How I Sold £35,713 of Courses on Podia in 1 Year [Part 1/2]
This Method Requires a 5 Year Mindset
Between the 28th May 2022 and 27th May 2023 I sold £35,713 of courses on Podia.
NOTE: This is not a slow and long lazy pitch to sell a course about selling courses. I’m just sharing my experience.
Normally this is where people show a picture of their Stripe account, but I have multiple income streams going through (which makes it look wayyyy more) so here’s a screenshot from an Excel File of a Sales Report from Podia.
I love Podia and they are cheap and easy to use but their reporting capability is pretty basic.
Here’s the close up.
In Part 1 I’ll give you the Short Version to the method I used, and the backstory of how I got here (this was a series of hard fought lessons learnt over 4 years of making and selling courses)
Which includes an earnings breakdown of what I made on Udemy and Skillshare prior to selling on Podia.
Then next week in Part 2, I’ll break down my whole journey.
This is not a get rich quick scheme, it’s just a behind the scenes look at how I did it, and I am still refining and improving this method today.
But, the core premise to selling courses can be broken down into 2 key ideas:
Give before you take: Through great content
Create something exceptional: I’m still trying to make our digital products better all the time, and every time I get someone asking for a refund I feel a little bit crushed inside (sad, I know) because the person out there buying your course is just like you. They are spending hard earned money on something they genuinely believe will solve their problem. For you to disappoint them is a travesty (and then there are just people who are never happy hahaha)
My thinking around selling courses mainly stemmed from many sources of ideas, but predominantly from the concept of the “generous give” from Seth Godin, and creating super niche content from Ali Abdaal.
Short Version
This is how I thought about selling courses (after previous failed attempts which I’ll outline in the backstory)
Choose a Social Media Platform (To get traffic)
Create great content that gives an audience value for free (a la Ali Abdaal et al.)
Find which pieces of content do best
Create a course based around the problem that content solves
Make the course really specific, good, useful and over deliver for a great price
Repeat
Simple as a concept, requires patience in practise
Backstory
My previous experience selling courses
Udemy
I made my first course in May 2019. Called the Complete English Interview Course.
It took me a month to make, had 7.5hours of video and handouts galore.
When I released it, do you know what happened?
F%^& all that’s what.
But you’ve had like 3,500+ students Mike.
You must have made tons of money.
WRONG.
Here’s how much I’ve earned in 4 years.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing to sniff at.
But considering how much work I put in.
To say I was slightly depressed was an understatement.
Plus I cheated, I gave away like 3,000 free passes to the course to boost the numbers, because I had no idea how else to get people to take the course. I’m not sure if you can still do this, but I just found a couple of groups on Facebook and advertised my course for free, to buy for free.
Result?
Lots of freeloaders, and very few reviews.
I learnt 2 important lessons:
I need traffic: Though you can believe in the idea of “make it and they shall come” , that really depends on how much time you have to wait. If you’ve got money and time, you can make something great and they will come. But the internet is really busy, and people are easily distracted.
What I want doesn’t matter: When I first made the course, I thought it was this super duper, bells and whistles, everything you need for an interview type thing. I was so full of myself and my years of coaching experience and bla bla bla. No one cared. The course was way too long and in-depth when people wanted something. importantly I never even asked people what they wanted, I just made it thinking I know best
Skillshare
About a year after starting my business I started to provide courses on Skillshare, which proved to be a hit in the beginning.
By October of 2021 I had 3 courses live and was earning over $100 a month.
But this wasn’t really enough for me to place more emphasis on publishing courses on Skillshare.
Our Youtube Channel was slowly getting bigger, and we had a steady flow of traffic this time (more about this in Part 2)
So, by creating a flow of regular traffic who trusted me, I created a constant source of sales.
At the time I was really proud of my sales and figures on Skillshare, because this was more than I had ever done before.
So, often we can get caught up in big numbers, but everything starts with 1 sale.
But I learnt one major lesson.
If you can drive traffic, then you can control the whole sale. Rather than give a percentage to a marketplace.
Apart from hosting and providing some form of trusted social proof, Skillshare did nothing to advertise my courses or drive further traffic.
They essentially were just a marketplace.
So, towards the end of 2021 I decided it was time to strike out on my own and look at a platform where I could sell my own courses for a flat monthly fee, rather than just taking a percentage from sales of my own content.
Next week, I’ll break down the whole journey from May 2022 to May 2023 which resulted in £35K+ worth of course sales…
Where is part 2?