The surprising secret to building mind-blowing online courses
When you start to seek advice on how to sell more of your stuff, it can be easy to get swept away into the underworld of internet marking culture.
We’re constantly blasted with Youtube videos, free webinars, and “hurry up act now!” closing shopping carts, that promise to give us the secret to sell more, More, MORE! …without needing to lift a finger.
It’s easy to spend months of your life working on your sales funnels and tweaking the color of your BUY NOW buttons.
While we’re busy buying into all this bullshit about higher conversion rates, opt-ins and magic sales page hacks, we take our eye off the real prize.
When putting all of this energy into our big clever marketing scheme, we’re no longer focused on crafting extremely high-quality e-learning experiences.
You’re being lied to. Every single day.
Are you still enchanted by the idea of “making tons of money online from anywhere in the world without having to lift a finger”?
It’s quite silly really.
Think about it.
Money is earned by creating value. More value created, more money earned.
There is no such thing as easy money. Get over it. It’s a big fat lie.
I know, shocking right!?
Here’s the secret to making lots and lots of money: Work your ass off creating really good stuff. Then market and sell that really good stuff.
If all you’re focused on is finding the latest marketing hacks, you’ll be missing out on developing your ability to create really good stuff.
Simply creating your really good stuff, and actually caring about your work 110% is a far more effective long-term strategy than getting swept up in the latest and greatest pile of “this one weird marketing trick increased my conversions by 249,294%” marketing nonsense.
Here’s the thing: you can’t fake it.
If you aren’t fired up about what you are doing, then stop everything now and go figure it out.
The world doesn’t need any more fake, inauthentic, trying-to-be-somebody-else BS.
The world needs you doing great work that you actually care about, and doing it in your own way.
There’s really two approaches to take in this game online business:
- A marketing-centric approach. The product is just a tool to make the marketing work.
- A product-centric approach. The marketing is just a tool to make the product work.
A marketing-centric approach may yield you quick results, but those results will be volatile and unsustainable in the long run. Marketing tricks change and evolve with the sands of time. And when you put all your eggs in the marketing basket, the products you create are a bunch of hot air.
A product-centric approach may take longer to yield impressive results, but you’ll be dealing with a much more stable and sustainable business. When you put all your eggs in the product-basket, you learn to create stuff that is genuinely valuable. Then marketing becomes much easier and better for the soul.
It may come across as though we’re bashing on all things marketing, but we’re not. Not at all.
We simply believe that a product needs to be good enough that it’s actually worthy of marketing. And a large majority of the stuff out there just isn’t.
We’re sorry to say it, but it’s the truth and the numbers don’t lie (extremely student drop-out rates).
Believe it or not, referral/word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing you can do.
“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the holy grail of advertising.”
– Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook (AKA the biggest advertising platform on the planet)
The best part about referral marketing?
Other people do it for you! (So you can continue crafting really great stuff.)
So how do you get referrals?
Wow, what a revelation! 😉
Here’s some signs that you’re on the right track
1. You’re in love with the creative process.
You’re joyfully immersed in your work of developing the most supportive, enjoyable and transformational experiences you can dream up.
When you’re really invested in your student’s experience, building your course becomes an obsession. You really start putting yourself in the student’s shoes and asking questions like:
“Would I pay attention to this? Is this easy to understand? Would I sit around and watch this whole lesson? What would keep me engaged long enough to finish his course? How can this be better and more enjoyable? Would I really pay money for this? Is this my best work?”
These questions shaped how we built The Great eCourse Adventure and inspired the amount of love we put into every little detail.
2. When people look at your work, it exudes a special kind of uniqueness.
First and foremost, your course feels like “you”. It is an authentic expression and you are your ideal audience.
It deeply resonates with people like you, and stands out in comparison to all the other offerings like it in your industry.
This is where the philosophy of treating your work like an art-form is essential. Think about how much care and thought an artist puts into their craft. They become consumed by their vision and process.
They realize the work of art is only done when it’s done. They also understand that the journey to mastery is a steep learning curve and so what is their best work now will look like kindergarten later, but the important thing is to keep learning, growing and creating.
The artist creates their art, first and foremost, for themselves. The world then has the privilege to experience the fruits of their labor.
3. Your primary mission is to transform people’s lives.
The conversion rate you’re most interested in is, “how do I get my students to stay engaged til’ the very end, and walk away from this experience with a lasting transformation?”
If you’ve seen our Masterclass and Courses Worth Sharing, then you’ll know we are ridiculously passionate about this question.
It’s kind of our schtick and we’re excited to see more people making it their schtick too. Because honestly, if we don’t have high engagement and students getting to the finish line of our courses, then we don’t have a course worth sharing.
4. You’re not just talking about the thing you’re teaching, you are living it.
Anyone who is not living what they plan to teach is living inauthentically and will have a hard time selling their thing with full confidence.
However, when you fully embody what you’re here to share, there is no pretending, there is no convincing, and there is certainly no need to perform sleaze-ball sales techniques. The people who want what you’ve got will sign up for your course without thinking twice.
5. You are blazing your own trail, instead of simply following others.
You are smart enough to listen, knowing that there is always something new to be learned, but you are wise enough to ask more questions.
Rather than taking every guru’s word as the way, you are feeling into what feels right to you and putting your own unique, creative twist on it.
6. You’re having fun. Lot’s of fun.
You are doing something that you’d do whether you made money on it or not, because it’s something you are passionate about and enjoy.
You’re standing up for a cause that you believe in.
You’re excited about the people you have the opportunity to serve, support and spend your time working with.
Having fun probably should have been #1. If it doesn’t light you up inside, what’s the point?
Life is too short to be wasted on things we don’t truly care about.
Look around at the online course and marketing industries. What do you see?
What we generally see is:
- a lot of hype
- a lot of sameness
- a lot of overpriced courses
- a lot of scarcity-filled buy-now-or-else offerings
- a lot of really great teachers with important work who are falling short of their potential because they’re focused on the wrong things.
The hack for building mind-blowing, transformational experiences is simple: Put your whole heart and soul into it. Be honest. Be authentic. Show the world you care.
If you create something that’s really good, the world will happily share it for you.
A great course should be priority over great marketing.
That’s the way we see it anyways…
What are your thoughts on this? Share in the comments section below!
Did you know? You can begin your first 14-days of the Great eCourse Adventure free of charge. After that, it’s just 35 bucks a month. True story! Now get yourself signed up and lets climb that mountain to the top of Launch Summit. Sheesh, you may even wanna wrangle some friends into the adventure 😉
Learn the Art of Creating Great eCourses
Rather than building boring courses that nobody wants to go through, we'll teach you to create courses that engage, inspire and transform your student's lives.
Here at eCourse Adventures, we treat eLearning like an art-form.