I run a WordPress programmer education company at WPDevelopment.courses.
The business has been around for a bit more than 3 years. It's making money, but only around a 1/4 of what I'd need to make it a full time income.
And that is the goal.
What keeps my from scaling the course is marketing.
There is an established system, so I thought improving this and that part would help me get there. But I'm increasingly convinced that the offer is the problem.
And that I need to go from one-off courses to a subscription model.
Here's the background on my thinking.
Previous iterations
I got started in the education business by buying a course from a guru.
The advice was:
1. One high ticket offer.
2. One webinar funnel.
This did not work because of two reasons:
1. For high ticket price, customers expected high touch support. So running the business was like doing less profitable consulting work.
2. The Russel Brunson-style webinar structure wasn't appropriate for the audience, or the product.
Next I got a business coach in the space.
The advice was:
1. Start with one course, and get customers.
2. Rince and repeat, using cross-selling and upselling to existing customers as well as a bundling approach.
This is where I'm at.
Challenges
There are five key challenges that I face:
1. Unlike with other niches, these courses need constant updating (2-3 partial updates per year). Which makes it hard to find time for marketing.
2. Inspired by the $100M Offers book, I want to offer more done-for-you along with the education. Think code snippets, cheat sheets, starter projects,... These need less updating than the curriculum, but they still need maintenance.
3. With the topics that existing customers want to learn about, there will be overlap between the courses. This is because certain topics require foundational knowledge.
4. Every course needs a sales page, and email sales campaign associated. Customer tagging doesn't really work well, so existing customers can get offers for products they own, etc. All in all at this stage it's already a lot to keep on top of.
5. Not everything is worth a course. So there are small topics that I could cover in a few lessons. But I hesitate to do it, because of the overhead.
There are two key learnings form this year as well:
1. I have a community for students, but only intended it for support. Turns out having this gives me much better insights into the struggles of students. And the appreciate every piece of advice I give.
2. I get uncountable "what should I learn?" emails. So far I answer these as part of presales. But this could be a good onboarding as part of a paid offering. It's personalized advice, but can be streamlined with a questionnaire, so that I don't spend too much time on it.
Solution
So I'm considering switching to a membership option next year. I'm not so sure about the precise offer, it would be courses, community, and some form of live calls.
That way I have one offer, and can point all marketing funnels towards this one offer.
I'd still need to rotate through topics on my marketing material:
1. For blog posts and videos, the algorithms will ensure people see the right content.
2. For nurture emails, I could segment the list based on interest, if needed.
3. For the onboarding sequence, I can do small optimizations based on the lead magnet. Highlighting offerings in line with that.
Questions
1. Does anybody have experience with either creating a membership from scratch, or doing the switch from one-off courses?
2. How to encourage people to buy beyond discounts? With this there would be no launches, or optional bonuses to create urgency.
3. For the membership sales page, I assume I need a video sales letter?
The business has been around for a bit more than 3 years. It's making money, but only around a 1/4 of what I'd need to make it a full time income.
And that is the goal.
What keeps my from scaling the course is marketing.
There is an established system, so I thought improving this and that part would help me get there. But I'm increasingly convinced that the offer is the problem.
And that I need to go from one-off courses to a subscription model.
Here's the background on my thinking.
Previous iterations
I got started in the education business by buying a course from a guru.
The advice was:
1. One high ticket offer.
2. One webinar funnel.
This did not work because of two reasons:
1. For high ticket price, customers expected high touch support. So running the business was like doing less profitable consulting work.
2. The Russel Brunson-style webinar structure wasn't appropriate for the audience, or the product.
Next I got a business coach in the space.
The advice was:
1. Start with one course, and get customers.
2. Rince and repeat, using cross-selling and upselling to existing customers as well as a bundling approach.
This is where I'm at.
Challenges
There are five key challenges that I face:
1. Unlike with other niches, these courses need constant updating (2-3 partial updates per year). Which makes it hard to find time for marketing.
2. Inspired by the $100M Offers book, I want to offer more done-for-you along with the education. Think code snippets, cheat sheets, starter projects,... These need less updating than the curriculum, but they still need maintenance.
3. With the topics that existing customers want to learn about, there will be overlap between the courses. This is because certain topics require foundational knowledge.
4. Every course needs a sales page, and email sales campaign associated. Customer tagging doesn't really work well, so existing customers can get offers for products they own, etc. All in all at this stage it's already a lot to keep on top of.
5. Not everything is worth a course. So there are small topics that I could cover in a few lessons. But I hesitate to do it, because of the overhead.
There are two key learnings form this year as well:
1. I have a community for students, but only intended it for support. Turns out having this gives me much better insights into the struggles of students. And the appreciate every piece of advice I give.
2. I get uncountable "what should I learn?" emails. So far I answer these as part of presales. But this could be a good onboarding as part of a paid offering. It's personalized advice, but can be streamlined with a questionnaire, so that I don't spend too much time on it.
Solution
So I'm considering switching to a membership option next year. I'm not so sure about the precise offer, it would be courses, community, and some form of live calls.
That way I have one offer, and can point all marketing funnels towards this one offer.
I'd still need to rotate through topics on my marketing material:
1. For blog posts and videos, the algorithms will ensure people see the right content.
2. For nurture emails, I could segment the list based on interest, if needed.
3. For the onboarding sequence, I can do small optimizations based on the lead magnet. Highlighting offerings in line with that.
Questions
1. Does anybody have experience with either creating a membership from scratch, or doing the switch from one-off courses?
2. How to encourage people to buy beyond discounts? With this there would be no launches, or optional bonuses to create urgency.
3. For the membership sales page, I assume I need a video sales letter?
Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member:
Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)
Access Restricted: Unlock 1,000,000+ Posts
Stop Peeking Through the Keyhole.
Open the Door.
You hit a wall because the best advice isn't free—it's earned. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has been active here daily (99.9% active rate), building a war room for entrepreneurs who refuse to settle for mediocrity.
- Active Daily: Life-changing content posted dozens of times every day. No dead threads.
- MJ's Inner Circle: Direct access to the author of The Millionaire Fastlane.
- Vetted Network: Connect with founders scaling to 7 and 8 figures.
- Proven Roadmaps: Strategy over motivation. Execution over "hustle porn."
"SCALED TO 6-FIGURE MONTHS"
"Tips and advice here saved me from huge mistakes, others allowed me to scale my business to 6-figure months."— User MitchC
"INSANE QUALITY OF PEOPLE"
"The number of high quality people I've met from this forum has been insane. All of it predicated on building real value."— User Richard Peck
"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with."
Are you surrounding yourself with success?
