My online course - results are below expected

[bambz]

Hi, I've been reading this forum for the last 3 years.
I followed the advice from:
- @MJ DeMarco to build businesses based on problems and needs instead of our ideas,
- @Andy Black to just help people,
- @eliquid to do a business in the domain that I know.

It was very helpful for me and I started to focus on the following facts:
- my main domain is software development (I'm a full-stack dev with nice skills)
- I'm a member of some groups for software devs on FB and every day people ask about "how to start learning programming" and "how to become a professional dev" - these are their real problems.
- I know the answers to those questions and sometimes I answered them and got a lot of likes (so I was helping).

As a result, I've started creating the online course for people who want to become software dev (something like a roadmap with extra advice based on my experience). I describe my process here: EXECUTION - QUESTION - My next iteration in Act, Assess, Adjust of my business road.

I didn't have any audience. I just answered in those groups.
I prepared a landing page with a presale and got 4 customers for 30% of the final price.
Next, I created half the course and started to sell for 50% of the final price (0 customers despite the advertising on FB).
Nom I'm working on the second half of the course to finish it but I'm wondering what is wrong with my actions. 0 customers in the second round of sales?

Additionally, I have a lead magnet (free, short e-books) and collected 50 emails. Nobody from this group has bought.
What is the problem? People don't trust me?

Maybe should I create a TikTok and Instagram account and upload short, free, valuable content?

And my biggest question - where is the moment when I should decide that this course doesn't make sense and the next step is looking for other business? I have a lot of ideas to help those people, they ask every day for similar things and my course answers those questions, but nobody buys it.

Best regards.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

I think you need to go back to the start and create an audience if that is the way you want to go.

I follow this guy: Josh W Comeau

He created hundreds of very high quality blog posts for a year and half and then he started selling his course (also very very high quality)

I am not affiliated or anything but this guy has something special. He is very good story teller and he explains complex topics in a very nice way. I think he made like 500K when he released his course.

Definitely not an overnight success.

 

[StrikingViper69]

50 people on an email list isn’t enough to know that no one wants your course.

However you are in a highly competitive space. There are tons of very high quality free courses out there.

Have you got a good reason for someone to buy your course instead of taking a free one?

 

[eliquid]

Hi, I've been reading this forum for the last 3 years.
I followed the advice from:
- @MJ DeMarco to build businesses based on problems and needs instead of our ideas,
- @Andy Black to just help people,
- @eliquid to do a business in the domain that I know.

It was very helpful for me and I started to focus on the following facts:
- my main domain is software development (I'm a full-stack dev with nice skills)
- I'm a member of some groups for software devs on FB and every day people ask about "how to start learning programming" and "how to become a professional dev" - these are their real problems.
- I know the answers to those questions and sometimes I answered them and got a lot of likes (so I was helping).

As a result, I've started creating the online course for people who want to become software dev (something like a roadmap with extra advice based on my experience). I describe my process here: EXECUTION - QUESTION - My next iteration in Act, Assess, Adjust of my business road.

I didn't have any audience. I just answered in those groups.
I prepared a landing page with a presale and got 4 customers for 30% of the final price.
Next, I created half the course and started to sell for 50% of the final price (0 customers despite the advertising on FB).
Nom I'm working on the second half of the course to finish it but I'm wondering what is wrong with my actions. 0 customers in the second round of sales?

Additionally, I have a lead magnet (free, short e-books) and collected 50 emails. Nobody from this group has bought.
What is the problem? People don't trust me?

Maybe should I create a TikTok and Instagram account and upload short, free, valuable content?

And my biggest question - where is the moment when I should decide that this course doesn't make sense and the next step is looking for other business? I have a lot of ideas to help those people, they ask every day for similar things and my course answers those questions, but nobody buys it.

Best regards.

Conversion rates for a lot of products/service are normal if in the 1-2% range.

Based on that, you would need 100 people in your email list to convert to 1 sale.

You are halfway there with 50 people.

However, that is assuming you have a normal offer and present a normal sales cycle and funnel.

You may also have a bad value/funnel and that means your Conversion Rate could only be 0.5%, meaning you are going to need to more people to get 1 sale.

Maybe you dried up the FB groups you are in.. alot of those groups have bots and dead accounts in them.

Lots of things to think about above, that could impact how many customers you are going to get.

 

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[Fox]

Next, I created half the course and started to sell for 50% of the final price (0 customers despite the advertising on FB).
Nom I'm working on the second half of the course to finish it but I'm wondering what is wrong with my actions. 0 customers in the second round of sales?

Fb ads are something to look into after:
- whole course nailed down
- you know your organic traffic loves this offer
- you have built up results, social proof and reviews etc
- your funnel is dialled in and you can get the most out of each $1 spent on ads

Fb ads for courses are competitive and also very tricky to dial in. I would say you will get a lot more initial progress by posting niche content on IG, Twitter or Youtube.

Also, your overall numbers are very small here. You need to keep going and get more data.
Plus = get lots of feedback. Ask for reasons people bought, why they didn't buy, what they want most etc.

Let the market tell you what to make and how to make it as valuable as possible.

 

[bambz]

@Tau Ceti
@eliquid
@Fox
@SamRussell
Thank you for your answers. I agree, IT courses are highly competitive space.
Now I'm not sure if is it profitable to continue this business.
Okay, I'm going to try to create some free content for TikTok/IG and verify whether I find new customers - probably it doesn't need very much time, but my main question is...

How and when decide that the current business doesn't make sense? (IT courses or some other business).

 

[Tau Ceti]

I think an IT course can be great business. You just need to reset and restart from the ground up.

Create an amazing blog and a great Youuibe channel. Publish high quality articles and videos for 12 months. In the meantime, collect email addresses and send 1 newsletter per month with some great content.

Then in 12 to 18 months start plugging your upcoming course with a heavy discount for those who pre-purchase it.

I think this approach can work.

The guy I talked about explains his process on the page below:

Pre-Selling a Programming Course and Making $550k in Revenue

Josh built CSS for JavaScript Developers, an online course to help you learn CSS. He opened pre-orders to validate the course and ended up selling $550k.

www.failory.com

 

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[bambz]

@Tau Ceti
Thank you for the answer and link.

You know... I'm just wondering if the road (creating free content within 12-18 months) you described is a Fastlane. Why? I create the free content and finally, I'm not sure if somebody would buy something from me. What if it's a waste of time?

The second option is creating saas, apps (or microsaas, microapps). Why could it be better imho? Within 12-18 months you can validate many more ideas, and you don't have to regularly upload yt videos or tiktok/ig content.

I don't know, I'm having a hard time with my course and just wondering if should I continue or rather choose the second option of building other digital products.

 

[MakeItHappen]

You know... I'm just wondering if the road (creating free content within 12-18 months) you described is a Fastlane. Why? I create the free content and finally, I'm not sure if somebody would buy something from me. What if it's a waste of time?

What are other businesses doing in this space? How do they have made their business Fastlane?
If many have built large audiences it probably isn't a bad idea.

Do you have a unique selling proposition? Is there anything about you and your course that is different from all the other courses out there? Building a personal brand with a large audience is some sort of a usp even if you offer pretty much the same as your competitors.


I am building an online course atm as well.
My niche doesn't lend itself to building an audience. So I am looking forward to getting customers by means of paid traffic and SEO. I might also try influencer marketing with a revenue share model.
My course offers something unique that is based on my unique background.

In the end, there are many ways to acquire a customer and the only way to find what works for you is to try many things.

One way to make your offer more unique is by niching down. Instead of having a course with the topic "How to learn to code" you might have a course with the titel like "Learn to code when you are over 40 years old with zero tech background". Now your course is different from most of the other online courses and people who are 40+ years old might find your course a lot more attractive than the ones from the competition.

 

[srodrigo]

I'm by no means an expert at marketing, but I'd focus on Twitter. Maybe there are enough developers on Facebook, but the audience looks stronger on Twitter. It's probably one of the few cases I'd say Twitter is where your audience hangs out.

BTW I was on your same boat, considering making a course. Then I realised I don't have an audience. Without an audience, you are probably doomed. Look at the big names (Kent C. Dodds, for example), they all build the audience, then sell their expertise at healthy prices. Trying to do the other way around is a recipe for disappointment. You could try Udemy though. It sucks in many ways, but if you course is good, it should give you visibility and authority.

Best of luck.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

@Tau Ceti
Thank you for the answer and link.

You know... I'm just wondering if the road (creating free content within 12-18 months) you described is a Fastlane. Why? I create the free content and finally, I'm not sure if somebody would buy something from me. What if it's a waste of time?

The second option is creating saas, apps (or microsaas, microapps). Why could it be better imho? Within 12-18 months you can validate many more ideas, and you don't have to regularly upload yt videos or tiktok/ig content.

I don't know, I'm having a hard time with my course and just wondering if should I continue or rather choose the second option of building other digital products.

I understand you have doubts but think about this another way.

You create another product, do some research and marketing and you start investing time and effort into it and then in the end no one buys it.

Is that any different? My point is that there is no certainty in this game. If you are only going after sure things, then you ll never do anything at all because nothing is sure or certain.

If you want something with less risk, then in this case I suggest you find someone already doing something and then copy their business model and make it better. This way you know that there are already people paying for this product and you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

But it still won't be a guarantee that people will buy from you.

Just food for thoughts.

 

[Johnny boy]

Post a job ad on indeed for a software developer as a random company for 175k a year and they must apply through your site

Lead gen

Now you have a shit ton of developers on an email list

Send them emails from your unrelated brand that’s not tied in any way to the fake company they applied to.

Free leads to market your course to

Post content online about getting into the field and have it funnel towards your course.

You need VOLUME. You need lots of people seeing your stuff. 50 isn’t shit. You need 50,000.

I’m surprised you got a sale at all at the beginning, that was great.

But you need much much much more volume

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Post a job ad on indeed for a software developer as a random company for 175k a year and they must apply through your site

Lead gen

Now you have a shit ton of developers on an email list

Send them emails from your unrelated brand that’s not tied in any way to the fake company they applied to.

Free leads to market your course to

Post content online about getting into the field and have it funnel towards your course.

You need VOLUME. You need lots of people seeing your stuff. 50 isn’t shit. You need 50,000.

I’m surprised you got a sale at all at the beginning, that was great.

But you need much much much more volume

The grey zone things one has to do in the very early stage of a business to grow it. This is a great idea though!

 

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[Johnny boy]

The grey zone things one has to do in the very early stage of a business to grow it. This is a great idea though!

I would have trouble feeling bad for sending software developers an email offering something that helps software developers improve their career and ultimately make more money.

Nuisance: 1%
Offering value: 20%
Not being broke: priceless

Long term I’d still recommend the content route

And besides they are software developers I’m sure they can find the unsubscribe button if they want to.

 

[oneac]

Post a job ad on indeed for a software developer as a random company for 175k a year and they must apply through your site

Lead gen

Now you have a shit ton of developers on an email list

Send them emails from your unrelated brand that’s not tied in any way to the fake company they applied to.

Free leads to market your course to

Post content online about getting into the field and have it funnel towards your course.

You need VOLUME. You need lots of people seeing your stuff. 50 isn’t shit. You need 50,000.

I’m surprised you got a sale at all at the beginning, that was great.

But you need much much much more volume

This is genius.

Did you just come up with that right when your wrote it or have you done something similar in the past?

Gold

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

The grey zone things one has to do in the very early stage of a business to grow it. This is a great idea though!

Big companies play worse games than this. They'll post job offers for jobs they plan to hire internally for. Plus most job applicants are just copy pasting job applications anyway.

 

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