3 myths about online course creation

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:: 00:00

Do you dream about living the laptop lifestyle working less than four hours a day from the beach or anywhere in the world? If so, you're probably listening to the wrong podcast. I'm Janet Murray and I have built a multi six-figure business selling online courses, memberships, digital and physical products, but it's not quite as glam as it looks out there. And in this short episode of the courageous content podcast,

:: 00:24

I'm going to bust a few myths about online course creation. Ah, so there are so many things that they gurus. Don't tell you about online course creation. When they're busy, flogging you the laptop lifestyle and letting you believe that you will be making millions by next week. The first one is that you don't need an audience. You too, the average conversion rate for online sales is just one to 2%,

:: 00:51

which should give you an idea of the kind of email list size that you'll need. If you want to sell in the hundreds or thousands. So you can skip the audience building part, but you won't have anyone to sell your course to. There is good news though, while you do need an email list, you don't actually need fancy email automation. Automation can make your life easier.

:: 01:13

It's more convenient, but you don't need it. And you particularly don't need it when you're a new online course creator, because you're typically going to be lucky if you sell 10 or 20, which means that you could theoretically do all of your marketing, do all of your follow-up and delivery emails. If you're digital products manually, you don't need this stuff.

:: 01:33

The other thing that drives me mad is this idea that you don't need any experience to launch a successful online course or membership. You don't need experience of online course creation or search. If you know your subjects and you can put some slides and resources together, you can probably make a decent enough product. Although of course you do get better every time. What you do need though is content experience because you don't just need to create the online course or the membership.

:: 02:04

You have to create a ton of content launch your product sales pages. Thank you. Pages, email marketing campaigns, delivery sequences, lead magnets, nurture sequences, social media posts. And here's another thing you probably won't be very good at it to start with. I mean, why would you be amazing at writing sales pages or email marketing campaigns? If you haven't done it before?

:: 02:24

Which means that even if you do manage to create all of that content, you're probably not going to smash it out of the park on your first launch, because you're a newbie. You're just getting used to how to do all of this stuff. And the final thing that drives me mad. Well, actually there's more than three things, but I don't want to spend all day on this episode.

:: 02:42

You'll be making passive income in nighttime. Now don't get me wrong. This episode is not about trying to put you off selling one to many or launching an online course or a membership. I love selling one to many. I love teaching one-to-many, but it's not passive income. And it's certainly not passive income in the first few years, as a new course creator,

:: 03:04

you have to create a ton of content. If you can get the automation together to make it all happen, magically automatically great, but things will still go wrong. You'll still get emails from people who haven't been delivered. The course locked out of their members. Area wants a refund. You know, these people will need customer service. And this content that I've mentioned,

:: 03:27

sales pages, email marketing campaigns, social media posts. Thank you. Pages lead magnets. It's going to take you longer at first because it does, when you haven't done something before it takes you longer, because typically your learning as you go along. I sold 13 of my first online course. And at the time I was devastated because I had seen all the hype from the gurus out there.

:: 03:49

And I was thinking that I would be able to do as well as somebody who'd been doing it for 10 years, had tons of experience. All the world's best copywriters were spending tons on Facebook ads. I didn't make the connection. And a lot of people don't, which is why I'm so passionate about sharing it. When I checked my stats, my 13 sales was actually really good because I converted at about 2% based on the number of people I had on my email list.

:: 04:15

At the time I did well, but it takes most people, a good number of launches and usually a good few years before that, more than breaking even I think it's worth it. I do wake up in the morning with sales in PayPal and Stripe, and it's very nice, but a lot of work has happened to make that possible and not just set up work for that particular product,

:: 04:38

but also all the work I've done to build my audience, my email list, my social media following to improve my sales copywriting. So I'm sharing this not to put you off in any way at all, but just to help you be kind to yourself, take the time you need to develop your content skills before you go rushing into launching an online course.

:: 05:00

And if you are going to launch a course, you don't need to knock the big online course to start off with a masterclass is a course. So one-off masterclass or a webinar, you can launch a PDF download or a small toolkit or a mini course save the big cause until you've got a little bit more experience under your belt, because then you will get better results.

:: 05:23

And if the content feels overwhelming, then get help. I'm just about to launch a launched content toolkit, which contains templates for all of the content that I've mentioned in this podcast. Episode, marketing emails, sales pages, thank you. Pages, delivery, emails, nurture sequences, lead magnets, it's all in there. And having those templates, having those checklists,

:: 05:48

those structures that will just help you get from the blank page to creating this content will save you a lot of time and trouble in the long run. I believe me. I know because I've been there. So I hope you found that helpful as ever a reminder that this is not to put you off. It's me speaking from experience, telling you to be kind to yourself,

:: 06:08

to give yourself the time that you need to develop the skills that you need to make this work for you, because that will get you better results in the long run as ever. I do love hearing from you. And if you do want to connect with me on social media, I'm at Jan Murray UK, and I will put a link to my courageous launch content toolkit in the show notes.