A Course In Courage – The Full Story of My First Ever Paid Product (subscribers only)
In March, 2011 I launched my first ever paid product: A Course In Courage. As the name suggests, it’s an online course that aims to help people become more courageous. Below I’ll share with you all the behind-the-scenes info about the course, answering such questions as…
- How much work went into creating it?
- How many people signed up?
- What has the feedback been like?
- How much money have I made from the course?
- If I was starting over from scratch, what would I do differently?
Before I get too far into it, you should know that this is not a big success story. As you’ll see further down, the response to the course has been disappointing, and I’ve pretty much given up hope that it will ever help a lot of people or make a lot of money. So I won’t be able to share with you any fail-proof tips for building a successful online course, since I haven’t been able to do that myself yet. All I’m aiming to share here is my own experience, and a few of the lessons I learned from it.
Okay, let’s start this off with a little backstory…
Why a course about courage?
One of my goals for 2011 was to release my first paid product by the end of February. When I set the goal, I had no idea what kind of product I was going to create; I just knew I wanted to create something. I wanted the experience.
All through January I was working hard on creating a free product, a manifesto which expanded on the theme of this site. That was set to launch on January 31st, and I wanted to do something special to promote it. Taking inspiration from the power and courage exercises of Steve Pavlina’s Conscious Growth Workshop, along with some excellent brainstorming help from a couple of mastermind groups, I came up with a project called Random Acts of Courage. The idea was to go out every day for five days and do ten things that would push me out of my comfort zone. I published daily reports about my adventures here on the blog, and my readers loved them. Before I knew it, I was seeing massive traffic spikes and getting lots of great publicity for the upcoming launch of my manifesto.
A week later, the RAoC project was over, my manifesto had been released, and all the hooplah had died down. I had only a few weeks left before I was supposed to release my first paid product, and I still didn’t have any idea what to create. That all changed after another brainstorming session with one of my mastermind groups. I realized that, thanks to RAoC, my audience now considered me to be something of an expert on overcoming fear. I figured I could work with that perception and put together a product that would help people build their own courage, much like I had been able to build mine. It seemed like the perfect idea for my first paid product, so I decided to roll with it.
Planning the course
I decided pretty early on that the product would have to be a course and not just an ebook. I envisioned several different components:
- A big list of challenges designed to expand your comfort zone. I’d break them up into different sections and provide tips for each.
- An email series, delivering a dozen or so exclusive articles on the topic of courage, spread out over the course of several weeks.
- A community forum, where course participants could post about their intentions and progress, and help keep each other accountable.
- A resources section, featuring reading and viewing recommendations, plus exclusive interviews with courageous people.
After coming up with all that, I realized I’d never get the course built and launched by the end of February, so I extended my deadline until mid-March. March 17th to be precise (Paddy’s Day!).
I also decided early on to go with a subscription model, charging $20 per month for participation in the course. My reasons for choosing a subscription model:
- The cost of entry would be cheaper.
- The looming automatic renewals would encourage people to jump in and make the most of the course from the get-go. Fresh in my mind were some online business courses I’d recently signed up for; having paid a one-time fee for access, there was no pressure on me to get started. Months later, and I still hadn’t logged into many of them.
In hindsight though, I’m not sure if it was smart to go with that model for A Course In Courage. Perhaps more people would have signed up if I had used a one-time fee. (More on this later.)
One other thing I did in the planning stage was take a good hard look at some other online courses and how they were put together. I liked the styling and layout of Corbett Barr’s Affiliate Marketing for Beginners, and took inspiration from Sean Ogle’s Overcoming the Fear of Uncertainty. I made note of what software they used and how they structured everything. I even reached out to Sean for some advice and he was very helpful with his responses.
Building the course
No joke: I worked my ass off putting the course together. It ended up being a lot more work than expected, and it scares me to even speculate on the total time investment.
First off, there was a lot of writing to do. Between the email series and all the writing on the site, it amounted to approximately 30,000 words of original content, and that’s a conservative estimate. To put that in perspective, the average blog post I write contains less than 800 words.
As for building the actual website itself, that also took some time. I’m lucky that I had a ton of prior experience with web development, because there were several different pieces I needed to get working together and it all got a bit tricky at times. Here’s a list of the main components of the site:
- WordPress content management system
- WishList Member (affiliate link), which transforms a standard WordPress installation into a membership site.
- Simple:Press, which adds a forum to any WordPress site.
- PayPal, to handle subscription payments.
- Aweber (affiliate link), for the mailing list.
Those components didn’t always want to play nice together, so it took a lot of wrangling and mucho trial and error to get everything running smoothly. Or at least, I though I got everything running smoothly…
Beta launching
I made my March 17th launch date, but decided to call it a beta launch. The plan was to limit entry to the first 30 subscribers, and charge them half-price for the first month ($10). I did this mainly so I could get a small group of test users in there to work out the kinks. I also wanted to give myself more time to round out the course with additional content and features before opening it up to the masses.
Unfortunately, I didn’t come anywhere close to getting 30 subscribers when I launched. I left the doors open for 72 hours and pushed hard to get the word out, but ended up with only eight paying customers. Worse still, half of those people had a shitty sign-up experience, since there turned out to be a glitch with the PayPal integration. I had to hustle to fix it, then email those folks asking them to please go through the sign-up process again. No fun.
Back to work
The early feedback from those eight subscribers was lukewarm. Nobody seemed to dislike the course, but nobody seemed ecstatic about it either. I realized that I still had a lot of work to do before the public relaunch on April 18th. And after seeing such low sign-up rates during the first launch event, I knew I’d have to do a much better job at marketing.
So, between mid-March and mid-April, I kept myself busy with the following:
- Adding 20% more challenges to the course.
- Creating printable challenge checklists to help subscribers track their progress.
- Creating an affiliate program with iDevAffiliate (affiliate link, naturally).
- Offering free access to blogger friends, in the hope that they’d check out the course, like it, provide testimonials, and become affiliates.
- Adding those testimonials to the course (muchas gracias to Sean and Spyros)
- Creating exclusive video interviews with courageous people.
- Building out the resources section with the aforementioned video interviews, plus a recommended viewing section.
Relaunch
Despite all that additional work, the April 18th relaunch proved to be even more disappointing than the beta launch. Nobody signed up for the course those first two days, and only four people signed up within the next four weeks.
Of course, it didn’t help that I forgot to give priority notice about the relaunch to the dozen or so people who had signed up for the priority email list, only realizing my mistake several days later. I don’t think any of those folks ended up subscribing to the course, and I couldn’t blame them after such a dumb mistake on my part.
Anyways, the non-response to the relaunch was tough to deal with. I still believed in the course, since I knew how powerful the information and exercises in there had been for me. But, for whatever reason, very few others were convinced of its worth.
Additional efforts
After a week or two of feeling sorry for myself after the relaunch, I decided to focus on my circle of influence and make some last ditch efforts to promote the course.
I figured that some people might have been interested in joining the course but unwilling to take the plunge right away. So I spent about three days putting together an ebook (The 50 Most Courageous Quotes of All Time – And Why!) that I could offer as a free gift to anyone who signed up to an interest list. Then I wrote two exclusive articles on courage that would be sent out to those people, one at a time, a week apart. Included with the articles were testimonials about the course and a big fat sign-up button.
As of this writing (almost two months after I posted the offer), fourteen people had signed up to get that free gift, and as best as I can tell, none of them went ahead and signed up for the course afterwards. Yeah, 0% conversion rate. Bummer.
My next big effort to promote the course was to record an interview with Ashley Ambirge from The Middle Finger Project. Rather than keep that video as an exclusive for course subscribers (as I’d done with all the other video interviews), I decided I’d post it on the sales page to act as a teaser and get more people to sign up. I even spent time creating fancy intro and outro titles so it looked really sharp. Ash has a pretty big following online, and I was hoping a good chunk of her audience would end up seeing the video and taking a chance on the course.
Unfortunately, that idea also fell flat. The video only received a few dozen views, and failed to generate any new sign-ups.
The fire sale
By now I’d pretty much given up hope of the course ever making money, but I still believed it could help lots of people become more courageous. I wanted to get a bunch of folks in there, even if it meant offering a steep discount.
So, for the first weekend of July, I decided to have a fire sale. The deal was $1 for the first month, and thanks to some retweets from a few legendary folks I met at The World Domination Summit that same weekend, I was pretty pleased to see fourteen new people sign up for the course.
Which brings us to the present
As of this writing, there are nine paid subscribers in the course. There’s no denying now that A Course In Courage has been a bit of a flop. It certainly hasn’t come anywhere close to being a financial success (see figures below), and it seems it hasn’t had quite the impact I hoped it would on the lives of most of the people who signed up for it.
That said, I believe I have learned some valuable lessons from my experience building, launching and marketing the course, so in that sense I feel like my efforts have not gone to waste.
Feedback on the course
It’s all well and good me telling you that I still believe in the course and how it can help people become more courageous, but what about the feedback I’ve received from others? I’ll share some of that with you here.
The last message in the Course In Courage email series asks folks to respond to a brief and anonymous survey. I’ve only received three responses to date, two of them coming before the relaunch. Here they are:
1. On a scale of one to ten, how well did A Course In Courage meet your expectations?
- 6
- 5
- 6
2. Is there anything you would like to see more of in the course? Or anything missing that you’d like to see added?
- If there was a way to select one set of challenges -and perhaps have one (or more) of the individual challenges sent to your inbox each day? It cuts it down in to bite sized chunks, at least.
- A ticking-list : once you have completed a challenge, you tick it on the chart. Gives you insight of which challenges are the most popular as well. Deadlines
- It needs something more to get it going, otherwise it’s just information and a forum.
3. What part of the course did you find least helpful or relevant to you?
- The challenges. I signed up to the course because of two very specific problems. Most of the challenges don’t appeal to me, because they don’t relate to my personal problem so much… On the upside, I have overcome one of my own challenges – and just committing to this course has put me in the right ‘mode’. I think that in itself is a huge thing. I was prepared to pay out cash and make change in my life. [Note: This response abbreviated for clarity.]
- The forums.
- The forums.
4. How likely are you to recommend A Course In Courage to a friend (Never will, Unlikely, Maybe, Likely, Definitely will)?
- Maybe. I’m scoring based on the course as it is now, and I’m sure if you can get a good number of members it will improve massively.
- Likely.
- Maybe.
5. Do you think access to A Course In Courage is worth $20 per month?
- Yes, that’s a fair price.
- No, should be less. 10$ is a fair price. While it’s true that 20$ for the 2nd month should encourage you to go through the challenges faster, it’s actually easy to just save the pages & unsubscribe, hence keeping the information & not needing to pay a higher price on the 2nd month. So defeat the purpose.
- Yes, that’s a fair price. It depends on how much it’s worth to you and what you get out of it.
6. Any other feedback? Remember, this is all anonymous, so please feel free to tell me what you really think of the course!
- I think what you’re doing is great, and I know that whatever you do will only get better as you go along and help to make anything else you do better. Well done and keep it up.
- Need more effective ways to help people overcome procrastination. I know some challenges, but need to dedicate a specific time to doing them, which is the most difficult part of all.
- I like the challenges, but they need to be something more and what are they building up to? The challenges seem to be more for younger people with less life experience.
Numbers
Okay, time for the juicy details. Let’s start with the monetary investment in the course. Note that all the figures here are in American Dollars.
| iDevAffiliate software | $ 99 |
| WishList Member plugin | $ 97 |
| Aweber (six months of subscription payments) | $ 88 |
| Overcoming the Fear of Uncertainty | $ 47 |
| Call Recorder (for video interviews) | $ 20 |
| couragecourse.net domain name (one year registration) | $ 14 |
| MyeCoverMaker (affiliate link, for Courage Quotes ebook promo graphic) | $ 4 |
| Total monetary investment | $ 369 |
I should note that I didn’t pay anything for web hosting since I already had an existing package allowing me to host multiple domains under one account. And I’ll reiterate that I used a free WordPress theme for the site design, although I ended up modifying that quite a bit.
Okay, now how much money have I actually made from the course? Well, to date, there have been 28 paid subscribers. Some of them renewed a couple of times, but most canceled within the first month. One requested a refund. After taking into consideration the beta launch discount, the fire sale discount, and all of the PayPal transaction fees, the total revenue generated by the course currently amounts to $510.
The course is likely to continue generating income for the foreseeable future but, unless something drastic happens, I don’t expect it to earn me anything more than $100 per month. Again, quite disappointing considering all the work I put in.
Lessons learned
Below I list out a few key things I’ve learned from my experience with A Course In Courage. Coming up with these, I was trying to answer the following question: Knowing what I know now, what would I do differently if I had to start over?
1) Content is only half the battle
While I know the course could be a lot better, I know it’s already better than some other courses I’ve seen that have gotten many more people signed up. I believe one of the main differences between my course and theirs is marketing. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say networking. By far the best marketing strategy is to have other people with their own big audiences buy into what you’re trying to do and help sell it. People will be hesitant to believe you when you say your course is great, but when other, reputable people are saying it too, that’s huge.
Although I feel I could have done a much better job with the marketing for A Course in Courage, I was fortunate enough to receive some great testimonials from Sean Ogle, Spyros Heniadis, Caroline Leon, and Mike Roberts. Without having their supportive words listed on the sales page, methinks I might not have had anyone sign up.
2) When you have several different systems working together, lots can and will go wrong
I tested with PayPal’s sandbox before my beta launch and everything ran like clockwork. It was only when I launched the course and people started signing up that I realized there was a problem with the real PayPal integration. Big headache. I should have tested for realsies. For the relaunch I had a friend sign up and make sure everything worked right before I opened up the flood trickle gates. Much better idea.
3) Make your pitch while they’re still in love with you
My traffic was peaking after Random Acts of Courage back in January. Everyone was loving that project. But it was another six weeks or so before I launched and began marketing A Course In Courage, by which time most folks had forgotten all about RAoC. Methinks it would have been wise to ride that early wave and get people on board and excited about what I could offer them in future. I could have started building an email list much earlier than I did, or even done a full-on pre-sale and offered people cheap and early access to the course if they signed up well in advance.
4) Follow-up personally
Only recently have I started reaching out to course participants personally by email. They do hear from me multiple times a week via the email list, but that’s all automated and they know it. I’m convinced those messages come across a little impersonal, even though I tried to write them all nice and witty like.
Now I send out a personal email to people a few weeks into the course, asking them how things are going. I’ve gotten some great feedback from that. I can’t say for sure that such emails help keep people more engaged in the course, but I feel good about doing it and wish I’d started sooner.
5) It’s hard to sell something intangible
A Course In Courage promises to help people become more courageous, but methinks that’s a tough sell; for someone to buy in they have to admit to themselves that they’re a bit of a coward. And even then, it’s hard for them to imagine the potential payoff should they go ahead and sign up for the course.
It’s much easier to sell something tangible. Like, take this course and you can earn $1000 extra per month! Or, buy this book and you can lose 20lbs in six weeks! It’s easier for people to relate to those claims, to envision what the payoff will look like. Not so much with become more courageous!
I’m not sure if there’s a way to make A Course In Courage more tangible though. Courage is a relative thing, and a huge step for one course participant might well be considered irrelevant for another. Next time I create a paid product, I’ll be giving careful consideration to this issue of tangibility.
6) Track your time investment
Writing this report, I was kicking myself that I hadn’t tracked how many hours I’d spent working on the course. Even a ballpark figure would be good to know, but I honestly can’t tell you if I’ve invested closer to 100 or 300 hours in it.
I’ve come to realize the value of measuring how much time I spend on my projects, as it will help me figure out in the long run which of them deliver the best return.
As such, I’ve started logging my hours in the project journals I keep on Google Docs. The journals are basically dated entries where I detail project tasks, record key decisions, and figure out next steps. I always have a timer running whenever I sit down to do a chunk of work so I can log the duration of my session in the journal when I’m done.
7) Be wary of the subscription model
One big issue with using a subscription model for A Course In Courage: It really kills forum participation. If someone signs up to the course for just a month, posting several times in the forum before canceling their subscription, there’s no way they can then go back and check for responses to their posts.
This really hit home for me when a recent subscriber began contributing to some older threads in the forum. Unfortunately, the folks who started those threads will never be able to jump back into the discussion, since they were locked out of the system once they canceled their subscriptions. No fun.
Also, my reason for choosing the subscription model in the first place was to hopefully force people into taking action and thus get more out of the course, but I’m thinking now that such a thing can’t be forced. A better approach might be to let people sign up for a one-time fee, give them indefinite access to the course, and allow them to get stuck in whenever they feel ready.
I may actually go ahead and make that change to the payment system in the coming months. Nothing to lose.
Final thoughts
Once again, I certainly don’t consider A Course In Courage to be a success in any traditional sense, but I do believe that it’s been a valuable learning experience for me, and I expect I’ll draw on much of that experience to help me succeed with future projects.
Hopefully all the above provides some good insight or helps you in some way. Feedback and questions welcome as always in the comments. I’d especially love to hear any thoughts you might have on why the course failed to do as well as I’d hoped. There’s every chance I could be overlooking some fatal flaw 
Hi Niall,
Give yourself some credit, you launched you own course of original material and you made a profit.
Personally, I think you’d have greater success charging around $15- $20 for the course instead of the subscription model (and I’ve looked into lots of online courses recently).
Best of luck with it regardless.
Cheers,
Keith
Thanks Keith!
I have no regrets about the course, just lots of lessons learned. I don’t consider it to have made a profit though, since I spent so much time working on it. For me, a true profit means that I get back more money than I spent on the project, plus more than the monetary value of the time that I invested.
But I agree about ditching the subscription model. I’ll try to get that done by the end of the summer. Like I say above, I’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a try
+1 to what Keith said
Hi Niall,
-Just wanted to add my two cents.
-Maybe that recurring payment stopped some people from getting it.
-Also a good portion of the WDS crowd who would end up stumbling on your blog could’ve been extroverts or people not that challenged in social opportunities, therefore it wasn’t so appealing to them.
Maybe you could find forums with social anxiety or social fear?
Since my blog is now focused on social situations, I have to find the right crowd.
Best.
Thanks for that, Matt.
Yeah, I think the recurring payment may have hurt more than it helped.
As regards WDS, I think that actually gave the course a good boost because a lot of the folks I met there tweeted about it and helped spread the word. I wasn’t really aiming to get actual WDSers into the course, but I figured it might appeal to some of their audiences.
And great idea about social anxiety forums. I doubt I could outright promote my course in them,, but I could try help some people out who post there and maybe they’d follow a link back to my site to check it out. Hmm…
Hi, Niall:
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this info. Super valuable and loaded with insight. Mine own site is a subscription model site. However, the original intention–in my mind–was to launch it as a “freemium” model. (More on that via Chris Anderson’s book Free. True to the concept, Anderson initially gave away the book for free on Scribd, until it became a bestseller. Now you gotta buy it if you want it! I highly recommend it.)
As I’m sure you know, the premise of a freemium model is this: give the basic service/product away in order to get traction with a wider audience; THEN upsell your free users premium benefits–e.g., no ads, special content, whatever.) On average, you’ll convert maybe just 5% of your free users into paying customers. So you need a BIG audience to make this model work.
Ultimately, if my site’s present set-up does not work (I suspect it wont), it’ll morph into a freemium model…and that would be incentivized via gamification. By that I mean: free members would get points for engaging with the site, which they could redeem for goodies. They could only redeem said points, however, if they became paid subscribers. Jesse Schell calls this the “The Expanding Velvet Rope” model. (An amazing vid on that here: http://bit.ly/epPcjF ) Here’s the rub though: with adults, you need some really cool things for which the points could be redeemed in order to persuade them to pony up some cash for a subscription.
In any case, I think it’s interesting that you got a bump in subscribers when you dropped the price for your course to just $1. There’s zero mental friction in a person’s decision process to sign up for something that’s free. I suppose there’s a heck of A LOT less friction between $1 and your original price. Even still–at $1–there’s still a smidge of friction…enough so, just in the process of submitting payment info, a potential subscriber must pause for thought. Even at $1, they’ll stop to make an evaluation as to whether or not they really want it before making the leap.
I think because you’ve gone through the process of developing an entire system on the web…getting all of those moving parts synchronized–it’s put you waaaaay ahead of the power curve. Problems and solutions are plentiful. It’s the execution that matters, and I think you’ve got that down pat. Your site, your blog, the e-mails…things work…and work really, really well.
You should note, too, there’s a difference between making something go viral, and making something stick. (For good info on how to make things go viral, check out Momentus Media, or this video about 30 min. into it: http://bit.ly/mSLnGS . ) To create something sticky, with an enduring user base–especially via subscription–that takes a long, long time…years, I think. Check out Hubspot ( http://bit.ly/4dXDiE ), too, on some interesting insights in leveraging landing pages to gain some solid traction.
I think you’re most definitely on your way!
Wow, Sean. Thanks so much for all that. Lots of great food for thought there, and I’ll be sure to check out those videos and the book.
And I think offering a free trial of my course is something worth experimenting with. Maybe the first week free, and then a one-time fee for anyone who wants to stay in. Again, I wouldn’t really have anything to lose by giving it a shot.
Cheers!
Hello Niall! Great article; I have a few thoughts that came to mind while I was reading:
-Have you tried paid traffic? Such as Google Adwords, Targeted Facebook Ads, StumbleUpon, etc? Those systems can be really tough and relentless, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt to try.
-The one-time fee sounds excellent. I’m personally not the biggest fan of the subscription model, and perhaps many other people feel the same way.
-More vivid descriptions/details on the sales page. For example, a section with the headline: “What Kind of Things Would You Expect to Do After Completing the Course”. Kind of long, but you get the idea
. And underneath the headline, write about more vivid imagery; something like:
“Imagine going up to that girl, giving a confident smile while radiating charisma. She is instantly captured by your confidence…..no more awkward stumbles in conversation, because you will have desensitized yourself to social rejection from completing the challenges” and so on and so on, with a bunch of different and detailed examples from your personal experience.
Again, these are just my suggestions. I hope they are of some use to you!
Thanks,
Josh Lipovetsky
I like those suggestions a lot, Josh. Thinking about it, I’ve already received some great email and forum feedback from course participants who’ve done some cool things as a result of the course. I could try posting some snippets like that on the sales page.
Man, really glad I wrote this report. Getting some excellent ideas from you folks. Thanks a mil!
Maybe you could re-brand your missions as “quests”? Sounds cooler and appeals to nerds.
Ohhhhh, me gusta mucho! Gracias!
Hey Niall!
Great great great post. Thanks for the transparency and for sharing the nitty gritty details.
I’m one of the folks who signed up for the $1 trial following WDS weekend.
I did not sign back up. Let me explain why… I wasn’t really your target audience for this product. I signed up because, well… I like your stuff and I thought I’d show some support (yeah only $1 of support, but it’s something
), I wanted to see this project that you had been working on and I’m always interested in seeing how other folks’ projects come together. I want to do something online as well and I’m still juggling a couple ideas around and trying to decide what I want to do. Seeing projects like yours is inspirational. You can say it’s not successful, but I view it as a success. Remember, you have to “fail” a LOT before you “succeed” and it’s those “failures” that ALLOW you to succeed.
So, yeah, first off, please don’t misconstrue my not signing on for the second month as a failure. You’ve done well here.
Things I would change:
1) Yes, definitely, as the course is now, I would recommend doing a one-time fee. I’d probably also keep that fee pretty low for the first wave of folks. $15-20. I know that probably doesn’t met your expectations, but try that out, get some folks in there, then raise the price for future subscribers if you see more folks signing up.
2) For a monthly subscription service, I think you have got to be CHURNING out the content. As someone above mentioned, if you expose the entire course to folks when they sign in, why do they need to keep subscribing? Further, if they do subscribe, I would expect to see a LOT of new content every month to justify the $20/month.
3) Building up a community. For online courses (and especially subscription model services) to keep people coming back, content alone is not good enough. Meeting other members on the site that are going through the same thing that you are helps immensely. Relationships are formed. Support networks are created that you can rely on. The forums are definitely the best way of doing this, but I think you have to build the community first before charging much. I like the idea of making the forums open. But you could also have a section of the forum that only paying subscribers get access to?
4) Marketing. I know this isn’t your target audience, but I see the pickup community as a prime marketing opportunity for you. A LOT of folks getting into the pickup community are battling one major obstacle: courage, and building up confidence. True, you’re not giving them tips on the psychology of how to win over a girl, but you are addressing some of the same mind blocks that pick-up helps folks with. And there are a BAZILLION pick-up sites. Just do some searching. Pay to be mentioned in one of their newsletters for a few months. I see that as a big opportunity.
5) Maybe build out user profiles so that you earn “badges” or points for completing challenges. People love recognition for their efforts. Allow them to show that off with some crazy badge icons on their profile?
6) Allow some kind of customization. Maybe when folks sign up, they can fill out a profile form that says I want help building up courage in areas x, y, and z. One of the comments above mentioned that some of the challenges just didn’t apply to them. Do some further research (online poll or questionnaire) to find out what areas people want help with. You do have this divided up on your site already, but it would be interesting to see if the categories that you came up with match up with what people want. For example, someone joining to gain courage with public presentations isn’t necessarily going to want the relationship challenges. You could prioritize the challenges for folks based on what they want out of the course. I think a very important part of any course like this is finding out what people expect out of it. Ask them this before they see the course. It’s good to tell folks what you can do for them. But it is more important when developing a course and finalizing everything to find out what they expect from you.
Anyway, some thoughts. Again, thank you for sharing. I’m anxious to hear about any upcoming projects and would love to give you feedback on any ideas you have bouncing around
-Miguel-
Hey Miguel,
Wow, you guys are just killing it with all the great feedback. I really appreciate you signing up for the course and checking it out. And you’re not the first person who’s told me they jumped on the $1 sale just to show support. I’m cool with that
Great points especially on community above. I think that’s what really makes or breaks most online ventures. If I got a good chunk of people in there all sharing their stories and encouraging each other, it would be a fantastic resource for all involved. And a one-time fee definitely lends to that.
Also like the idea about marketing to the pick-up community. A Course In Courage could be something very useful for extremely shy guys in those circles who are just starting out.
Also, just want to mention to everyone who’s left feedback that I do intend to make many of the changes you suggest, but it’s gonna take me a few months before I can devote the proper time to it.
Cheers!
Hi Niall,
First thank you for your honesty on the management of this project.
A couple thoughts that might help:
I knew about A course in courage and you know I appreciate your work. Now, why did I subscribe? 20$ seems a little to expensive. I had no idea how long was this program and I did not want to be stuck for 12 months with a carrot in front on me. Second reason is to admit that I was a coward. That’s what it implies and it’s a big step. I think 99% of people are not ready to admit they lack courage.
And now I see the in depth analysis you made about this project, I look forward for the next one!
Failing is the beginning of success.
Take care my friend!
Manu
Thanks so much, Manu. I’m definitely sold now on the subscription model being a bad idea. Your feedback helps confirm that.
And as to your second point, yeah, I’m with you there, too. I’m not sure if the solution would be to change the name of the course and try to brand it in an even more positive way, but I’ll be thinking about this.
Muchas gracias, mi amigo.
Hi Niall,
I’ve stumbled across your site today actually, and then somehow to this article. Which I’ve found quite interesting.
Now that you’ve gone through the process, what are your thoughts on ‘products’ that are how-to’s/personal/lean on people’s psych? I’m not judging here, just bouncing ideas?
Being a fellow ferriss inspire-ee, do you think that with the technology we’ve got available, market samurai, google keyword tools, dirt cheap manufacturing, outsourcing etc.. that your energy would be better spent on a physical product?
I know ‘e’ products have their benefits, no inventory, easily upgraded etc.. but I’m interested in your thoughts of products that rely on people’s psychy and their hope in order to buy them? Probably most of the ‘personal development’ category in a nutshell..
I’m not ripping on the model entirely as producing a product/service to genuinely help people would be better than pushing out a piece of sh!t manufactured in China that gets binned after a week, just interested in your sentiments.
Cheers,
Andrew
Great questions, Andrew. I don’t have much experience to lean on here, but I’m under the impression that physical products will always be an easier sell, because most people still like to get something tangible for their money. Digital products can be tangible, of course, but the value is harder to measure and therefore harder to market.
That said, I think the ceiling is much higher for digital products, because of the benefits you noted. If you can hit that sweet spot and produce something that really resonates with people, the sky’s the limit. And you don’t have to feel guilty about widgets ending up in a landfill somewhere.
That said, I would consider selling physical products if I felt they really served a long-term need and I could pull off the whole cycle (creation/marketing/delivery) quite well.
I guess for me it doesn’t matter too much if the product is digital or not. As long as I believe I can provide value with it, ideally value that people are willing to pay for, I think it’s worth giving it a shot.
Hi Niall,
In reply to the following:
“I’m not sure if there’s a way to make A Course In Courage more tangible though.”
This is just an idea off the top of my head that came through when I read that sentence, but how about structuring the course for people stuck in 9 to 5 who want to break out and do the 4-hour work week / live in a different country for 4 months at a time, think more for themselves, live their dreams and piss off the zombies… basically have the course with the end result of changing their lifestyle to one like yours … which obviously takes courage!
Maybe if you marketed this way and restructured it to flow with what your tag line / mission statement on your blog is that would give people something more concrete or tangible to aim for… just a thought!
I also think that this post with all the feedback has much info in it that could be a small course in itself to help others who are wanting to make e-products … put that together with the step by step technical know how and that might be a product people want as well…
The one thing I have learned from some of the current successful online marketeers is to find out what people want / need first and make a product for that… also … start marketing it BEFORE you make it…!!!
I love your blog… it’s real and integral, I feel you will be VERY successful… !!!
Hey Janice. Thanks so much for those suggestions. I think you’re spot on in that I need to narrow down the focus a bit, so I’m not aiming the course at everyone and anyone.
Been doing a bit of work restructuring the course and hoping to relaunch it again soon. We’ll see how it goes.
Thanks again!
Totally. Blown. Away.
If anyone should have written the Courage course, it had to be you, man. Seriously, this is brave stuff.
I am currently trying to launch my own ebook product. And each and every line here hit me like Tyson. Your courage to tell me about a product that didn’t go well, just gave me the courage to launch one.
No Niall, I will not buy your product. But I will buy you your favorite dinner anytime. And there in lies the problem, I think. But I am not here to ‘give my two cents’ on how you can better the product, find a better market etc (you are OBVIOUSLY way, way, wayy ahead of me).
But seriously man, you make my hard work look like child’s play. Thank you for giving me some serious perspective. I am hooked to your narrative, your story now. So that should amount to something right? (like, I have set the Google Analytics goal value to $1 for each subscriber on my blog… it already feels mean to do that, no?!
).
I wish you all the best man.
P.S. Found your blog through your interview with Caroline
Momekh! Thanks for the comment. Just checked out a few of the latest posts on your blog, really digging your writing.
And I might take you up on that free dinner some time; I should be passing through Pakistan in January
Now “thats” a done deal! Dinner’s on me for sure!
HI Niall,
Brilliant brilliant post! As a lot of other peeps said, You are the right guy for launching this course. I kinda feel point 5 and 7 are most relevant.
It IS difficult to sell something intangible. OTOH, the subscription based model for your course was a little way off. Courses like the one you are selling should be sold as an ebook or maybe password protected videos. Hopefully Version 2.0 will rock!
Cheers
Anshul
Hey Anshul,
Thanks for the comment! Unfortunately, Version 2.0 didn’t do very well either. I think I’m just over this project. I’m happy to keep it up there for anyone who wants it, and will keep interacting with folks in the forums, but it’s pretty undeniable by now that I’d be better off investing my time in other projects going forward.
Niall:
Just discovered your blog today.
Thank you for this FANTASTIC post! So very helpful and filled with nuts-and-boltsy tips and insights, as I aspire to have products/programs some day (I’m a holistic career counselor). I had suspected launching a subscription site (or launching *anything*) was more difficult than the marketing gurus made it seem, but I couldn’t find anyone willing to tell the dirty details. And, I’ve been looking ! Plus, lots of helpful ideas and resources for implementing. See?! You = courage in action!
Two ideas:
1) I love Janice Mitra’s idea above – great! Then, your product would dovetail way more directly with all the Tim Ferris-y, Location Independent, Travel, Minimalist-type circles.
2) I feel this post itself is a worthy product. I could imagine maybe charging $2.99 or $4.99 or $14.97, etc. for it. And, then maybe upselling to something else like your website consulting, etc. It seems like the kind of thing I would pay for. Of course, if you could include interviews a couple of people like Sean (in exchange for links in your product, etc.) with very specific suggestions on how you (and everyone reading) could possibly have overcome the problems you encountered (which I believe Sean did above) it’d be great, in my mind. Plus, I love how Sean pointed out all the ways in which this was a grand success. I agree. Really!
Laila
Thanks, Laila! I really appreciate the comment and those ideas.
Cheers!
Great info Niall. And congratulations on the hard work and lessons learned. This will certainly pay off.
Niall,
Great post, great insight I am just beginning to put together content. I personally pay for several subscription based courses, ranging from $10-$47 month. Most of the information I get from the courses is freely available online or found with minimal effort. After reading your post I asked myself why I continue to pay for online information subscriptions. This is what I found.
I continue to pay because…
1. I get practical results from taking action and following the lessons in the courses.
2. The information provided is filtered down to something that has been personally tested along with surrounding factors of use.
3. I have access to a group of likeminded people. I post my experiments with the practical lessons I try and get feedback from many other people I would otherwise not have access to.
Thanks again for your info!
I’ve been thinking about your project and I do think you have a product to offer. I would call it location freedom(LF) or location independence(LI) . I have followed lots of different financial gurus over the years to reach my financial independence, one of my two favorites are Your money or you life by Vickie Robbins and Joe Domingez. This book has been around since the eighties. My other favorite is Dave Ramsey(DR). Well here I am, 50 years old, paid for house, sons college funded, money in the bank. I’ve reached the goals but now I feel like something else is still missing. I think that is why your blog resonates with me, you have achieved a different kind of freedom or independence. For selling it has a product, I think the Dave Ramsey model makes sense. In that model, you buy the 12 week course for $99. The course teaches you the steps to get FI, but it takes much longer to execute all the steps. After the course it takes most folks 7 years to reach their goals (per DR). Looking at your blog and my own situation, it looks like it might take a while to get the skills and tools needed to achieve LF. Many of the topics you have already outlined in your blog, understanding your values, minimalism, skill building, courage building, preparing for the journey, surrounding yourself with like minded individuals and dealing with others. I’ve got a 7 week course built for you already, and i havent even finished reading your blog!I But just as in the DR model, it takes time, that’s where exclusive blog content and forums generate additional revenue.
Changing subjects, lets talk about the donate button that you have not yet put out on your site, even though I’m sure it is a very easy thing for you as a programmer to do. From your independent nature I’m guessing you would feel like it is charity. I would encourage you to check out Charles Eisenstein Sacred Economics I haven’t read the book in full but saw him give a lecture, his thoughts rocked my foundation of securiy in the world as I have known it.
Very briefly, his theory is that the new economies will not be a growth model but gift model or curriculation model. Giving to others is an inate human need and when others are recipients of a gift, they feel bonded and also want to give back, or if they can’t give back they pay it forward. He practices what he preaches by giving his books and lectures for free, but recipients are free to give back, through an option to pay for the book, whatever value you feel you have received. I donated $25 to a FREE lecture. I found value and was willing to give. I would willing give to you for the value I have received in your blog. So maybe don’t call it donate, call it free circulation of ideas, or sharing or paying it forward.
Seriously, I would fund your activities if you could help me reach my goals in the process.
Hey Nancy,
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I really appreciate it.
Quite honestly, the thought of putting together another course doesn’t appeal to me much at all. I agree that I could probably make money from it and help a lot of people, but I’d rather focus on building a business that can run without me, as well as pumping out more writing.
As for the donate button, I added one to the bottom of my email template a few days ago, so everyone on my mailing list will have the opportunity to donate easily (I figure they’re the people most likely to donate anyway). I may put one on the site as well at some point, still debating that. I’d rather newcomers to the site don’t get hit with a donate button right away.
I hadn’t heard of Charles Eisenstein before but will check him out. I like the sound of him.
Thanks again!