For years, I believed that if I could just perfect my course launches, then everything would finally click and I’d live happily ever after.
But no matter how much effort I poured into launching, the revenue felt inconsistent, the pressure felt unbearable, and the sustainability just wasn’t there.
Until one day, I had enough and I made a change.
I stopped launching and started selling my course with an evergreen funnel that was 100% automated.
That one decision (that felt really hard at the time) helped me generate my first million in less than a year later.
But here’s what most people don’t tell you…
Shifting to evergreen is not as simple as flipping a switch.
When I first made the transition, I made some mistakes – big ones. Not because evergreen doesn’t work…but because I didn’t yet understand how it works.
I assumed I could take what worked in a launch (webinar, emails, etc), automate it, and call it a day.
I was wrong.
In today’s episode, I’m sharing the three biggest mistakes I made during my transition from launching to evergreen – so that if you’re thinking about making the switch…or you’ve tried before and watched it flop…you can avoid the same frustration I felt and build your evergreen sales system the right way.
Let’s dive in.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, CEO of Scale With Success®, and I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. I’m sharing revealing insights about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join me here to discover the tough decisions I’ve had to make, the biggest failures I’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. I’m so grateful that I have the chance to tell you everything right here on Scale With Success®: The Podcast. Let’s get started.
Before we get into the first mistake, I want to normalize something.
If you’ve tried to switch from launching to evergreen and it didn’t immediately work, that doesn’t mean it will never work. It doesn’t mean your audience will only buy your course if you launch. And it definitely doesn’t mean automation “just isn’t for you.”
What it usually means is that you brought “launch thinking” into an evergreen model and the two are very different.
I didn’t understand that at first. I thought evergreen was just a more convenient version of launching. Same offer. Same messaging. Same webinar. Just automated.
But evergreen isn’t a recorded launch.
It’s a completely different sales environment – which requires a different approach.
And that realization leads me to the first mistake I made when I tried to sell my course on autopilot…
#1 My Offer
So, first let’s talk about what an offer actually is – because it’s not your course.
I’m going to say that once more – your offer is not your course, but it does include your course.
An offer is the way you articulate the value of your specific method of getting someone from Point A to Point B.
If you have a course that you’ve tried (and failed) to sell on autopilot in the past, then you might be thinking to yourself that something is wrong with your course, or your audience – but, chances are neither of those are the real problem.
This can be especially frustrating for course creators because they were told, “launch it live a bunch of times and when that works, just put it on autopilot”.
They can’t wrap their heads around why their course sold live, but not in an automated funnel. They start believing that maybe automation just doesn’t work for them, but “automation” isn’t the problem – it’s your offer.
When you are creating an evergreen offer (remember I’m not referring exclusively to your course here) you need to make it clear, simple, and if you’re really good – you’ll construct your offer in a way that overcomes sales objections within the offer itself – and that can’t happen if you just try to repurpose what worked live.
The first time I tried to sell my course on autopilot, I was convinced my offer wasn’t the problem because it had already sold live. People had bought it. They had gotten results.
So when the same offer that converted live didn’t convert in my automated funnel, I panicked.
I remember staring at my sales numbers thinking, “This makes no sense. It works live. Why isn’t it working now?”
I nearly went back to launching because I thought, maybe evergreen just won’t work for me. I had to have a heart to heart with myself to remember that I am committed to doing the work until it works – evergreen worked for others and there’s no reason it couldn’t work for me.
So, before you start thinking people don’t want your evergreen course, think about the way you’re communicating the value and transformation that it holds. Keep things as clear as possible to reduce buyer confusion and to ensure that your prospects can make a decision that’s right for them.
Which brings me to the second mistake…
#2 My Funnel
When I made my first automated webinar I tried to use the same content format that worked in my live webinars and let’s just say, it was a major flop.
I made a couple sales at first, but then they just stopped. I thought my issue was just that I needed more traffic, so I spent a bunch of money on ads and STILL – no sales.
I was missing something, but what??
The problem was that I failed to consider just how different the sales journey is for a prospect when they’re buying live vs. evergreen automation.
I thought, if a webinar converts live – why wouldn’t it convert inside an automated evergreen funnel?
Well, here’s why.
Inside an automated evergreen webinar, your content needs to be so captivating that people will stick around all the way to the end. There are specific things you need to do in the introduction, the teaching and especially the pitch.
You need to build curiosity and satisfy that curiosity while building to the next section again and again. AND you need to do it in a way that doesn’t leave your audience confused because remember – you’re not there to answer questions live.
You have to present the information in a way that builds connection with your brand on a deep, identity level while tapping into what they really want – I mean you need to describe their desired outcome better than they could.
Whether your course solves problems related to parenting, dating, finance, health, wellness, or even mastering a skill like spreadsheets or watercolors – you need to understand what your audience wants, why they want it, and why your approach to solving their problem is completely different than anything they’ve tried before.
By the time your audience attends your webinar, it’s likely they’ve tried solving their problem before with methods and advice they’ve learned from other experts – people who wrote books, hosted podcasts, or posted content on tiktok. But, despite their previous failed attempts at solving their problem – they haven’t given up and they’re interested now in learning from you.
And if the content you’re sharing in your webinar is not reflective of a deep understanding of your audience, they’re gonna leave, never buy, and move onto the next webinar. Your audience deserves a better sales experience and YOU deserve a higher conversion rate.
The numbers don’t lie and if your webinar is not converting, then the content you’re sharing in it isn’t working.
Which takes me to my next mistake…
#3 My Emotions
I couldn’t figure out WHY people weren’t buying and instead of digging into the data to determine precisely what wasn’t working, I let my emotions get the best of me and it felt like I was grasping at straws – trying to fix everything about my funnel EXCEPT the thing that actually needed to be fixed.
I vacillated between tracking every little piece of data in minute detail (to the point where I didn’t even know what I was looking at) and throwing caution to the wind without tracking anything at all.
The worst thing you can do as a course creator making less than $1m/year is waste time solving the wrong problems – and if you’re not tracking the right data – if you don’t understand how to read the data and interpret what the numbers mean, you’re going to waste a ton of time solving the wrong problems.
You don’t redo your webinar, or your emails, or your webinar registration page just because you “have a hunch” that you should change it.
The best thing about numbers is, if you know how to read them correctly, they’ll tell you exactly what needs to be fixed and then you can use all your creativity and intuition on solving the RIGHT problem.
Honestly, you’ve got really good ideas and you’re way better at this whole “growing a business” thing than you think, but you’re just directing your attention at the wrong spot which just leads to frustration and burnout.
Our clients track all their info in a tidy, data dashboard and we give them benchmarks for everything. So, if a number is too high or too low, then they just look at the decision tree we give them that helps them determine exactly what to fix.
So let’s bring this full circle.
When I made the switch from launching to evergreen, it wasn’t smooth.
It wasn’t instant – and it definitely wasn’t perfect.
I had to learn that my offer needed to be articulated differently – not rebuilt, but refined so the transformation was crystal clear and objection-proof without me being there live to explain it.
I had to learn that my funnel wasn’t just a replay of my launch webinar, it needed to be intentionally designed for automation, built to hold attention, build connection, and guide someone through a complete decision-making journey on its own.
And maybe most importantly, I had to learn how to manage my emotions because when sales didn’t come in immediately, my instinct was to panic and start changing everything… instead of calmly looking at the data and fixing the right thing.
Evergreen isn’t magic.
It’s methodical and rewards tiny tweaks over time.
Once you understand that, everything changes because instead of asking, “Why isn’t this working?”
You start asking, “What needs to be adjusted?”
That’s when you stop feeling powerless…and start feeling in control.
Switching from launching to evergreen was one of the best decisions I ever made in my business, not because it was easy, but because it was sustainable.
There’s absolutely no reason you can’t build the same kind of predictable, scalable revenue in your own business.
I appreciate you being here, and be sure to tune in next time for another episode of Scale With Success® – The Podcast.
Are you sick and tired of launching and looking for a proven method to generate consistent revenue from your online course on autopilot?
Sign up for my free masterclass, “How To Generate Launch-Sized Revenue Without Launching” and I’ll show you how our clients are making MORE money in LESS time than they ever did while launching.
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Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale With Success® Accelerator — an online course designed to help you generate launch-sized revenue without lanching. If you want to learn MORE about our proven method for success, click here to watch my free masterclass. See you in there!
