How Dorie Clark Built a six-figure online course in just five months
Over the years, I've been wishing to develop an online class. I was convinced that it would be the best way to boost the impact of my work, connect with more people, and earn revenue without constantly jumping on airplanes.
In 2015, I published my first book Stand Out: How to Discover Your Breakthrough Idea and Build A Following for it.
After a year, I decided to leverage the research I'd completed to write the book and devise an instructional course for the platform. The course I call " Recognized Expert." In only 5 months I made $118,010 of sales and immediately created an entirely new revenue stream of six figures for my company.
Here's how I did it And you could too.
1. Make sure you have a powerful lead magnet
If you're offering a top-quality program (let's say it's over $150 or $100) You're not likely to attract buyers on impulse who discover your course and instantly click to purchase. Instead, people need to become familiar with your course to build confidence in you and your method. It is essential that they know your investment is a good one. Make sure to contact the company before offering.
It is possible to begin the procedure by creating a wonderful "lead magnet" that is a bit of extra content - usually a series of videos and workbooks, an electronic book, a tips sheet or resource guide and so on. They'll get from you in exchange of the email address they provide. Very few people want an additional e-newsletter because the majority of electronic newsletters (let's be honest) can be boring. People are usually willing to start a dialogue with you if you're offering material that they find useful and interesting.
You can look over my lead magnet I made to create my personal list of leads over the past two years from 9,500 up to 38,000 right here.
2. Survey your audience
The majority of the time, we're not sure in our perception of what the audience would like. When I first started pitching book proposals to publishing houses some time ago, I was obsessed with the idea of writing a book about communication secrets for professionals, based on most effective practices of famous political figures. Having worked as a president's campaign spokesperson in the past this was within my realm and I found it intriguing.
The idea wasn't bad however, it also wasn't a great one. Nobody else seemed to be enthusiastic about the concept. Instead, I listened to the news on the internet (in the format of an article on a popular blog) and then when I proposed a new idea about the possibility of a book about professional reinventing, that idea took off.
For more information on the methodology of surveys, Ryan Levesque's book "Ask can be very useful.
3. Run a pilot
The cost, which I explained to participants would be that they'd need to agree to give me lotsof feedback. I asked them to take a poll after every session to see the things they enjoyed and didn't like, and the kind of material they would like to learn more about. This process was invaluable as it helped me create the content according to the needs of my students and what they needed to know, not what I had imagined that they could.
4. Explain the value
In September 2016, I officially launched my course. An online course isn't an essential like food or shelter, and there's a lot of low-cost products available in the market. If you want to persuade that someone to enroll in my course - the way you would invest in a conference or graduate level professional development , you need provide context and help them understand the way your course will benefit them, specifically. It's about creating videos or audio, that frames things properly. Why does your course matter? What impact will it have on their life? In what ways has it helped others who are similar to them?
I designed a set of emails, often with links to YouTube videos to get more information, which I sent out to my list for a time period of 3 weeks. In each one, I deepened the conversation. I told my story of building up my company and learning by my own experiences and the process of writing how to stand Out - how to become a recognized professional.
Make sure the audience can understand why the issue your training solves is relevant and meaningful for your audience (in this case, because having a reputation as an expert will make sales significantly easier and boosts your earnings) and that you're a credible source for that knowledge; and that your content will actually benefit others who are similar to you. If you're able to do those things, you're on your path to creating a strong relationship with your customer.
Building a six-figure course - like the process of becoming a renowned expert doesn't happen overnight. But if you can be attentive to your target audience and build a product they want to purchase it is possible to generate huge value for yourself, in addition.
Dorie Clark works as a market expert and professional speaker who is a professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. She is the writer of Reinventing You and Stand Out. You can download her free 42-page Stand Out Self-Assessment Workbook.