How to Pre-Sell a Course?

In this case we all know there is a Bitcoin audience.

Segment further.

WHAT ABOUT Bitcoin does your target want to learn more concerning?

One of the most powerful things I have helped clients do is transform the mindset of their audience.

They bring in people who are already very interested in the topic. Then they educate them on a different way of thinking about the topic.

And then they release a product that automates that different way of thinking.

The education portion can be the pre-sales or warm up part of the funnel. You can charge for this, but I would not until after the launch. That way you have content that is proven to excite buyers.

You can build into the funnel engagement steps to get testimonials along the way.

Honestly, I think you have a long way to go without help.

Jason Kanigan knows his stuff, so pay attention.

For a quick test, see if your targeted audience are very responsive to a freebie. Send them to a squeeze page and see how the traffic converts to your free offer. If the conversion rate sucks, abandon project and do something else. If the conversion rates are off the charts, then proceed with selling your material. Once you determine that the demand is there.... create your product, and THEN release it to your email list for purchase.

Have you done forum research to find out what questions people have about bit coin and see if your course will address those questions?

Have you researched to see if there are other courses that may be similar to yours? This would indicate that there is an interest in the subject.

Which brings to mind one guru who decided to create a course/book to help college students get good grades. Spent lots of time developing the book only to find out no one wanted to buy it. Moral: Do your research first which is a plus for you.

Sharing.

Leilani

Without a shadow of doubt, pre-sell your product!

I never invest a huge amount of time unless I'm pretty confident that the product will sell. I've wasted a lot of time making products that were duds because nobody was interested in them.

You do need to know why your prospective client wants your product. You'll need to illustrate this in your sales page. And do create a sales page that tells them that you are taking special pre-launch sales and if they decide to purchase before launch, they'll save 'x' dollars before launch.

This works! Once you have a strong client base, you can pre-launch without a discount to current clients as you should have built up trust with them and they know that they will get what you promise.

But dont' be afraid to sell your idea before you make your idea. I've done this concept for years and it does work.

I've actually done this many, many times... I call it "Getting Paid To Create Your Product". In fact, I just did it again last week and before that in June.

The way to deliver to these presell folks and keep them happy is by selling it as a 4-week, 6-week or 8-week training. Tell them this is a one-time deal that you won't ever do again and when you release it (your final product) to the public it will cost 10x more.

I've had great success with this using just a small portion of my list. You could just as easily advertise a lead magnet, get them to opt-in then offer the training on a specific date. I run these like mini-launches. I'll send out three "pre-sell" emails then the fourth one "the cart is open". I don't even put up a sales page. Just sell it straight through email and straight to a PayPal link to buy.

This post is a good learning curve for me thank you warriors.

Very informative and I learned something. Thanks

Guys, this thread is a fantastic read? Kanigan, Duston and Ryan does this convert to all sort of niches? are these techniques would only work for Make Money Online niches.

I am working on a product about "how to revamp plr product into a shiny new product in any niche". But I am unsure if this will click, and this has resulted in my go slow over the creation.

I would like to hear your suggestions for me

Yes, probably they will!!

I think you will not obtain the results you hope!

The best thing to do is to give possibility to book your course in exchange for a discount!

you will obtain:
1 visibility
2 to know how many people are interested in have the course
3 Get more customers couse of the discount!

You've got some unique responses to many parts of your question so I'll focus on the last bit.

If you pre-sell the right way there's no reason for this to happen. In actual fact I recommend to my students that they sell the course BEFORE they create it because it ensures there's a market for it as opposed to creating a course because YOU like it or you THINK there's a market for it.

The money you make upfront is undeniable proof that you are likely to be successful if you do the other parts correctly.

BAYO.

One thing you can do is offer a webinar about your topic- Instead of a 'free webinar' do a paid webinar. $7. You are getting paid to create part of your product, and on the webinar take pre-orders on the main product.

Good Luck

Courtney

Wow! Surely, I've learned a lot from this thread.

Thanks for the nuggets from all these experienced marketers that we have here.

I was going to say that if you already have a list, then you might want to ask them first what topic interests them the most and the questions in their mind that they want to be answered. That way, you'll hit them head on when you create your own product.

But doing webinars and getting paid before even creating your own product. That some really genius idea right there. Well done.

Mike

Which of these suggestions would apply to launching a crowdsourced book?

Where the market is mature and obvious, this process is relatively easy.

For your market, you just need to do a little research first. Bitcoin is obviously a market but the product you are intending on creating would be best pre-tested by doing some keyword research.

When I search "economics of bitcoin" there is already an exact match domain that addresses this question.

If I go a little further and drop this into a keyword research tool, I come back with 90,500 people searching for the keyword "bitcoins" per month. Google Keyword Planner.

Check with Clickbank for Bitcoin products for sale and I see one that has Gravity 18, which means that approximately 18 affiliates are making sales with this product(s).

So, since your product is educating people about the economics of Bitcoin, I am assuming that your product would helping people to make money with it, from what I can see you would be on a winner of some description of a market.

I educate people on search engine optimization and before creating my courses, I really didn't need to do much research, as everybody wants to figure exactly how get free traffic from Google. But I have products in other markets and these types of simple research basics are a great way to test a market before entering.

The last thing you want to do is create a product and then hope to create a market - this usually spells disaster. Been there and done that too.

I am going to make some assumptions here.

You wrote, "I am planning on putting together a lengthy course on the "economics of bitcoin" for my audience." So I am assuming you have built a list from your website (nice one by the way) and this is your "audience".

Since your site is based on education for the Bit Coin Economy, you should have a good base to use. If your list is responsive...I.E. you have people emailing you with questions, people are buying other similar product you are sending, etc.; the best way is to send out a survey to your list. Ask pointed questions to judge the overall understanding of what the course covers.

After that compile the results and send it out explaining a a bit (not too much) on the questions and at the end ask a question like, "If you would like these and other questions answered, click the link to pre-sign up for free for the waiting list of a brand new course which will answer these questions and more...blah...sales stuff.. blah, blah...

Once they sign up, you can get an idea of the interest. Then send another survey describing the course and the content with a question of, "Would you be willing to pay...X, Y, or Z for this type of information?"

Once you do this, you will have concrete data to plan and implement the course with a solid base. If there is little interest or the price point sucks...you can send an email like, "Due to lack of interest, this project has been delayed" or something along those lines. If you have already made the course and find no interest, then also offer a "OTO" of the course for a high price point to try to recover some of the costs and go on with your life.

You could also offer a coupon or other freebie for referring someone else who wants to learn it. This will get the people who may already know a lot of it but don't want to buy the course and don't want to teach it.

Obviously this is a bare bones description and you need to flesh it out for your course and situation. It also won't tick off your audience if things don't go well with it.

Best of luck!

I believe there is a good market for educating people on Bitcoin , I myself belong to a club that allows people to invest in mining contracts for Bitcoin


People who understand how digital currency works and understand good mining contracts versus bad do very well investing in Bitcoin .

Customers might not get angry if you ask for money before you have a product... but I highly doubt they'll fork over any dough... and at the very least, it will probably leave a bad taste in their mouth.


Secondly, there is definitely a market for this type of thing. I can't say if your list is the right audience for it, but the audience is out there.


You can gauge your lists interest by promoting related offers (make sure they're not crap, so you don't ruin your credibility). See how those convert. I'd go for some low dollar offers, as the goal is not so much to make money from those commissions, but just to see if the interest is even there.

You might want to consider using your free ebook as your sales end. Make sure it "pops" and gets people interested. At the end have 2 links. One to your newsletter sign up and the other to your course. Maybe give the people clicking the link the first chapter of the course for free or something similar. Make sure the ebook "teases" the reader, not giving away too much; but, covering the topics of the course. Use a "For a more in depth experience to learn all there is about BitCoin, consider our complete course by clicking the link below" or something similar.

Use redirect links in the ebook so you can do split testing of different sales copy for conversion of both sign ups for the newsletter and the course sales. You may also consider different versions of the book with specific redirects in each ebook to check conversions.

Start putting the ebook in all the free PDF download sites. Make it a totally "no string attached" download - meaning a direct download where they do not have to do anything except click the link to get it. The object is to get it into as many peoples hands as possible.

You could also do free webinars covering the basics of the content of the course - use the ebook as the script. You could put a link at the end of the ebook to sign up for the webinars and send it to your list too. At the end of the webinar offer the ebook as a gift and the course link.

Send the ebook to sites and blogs who also do financial or BitCoin topics and ask for a review.

None of this is "new" or ground breaking and doesn't cost anything to implement. Many book authors use similar to market their books.

The sales page is a bit sparse. you might want to consider using some sub-heading to describe what each chapter is about. Like "1. Course Introduction (Bitcoin: An Internet of Money) What does BitCoin have to offer you, as an investor, and how you can take advantage of BitCoin to build a better financial future" or something similar.

The advantage of using this type of marketing is you get more targeted people. They won't download and click the links unless there is some interest. The downside is it is a bit slow to build up. Once you get some numbers to crunch, you can scale it up with some paid advertising to give it a kick in the butt.

If you make all your marketing point toward the ebook, you can hook them with it. You get the "like/trust" thing going immediately.

Hope this helps!