Behind The Scenes Of $1,000,000/Year Online Courses

I have this student, her name is Danira, and she lives in LA, single mom, 3 kids, really small house, not enough rooms for everybody. Like she is definitely doing it herself. She was working 2 jobs and she was baking and people would come to her house. They'd pick up a birthday cake or a celebration cake or whatever. And that's one way she was making money. Long story short, cut to creating a digital course. And she became really good at caramel candy apples. So how to create caramel candy apples. And the thing is, the caramel was store-bought. It wasn't like her special recipe, just people didn't know what store to go to or what to buy. And so she started to create these and sell a digital course. Now, a lot of my students, many of them have made 7 figures and beyond, but I want to talk about her because she's a woman who made, never made over $100,000 a year. And now in one digital course launch, She made $260,000 selling how to create caramel candy apples. And she literally was just doing live videos in a private Facebook group. And I always tell that story because a lot of people listening have never created anything in their life online, and they would never even, they're like, my idea can't be good enough or it's not original enough or whatever. And then I think of Danira, single mom living in LA, making $260,000 on the first time she launched anything. Now she's making way more money than that, But that's the kind of stuff that I live for because it has to start somewhere.

So Amy, what's going on? So Amy Porterfield, you're part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. You're a new-ish addition, right? When did you join?

Right. Yeah, just about 2 months.

And so what would you say you do? I mean, you do— I've read your blog for years and years and years, but we had John Lee Dumas on the other day and I was like, I actually don't know how to describe him. And he's like, Is he— do I just call him a podcaster? Is he— he's a blogger? I'm not actually sure what— how I would— like, because you kind of do a bunch of stuff. How would you describe it?

You sound like my mom and dad who have no clue what I do 13 years in. So I totally get it. I always say that I am an internet marketing expert and I help entrepreneurs build businesses online. And my expertise is to take your knowledge and know-how and turn that into a profitable digital course. So digital courses are my area of expertise online.

Okay, amazing. What kind of digital courses? Do you have your own course about courses?

I do, which is so meta, I know. So basically, here's the thing. 13 years ago, I worked in corporate. I worked for Tony Robbins and I was the director of content development, got to travel the world and work on content that Tony did on stage at like Unleash the Power Within and Date with Destiny and all those cool events. And I was in a meeting And I was called, so humbling, I was called into this meeting to take notes. And I walk into this meeting in this big San Diego corporate office and I walk in and it's a bunch of internet marketers. Now in my world, these are like the grandfather of internet marketers, although that sounds very rude to call them grandfathers, but they're like the mack daddies. Like, so it's like Frank Kern, Brendon Burchard, Eben Pagan, Jeff Walker, like big name internet marketers that are still doing really big things. But they were the leaders in the industry. I had no idea who these guys were, and here I am at a side table taking notes, and Tony's going around asking them about their businesses and what do they do and how are they making money online. And all I heard was freedom. Like, these guys were running their own businesses, creating digital courses about tons of different topics, and I wanted a piece of that. So that was like my first entry into this world I knew nothing about. And about 6 months later or so, I had left my corporate job and started creating my own digital courses. So yeah, I've got digital courses teaching people how to grow email lists, how to create digital courses. But ultimately, my mission is to help people leave their 9-to-5 jobs, start their own online businesses, and I believe digital courses is a way to do that. So that's their vehicle.

Sean, you have something to say? Because I—

I was gonna say— I was gonna say, forget courses. Let's talk about Tony Robbins.

I was gonna say that exact same thing. I was gonna, I was gonna say, uh, I was gonna ask you about a couple of the people you mentioned, including Tony. And I was like, how much is his empire bringing? Do you think it's, does this guy just knock it out the park or what?

I mean, it's seriously, what I always say about Tony is how, if you have, you guys ever been to one of his events before? Have you ever seen him on stage?

So I've been to two, maybe actually I've been to, yeah, I've been to two Unleash the Power Within.

Okay, cool.

And I'm a Kool-Aid drinker. I love Tony Robbins.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So I'm a fan, but I'm also super curious because I don't know the guy or know much about him.

So I'm still a fan after all these years and how he is on stage like that huge personality, all the energy, super intense, like how he is on stage is exactly how he is behind stage as well. I often joke that I might have lost a few years off my life because that was the most intense job I ever had. But I wouldn't change it for the world because I literally got to learn from the master.

Give me an intensity story. Tony Robbins intensity. What you got?

So the thing is, when before Tony goes on stage—

Spill the beans.

Wait, what?

You got to spill the beans. You got to tell us the stories.

Here's why it's intense. Before he goes on stage, he literally preps for Unleash the Power Within like it's the first time he ever stepped on stage. I've never seen anyone prep for anything and be prepared more in my entire life. And so we have to write these like stage signs of everything that like he's going to talk about and the stories he's going to touch on, and they're all handwritten. I don't know why we would handwrite these things every time, but they're handwritten and he goes over all of them. And then he gets on this rebounder and he's jumping on the rebounder behind stage, getting all the energy in his body.

The music's super loud. What's a rebounder?

Is that like a trampoline?

Like a trampoline, yeah. Yeah. And it kind of gets the energy going in your body and he's reading your stage sign and making sure he's got everything going. And then he just throws the stage sign and he runs on stage and he does his thing. But the intense part is when he gets off, he looks at whoever's in his proximity and he's like, all right, let's download. He downloads every single time he comes off stage, what worked, what didn't, what we can make better, what he liked, what he didn't like. He wants feedback from everyone. And it's like, you are on the entire time. I still, I'm nervous talking about it.

Yeah. You sound like it. So he's been doing this for like 40 years. That's crazy to me, because I went to the two things. He does the same exact thing, right? He does pretty much the same script. So I would assume he's like, you know, knows it by the back of his, you know, like, like the back of his hand or whatever by now. So it's not, it's probably not the material that he's like trying to remember. It's like, he's just getting himself into that state.

What about that?

What about besides the performances? I think performing is definitely like a high intensity thing. What about just like work, like the office, or were you not around for that part?

Meaning Tony in the office?

Yeah, just like on a normal day, non-performance.

So on a normal day, non-performance, Tony's not in the office. He was— when I was there, he was at his house. He did all the stuff from his own house, but he's always on. So I think one thing I took, what I learned from Tony and I brought into my own business, is that one, always be prepared, over-prepare, care deeply about what you're creating. He cares deeply about his content. So that's why he is always getting it in his body, even though he's done it 100 times. And when he's not in the office, he's still always, always learning, always meeting with people, learning new things like that meeting that we had. He just wanted to know how they were selling their digital courses online because he was going to start doing that in a bigger way. So he is always pulling from different places. It was an incredible experience.

What about, so Sean, I've told you about this guy before. His name's Eben Pagan. And we talked, Sean and I, Amy, are good friends with Craig Clemens, and he was a copywriter, and when we had John Lee Dumas on the other day, I was like, John, tell me about some of these marketers. They're so fascinating to me, and you just named a bunch of them, and I'm gonna ask you, I wanna ask you about them, but Eben Pagan's the most interesting. So basically, for the listeners, Eben Pagan, I knew him as David D'Angelo. When I was 14 years old, I was a nerd. I wanted to learn how to meet girls. He had an ebook called Double Your Dating. And what he would do, if I remember correctly, and Amy, you could correct me, I think he would send these really long emails. Like, it felt like 10,000-word text-based emails about how to meet women. And then at the end, you could buy like a $14 book. And I think Craig told us that he was selling like $30 million a year of this book called Double Your Dating. Have you heard about this?

Yo, absolutely have heard about it. And I know he's a legend in, in that area. And when he came to the table, I think he had moved on from that part of his business, but that's how he was put on the map. And the one thing that I learned from Eben really early on is he teaches this strategy that you've got to coin your own content. Like you've got to name it, you've got to put a title to it, you've got to own it. So one of the things that I've always done when I've created content in my own business is like, I've got the Porterfield Process for outlining your digital course and the Sweet Spot for finding what topic to create for your course. I name everything and own it, and it sets you up as an expert, and that absolutely came from Evan.

That's like, so me and Sam both teach courses on Maven, and Wes, who runs the course platform for Maven, she has one that she calls, she's like, you need your spiky point of view. It's like, what's your spiky point of view? And she's like, it's your point of view that stands out that not everybody would agree with. It's like, it'll poke some people the wrong way because it's different than, you know, everything that they've heard before. And so, you know, that was like the core of when she's like, If you're going to teach a course, you got to have a spiky point of view. Otherwise, like your course doesn't really have a sort of angle to it or a hook to it that other people are going to attach with.

Yeah, I love that.

Do you— the other day, Sean and I were talking about this guy named Sam Ovens because he had this YouTube video called Consult. He has a business called consulting.com and he revealed all of his numbers and he was like, we got to $30 million in revenue and then we decided to just be really profitable and we do $10 million in sales. With $5 million in profit with like a team of 4 people. And we were just fascinated because that's just like a— that's a great, great business to own that. What are some other people who you've worked with or that you know of that are like shockingly— that you would tell people and you're like, I can— you would not believe what this person does. You would not believe how much revenue they make or that they sell a course in this space. Are there any shocking ones like that?

So one of the ones that always has shocked me, I have this student, her name is Danira, and she lives in LA, single mom, 3 kids, really small house, not enough rooms for everybody. Like she is definitely doing it herself. She was working 2 jobs and she was baking and people would come to her house, they'd pick up a birthday cake or a celebration cake or whatever. And that's how one way she was making money. Long story short, cut to creating a digital course and she became really good at caramel candy apples. So how to create caramel candy apples. And the thing is, the caramel was store-bought. It wasn't like her special recipe, just people didn't know what store to go to or what to buy. And so she started to create these and sell a digital course. Now, a lot of my students, many of them have made 7 figures and beyond, but I want to talk about her because she's a woman who made, never made over $100,000 a year. And now in one digital course launch, she made $260,000, selling how to create caramel candy apples and she literally was just doing live videos in a private Facebook group and I always tell that story because a lot of people listening have never created anything in their life online and they would never even— they're like my idea can't be good enough or it's not original enough or whatever and then I think of Danira, single mom living in LA making $260,000 on the first time she launched anything. Now she's making way more money than that But that's the kind of stuff that I live for because it has to start somewhere.

What's her course name? How do I Google her?

Let's see. If you Google Danira Caramel Candy Apples, you will absolutely find her.

How do you spell Danira?

D-A-N-I-R-A. We call her the Caramel Candy Apple Queen. She's got tons of press written up about her. Like, she's a big deal.

How did she get her customers? So who bought this course? How did she go sell? How much is the course?

I can't remember, a couple hundred dollars. And the way she got her customers, this is what's cool. She made a lot of videos, she did a lot of social media where she'd show in her tiny little kitchen with not a fancy camera or lighting like what she was doing. And the thing is, so if you own a bakery, a caramel candy apple is like $10 or more to sell, which is really good profit for a bakery. And these bakers wanted to find more ways to make more money. So she appealed to the small business owners who had bakeries or sweets to sell, but she also appealed to a lot of hobbyists. A lot of people are like, I just want to do that. That's cool. So she had a mesh of two different audiences.

But she basically just made free content and then sold the course.

Tons of free content, lots of videos. Yep.

Wow.

And then the way I teach people how to sell courses is with webinars. So she started to do webinars and webinars were a way, a new vehicle to sell more. So she's gone on to do even launches.

You would do a webinar for a $300 or $200 thing?

Absolutely. So back in the day, my very first successful course was called FB Influence. I did it with Lewis Howes, and together we created this course and launched it. It was $97, and I probably did 200 webinars to sell a $97 course. And it was a huge success because we had tons of affiliates, but I would do a webinar even for a $97 course.

Amongst these internet marketers, who— what's the largest course? I don't know, course, info product. What's the largest business you've ever heard of?

Oh geez, the largest business I've ever heard of. I don't know. I feel like people—

Yeah, who crushes it the most? That's a different way to ask.

Well, my girl Marie Forleo. Do you guys know Marie Forleo? She has a program called B-School. She's been crushing it for 10 years. Here's what's unique about her course. She's had the same course. Obviously, she makes it a little bit better every year, makes the marketing better, but it's literally the same course that she has sold for, I think, 13 years now. Once a year, she sells this course, $2,000. Now it's $2,500. But she's been in the game for 13 years with the same course. That to me is badass because—

She's probably made like $3 million a year in profit for like 10 years. Would you think that's crazy?

Yes, I do. She's very quiet about her dollars, so I don't know exactly, but seeing the numbers, the affiliates— I've been an affiliate for a really long time. Absolutely, she's crushing it. And the thing is, and what I learned from Tony Robbins, is you do not always want to reinvent the wheel. Find something that works, double down on it, and stop starting from scratch all the time. And that's literally what Marie has mastered. So she's someone that I've always followed from the get-go.

Is there anyone else?

Um, I'm trying to think. It's just that, here's the thing, sometimes I don't think people are totally forthcoming with their numbers. I've been in the internet marketing space for a long time, and sometimes I trust, you know, what I hear, and sometimes I don't. And sometimes people throw out numbers and I'm like, yeah, but what's the profit margin on that? So I always am a little bit, uh, unsure about what the numbers really are.

The affiliate strategy. So, uh, what— because I think most people, if they're like, oh, I'm going to create my own my first course, they wouldn't think that, oh, I should be using affiliate strategy. So explain what that works and how big of a tool that is for you and your, like, marketing mix.

Do you use that even? Do you even use that, Sean? Do you use affiliates?

No. I don't use affiliates. No? So I have made millions in my own business being an affiliate for other people, but I've also had affiliates sell my own courses. And to me, I think it's one of the most powerful ways to build a business, at least supplement your income if you have courses and memberships of your own. So for, I think number one, I think 50/50 is what people should be offering. I've seen a trend recently that it's gone down to like 30%, maybe 40%, 40/60. I'm old school, so I really do believe the 50/50 model is the way to go. And I think that if you find a course that either you've taken or you know your students will get massive value from it, but you don't offer something like that, I think absolutely adding an affiliate offer to the mix can supplement your revenue. Like, I have different streams of revenue. One of my second biggest streams of revenue is being an affiliate for other people.

Who's your biggest affiliate?

So I— the most money I've made as an affiliate is through Marie Forleo's B-School. That's why I'm really close to it. And then Jenna Kutcher and Gabby Bernstein are huge, and Stu McLaren. All three are huge affiliates for my program, Digital Course Academy. They do really, really, really well.

I think we need to do that, Shawn, huh?

It makes a huge difference. It's like a whole other stream of revenue.

How many people work at your company?

So we've got 20 full-time employees and then some contractors on the side. Everyone's virtual. We do a 4-day workweek, and so we work Monday through Thursday. And it feels like a big team. Like, I feel like that's a lot of people, but I know it's such a small business still.

Yeah, I think that's a lot. Why do you need so many people?

So we do— so I have 3 digital courses, 1 membership, and then we do a lot of affiliate marketing. And so everybody is just stays in their lane. And like, I've got 1 person that's 100% focused on my podcast. So that's all she does, podcast producer. Kylie, you might talk to her, your team talk to her. And so we have a lot of people in specialized roles.

Are you running the company and being the front person? Or do you have someone help and run the company while you're focused on content?

Great question. So for 7 years, I've had a sidekick helping me run the company. She's a CMO and recently transitioned out as a contractor. So I'm running it more than I normally do. But when she's running marketing, I don't have my hands in all of that.

That's a lot of work. Goddamn.

Right now it feels like a lot of work, but it won't— it doesn't always feel that way.

And what's the name of your podcast so people who are listening can go check it out?

My podcast is Online Marketing Made Easy.

How big are you guys? We've been, we've been, we're getting in a pissing contest with John Lee Dumas. I'm a little like, I'm jealous a little bit with Jenna Kutcher.

Jenna Kutcher is totally magic. Like, she's got an amazing podcast. How many downloads total do you guys have?

I think in December on the podcast platform, we had 1.3 or 1.2 3 maybe million on the podcast platform, and then like another 400 on YouTube, 400,000 on YouTube just for the month. Yeah.

Okay, well, that's huge. We had a million in January. That was our recent— was a million in January. So, um, we've had over—

just on podcast players or like, uh, yes, yes, dude, that's huge. That's huge.

So we feel good about it. We've had 35 million downloads. Um, I used to not download twice a week. Changing to twice a week has changed things for us for sure. I do a 15-minute one on Tuesday and a longer one on Thursday. And that changed the game for us. So I'm glad we did that.

So your episode was once—

What's that?

It was once a week before that, or?

Once a week before December, I think it was, that we made the change.

So then you have way more downloads per episode. So we get between 50,000 to 100,000, probably average. We have 3 episodes a week sometimes. So we're doing way—

Holy cow. That's awesome.

I think we even— we have 4 sometimes. So our episodes, like the episode— The downloads per episode is the more important metric, I think.

That's the real metric. It's not the one you brag about, but it's the only— if you actually want to grow, that's the one you care about.

It sounds like yours is really big.

That's how you are also moving up in the charts. I mean, I know that there's like, you can't know everything about that algorithm, but one thing I've studied enough and I'm competitive enough to know that I'm not moving up in the charts unless my week of downloads are strong. And so you guys are doing better than I am because you're always above me in the charts. I pay attention to those things.

So do we.

Anyone who says they don't, I think they're lying.

Oh, we totally do. I take a lot of pride in chartable numbers, but it sounds like you get more downloads per episode than us for sure.

Maybe my back catalog. We do, we do a lot of promoting to our own community about our podcast. Like we embed it in a lot of things. So we did something really cool in January where we had a quiz and basically you take a quiz to figure out where you are in your entrepreneurial journey. And then we gave you 10 episodes that are going to help you along that journey. And that blew up.

So you're smart. Okay, gotcha. You're smart and you do smart things and then you get good results. I understand now. This is the secret.

Yeah, we, uh, the, the— and we'll wrap up a second. The best promotion we did recently was we just announced that we're going to give $5,000 to some person who takes our clips and turns them into TikTok videos and gets popular on TikTok. And we got, I think, 30 million impressions on TikTok in, uh, like 3 days.

That is incredible. That is super smart.

That was the only smart thing we've ever done.

Whose idea was that one?

Neither of ours.

Ben's.

In fact, I literally called it a dumbass idea on air.

Oh wait, is it Ben? Ben just popped up.

This is my chance to come back into the episode. Yes, it was my idea.

Shout out to MFM Cuts who is killing it. And there's many others. I follow them all now on TikTok. My TikTok feed is now just clips of myself and Sam, you know, over and over again. It's great.

That's awesome. I'm gonna check that out. Wait, how do I find it?

Like, I just looked up— So here's what we did, but we screwed up, or I screwed up. So it's, what was the hashtag, Ben? MFM Shorts? MFM Shorts. Alright, so if you go on TikTok and you search MFM Clips, with an S, you'll find it. But you'll also find, because I read the When we were announcing it, I accidentally one time I said clips with an S and then I said clip without an S. So if you search both of those words, you'll find different ones.

And also if you just Google MFM clip, you're going to get porn because it stands for male, female, male. And so you'll get a whole different set of clips if you go to Google. So that, you know, it's something for everybody over here. We're a very inclusive show.

When I was just starting out, my name, I think it was my maiden name now that I think about it. It was a porn star when I was just starting out. Ballard. So I think it was someone named Amy Ballard was a porn star when I like 13 years ago or something. And I was like mortified every time I searched my name. There she was.

Does that sound familiar, Ben? Does that ring a bell? Yeah.

No comment, Ben. Say no comment.

I see. Yeah, that's crazy.

The—

yeah, that sucks. Definitely sucks.

It's not an issue anymore.

I'm a—

I've got a new last name.

I used to follow this guy on Twitter named Jeff Epstein, and so it could be worse.

No, I tweeted at that guy. I was like, ah, brutal name. And then he got so mad at me. I was like, you can't be— I can't be the first person to point this out to you. Like, don't be mad at me. I didn't do it to you.

Oh my gosh.

Well, thanks for coming on, Amy. This is, this is awesome.

Yeah. Thanks guys so much. It's nice to talk to you and I know you guys are coming on to my podcast, so I'm looking forward to chatting with you too.

Sounds good. Take care.

All right. Bye, guys. Bye.