tough love about selling online

The Truth About Selling Courses in 2024

I want to tell you something, but I don’t want to scare you.

Trigger warning for an insider scoop on the state of online business. Specifically, about selling courses online.

Let’s start with a whole bunch of good news:

By the time you get this we’ll have closed cart on our latest offer. I set very doable good/better/best goals of 15/20/25. It was thrilling to open my Stripe account after coming back from camping and see that we’d hit our “best” goal.* …without fast-action anything. …without huge promises. …without performing my life on social media (​I did post this on LinkedIn​). …despite saying, “This is going to be hard,” many times in my emails.

My retargeting ad got stuck in “learning” so I only spent a hundred bucks on advertising.

I worked normal hours.

I wasn’t biting my nails the whole time, wondering, “Is this shit going to work or am I going to die alone?” Nervous system regulation is so much of the game in business. This was a huge win.

Sales were slow the first few days, which was a good thing. Snap-decision buyers are great for revenue but they are the quickest to ghost on programs, ask for refunds, and regret their purchase later. I want my potential customers to take their time deciding, and they did. In the meantime I fielded lots of “Is this for me?” type questions, a great indicator that an offer is connecting.

Most of the sales rolled in toward the end of our bonus deadline, while I was off camping in a zero-service zone. Another big win.

Along the way, one subscriber who has not started their business yet emailed me saying, “I have a dream of building an online community. How long do you think this is going to take?”

I’ve botched questions like this before.

Years ago a financially-strapped woman who’d just had a baby asked if I thought she could be successful with the program I was selling. I told her it would take grit and courage but it was definitely possible if she was willing to put in the work.

Successful with what resources?

Without time or money?

Highly unlikely, even with all the “grit and courage” in the world. How about childcare and capital?

I emailed her to apologise afterward but years later I still feel shitty thinking about it. After that I promised myself that I would be a safe place for subscribers to share their dreams and desires without those same dreams and desires being weaponized against them.

I got good at hearing every version of no, and keeping my mouth shut. Even better at telling people, “I don’t think this is for you.” This is what I said to the subscriber who bravely shared her dream of building an online business.

Here is the truth not many people will tell you:

That’s the good part, and I meant every word of it.

Here’s the part you may find hard to hear:

In our 2020 promotion of Email Stars, which was our biggest launch ever and quite a lot more work, we enrolled 225 students, with a similar-sized audience.

Roughly 10x more students

Could webinars and cold ads have gotten us a bump in enrollment this year? Probably but that’s not a guarantee. Would fast-action bonuses and transformational promises have improved sales? No doubt. But not to a magnitude of ten. Selling courses in 2024 just isn’t the same as selling courses in 2020.

The obvious solution for people like me who want to continue selling courses is to focus on list growth, something I know how to do. We sell quality products, have loyal readers and customers, plus we know how to convert. We’ve just had to reset our expectations on conversion rates.

Also—now pay attention to this part—there are other business models than courses. I know lots of people carving out interesting and profitable careers for themselves from their kitchen tables, without much more than a laptop (and grit and courage, obviously —childcare also helps).

IT IS GOING TO BE OKAY.

I do have a lifestyle business, even though I don’t post Instagram stories about it. I have a career as a writer, which has been my dream since I was old enough to be asked. It provides for my family and leaves me with enough time to be a NATIONAL MEDALIST in sprint canoe, and go on, like, 3 dates per year with sexy, funny people who totally want me to be their boyfriend but also don’t usually call me back.

Those things are much more important to me than 10x-ing my sales.

What more do I want than that?**

The dream we are sold is so big and so far removed from most people’s reality, it’s easy to overlook the fact that something smaller and more personal might be just as precious.

This isn’t the dream that was promised to me by The Bikini Business Coach back in 2016, and it isn’t where I thought my business would be in 2024. It’s better. Better than the business I was chasing before, which was the bunny you never quite catch, a ladder that has no final rung.

..and yet the business I have today is still a dream that is very much worth chasing.

‘Till next week

Tarzan

Trazam Kalryzian [she/they] Did someone forward you this email? ​Subscribe here​. Follow me on ​LinkedIn​.

*A thrilling moment that I got to experience at a pharmacy in the middle of nowhere, waiting in line for UTI meds (IYKYK) after hauling ass out of the backcountry and driving 167 kilometres to the nearest Shoppers Drug Mart, bouncing up and down on one foot and grabbing myself like Michael Jackson I was in so much pain. The relief I got seeing those sales was brief but appreciated. Thank you to all

**The truth is I really want a boyfriend. Hit “reply” if you like reading in bed and you are comfortable calling me daddy when I fix your bike or tie a boat on your car or whatever. me

(If you care about me at all, you’ll email to say you laughed at that joke. Just say, “Thank you, daddy.”)