How I Made $60K Launching An Online Course... The Good, Bad, and Ugly!

This month I just wrapped up making $60,000 in about 10 days. But that's not the total truth. When it comes to launching an online course or an online program, a lot of people really glorify it and talk about how much money they make, but they're not really being 100% transparent and sharing what's really going on behind the scenes. So in this video, I just want to get real with you and walk you through exactly what I did for my most recent launch of Video Strategy Academy and be 100% truthful with how long it took, how much money we spent, and all those little pieces not everybody talks about. So if you're wondering what an online course launch strategy looks like, hit that like button because I'm opening the curtain or unveiling the secrets, going behind the scenes. I don't know what to call it. So starting on September 27, we kicked off our launch period with a challenge. I hosted a five day challenge called the YouTube Game Plan Challenge. Video Strategy Academy was created years ago and it's constantly been updated. We look at updating things just about every six months and YouTube changes so frequently. So I didn't have a course to create, but since we did a challenge, I had a challenge to create. Now let me walk you through why I did a challenge leading up to a launch. The online world has really changed a lot this year, and just hosting webinars and just getting people to show up to your webinars isn't really working for me. And I know with other friends of mine in the industry, it's not working for them as well. So it's time to get creative and find different ways to create this hype piece, which is normally a webinar. But since it's not working, I did this challenge. The whole purpose of this five day challenge was to allow those that were taking the challenge a win to see that you can actually do this. And with my guidance, my insight, my feedback, you really can do this, right? So as I built that trust, as I gave them all this great information, answered their questions, it was creating this relationship, it was creating this trust with them. Now, I'm not going to go into a total deep dive here about how I did a challenge. If you would like to see a video of me walking through how I created a challenge and everything we did, leave me a comment below saying challenge video please, so that I know you're actually interested in that, but let's keep moving. So we did that challenge for five days. It started on September 27, and then we did the what you would normally hear people say cart open on Friday, October 4th. First. Now on Monday, my podcast episode, the Video Refrain Podcast, I talk more about the feelings and the experience and more what was going on in my mind through this challenge. So I highly recommend listening to that podcast as well because I'm going to show you the physical things that we did for this challenge. But it's really important to understand the mindset and what's going on in people's head as they are launching. So I will link to that podcast below for you to check out after this. Friday, October 1st is our official doors open. This is when the course Video Strategy Academy was available at a special early bird pricing and there were special early bird bonuses as well. I did host a webinar on that Friday, but it was the capstone course or the capstone lesson for that five day challenge. So day five was a webinar. Those that were in the challenge also got special discounts to enroll in Video Strategy Academy as a challenge member. And I'm going to give you all the analytics here in a minute, all of the marketing material that we did here as well. I just kind of want to give an overview of what this look like then take it over to the computer computer and show you everything. So traditional doors open were on Friday, October 1st and then we had our first public webinar on Sunday, September 3. I did something different with that particular webinar. I hosted it on a Sunday night which I'd never done before and we had a really great show up rate. We had over 100 people live on that webinar that night. And those people on that webinar also got the early bird pricing opportunity and a stage special bonus for showing up live on that webinar. From there we increase pricing on Tuesday, October 5th. So that early bird pricing expired. The reason why this pricing is expiring is because you need to give people a reason to get off the fence, right? If they're willing to jump in early. Early bird gets the worm, kind of gets that discount pricing. And so you're trying to give them reasons to enroll if they're sitting on the fence. So that price increase, some of those bonuses expired as well are giving them a reason to jump in. So then we did a doors close, which FYI we aren't doing this anymore. No longer are we using the marketing phrases doors open, doors close. Video Strategy Academy will always be available for you to enroll in. But we are now calling this a promo period for Video Strategy Academy. So These live launches are now going to be promo periods and we're not going to open and close the doors because they were never really opened. So surprise, spoiler alert. Most people's programs and courses aren't open and closed. There is an evergreen funnel that you can go in and enroll whatever you want. And so we're shifting away our marketing messaging from doors open, doors closed to promo periods. But our end of a promo period happened on Friday, October 8th at 4:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Why 4:00pm Eastern Standard Time? Because I wanted to wrap it up and enjoy my weekend. I don't want to stay up till midnight and do doors closing or promo period closing, closing at 11:59pm I don't want to stay up that late. And so that's when we wrapped it up. So it's kind of an overview of this period of time. Now I want to take you onto the computer to show you exactly what we did on each day to promote this, what our numbers look like on the back end and how we got to that kind of 60K. And I'll tell you why. So one thing that I do for every single launch is know all the pieces that I need to do. This challenge started on September 27th. I started actually playing planning this challenge at the beginning of July. I had the idea and we started working it out to get to the point that we could go live in September. So let me walk you through what my launch plan looked like. I use this launch board. I use it for any time I'm launching this program or any other program that I have. I first get all the important informations and dates down first. I got this asana board actually from Louise Henry and her asana course. It's amazing. I will link it below if you want to check it out. But we got the important dates in in here, the important links in here, when the fast action bonuses were opening, when the doors closing and all of that information. Then this kind of the pre launch marketing strategy that we go through, getting social video templates into teachable because that was a bonus I wanted to add. Collecting testimonials, creating some bonuses, getting launch emails written and scheduled, doing the webinar slides. I also, that is not on here, had to record all of the training for the challenge as well. So I recorded four videos in advance for for the challenge as well as created a daily workbook. Now I did outsource my daily workbook to my graphic designer Caitlin. I wrote it all out on a Google Doc form and then she just made it look pretty so if we look at this in a calendar format, if we go back up here to September, you can start to see where we get really busy. This is why it's important to start early. The two weeks out, three weeks out, things start to get hectic. So, so on September 7, we knew we were going to start enrolling people in to the challenge on September 13th. So that was this Monday. That gave us two full weeks, 1, 2 until the challenge actually started. So I was getting all of the promo material created, writing promo emails to our list to get them to enroll, to get them to sign up for the challenge. So we had six of those that went out and you can see they went out September 13th, September 15th, 17th, 2022 and the day before so that they had adequate time, they knew exactly what to expect. I also needed to get challenge onboarding emails wrote so when people joined the challenge, they were getting information from me what to expect, when to show up. And so we had that initial, you're in, you're going to get more information about the challenge. And then these were just a couple warmup emails to give people a little bit more information about me and why they would want to learn from me to ensure we're creating that connection so they want to show up and participate in the challenge. So then you can see this email went out that Thursday, four days before the challenge, three days before the challenge. We waited to open the challenge Facebook group till the day before and had a welcome party. So you can see that happen on Sunday as well. Like I said, having this all pre written is incredibly important because it's a lot of stuff and you can't just do this the day of. So I had an outline of the challenge videos that I wanted to do. So I then filmed them on the 8th and I started creating social media posts. I also full transparency, because I like to be transparent, started working with a social media agency on September 1st. So I did have help posting to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. With the social media agency that I worked with, I also made sure everything was linked up. So I needed to test the challenge. Make sure if you enrolled in the landing page to the checkout page, you got into the Teachable account. I will tell you, we had so many issues with Teachable, which is our course hosting site, that we are formally moving everything in the process over to FG funnels because we've just had so many issues with teachable and this challenge was a nightmare because of the teachable issues. So when I'm testing the challenge What I'm doing is I'm going to the landing page that we created right here and making sure each one of these buttons work. So I'm clicking on them, making sure it's taking me to the checkout page, making sure it looks nice. I'm seeing now that this was white. I don't know why this is white. So people can put their first name in here. Email address agree to terms and condition. I did have an upsell sell offer, so my challenge did cost $10 to participate in. I wanted to make sure that people were serious about this. I only wanted people who were serious and the money that we made on the challenge allowed us to spend money on ads, which I'm going to talk about too. So this was $17. They could add that or not totally up to them. Then when they completed their order, it went to the confirmation page and then I made sure teachable enroll them and ConvertKit had them as well. So that's what I was testing. You can see these days are empty, but these are the days things are due. So I knew I had to work on them this week to be due on these days. So I created separate pages for each day of the challenge. Every morning at 5am a challenge member got an email from me. This is what the email looked like. So hello, YouTube game plan starts today. Here's step one. Click here to watch the challenge. Click here to download your worksheet. Make sure you join the Facebook group. Set an alarm for the live coaching and it just gives them some more information if they have friends that want to join. So Every morning at 5am this email went out. This is the link they went to to watch the video. So here I made sure I had a button for them that could easily get them over to the Facebook group. The key was joining the Facebook group because that's where I could cultivate the relationship that would allow me to convert higher at the end. Because I made these relationships, I built trust with them. So I needed them in the Facebook group. They also got their workbook here as well. So this is what day one's workbook look like. They could go here, download it. It had everything that needed to be done, prizes that we included and like I said, a checklist for everything to be done on day one. So this had to be created for five days, this page and these buttons as well as those emails that went out every morning. That's why these are going to be due here. I had to create them here now in conjunction with the challenge that was going live September 27th to October 1st. I was also hosting a webinar for the third. So those that weren't signing up for the challenge, I was hoping to get them into a webinar as well for the third. So I had to create that landing page enrollment page for the webinar and get those emails out to invite people to join the webinar. For those that did not join the challenge. Now, the webinar was going to be free, whereas the challenge was $10. So let me just break down all the assets that we did. We did launch a podcast back in August as kind of a pop up podcast that we are keeping going. I mentioned earlier this week I'm talking about kind of my mindset and thoughts that were going through my head during the challenge. But the purpose of this podcast was to get clients of mine to talk about their experience working with me and building a YouTube channel. So during the month of September, we had a podcast every Monday that was basically a case study with clients. So on August 30, we had a case study with a teen therapist that has gone through Video Strategy Academy and seen amazing results on the 6. We had one of my agency clients talk about why she believes YouTube has really been an asset to her business for the past two years. We had another client talk about how YouTube is allowing her to get traffic to her online shop around the clock. And we also had a episode with another Video Strategy Academy student who had got over 1 million views in less than 6 months and hit 30,000 subscribers in about 8 months as well. So we did these pop up podcasts, basically testimonials and case studies. We then use these in our Instagram strategy. So you can start to see these are weaved in here. There's Christina talking about YouTube is driving traffic to her business. We also have how I stay productive in my business using video. And so we were just able to to use that as promotional content. So aside from the podcast, I also had weekly YouTube videos getting people onto the challenge and in the webinar as well. So if you look at my YouTube content September 15th, so two weeks before the challenge, I did this best YouTube script and I talked about how to script out your content. And then I told them about the challenge that I was hosting. And I got a lot of signups from this particular video because they could see how important it was scripting. And then I told them I'm going to actually help them script this video. I did the same thing for outdated YouTube tips. I talked about what you're probably believing and why that's not true. So join the challenge because I'm going to make sure you're working and focusing on the right things. And then for this video that went live on the 29th, knowing my webinar was that Sunday, I pitched that particular webinar. I talked about how I plan and film content and how it's not that difficult if you have a clear plan in place. And then told them why they should join the free training that I have available. I am talking about this on my YouTube content and I'm getting leads from YouTube, YouTube around the clock because of these videos. Then the week the doors were open, so to speak, I walked people through my journey on YouTube and how YouTube has really affected my growth and my business success. And I let them know. Video Strategy Academy was currently open to join at a special promo price. And the whole purpose of that video was to get people to the sales page. This was also content we were using on Instagram. So we started promoting the challenge with this particular piece of of content on Instagram. This was helped created by my social media agency. And then we again just kept promoting the content as we could. This one promoted the content. This one right here. There's less than one week left. We did how to start a YouTube channel reel. We started to do reels every single day, Monday through Friday, just to get a larger organic reach. The reels, I will tell you, were easy for me to film, but I didn't edit them. And I'm glad I didn't because doing a reel literally takes more time than a YouTube video, FYI. I also did this reel to promote people coming in. I wrote down everybody's name and added them to the wall. And so this just got people excited. This was probably my most viral reel during this period of time. And again, like I said, we're promoting it. We're talking about the YouTube game plan challenge. Once that challenge started on that Monday, then we started promoting that workshop. So you see this post says it starts tomorrow. Then we started posting the workshop here. We then started shifting to Video Strategy Academy. So this was the last day. This happens tonight. Then that Monday we started posting testimonials. We started kind of hitting those pain points or reasons why they should join. So why is now the best time? We featured Video Strategy Academy. We did reels as well on why people should join Video Strategy Academy. So you can start to see how this content really started building out. And social media promo is the hardest piece for me. But having that social media agency definitely helped. Now that you saw the Instagram content. Let's come back to the skill schedule. I was making sure emails were being sent out. I was going live every single day at noon. I had initially thought it'd be like a 20 minute training. Every training ended up being over an hour this week. So it was a lot. I was also manning the chat box. There was a chat box on this page where people could message me directly to my inbox. So the app that I'm using on my sales page is called Zendesk. And when people are on my page, I will see that they're on my page. You will also see that I would be online. So the box would pop up and say, do you have a question? Feel free to message me. And I could literally instant message and answer any of their questions with them through this app that would go directly to the sales page right here. So I was on that a lot all weekend, in fact, during this time then we did some extra things the week the promo period was happening. I really want to avoid calling it Doors open, doors closed. So what we did here is the Monday after the webinar we, we did a roundtable. This is also the day that Facebook and Instagram went down. The minute we were going live on the roundtable is when the Internet shut down, basically. So what we ended up doing was it didn't have the reach that I wanted it to be. We recorded it on Zoom and then re uploaded it on YouTube, Facebook and I don't even know if we used it on Instagram. So we did a live roundtable with old VSA clients, meaning people that have been in the program for over a year, and then clients that have only been in it for 30 days. The next day I did a behind the scenes of the product or the program and I went live on Facebook and Instagram and talked about everything that they got inside of Video Strategy Academy. I shared my screen so you could see exactly what it looked like inside. On Wednesday, we had a live co working session. So we did this on Zoom and I just literally invited my entire list to join me over on Zoom as I walk you through how I plan my YouTube content so that you could also plan it, ask me questions as we went and every single live. I'm talking about Video Strategy Academy and why they should enroll and the link to go to enroll. On Friday, I did a live Q and A kind of final last minute questions, what I'd been getting in my inbox and just anything that I can think of that may help people finalize Their decision, because this is a time not the doors would close, but the price would go up to where it sits right now. So the last thing that I want to show you before I kind of walk through all the tools that we use, is final numbers. And this is a launch debrief that I created. You can see these are our numbers. You're going to see exactly how much we spend on ads and everything. With the Challenge, we had over 290 people enroll. It was about 2 97. That costs $10 a person. So that created almost $3,000 of revenue for us. Almost 42% of people converted for the bump. The extra 17 to get the action plan. So that brought our total Challenge revenue to over $5,000. We offered a coupon code for those in our challenge for 24 hours so that they could save a hundred dollars. We had 25 people use that coupon code, which got US to over $22,000 on Thursday, before we even talked to the public about it. It was only to our challenge members. So this was with the coupon code, full price. And then this was the coupon code with the payment plan. We did offer some special payment plans for those in the challenge, but they had to reach out to me specifically for a payment plan. So on Friday of that day, the coupon code disappeared. And during that webinar on Friday, we had 18 people pay full to make $17,000. We had nine people do the payment plan. So what I am actually tracking is because this is payment plans, I am going to receive money in the future, and I'm trying to track money that I'm creating that I have in hand. So you can see this is only 297 times 9 right here. And this is future payments that I'm going to make. Right. This is all in the future that I'm going to make. It's not cash in hand. Then when the price increased again on that Tuesday, you can see we had three people enroll with the payment plan. We had four upsells. So there was a special opportunity to buy Video Strategy Academy at a special price that only converted at about 6%. Something that I want to look at a little bit differently in the future. You can see our expenses right here with the Challenge. We gave away daily Amazon gift cards. We gave away a ring light, a blue yeti microphone, a wet webcam, a loom cube, and we spent around 10,000. I think it might have been a little bit closer to $11,000 on ads. So I took this and subtracted it from what we made. So again we're looking at cash on hand would be right here. This is all future payments I'm getting. So if you're looking at my launch and hold, you're going to see this was cash in hand, this $53,000. All of that added minus the expenses. So I took this minus the expenses and this is what I had cash in hand at the end of seven days, right then I have these future payments that are coming in to get me to this $60,000. Again, a lot of the times when you hear people talking about their launch, they're not going to include the expenses as well. So if you look at a total launch value, it was over $70,000. But I'm being real telling you everything that I included that I paid for. Right here is the breakdown in the Facebook ads. This is needs updated a little bit. You can also see I broke down my challenge registrants landing page views on that challenge. The conversion rate when you do Facebook you can see definitely organic overpowered Facebook by a long shot. Again with the webinar, how many registrants we got from Organic vs Facebook? Almost the same, pretty equal. You see how many views we had on the sales page, how many converted, what that sales page conversion was and then our purchase breakdowns when we got those sales. So 22 on day four of the challenge that Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And then these are all the emails that we sent out. I know launching is a lot of emails but you've got to remind people sometimes they're getting sent in trash. And so we did promo period for the challenge. We sent 1, 2, 3, 456 emails out to promote the webinar. We sent 2, 3, 45 emails out and then launched emails. We sent 1 2, 3, 4566 some of these. I ab tested the subject lines as well and you can see the average open rate and click through rate for the entire email marketing period in my launch. I would love to answer any questions you have about launching. Go ahead and drop them in the comments. But I do want to run through some of the tools that I use because I know that's a big question that I get asked to. So for all my landing pages and like opt in stuff I use FG funnels. For my checkout page I use Thrive Cart but we are moving that over to FG Funnels as well now that they have integration with with PayPal for our course content. Like I said we use Teachable but we are moving that over to FG funnels because they have a course platform as well. For email, I use ConvertKit, and for my webinar I actually just used Zoom. I upgraded my Zoom account for 30 days to use the Zoom webinar option and I thought it was great. I thought it was easier to do that way. I then took that recording, uploaded it to YouTube to send out the replay. So when it comes to launching, would you like me to talk more more about this on my channel? What other questions do you have? What other topics would you like me to dive into? Also check out the podcast episode that I did this week where I talk more about what was going on in my head, how it was balancing all of this as well as family, the crisis that happened that week as well. But that's more kind of like getting into my head now. You don't have to do this to actually make money in your business. I did a video last week that I'm going to put on your screen right now where I'm sharing five different ways you can diversify your revenue stream. This is so important because launching isn't for everybody and you don't have to do this. So check out that video. Make sure you come back next week because we're going to start diving into content planning and how to plan out all this content in advance.