want, without having to worry about replying to clients.

How I will achieve it: By selling a course that helps entrepreneurs build and scale their technology faster and cheaper

What I've done so far: I've created the course and have a funnel in place. I've also started running ads

What I still have to do: Optimize ads, funnel...

Currently we are having a very low conversion on our opt-in page (less than 1%). I will be working with my marketing consultant in order to increase the conversions. I will be reporting here on my progress.
Welcome. Good for you posting, and a progress thread at that.

Can you do anything now so you don’t have to worry about answering clients as soon as they message you?

Is there anyone in your current network who might want to buy your course, or know someone who might?

Maybe this might help:
 

Samer Bechara

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May 9, 2018
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Welcome. Good for you posting, and a progress thread at that.

Can you do anything now so you don’t have to worry about answering clients as soon as they message you?

Is there anyone in your current network who might want to buy your course, or know someone who might?

Maybe this might help:
Thanks Andy! Basically I come in and act as an interim CTO for my clients. They pay me on a weekly basis and on average my hourly rate is very high, so I feel obliged to reply fast. I guess it's an attitude thing more than anything else. I'll try to relax a bit and not reply to messages quickly and see what happens. The worst thing they can say is "hey, can you please reply faster?".

About the Just Start thread, it's highly beneficial. However, I've already validated my market because clients already pay me big amounts of money to do what I'm about to teach them in this course. I also don't want to do manual outreach, I want to build a lead generation system that works without my involvement and that I can scale quickly. I found paid ads to be the best medium. Even if it takes a bit more time and costs me more, the results come faster once I have my funnel in place.
 

Andy Black

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Thanks Andy! Basically I come in and act as an interim CTO for my clients. They pay me on a weekly basis and on average my hourly rate is very high, so I feel obliged to reply fast. I guess it's an attitude thing more than anything else. I'll try to relax a bit and not reply to messages quickly and see what happens. The worst thing they can say is "hey, can you please reply faster?".
Yeah, you might have built a rod for your own back that isn't even needed. Try slowing the messaging down and see if they really care about instant response times.

About the Just Start thread, it's highly beneficial. However, I've already validated my market because clients already pay me big amounts of money to do what I'm about to teach them in this course. I also don't want to do manual outreach, I want to build a lead generation system that works without my involvement and that I can scale quickly. I found paid ads to be the best medium. Even if it takes a bit more time and costs me more, the results come faster once I have my funnel in place.
I think getting paid by DFY clients is different than getting paid by DIY customers. I'd suggest selling your course isn't validated until you've made a sale. It's a different product, to a potentially (likely?) different market.

The advantage of engaging the market manually by getting into conversation is you can iterate your offer and how you sell it really fast. You can do it on the fly when you're in PM conversation.

Running ads has it's place too of course. Even though I run ads for clients I always recommend they explore their current network first.
 
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Samer Bechara

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May 9, 2018
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I think getting paid by DFY clients is different than getting paid by DIY customers. I'd suggest selling your course isn't validated until you've made a sale. It's a different product, to a potentially (likely?) different market.
Totally agreed. This is why I don't mind spending some time/money on ads and see how that materializes. My next goal is to get just one sale for now.

Running ads has it's place too of course. Even though I run ads for clients I always recommend they explore their current network first.
I realize that outreach is a better option as a start, but I'm already in the process now. I will continue with it since I started and see where it leads me.
 

Andy Black

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Good stuff. Following!
 

Samer Bechara

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May 9, 2018
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So my marketer and I had a meeting with the Facebook ads expert in order to optimize our ads. We have spent around a $1,000 based on her suggestions to see what audience responds best. She gave us some tips on changing our ads (trying 2 minute videos, using conversion objective instead of traffic...). She also asked us to do some changes on the webinar landing page in order to increase conversions.

Right now we had more than 100 clicks to our website with only one opt-in. With the changes she is asking for, we expect to get more conversions moving forward. I will be working with my web developer and marketer to implement the changes. They should be ready next Thursday.

I will report back on results here.
 
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Andy Black

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May 20, 2014
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So my marketer and I had a meeting with the Facebook ads expert in order to optimize our ads. We have spent around a $1,000 based on her suggestions to see what audience responds best. She gave us some tips on changing our ads (trying 2 minute videos, using conversion objective instead of traffic...). She also asked us to do some changes on the webinar landing page in order to increase conversions.

Right now we had more than 100 clicks to our website with only one opt-in. With the changes she is asking for, we expect to get more conversions moving forward. I will be working with my web developer and marketer to implement the changes. They should be ready next Thursday.

I will report back on results here.
Have you looked at Google Ads yet?
 

K1 Lambo

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For the past few months, I've been working on building my own online course. I make enough money to live comfortably, and although I don't trade time for money (I get paid weekly by my clients) , I'm just so sick of having to be tied all day to my computer/phone, because I have to keep monitoring Slack and reply to my clients, team members... I am unable to take a few days off of technology unless I'm on vacation. Although I've come a long way, I don't feel that I'm fully my own boss yet.

My goal: Reach a place where I am making more money than ever, and can work whatever times I want, without having to worry about replying to clients.

How I will achieve it: By selling a course that helps entrepreneurs build and scale their technology faster and cheaper

What I've done so far: I've created the course and have a funnel in place. I've also started running ads

What I still have to do: Optimize ads, funnel...

Currently we are having a very low conversion on our opt-in page (less than 1%). I will be working with my marketing consultant in order to increase the conversions. I will be reporting here on my progress.
What is the course about? In terms of the technology? Is it about software, social media, automation etc.? Are you utilizing all channels to reach your potential customer? Btw do you guys have Instagram?
 

Samer Bechara

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May 9, 2018
7
7

Planning to do so down the line, right now I am laser focused on facebook ads and want to create a funnel that works. Once we hit that point, I will scale to other ad venues such as Google.

What is the course about? In terms of the technology? Is it about software, social media, automation etc.? Are you utilizing all channels to reach your potential customer? Btw do you guys have Instagram?

Most of my high paying clients come to me after having spent lots of time and wasted lots of money on building and launching their websites. Typically, they are marketers who know how to scale the marketing side of the business, but they do not know how to build a website that can handle that massive traffic. I usually do that as a done for you service, now I'm creating a course to help them do this by themselves. Regarding insta, I'm not there yet, focused on FB ads at the moment. (See above)
 
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K1 Lambo

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Planning to do so down the line, right now I am laser focused on facebook ads and want to create a funnel that works. Once we hit that point, I will scale to other ad venues such as Google.



Most of my high paying clients come to me after having spent lots of time and wasted lots of money on building and launching their websites. Typically, they are marketers who know how to scale the marketing side of the business, but they do not know how to build a website that can handle that massive traffic. I usually do that as a done for you service, now I'm creating a course to help them do this by themselves. Regarding insta, I'm not there yet, focused on FB ads at the moment. (See above)
Nice, that sounds good. Best of luck.
 

Samer Bechara

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May 9, 2018
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So after giving it some thought, I realized to change my niche market. Instead of catering for individuals who have not launched their MVP and sell them a course on how to launch, I decided to go for individuals who are already making money online (typically marketers) , but have trouble handling the technology side of things as their site grows (scaling servers, writing optimized code, building a development team....)

I already do this where I come and act as an interim CTO for clients. I build their team, hire good developers... and they pay me a fixed weekly fee, which is decent, but around 15% of what they pay for the whole development team. So I realized that instead of building them their own team, I can do this on the backend and create this as a productized service, systematize it and make a 5X profit out of this, while working very minimal time involvement. I need 3 clients like this to have a very comfortable life, and 10 to be able to afford anything I want.

I started creating my Facebook ads now based on this new niche market, which has already paid me lots of money in the past. Fingers crossed!
 

Samer Bechara

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May 9, 2018
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So as a proof of concept, I sold my new offering to a client who was facing the problems I stated above, but instead of selling them my expertise (hence time) , I sold them the solution, which is the whole team. Now I am going to hire a really good project manager for the first project, in order to setup a service that is predictable and scalable. I will be obsessing about creating processes for everything as I want this to be fully automated without my intervention. Once this project is done and I have created a framework to execute, I will be able to start getting clients at 5X the profit, without any involvement on my side.

On the marketing side of things, we are running a few facebook ads that target the new niche market, so I can generate leads in a systematic way as well. I expect to burn money on a few rounds of ads, but I know that I will get this right, as there is a big market need for this.

I am also talking to someone later today who has helped build a similar business to the 2M/year revenue. He's one step ahead of me, so I will learn a lot from him. I will keep you posted.
 
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Kinsey6287

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Nov 2, 2009
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So as a proof of concept, I sold my new offering to a client who was facing the problems I stated above, but instead of selling them my expertise (hence time) , I sold them the solution, which is the whole team. Now I am going to hire a really good project manager for the first project, in order to setup a service that is predictable and scalable. I will be obsessing about creating processes for everything as I want this to be fully automated without my intervention. Once this project is done and I have created a framework to execute, I will be able to start getting clients at 5X the profit, without any involvement on my side.

On the marketing side of things, we are running a few facebook ads that target the new niche market, so I can generate leads in a systematic way as well. I expect to burn money on a few rounds of ads, but I know that I will get this right, as there is a big market need for this.

I am also talking to someone later today who has helped build a similar business to the 2M/year revenue. He's one step ahead of me, so I will learn a lot from him. I will keep you posted.
Just found this thread and am on the same path just different type of technology. Would you mind providing an update to your progress?
 

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