Pre-sell your course earlier rather than later

[Alexander K.]

Here is another valuable experience. I created the first version of my course in English, which is my adopted language. I was a bit shy about pre-selling it, so I only pre-sold it when it reached the level of 17 out of 51 lessons. It worked well in terms of money I gained, but only a few students have actively engaged with the course. I can also see that some of the students tried to skim over the lessons, and that didn't work well, as they are supposed to do their homework and to take their time. So they got lost, and I hopefully helped them by advising to go back and do the first few lessons properly.

Now, after the reasonable success with the English version, I decided to create a version of the course in my mother's tongue, which is Russian. The difference was that I pre-sold it when I only had 3 lessons in Russian ready. And I am adding 3 lessons per week, I can't do more than that at the moment. The result is that people are waiting for every coming lesson, and they are doing their homework and posting it so that I could check. So the overall impression is that my Russian audience engages with the course much better than the English one. They were a little bit uncomfortable in the very beginning, having paid their price for only three lessons, but they seem to be quite happy now doing their homework for each and every coming lesson. There is also some importance in the fact that the Russian audience is most probably less over-saturated with information, compared to the English one, and it is traditionally more thirsty for knowledge, but still, the merits of an early pre-sell remain obvious for me.

 

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[ExcelGuy]

[QUOTE ]... but still, the merits of an early pre-sell remain obvious for me.[/QUOTE]

Very interesting. I'm considering using Udemy to put out my first course and maybe someday developing my own platform. Are you using a platform of some kind?

51 sounds like a lot of sections. Also, how to you tell customers that jot all the material is available yet?

 

[AndrewNC]

Here is another valuable experience. I created the first version of my course in English, which is my adopted language. I was a bit shy about pre-selling it, so I only pre-sold it when it reached the level of 17 out of 51 lessons. It worked well in terms of money I gained, but only a few students have actively engaged with the course. I can also see that some of the students tried to skim over the lessons, and that didn't work well, as they are supposed to do their homework and to take their time. So they got lost, and I hopefully helped them by advising to go back and do the first few lessons properly.

Now, after the reasonable success with the English version, I decided to create a version of the course in my mother's tongue, which is Russian. The difference was that I pre-sold it when I only had 3 lessons in Russian ready. And I am adding 3 lessons per week, I can't do more than that at the moment. The result is that people are waiting for every coming lesson, and they are doing their homework and posting it so that I could check. So the overall impression is that my Russian audience engages with the course much better than the English one. They were a little bit uncomfortable in the very beginning, having paid their price for only three lessons, but they seem to be quite happy now doing their homework for each and every coming lesson. There is also some importance in the fact that the Russian audience is most probably less over-saturated with information, compared to the English one, and it is traditionally more thirsty for knowledge, but still, the merits of an early pre-sell remain obvious for me.

Do you see potential for video training courses in a lot of industries in Russia? I sell in the US and it sounds like there would be a great market over there based on what you're saying.

Thanks for the great info!