It’s normal to want to know if something is possible before you start pursuing it. And maybe you know one or two people who have had success selling their online course but you’re still questioning, “Is it really possible for *me* to do this successfully?”
Well, the good news is that yes, it *is* absolutely possible! If it’s possible for someone else, then it is 100% possible for you to achieve it as well.
(Funny story: I once shelled out $700 for a business coach to tell me exactly what I’ve just told you—we humans just crave validation, don’t we?)
And when it comes to how much money you can realistically make selling your digital course, it really comes down to how much you *want* to make. Got your eyes set on multiple seven figures and beyond? I did it, and so can you!
Financial goals are a very personal thing and you certainly don’t have to be chasing after seven figures if you don’t want to. But no matter what your target is, the only way to get to where you want to go is to optimize all of the variables that will impact your earning the most.
Daring to Dream
I’ve come to realize that oftentimes, we entrepreneurs can be our own biggest obstacles. We’re the best at limiting our own goals and what we want to achieve. But the good news is, we *can* dream bigger and push past those self-imposed limitations.
If we can learn to recognize when we’re limiting ourselves and setting the bar too low, then we can adjust it.
Business owners work really hard to reach a certain level of success but sometimes we forget that concept of “what got you here won’t get you there.” If we want to keep growing, we need to be willing to reevaluate our strategies and make changes as needed.
Entrepreneurs can find it challenging to break through to the next level (of income, time freedom, or whatever the goal is). But if you want a different output, you have to make a change to the input. You need to shake things up, whether it’s learning new skills, embracing new technologies, or adjusting your mindset.
Change is inevitable in business, and it’s essential that we’re prepared to adapt and evolve along with it. Even if we’re content with where we’re at, there will always be external factors pushing us to make adjustments. Take, for example, CSS student Felicia, who knew she needed to switch up her marketing tactics and as a result created a six-figure launch in just 45 days! (Learn more about her journey here.)
The only way to truly thrive in entrepreneurship is to keep pushing the boundaries of what we think is possible.
Once I identified the mechanisms of the Circuit Sales System, I experienced significant growth in my business. In just a few years, my revenue went from $40,000 to $1.6 million annually. Now, I’m humbled and proud to say that we’re in the multiple seven figures per year and steadily growing. But all of that comes down to deciding what you want and being willing to make the necessary changes in your business to achieve those goals.
And while being ambitious with your goals is great, it’s also easy to set a crazy high goal, not hit it right away, and then get discouraged. So it’s definitely worth setting goals based on where you’re at in the process.
Factors that Affect Your Earning
Once you’ve decided on a goal that makes sense for you, the next question to ask yourself is, “How am I going to achieve that?” And this is where it’s important to consider the different variables that will impact your earning limit.
Price
If you’re selling a course that’s $27, the amount of time that it might take for you to hit certain milestones is probably going to be different to someone who’s selling a course that’s $5,000.
Paying attention to your business’s key metrics will help you figure out what kind of price point makes sense for you and will allow you to set goals that feel realistic for what your price point is.
The more clarity you have around metrics such as how much it costs to get someone into your funnel and how much it costs to acquire a customer, the more ability you have to make adjustments to the price of your program if you need to.
Audience
Price is just one piece of the puzzle, but figuring out who the right audience is, will also heavily impact your sales. What is the size of the group that you’re selling to? What is the potential there? What is their interest?
It’s crucial to figure out who your ideal customer is so that you can craft your messaging to that audience in the right way that gets them wanting to buy.
We often see some resistance among our Circuit Sales System students when it comes to digging into their audience research. But invariably, they always discover something new about their audience that makes it easier to sell their offer to them.
Until we’re actually reaching out and communicating directly with our audience, we don’t know them as well as we need to. We don’t understand their needs, wants, fears, and motivations nearly as well as when we’ve actually had the opportunity to talk to them and understand.
We know how tempting it is to gloss over figuring out who your audience is. It’s easy to think, “Well, I have a really awesome offer. I would buy it, so I’m just going to put it out into the world and the right people will find it.” Unfortunately, that’s just not the way it works. You have to put your offer in the right places and in front of the right people to give them the option to explore it, and then hopefully purchase it.
With our copywriting business, we’ve learned a lot about who to target through testing different audiences. For a while, we were targeting people with an interest in marketing because copywriting is part of the marketing world. But most of the students in our audience aren’t marketers. They have never even heard of copywriting before. And so we’ve discovered that our core audience is made up of folks who are interested in writing, rather than marketing.
Identifying a Niche
If someone wants to sell a product to everyone, it’s very likely that is going to lead to lackluster results. If you’re trying to sell to men and women, from age zero to 99, your messaging is going to be pretty unfocused.
Who specifically needs and wants this product? The better you understand your specific niche, the easier it is to speak to them in words that they understand. That will then help you create more effective messaging and marketing materials that attract that specific group of people and not others.
Differentiating from the Competition
What other competition is there in your niche? The answer to this question doesn’t necessarily mean you should shy away from that niche or not pursue the course idea that you are trying to sell.
Instead, it should make you think how you can differentiate yourself from everyone else within that niche, whether that’s by getting more specific on the folks that you’re selling to, or looking at what makes your program different, better, easier, etc. (or likely a mix of both).
There’s no getting around the fact that you will have competitors and we would be doing you a big disservice if we said, “Just start your business and it’ll be great!” You have to figure out why people should work with you versus anyone else and you have to communicate that effectively to your target audience.
What differentiates your product or offer? Your audience can’t tell the difference between you and somebody else. Fundamentally, if you’re going to go into business, you have to have something that makes you different, otherwise there’s no point.
Is there a true demand?
When you think about your offer itself, you have to make sure it’s something that people want, are interested in, and that it is solving some sort of pain point, or giving people some sort of transformation.
Fundamentally, is this something people want? And are you communicating that value in a way that makes it compelling to people?
Just thinking, “Well I would buy this, so I made it” is not enough. You need to know that there’s an audience out there that will buy it. I see a lot of business owners struggle because they’ve created a course that only addresses half an issue, or they’ve created a course that is what they want to teach people versus what people actually want to learn.
Factors that Impact Business Growth
Alongside the variables we’ve just seen that can impact your ability to earn, there are also some factors that can impact your success as you plan to hit certain financial goals.
Making Assumptions
Making assumptions about your business model can be a quick way to limit your success. For example, if you currently offer one-on-one services, think about how you could switch elements of that to one-to-many, so that you can reach more people without stretching yourself too thin.
Many business owners get stuck on the idea that you have to do all the coaching yourself. But the truth is, your customers don’t need *you*, they need the information and insight that you have. (In fact, most of them only need around 80% of the expertise that you have!)
My point here is that the coaching doesn’t have to come from you. You could train up coaches to provide that same level of coaching, support, motivation, and insight that you can. This is something we’ve implemented for all of our courses and the great part is, our coaches offer additional insight and perspectives that I don’t have. So this can be a great way to add MORE value, while taking something off your plate.
One of the things we’ve also found with coaching, especially in our copywriting program, is that many students actually need more accountability and structure, as opposed to coaching. That’s why it’s important to dig into the real issues that are happening. Is it that they need one-to-one coaching? Or is it the accountability piece? Do they need deadlines? Is it a combination of these things and can they be solved by different solutions versus coaching?
The more creative we can get and the more we can challenge our assumptions, the more possibilities we can explore—even if it doesn’t end up being the best solution. But trying new things gives you more information to work with.
Messaging
Nothing will support or hinder your business growth more than your messaging. I think a lot of business owners don’t want to deal with their messaging because it’s SO important. But the good news is that you can figure it out. You can get your messaging dialed in.
If you want to be a successful business owner, your messaging needs to make people go, “Oh my gosh, I *have* to have that, I’m buying it right now” or “I genuinely can’t buy this now, but I will buy this soon.” (Obviously we want more people in the first camp!)
If you can’t figure out how to convey to your target audience exactly why they have to have something, they’re not going to figure it out for themselves. They just won’t.
And I see this time and time again with business owners who want to increase their conversion rates—their messaging is convoluted, cloudy, non-specific or just doesn’t connect with the target audience.
It’s crucially important that your messaging makes it very clear why your audience should go with you and not a competitor.
Willingness to Invest
It is an often overlooked—but obligatory—mindset shift for entrepreneurs: being willing to invest in essential programs or being willing to hire new team members before you feel ready.
Business owners can easily slip into the consumer mindset of wanting to wait and save up before buying a program or taking on a team member. But in order to get to the next level of income or time freedom, you need that person in place or the information you’re going to learn in that course.
You’re not going to get to that next stage before you invest. You’re going to get to the next level because you hired the team member or because you invested in the course.
Metrics
All of your key metrics such as conversion rates and your customer acquisition cost, are very specific to you and your business. But you can only grow if you know how your numbers work. The more understanding you have around these figures, the more ability you have to make adjustments where needed in order to increase revenue.
And even if you’re not running ads, it’s still something you need to consider. There is still a cost in terms of time and energy when you’re just selling organically. If it takes you three days of organic effort to make a $500 product, does that work out to support you? Are you making enough money or are you spending more money to run your business than you’re making through your sales?
A business can’t run without making any kind of profit. So you have to dig in and understand your metrics. You may discover that your course is priced too low or that you’re spending too much time on the program. Looking at the numbers will help you to figure out how to maximize your time so that it’s possible to achieve your goals in the timeframe you want.
Affiliates
Working with affiliate partners can be a good way to make some nice, easy sales without having to put in too much effort. This could be affiliate partners who own other businesses and you share audiences, or it could be former students.
But if you are going to put together an affiliate program, you have to make it easy for people to use.
Average Lifetime Value of a Customer
A customer’s lifetime value is the amount of revenue a consumer will generate for your business throughout their customer journey.
So are there ways that you could increase that? If you have one core offer, are there additional things you could add that will enhance that offer? Is there something that could make it faster or easier, or get them better results from your core offer? If so, that could make an excellent upsell for your offer.
Downsells can help recoup some of your costs to acquire people. If someone is not purchasing your main offer, you could offer a downsell, aimed at a different type of person or a different type of need. Although it isn’t as expensive as your main offer, these sales can certainly help to cover things like ad costs.
I think most business owners have the opportunity to optimize within every single one of these categories. But does one stand out to you that you haven’t worked on very much? Or, if you’re especially brave—and I know you are because you’re a business owner—is there one that makes you particularly uncomfortable? (I know for a lot of us, it’s going to be metrics!) But if something represents a big opportunity, now could be the perfect time to dig into it.
As you start to experiment with the fun puzzle of factors that affect your business, you won’t just benefit yourself by getting more income, but you will also benefit other people by selling them courses and programs that positively impact their lives. And personally, I can’t think of a more fun way to spend my day than by doing that!
Read More
In this blog post, we look at the importance of digging into your metrics to give you more clarity on key business decisions. Plus, find out 12 of the most common sales funnel mistakes to avoid if you want to achieve consistent and predictable sales growth.
Watch More
In this Energize Your Online Business podcast episode, we find out how much money a course selling business can really make. (Clue: The sky’s the limit!)
Listen in as Nicki and Kate discuss the variables that will impact your earning the most, as well as the key factors for growth if you’re looking to scale your business to new heights!
Your Turn!
Which factor are you looking to optimize first? Let us know in the comments below!