Whats it like making and selling your own courses? Are IM customers a p.i.t.a.?

really depends on you and what you offer.

IF you have knowledge on a subject which people are interested in, and you want to create a course to satisfy a demand for your knowledge, it can be a long and hard journey.

You could pay someone to create your course. Or do it yourself.

It seems as if you are uncertain about what you WANT, yes? I would think that would be a better starting point, and then determine whether or not a course is even warranted.

IF you deliver great value, customers are a pleasure, if you get a lot of PITA types, it probably is more about you than them.

gjabiz

It could take awhile to create. However, you can make a strictly audio course to start out. It really cuts down on time and you can deliver your points succinctly.


Then you can develop a video course (takes much longer) with accompanying pdf files.


The main factor is the content however. You need to make sure you know what you are talking about and can deliver what the course you are teaching promises.

Your customer quality really depends on the level of qualification you use to choose your buyer.

People think copy's purpose is to convince the buyer to buy. They're wrong. Copy's purpose is to SORT the people you do want from the people you don't want.

Also, a higher price tends to attract people who value quality, themselves, the investment, and the transformative outcome...

...but of course your program needs to measure up to that price.

Another factor in customer satisfaction is setting correct expectations for both buyer and seller at the time of order.

If you didn't tell a client they couldn't do something, you can't get mad at them when they do it.

Most of these situations are self-created: you take on someone you shouldn't; you don't make things clear enough at the outset; you make it seem like there's no work to be done but there is.

There will always be whiners and people who spend their last dime on your course, somehow getting the pennies together to do so, trying that last roulette wheel spin...and then crying when your program isn't work-free or requires something more like, I don't know, TRAFFIC (what a shock) to work. Despite your very best efforts, someone like this is going to come along once in awhile. Move on as quickly as possible and forget about them.

Keep an eye on your own energy. If someone is sapping that energy, disengage. No matter what the financial cost may be in the short term, that's a spit in the ocean. And the world has a funny way of filling open spaces pretty quickly...something about abhorring a vacuum. I saw this in the early 2000s with my branch managers. They'd be freaked out to get rid of time-consuming, energy vampire contractor customers, because they didn't want to give up the five or six figure a month spend that contractor was doing with the branch.

This spend was on credit and the customer was always behind on payments, so the company really didn't collect the cash for 60-75 days.

I remember cajoling and explaining to one particular branch manager that he needed to find a replacement for that customer. He gave me all kinds of reasons why he couldn't "fire" them.

One day I went on vacation. A week later I was back and looking through my files...and saw something weird: the customer's account was locked down. I called the branch manager. "Oh yeah," he told me calmly, "I fired them." Like it was 100% his idea. "What about the revenue loss you were worried about?" I asked. "I replaced them with two better customers. Funny, it happened almost immediately," he said.

As soon as he made the room for a better customer by getting rid of the one that had been eating up his work life, they appeared.

You won't get rid of every bad egg. But you can definitely minimize them. I get a couple a year and they drive me nuts ("It didn't motivate me..." "...it's not MY job to motivate you! My job is to give you the tools to accomplish what you said you wanted to do--and here they are!" ... *mental dial tone*) but for the most part a simple price hike and some repulsive copy will do the work for you.

Something else to remember is that most people who buy a course never open the box.

So the ones who do "complain"...take a real look at what they're saying. They may have a legitimate concern that will help you truly improve your product if you fix what they point out.

One IMer I admire has said for years that the help desk section of his sites is the most valuable...that's where all the action-takers are.

Don't be expecting to throw your course out there, have people buy and consume it, and never interact with them. Well, I guess you could hire a VA to do the interaction, but somebody will have to do it. And it may be very valuable interaction.

Excellent response, Jason...

I was tempted to quote your entire post and highlight everything that was really, really pertinent.

Then I realized I would just be highlighting the whole post.



For the OP (and the rest of you with similar questions) :

You would do well to print out Jason's post and tack it to the wall just above/behind your computer monitor. His suggestions work just as well for computer software, WordPress plugins, or courseware... and just as well for online or offline clients.

Thanks again, Jason.