[Ultimate guide] How to sell your own online course, WITHOUT being held hostage by marketplaces that steal 50% of your profit
Hey what’s up? Thanks for reading the ultimate guide on how to sell your own online course…
And as you’ll see throughout the entire guide, this is a subject I really love talking about.
Not because it’s an “exciting” topic or anything like that either, but because after working with dozens of online entrepreneurs over the years, and from all sorts of backgrounds…
I can confidently say this is one topic that a lot of people don’t know about.
It seems like most aspiring online entrepreneurs think selling online courses is nothing more than creating a landing page, then sending traffic to it with Facebook ads and going for the sale right away…
But as I’m sure you can guess, that’s the worst thing you can do.
It’d be the equivalent of asking somebody to marry you without taking them on a date first, and I’ll show you how to get around that throughout this guide…
But before we get there, I wanted to go over the goal and brief overview of how it works first.
Always like to do this upfront, that way you know if this is for you right away — not 10 minutes after you’ve started reading…
And to get us started, let’s go over:
The goal
The main goal of this guide is simple, I want to show you everything you need to know in order to get sales with your online course.
Doing this because well, I’ve worked with a lot of course owners over the years…
And I’ve unfortunately seen way too many people start “selling” without knowing what they were doing, which usually results in burning $1K (or more) on Facebook ads, for no results.
As for who this guide is for, it’s really designed for people who already have a course built, but want to learn how to sell it on their own (well, without using online marketplaces, like Udemy).
I say that because that’s where a lot of my clients have come from over the years, and it seems like each and every one of these entrepreneurs always have the exact same message…
I’m getting a lot of sales, but Udemy forces me to opt-in to their $10 deal program, where new students can get any course for $10…
And since you only get 50% of the net profits, that means you’re making a whopping $5 on a course that you spent a lot of time building.
This then leaves you with two options:
- Continue giving away valuable information for $5 (your share of the $10 sale)
- Or figure out how to cut out the middleman and get sales on your own, which is exactly what we’re going to cover today
And I say this works best for people who already have an online course, as I’m only going to be talking about the sales aspect of this, not the actual creation…
But even if you haven’t created a course yet, this will still be valuable for you as it’ll shave A LOT of time off your learning curve when you’re ready.
Okay, that’s it for the goal of this guide…
And one last thing I always like to mention before jumping into the actual guide, is a brief overview of how I got to this point.
Not because I like bragging myself up or anything like that, but I’ve noticed that it’s easier to learn from somebody when you can relate to (or at least understand) their story…
So a brief background of how I reached this point:
It actually started 3 years ago when I decided to write a book.
This was during a time in my life where I was new(ish) freelancer who was really struggling to make ends meet, and I was working 90 hours a week trying to figure everything out…
So after hitting a deep stage of burnout and realizing something had to change, I decided to pick up the 4-hour workweek by Tim Ferriss and figure something else out.
This eventually gave me the idea to write a book of my own, as I liked how I could build something once, then sell it forever…
So after a little bit of thought, I jumped into the writing process and started cranking away at my new book.
I decided to write this book about SEO, which was a subject I’d had a lot of results in and knew I could show others how to cut through the noise and use this information to get organic traffic as well.
The actual book itself didn’t take too long, mainly because it was a “how to” guide that I was able to breeze through pretty quick, so a couple weeks later I was hiring:
- An editor to do the final edits
- A designer to create an attractive cover
- And a Facebook Ads guru that could ring up sales at all times of the day
Over the next week we all worked hand-in-hand to expedite the project, and the week after that…
We officially had a book that was ready for sale, and shortly after that, Facebook campaigns that were ready to ring up the sales.
By this time I’d actually had a little bit of experience with Facebook ads, and I knew they took 2–3 days before they’re fully optimized…
So I decided to wait one week before checking the results.
Did this so I didn’t micromanage anything and end up hurting the campaigns before they had a chance to shine, and I’m not going to lie, it was hard waiting that long…
But I somehow managed to hold off the entire time, then once the final day hit — I jumped on my laptop and opened up Facebook Business Manager.
Deep down, I was expecting to have a crazy amount of sales and had actually started planning a vacation because of it, but after I opened the results and saw I had a grand total of…
2 sales, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
At first I thought it had to be a reporting error on Facebook’s end, so I switched over to my Stripe account to see if that told me anything different…
And unfortunately, it did not.
After that I switched back to my Facebook account so I could check out the other metrics, trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong…
And funny enough, most of the other metrics had actually outperformed my expectations.
I was getting clicks for around 14 cents, which is unheard of now…
And I’d actually spent $400 in that first week, so that meant I had a lot of eyeballs on my offer…
But for some reason, I couldn’t get people to fork over $20 for this knowledge.
This really confused me for the next few days, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do…
So I cried about it for a little bit, but then once my pity party finally wore off…
I decided to look into everything again, seeing if I could find the root of my problems.
I skimmed through a lot of information over the next few days, and really didn’t find anything that’d help me out, so I was about ready to give up…
Until I came across a blog article that showed exactly what I was looking for, my copy wasn’t persuasive enough!
This was the last thing I would’ve ever thought of, but it made sense after I read it…
So a few days later I decided to take an expensive copywriting course and learn how to write persuasive copy, that way I could start getting sales and be paid for my hard work.
Now I’m not going to lie, I actually bought this course as the instructor sold me on the fact that I’d be able to write copy that sells right away, so I thought it was going to be a quick fix that was resolved in a matter of weeks…
But looking back now, I can see that he sold me what I wanted (the ability to write copy that sells right away), then gave me what I needed (an understanding of how sales work online)…
And even though it took me awhile to catch onto this, once I did —I started to see the one reason why most companies can’t get sales online.
We’ll go over this in more detail throughout this guide, but one of my favorite ways to understand this is the analogy I used earlier…
Where most companies go for the sale right away, and that’s the equivalent of asking somebody to marry you before taking them on a date first.
I like this analogy because when you put it that way, most people realize how crazy it sounds to even try this…
But nonetheless, if that’s the only thing you took away from this guide, then I guarantee you’re already light years ahead of most entrepreneurs.
I can’t explain how many times I’ve had struggling entrepreneurs reach out to me, saying how they blew through $5K in Facebook Ads last month, yet still didn’t get any sales on their course…
And it all boiled down to one thing, they didn’t have a lead nurturing system in place that turns warm leads into paying customers, which is exactly what we’re going to cover right meow.
I’m going to do this by breaking this topic down into the 5 main parts of an automated funnel that (actually) sells at all times of the day, which are:
Part #1 — Getting targeted leads with a (powerful) free offer
Part #2 — Creating a high converting landing page for that free offer
Part #3 — Understanding how to craft a 5-day email funnel that turns the casual looksy loo into a paying customer
Part #4 — Sales pages that sell at all times of the day
Part #5 — Filling your funnel with targeted leads…
And with all that out of the way, let’s jump into:
Creating automated funnels that (actually) sell at all times of the day
So a few weeks after I started my copywriting course and began to understand the importance of lead nurturing, I really started digging into the issue.
It was something I’d never really heard of before, not to this extent anyway…
And it baffled me that I hadn’t by this time, as I’d been in “online business” for a good 6 months now…
But either way, I knew it was something I needed to learn, so I kept looking into it even more.
As I’m sure you can imagine, there was a lot of information about this topic out there, and even though most of it was worthless…
I kept coming across the name, Russell Brunson.
At the time I’d never really heard of him, and I quickly realized his idea of funnels were a little different than what I was learning…
But I could tell he kinda knew what he was doing, so I decided to watch a Youtube video he’d created…
And in that video, he mentioned how he’d learned this topic known as “funnels” early on in his entrepreneurial career, then after seeing how they were able to skyrocket his business in little time…
He got really excited and started reaching out to other entrepreneurs, telling them that he’d love to build funnels for their company, and he was only charging XX amount of money to do so.
He knew it was an amazing deal, and he knew he’d be able to help them recoup their investment in little time…
So he didn’t really “sell” too much, as he knew it should be a no-brainer for them…
But no matter how many people he reached out to, he could never get anybody to work with him.
This was really surprising at first, especially since he was offering a guarantee and all of that…
So one day he finally picked up the phone, followed up with a prospect and asked if he could explain why he didn’t want his help.
He did this because he knew the guy’s business was struggling, and Russell knew his knowledge could easily turn that around in little time…
Then after asking this, the guy essentially just said — “dude, I have no idea who you are or what you’re selling. I’d love for you to help, but it’s hard for me to fork over money before fully understanding what you do”…
And after hearing this response, he started to realize that the problem didn’t have anything to do with his offer, it was that he wasn’t doing a good job of explaining what he could do for them.
After hearing this, he decided to tear down the expensive sales letter he’d created a few months back, one that was converting around 1%…
And replaced it with a simple training video that showed his target market what he did, and how it helped them.
He then started giving away this training video for free, as he knew nobody wanted to pay a dime for something until they understood how it helped them…
And after he started doing this, his sales instantly improved overnight.
Now I don’t know why this story resonated with me so well, but after hearing this…
I immediately realized where I’d gone wrong with my book sales.
I guess I was under the impression that since I was only selling a book for $20, then I could just go for the hard sale right away and be fine as it wasn’t a large investment…
But after hearing Russell’s story, I immediately realized that online sales has nothing to do with price, fancy words, tricking people or advanced advertising…
It’s just understanding how to show people what you can do for them, because once you’re able to do that, then “sales” gets pretty easy.
Now that’s the simple version of it, but the hard part is understanding exactly HOW to show people this…
Or more importantly, understanding how to stand out with all the noise there is today…
Which is exactly what we’re going to cover right now.
Part #1 — Getting targeted leads with a powerful (free) offer
The first important step of creating a profitable lead nurturing system (a.k.a. funnel) is getting targeted leads to enter it.
This doesn’t sound too hard at the surface, as you’re obviously aware of who your course is for…
But again, with all the noise (and scams) out there today — people are hesitant to talk to anybody, EVEN IF you have the perfect course for them.
That’s the same reason why you’ll see so many people offering a free ebook (or something similar) today in exchange for an email address, that way they can officially start a “client relationship” and follow up with them later on…
But as most entrepreneurs learn the hard way, it’s definitely easier said than done.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying ebooks don’t work…
But I am saying 90% of these ebooks get little (if any) conversions, and that’s simply because they don’t provide any value to their target market.
Instead of giving a little bit of thought and actually creating a free offer their target market will want, for some unknown reason…
A lot of online entrepreneurs think people are so dumb that they want any free ebook out there, and lol — that’s far from the case.
This is the same reason why it’s ESSENTIAL to do research on your target market first, as you want to discover their single, most pervasive problem before anything else…
Then after you’ve identified this problem, that’s when you design a free item to help fix this and start getting targeted leads that way.
To give you a few examples of this, if you were:
- Creating a dog training course for problem dogs, then you’d want to give people the single best technique that immediately gets dogs to stop barking
- Creating a cooking course for people who don’t know how to cook, then you’d want to give them the top 3 “go-to” recipes that take less than 10 minutes to make
- Creating a course that teaches people how to get better at online dating, then you’d want to give them the exact words to say in their profile…
And the list could go on forever, but remember, at this stage — you just want to help them fix their most consistent problem.
There’s no need to go way over the top and offer more than this as it just overwhelms people…
But at the same time, you want to give them something that’ll actually help them, as that will not only get you a lot of leads in little time, but it’ll also show them you know what you’re doing…
And the rest of the sales process gets easy after that.
As for what type of medium (i.e. ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, etc) works best…
I think I’ve tried every freebie out there, and I can honestly say I haven’t noticed too big of a difference.
If anything, it seems like people are more likely to sign-up for “easy access” items, such as ebooks or whitepapers…
But that attracts a lot more tire kickers and in turn, means less of them are going to convert into paying customers.
On the other hand, if you do something that requires a little more commitment upfront, like a webinar…
Then less people are going to sign-up (well, show up), but if they do, they’re certainly interested in what you have to offer…
Which creates a higher conversion rate, but at the end of the day — it averages out to be the same amount of sales.
To recap:
- Research your target customer and discover their most consistent problem. It’s important to keep that problem defined right now, as you don’t want to go over the top and overwhelm them, but if can immediately help them solve a problem — then you’re already in good graces
- I always make sure my freebie makes sense by plugging it into the simple formula of: [Problem]? Get my [free item] and see [results]
- The medium in which you create a freebie doesn’t matter too much, they all average out in the end
Part #2 — Create a landing page for your new offer
Alright, now that we have the freebie ready, it’s time to setup a landing page that “sells” your free item.
Again, even though there’s no monetary transaction taking place, you still have to “sell” your freebie as you’re asking for an email address in return…
And that’s why it’s important to setup a separate landing page for this.
I’ve seen a lot of people overlook this step and think they can give away an ebook with a pop-up that has one line on it, and even though you could get some email subscribers by doing this…
After testing numerous methods, I can confidently say landing pages work 12x better than any other method…
Because they not only give you the space to explain your item, but it also gives your target audience one option and one option only.
This is very important, especially in today’s world of ADHD where we’re constantly chasing shiny items…
So when you have one page that doesn’t offer any other options or opportunities for them to click around, then conversions are only going to increase.
Funny enough, I think a lot of online entrepreneurs are actually aware of this step…
But then they go out and mess everything up by getting too fancy.
They’re under the impression that conversions are all design-oriented, and don’t get me wrong, I do realize design helps somewhat…
But as somebody who’s never had an eye for design and always outperformed my competition in terms of conversion rates:
I can assure you, too much design usually does more harm than good.
In the simplest terms, all you really need on a landing page is:
- A headline that grabs the reader’s attention right away
- 3 bullet points that show the benefits of your freebie
- A call-to-action that shows people how to move onto their next step…
And that’s honestly it.
After that, you can always get a little more advanced and maybe add a few pictures and/or testimonials…
But to show you an example of a landing page that’s converting like crazy, here’s one I have for a free landing page course:
As you can see, it’s far from flashy and doesn’t have a huge emphasis on design, but it’s currently converting at 14%…
Which is much higher than the 1% most landing pages receive.
As for what conversion rate you should shoot for, it always differs between industry and niche…
But as a general rule of thumb, you always want to get a 5% or higher.
That’s achievable for every industry, and it’s also important to remember that this will differ depending on your source of traffic as well.
I’ve had some landing pages that converted at over 20% when traffic was coming from blogs, then a 8% when they were coming from Facebook Ads (that were designed for clicks at first):
To recap:
- Now that we have your free item ready, it’s time to create a landing page that “sells” it. I’ll show you how to drive traffic to this landing page in a second, but before we get there — it’s important to get this ready first.
- Don’t worry about design too much, as it can actually do more harm than good. Just make sure you have a headline that grabs the reader’s attention right away, followed up by 3 bullet points that explain the benefits of your freebie and finally, a call-to-action that shows the reader how to move forward after that
- It never hurts to test out this landing page before moving forward. Again, I’ll show you how to get traffic later on…but if this is the first landing page you’re creating, then it usually helps to test it out and make sure you’re getting a 5% conversion ratio before moving on
Part #3–5-day email funnel
Alright, now that we have a list of targeted leads who’ve clearly shown interest in your product, now it’s time to turn the casual looksy-loo into a paying customer.
As with everything, there’s a few different ways to do this…
But I honestly don’t think anything beats a highly-converting email funnel.
These work amazing as they’re something you can create once and let sell forever…
Then at the same time, they’re easily accessible and from my experience, people are usually more likely to read 5 emails then watch a bunch of videos.
As for how to create a 5-day funnel, there’s 2 different ways to approach this.
Approach #1 — Build an audience first, sell later
The first approach that a lot of people take, and one that works especially well for anybody who doesn’t have a course yet…
Is to build an audience first, then once you have a big enough list — you’ll create a funnel later on that turns your list of leads into paying customers.
This can seem difficult at first, and I’m not saying it’s the easiest thing to do…
But in the simplest terms, the formula you always want to follow with this method is:
- Day 1 — Engagement. No mention of sales, just something that (subtly) introduces your new product, or at least mentions a problem that it’ll solve
- Day 2- Engagement. Same as day 1, and even though you’ll want to move the reader closer to the sale, you still don’t want to mention your product yet (as that’ll make them put their guard up and run away)
- Day 3 — Engagement to sales. Now we’re starting to introduce your product, and even though we’re not really hard selling yet…we’re going to start mentioning it. This is usually done with a quick “P.S. Tomorrow I’ll actually show you something that can take care of this for you” Nothing intense, just enough to make them start thinking about it
- Day 4 — Soft sales. This is the first day you’ll mention your product, and even though you won’t be “hard selling”, you’ll want to let them know about your product and have more of a soft sales pitch. There won’t be a lot of sales on this day, but you’ll want to get them thinking about it
- Day 5 — Hard sales. This day is dedicated to sales, and you’ll still want to say something valuable at first (or else they’ll bounce right off the bat), but after that — you want to let them know about your offer. That’s really about as complex as it needs to get, but one thing you’ll want to remember here is that without some form of urgency, nobody ever takes action. I’ve seen this happen in a lot of different ways, but the 2 that tend to always work best are:
- 1. Closed enrollment periods (i.e. course is only open until this Friday at 11:59 p.m.)
- or 2. Limited-time discount (i.e. you get $50 off if you sign-up within the next 48 hours)
Again, this is the approach you’ll want to take if you don’t have a course built yet, or if you have existing email leads who are familiar with you and either haven’t bought your product in the past, or joined your list before your course was available.
Then on the other hand, you have:
Approach #2 — Evergreen funnels
Now these are the funnels that online entrepreneurs look at as the “holy grail”, as you can create them once and enjoy the benefits forever.
As with everything, there’s more than one right way to create these funnels…
But after testing various options over the years, I’ve learned that free email courses ALWAYS outperform everything else.
To show you how they compare to traditional open rates, here’s a screenshot of a recent course I created:
And I’m not sure if you’re familiar with email open rates, but with the industry average being 20%…
Having 50% of people open every email you send is a powerful outcome that can really skyrocket your revenue.
Like the 5-day funnel we created in approach #1, you never want to offer the (paid) course until later on…
And the best way to do this is by following a simple formula of:
- Day 1 — Intro, overview, lesson 1
- Day 2 — lesson 2
- Day 3 — lesson 3
- Day 4 — lesson 4
- Day 5 — offer
In other words, 4 days out of your 5 day course should be 100% dedicated to teaching, then the 5th day should explain your full offer and how you can help them.
Of course, you’ll want to do this in a way that moves them closer to the sale everyday, and I always start to mention my offer on days 3 or 4…
But I never actually offer it until day 5.
To recap:
- Now that you have targeted leads, it’s important to nurture them into paying customers
- 5-day email funnels work best, as they’re long enough to get the point across, yet short enough to where you can keep interest the entire time
- There’s 2 different approaches you can take
Approach #1 — Build an audience, then follow-up with a 5-day funnel later on after you have a bunch of targeted leads in place. You’d do this by offering some sort of lead magnet (i.e. ebook) then following up later on. This wouldn’t be an automated funnel at first, but you could also use it again later on for any leads who don’t buy your product during the first go around (i.e. after coming off an email course)
Approach #2 — Give away a free email course, offer your advanced course after that. This only works when you have an existing course ready to sell, and this option works amazing as it’s evergreen, so it’ll sell for you at all times of the day. If you’re using this approach, you don’t need a lead magnet as the email course serves as both lead magnet and email funnel
Part #4 — Sales pages that sell at all times of the day
Alright, so the last step in every sales funnel is always a sales page…
And trust me, as somebody who’s been a sales copywriter for the last 3 years, I completely understand the importance of sales pages…
But I also know that when they’re not used correctly, they can actually do more harm than good.
The on top of this, there’s a lot of different things that go into creating a sales page, and there’s no way I could teach you all that in one article…
But it will be helpful for me to show you when you should (or shouldn’t) use them, so that’s what I wanted to cover here.
This ties in well with the story about Russell Brunson that I mentioned earlier on, where he traded his fancy sales letter in for a simple funnel, and noticed amazing results right away…
So as a general rule of thumb, if they’re coming off an evergreen funnel (like a free email course), then you’ll want to stay away from a long-form sales letter.
I say this because, well, if done correctly…
Your email course/funnel should’ve already done a good job of explaining everything, and after your course, all interested buyers should be ready to take action right away…
So a long sales letter will just serve as an obstacle and could actually result in lost sales.
If you did take this option, then I usually create a quick landing page that recaps the course offer on a separate page, then provides a call-to-action that leads them to the payment screen after that.
On the other hand, if you’re using a traditional funnel approach, where you’ve built up an audience first…
Then a sales page is something you’ll want to use.
It works well in this situation because when you’re creating an email funnel for this situation, the main goal of the email is getting people to click on a CTA (usually at the end of the email)…
And the CTA will redirect them to a sales page, which will then do all the “selling” after that.
In short, if you’re doing an evergreen funnel then don’t use a long-form sales letter as it’ll do more harm than good…
But if you’re offering a new product to existing leads, or even an existing product to leads that didn’t want it the first go around (i.e. when they completed your free course months ago)…
Then a sales page is important (almost a must).
Part #5 — Filling your funnel with targeted leads
Alright, so now that you have your entire sales funnel ready, it’s time to circle back to the important part that a lot of people struggle with…
Getting qualified traffic to visit their landing page.
I actually remember this being one of my biggest challenges when I first started, as I’d already tried blogging in the past…
And really didn’t have a good experience with it.
Like many others go through, I got sucked into the “benefits” of SEO and thought I’d be able to gain traffic in little time by constantly blogging on my own site, but after cranking out 90 blogs in 60 days and only having 17 email subscribers to show for it…
I quickly gave up on that method and swore I’d never blog again.
Then after that, I started messing around with paid advertising, and even though I loved being able to get 2x the leads for half the work, I didn’t like how it cost $3 (more now) to get a new email subscriber…
Because well, that was really cutting into my profitability and taking away from my bottom line.
This put me in a stand still for the longest time, as I knew content marketing was the most efficient way to get leads, it just took a lot longer to do so…
But on the other hand, even though paid advertising was faster — it was also a lot more expensive and I had to get more sales just to remain profitable.
This sucked for the longest time, and I really wasn’t sure what to do…
But then one day I was reading the timeless classic, Ogilvy on Advertising, and he mentioned how his best advertisements were always full-blown articles that he would put in the newspaper, because they allowed him to show his knowledge and leave a call-to-action at the end that would offer his services…
And I have no idea why it took this long for me to think of it, but after reading that chapter I got the brilliant idea of writing an article, then “boosting” it on Facebook.
I figured this was essentially the modern day equivalent of writing an article and paying for it to be in the newspaper, and even though I was a little nervous, I tried it out anyway…
And well, the results were absolutely amazing.
I was getting clicks for around 23 cents each, which showed me that this is a cheaper form of advertisement in itself (as I was getting some leads from it)…
But then after running this ad for a week and having a sizeable audience I could “retarget”, I then setup a retargeting campaign and offered my free course to them after that.
To my surprise, this significantly lowered my cost per conversion (to $1.30) and skyrocketed my conversion rate…
And I guess I don’t have the exact reason why, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because sharing the blog first gave them an opportunity to become familiar with me and understand what I was saying.
Then in addition to that, it worked well as I was able to find targeted leads for cheap, as they showed interest in my product when they read (well, clicked) on my blog…
Which is a nice alternative when compared to paying higher prices that just put you in front of cold leads.
In short, you’ll have a lot of people who swear that blogging (or any form of content marketing) is the only way to go as it gives you a chance to share your knowledge first, then try and start the relationship (via content upgrade) after that…
And trust me, I agree 100% — but I also know it takes a long time to build an audience, so if you’re not wanting to wait that long…
Then pure content marketing probably isn’t the best route for you.
On the other hand, you have paid advertising that certainly speeds up the process, but it’s also expensive and cuts into your profitability.
This leaves you with two extremes that usually stops new entrepreneurs in their tracks, and I’ve been there myself…
But then I accidentally figured out how to combine the two, and my life hasn’t been the same ever since.
To recap:
- Start off by creating a blog that your target market will love. If you’re starting off with an evergreen sales funnel, then this blog should solve the most pervasive problem I talked about earlier…and if you’re building an audience first, then it doesn’t have to be quite as intense, but you still want to produce something that solves a problem for them.
- After you’ve created this blog, publish it, share on Facebook and boost the post.
- Just make sure you leave a call-to-action at the end, that way some people can sign-up right away
4. Then once you’ve had enough people engage with your blog post, run a retargeting ad (sending people to your landing page) for everybody who clicked on your blog, but didn’t take your free content upgrade.
And guess what?
That’s literally everything you need to sell your own course, but I know we’ve covered a lot of ground here, so I wanted to do a quick recap before moving on.
The 6 steps to creating a funnel that rings up your course sales
Step #1 — Create a freebie you can offer in exchange for an email address. If you’re in the process of creating a course and just want to build your audience first, then do this with a lead magnet (ebook) and follow up later on. If you’re doing an evergreen funnel, then create a free email course that solves an immediate problem for them
Step #2 — Create a landing page that “sells” your free item. Again, don’t worry too much about design or anything like that, it always does more harm than good.
Step #3 — Write a blog post your target audience will be interested in. If you’re taking the evergreen funnel approach, then it usually works best to create a blog post that solves an immediate problem for them. Just make sure you include a call to action at the end, that way you can send traffic to your landing page.
Step #4 — Share your blog post on Facebook, then boost your post to a targeted audience
Step #5 — After you’ve received a lot of engagement on your blog post, set up a retargeting ad for everybody that read your blog but didn’t opt-in to your free content upgrade.
Step #6 — Let your funnel run on autopilot, enjoy the money, but gotdamn it — make sure you help your students. I’m a HUGE fan of online courses and encourage everybody to do them, but I also know there’s a small percentage of people out there that only care about the money…so please don’t be that Rob Lowe
Step #6.5 — If possible, try and email all your subscribers at least once a week. It’s good to keep up with them afterwards (even if they don’t sign-up for your course right away), that way you can stay in touch and they’ll be more likely to buy when you offer your course again later on down the road (preferably 4–6 months later, and this is when you’d use the other funnel).
Bonus hint: You’ll get sales if you do a 5-day funnel, but on day 6 I always send out a FAQ email (to everybody that didn’t buy), then on day 7 I send a short training video that hopefully addresses any remaining concerns they may have, and usually ends up getting a sale or two.
Alright, that’s honestly it for this funnel…
But if you’re a visual person, here’s the exact funnel we setup for a recent client (and yes, it’s performing very well):
P.S. Also, if you’re interested…
It seems like everybody understands this information better after seeing the inside of a live system, so if you’d like — here’s a short video that does just that.
