Does making $1m from selling one course in one year sound impossible?
It’s not. Aside from doing it ourselves, we’ve helped course creators who teach color theory, knitting, guitar, yoga, meditation, dog training, horse hoof care, eyebrow waxing, home organization, presentation design, interior decorating, personal finance, business, and more.
But, just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s easy. The truth is there’s a lot of FALSE information floating around the interwebs and today we are exposing THREE of those falsehoods.
It’s a new day and I want 2024 to be the year you finally get some traction in your online course business and break through that upper limit you keep coming up against.
Let’s go.
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.
Today I’m exposing 3 myths about what it takes to grow your online course business to the $1m mark and beyond. But, I have to warn you that some of what I say today might sound a little weird because it flies in the face of what you’ve known to be true. So, stick with me because once I reveal the truth about why these myths are flat out wrong – you’ll begin to see this whole “making millions from your course on auto-pilot thing” a whole lot differently.
1. You need to spend tons of money on ads right away.
I recommend doing exactly what my program says, which is to make sure to focus on learning how to leverage organic traffic to reach $8-10k/mo consistently from your course BEFORE you start using paid traffic.
The thing to remember about paid traffic is that it amplifies what’s working AND what’s not working in your funnel. Even if you have a funnel that is converting well organically, once you start sending paid traffic to it – there will be a learning curve as you figure out how to optimize your offer further so that it really stands out (which lowers your lead costs) and improve the effectiveness of the sales funnel itself (which will increase your return on ad spend).
The good news is that if you have at least $8k-$10k coming in organically, you have a little buffer to experiment with when it comes to investing some of your profits back into paid traffic. But, if you try to skip that step and start with paid traffic, you don’t have that buffer and everyday you are investing more and more money until you figure that out.
Typically this creates a lot of financial stress for the course creator and because they never took the time to develop effective organic strategies that work consistently to generate revenue (whether you’re running ads or not) the course creator is in a bit of a panic and has trouble thinking clearly, which further slows down their ability to figure out what needs to be fixed.
My MOST successful clients (the ones who are now making millions per year) all started by learning how to generate $8k-$10k/mo consistently with organic traffic first.
2. You need to hire an expensive team to grow.
One of the best things about running an online course business is that you don’t need a huge team to keep things running – especially if you’re selling your course on auto-pilot.
In fact, I didn’t hire my first employee until after I crossed the million dollar mark. Before then, I worked with a few trusted contractors from time to time – but, things were so streamlined and systemized that I didn’t need more than that.
I took the time and money I could have spent investing in a team into MYSELF. Afterall, how could I be expected to LEAD a successful team if I didn’t understand the basics? This approach allowed me to increase my sales, marketing, and leadership skills so that when I DID begin hiring a team, I knew how to train them and how to help them troubleshoot and brainstorm if something wasn’t working as planned.
I want everyone to understand that investing in your own education is not something that will ever end IF you want to build a successful business that provides for you and your family for years to come.
My most successful clients have spent YEARS working with me. Starting with my course, then upgrading to my mastermind, and then renewing their mastermind membership again and again. You don’t know what you don’t know and investing in support (courses, coaching, etc) from someone who has done the thing you’re trying to do will save you a ton of time and money.
3. Your course has to be perfect.
A client who is willing to take imperfect action will consistently outperform one who draws everything out because they want to get everything perfect.
By the time you create a “perfect” course, it’s already going to be out of date and you’ll need to redo something anyway, so you might as well start selling what you’ve got and then just keep making it better and better overtime.
“Creating” the course is the easy part. Come up with a topic, outline the steps, record a video of you explaining the steps. Done. No matter how much time and money you spend on creating what you believe to be the perfect course, once you start selling it, you’re going to begin realizing what needs to improve.
And since you’re selling it in auto-pilot, you’ll have the time to improve it WHILE you’re still making sales. Everyone wins. Your customer wins because they’ve invested in a program that keeps getting better year after year, you win because you’re learning more about your customers and you’re able to serve them at a higher level over time, and your business wins because you’re able to generate revenue consistently throughout the whole process.
I know there’s a few of you listening right now who have been postponing your enrollment in our program because you’re telling yourself that you need to have a perfect course ready to go BEFORE you join us – but, that’s not the case.
So to recap all the myths we’ve just busted about what it really takes to grow a $1m course business:
- You don’t need to spend tons of money on ads. Learn how to generate $8k-$10k/mo consistently from selling your course on auto-pilot BEFORE you begin investing in paid traffic.
- You don’t need to hire an expensive team to grow. Prioritize your OWN learning first – especially sales and marketing – so you have the skills needed to train and lead a team later on.
- You don’t need a perfect course to start selling in auto-pilot because your course can only get better and better overtime AFTER you start selling it.
I appreciate you being here and make sure to join me next week 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 auto-pilot?
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.
If making sales everyday in a way that is completely automated and doesn’t require paid advertising sounds good to you, then click the link around this episode and sign up for my free masterclass today.
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!
