SEO

#340 – Create A Profitable Online Course (from 8-Figure Course Creators)

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73 min read
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Overview

  • How to coming up with a course idea that people will actually buy
  • How to build a course efficiently
  • How to package a course attractively and sell it effectively

In this episode, we dive into what might be the most powerful way to monetize your content online – online courses. Beyond ads and affiliate marketing, online courses have proven to be incredibly profitable and versatile, catering to both info businesses and other diverse business types.

Real-life Examples of Successful Course Strategies

1. Samcart

  • Product: CreatorU
  • Impact: Transitioned their sales message from selling shopping software to promoting a business model, improving Facebook ad effectiveness.

2. Ahrefs

  • Product: SEO Course
  • Impact: Initial chargeable course that primarily serves to generate demand for Ahrefs and offer valuable tutorials.

3. Get Me Links

  • Product: The Link Report (link building course)
  • Impact: Allowed more effective Facebook ad campaigns and accelerated business growth.

Challenges in Course Creation

Course Creation Process

Brainstorming a Course Idea

Finding the right course idea is crucial. It’s all about understanding the criticality of the problem. eg. Comparing “rat infestation” (high urgency) to “smart home setup” (low urgency).

Community Research

Find communities discussing the problems your potential audience faces. eg. Using subreddit communities like “aging parents” to identify recurring issues.

Idea Validation

Check market demand and the presence of paid products to validate your idea.

Use tools (like ChatGPT) to find existing paid courses in your niche. eg. Searching “elderly workout plans” and finding successful competitors like “Grow Young Fitness.”

Addressing Objections

List potential objections and prepare solutions. eg:

  • Accessibility: Have features for the visually or hearing impaired, large subtitles.
  • Equipment: Use minimal, accessible equipment.
  • Health conditions: Create exercises for different ability levels.
  • Motivation: Create accountability systems.

Crafting the Course Offer (Stack)

Compile an irresistible offer that solves all pain points. eg. Stack for Elderly Workout Course:

1. 90-day core workout program

2. Weekly coach check-ins

3. Quick workout bundles

4. Community access

5. Fitness meal plan

6. Surgery/injury recovery package

Creating the Perfect Sales Page

Main Conversion Tools

1. Social Proof: Logos, testimonials, endorsements.

2. Guarantees: Money-back offers, quality assurances.

3. Scarcity: Deadlines, limited-time discounts, bonus offers to create urgency.

General Sales Page Structure

1. Hero Section: Captivating headline and CTA.

2. Social Proof Section: Logos or testimonials.

3. Problem-Agitate-Solution Section: Define the problem, the consequences of inaction, and present your solution – the course.

4. Results Section: Showcase customer stories and testimonials.

5. Content Breakdown: Detailed list of what’s included in the course.

6. Emotional Appeal: Highlight emotional benefits.

7. Pricing and Stacks: Display the value proposition clearly.

8. Guarantee Section: Reinforce money-back and other guarantees.

9. Who Is It For? Section: Help your audience see themselves in your offer.

10. Testimonial Roll: Continuous stream of positive feedback.

11. FAQ Section: Address common objections and questions.

12. Final CTA/Close: Urge immediate action with a closing argument and CTA.

Launch Strategy

Product Launch Sequence

1. Pre-launch: Send value-heavy emails on relevant topics, possibly teasing your upcoming launch in a “P.S.” at the end.

2. Launch Day: Short, direct email announcing the product.

3. Mid-launch: Keep up engagement with feature-highlight emails.

4. Closing: Use scarcity tactics with multiple reminder emails.

Ads

  • Start with a small warm audience, gather data, then slowly broaden to cold audiences.

Building Successive Launches

  • Iterate based on feedback and sales data.
  • Expand to affiliate promotions after your initial launch.

Today, we’re talking about
what might be the most powerful way

to monetize your content online.

And no, it’s not ads
or affiliate marketing.

We’re diving into the world
of online courses.

Let me throw some numbers at you.

$5,000 RPM.

That’s what one of our students
in our paid mastermind achieved

in his first course launch.

And honestly, Actually,
after reviewing it with him,

there’s a lot that he can improve on.

But to put that number in perspective,
it’s more than 50 times what

you can expect from a good ad focus site.

This is just his first attempt.

Courses are not just for people
whose entire business model

revolves around selling information.
Of course, it can be.

It’s an awesome way to scale
a legit business, but courses

are a versatile tool that can benefit
a wide range of other businesses as well.

To convince you, let me give you a few
real-life examples of non-info company

using courses to grow their businesses.

The first one is Samcart.

It’s a popular shopping cart software
that sells a course called Creator You.

It’s a course that teaches people
how to be creators and includes a lot

of tactics that use Samcart to monetize.

It allows Samcart to shift their sales
message from buy a shopping software

to learn a business model.

And that angle works a lot better
for Facebook ads, for example,

allowing the course to generate
sustained sales for their software.

The second one is Ahrefs,
the SEO tool we all know.

They created an SEO course
to complement their product.

They don’t charge for it anymore,
but they used to, and most

of the tutorials use Ahrefs and
generated demand for the main product.

And SEMrush, their main competitor,
they went even further and they acquired

Backlinko for millions of dollars.

And one of the reasons for the acquisition
was to offer the courses

to to promote SEMrush.

Now, admittedly, these are two pretty big
companies, but there are examples

of small companies that did it as well.

Getmelynx, a link building service
that created a cheap course

on link building called the Link Report.

This allowed them to run Facebook ads
because the angle was more appealing

than a link service, and Gary, the owner,
grew the company faster than anyone else

because he could scale ads with
that offer and an info product.

These three examples show you that courses
can either be your main product,

but also they can be an entry point
your phone or whether you’re selling

software, services, or anything else.

They can make strategies
like paid advertising

much more effective and be the key
to scaling a business that initially

seemed quite challenging to grow.

But making a good course that people want
to trade money for is not an easy task.

Luckily for you,
Mark and I have done it a lot.

We are eight-figure course sellers,
and while this sounds glamorous,

what I can tell you is it
was not a walk in the park.

We’ve made countless mistakes that could
have been avoided, and if we did, we

would both be seven figures richer today.

And that’s where this
podcast episode comes in.

We’re going to break down
the entire field-tested process

of building and selling courses.

We’ll cover everything from coming up with
an idea that people will actually buy to

packaging it attractively, to building it
efficiently, and selling it effectively.

So whether you’re looking to diversify
your income streams like the student I

mentioned at the beginning,
or generate leads for your main business

like the three examples I gave,
or simply share your expertise

in a profitable way, this This episode has
something for you, so let’s get into it.

Welcome.
I’m your host, Gael Breton.

And I’m Mark Webster.

And this is the Authority Hacker Podcast,
the place where you learn strategies and

tactics on how to generate traffic, earn
people’s trust and turn them into your

audience, then monetize this audience
in cool and non-spammy ways for a living.

We’ve been doing this ourselves for
over 10 years now, and we’ve

helped tens of thousands
of our customers do the same, too.

So if this is something you’re
interested in, then don’t hesitate

to subscribe Vibe here on YouTube
or wherever you get your podcast from.

And just before we actually get
into the meat and bones of this podcast,

something I wanted to say is
that the skill set you need to do this,

there is a huge overlap between
that of which you need to do SEO to create

reviews if you’re running
an affiliate site.

It’s very similar, a lot of the things
to, for example, creating a sales page.

You go through a lot
of the same psychological difficulties.

If you remember You look back
at the first blog post you ever

wrote, it was terrible, right?

Everyone goes through that.

And the first time you make a sales page
or the first time you film a course

video, it’s not going to be perfect.

But you keep going a little bit further
and then very quickly

you start to get it.

And a lot of those same skills in content
creation and just building systems

and workflows, it translates very well
across to creating courses as well.

I think because we come from an SEO
background, potentially we built

the process based on our experience.

It’s like That actually levels it up.

I think we might be doing things a bit
differently from other people because

a lot of this stuff is very much ours.

It’s not necessarily stuff that
we’ve learned from books or something.

It’s just something
that we’ve actually just honed in

and expanded from our SEO experience.

You will see that we’ll be able to draw
a lot of parallel between what you do for

SEO and how you create a product
like that and what you were saying

about not doing very well the first time.

Yeah, we can see that because we have
a lot of Platinum members.

We’ve done several Platinum events now
on this stuff.

People seem to be really interested.

Obviously, with all the Google
changes, a lot of people are looking

to explore new business models, etc.

And since it’s something
that we know pretty well, we’ve helped

several people now actually get started.

I mentioned it in the pre-intro,
but one of our students had a launch

with a $5,000 RPM to his sales page.

It’s not even that great, to be honest.

It’s a good start, but it can be better.

But I can see all the mistakes
people are making.

It’s actually one thing
that I’m documenting, so eventually

we’ll actually have maybe more
of a paid training on all this stuff.

Right now, we’re going to give you
the rough version of all of that and how

you go through the system, but we’re not
going to hold anything back.

So let’s jump in because
there’s a lot to cover.

And I want to talk about first,
like coming up with an idea because a lot

of people are coming in and they’re like,
okay, people are making money selling

courses or it generates interesting
needs, but I have nothing, guys.

I don’t know what to sell.
I don’t know what to do.

And so it’s like SEO.

If you create a course
on something, people will are not

interested in spending money
in, you’re going to make zero.

The same way as if you create a blog post
for a keyword nobody searches,

it might be a great blog post,
but you get no search traffic.

So if you’ve taken the Authority Site
System, for example, I have a very long

niche research process, etc.

And honestly, a lot of this
transposes to creating courses as well.

Just you’re going to look at
different things and you’re going

to use different criteria, and I’m going
to walk you through the process now.

I think anything you do in marketing,
it’s 75% of the result is from

spending all that extra time
on your research and getting that right.

Anytime we’ve had big failures,
it’s usually been because we had tried

to skip that and just jump straight in.

Yeah, but the difference is there’s
no keyword tool for courses, right?

So it’s not as simple as SEO.

It’s a little bit more of an abstract
process, but you definitely need

to base it on real-world observation.

I’m going to give you
some very practical tactics here.

I mean, you can use search volume, right?

Search Search volume with a twist.

So basically, search volume gives you
how many people search is for a keyword.

But then what you should do
is you should assign to a keyword

a score between one and 10.

That is what I call criticality
of the problem, which is how urgent is it

to take action on that problem.

I have two examples here.

Imagine that the keyword rat infestation.

Like your house is infested with rats.

Maybe that only has a thousand searches
per month, but it’s pretty dire

as a problem to live in a house
infested with rats.

So I’ll probably give it a score of eight
out of 10 in terms of how critical

it is to solve that problem.

I don’t know if a course on
getting rid of rats is the problem.

Probably it’s a service here.

But the idea is people are much more
likely to take action on whatever

you have when you rank for that keyword
because of how urgent that problem is.

So it’s like a thousand search volume,
score eight out of 10, you multiply these

two, you have a number that is 8,000.

Now, let’s take another example,
smart home setup.

How to be able to control everything
in your home with your phone.

It’s pretty tedious to do that.

These days, there’s lots
of protocols and things that

are not compatible with each other.
It’s difficult.

Let’s imagine this has
a search volume of 5,000.

So five times more people
than rat infestation.

But the criticality is really quite low.

It would be nice to be able
to open my curtains with my phone, but

I don’t necessarily have to have that.

Probably a one or two score, right?

I put one, really.

It’s really not that important.

It’s 5,000.

It’s 5,000 versus 8,000.

While there’s The best people
searching for the right infestation,

it’s probably a better product
than the smart home setup because

even then there’s less people, people
are much more likely to take action.

That’s how would you search volume.

That’s my first tactic.

Another way of looking at that search
criticality, because it’s quite difficult

to just, if you’ve never
done this before, to put a number on 1-10

of how critical it is,
is think of the ‘oh, shit’ scale.

So if someone has this problem
that they’re trying to solve,

how How likely, out of 10,
is that person to say, Oh, shit,

when they’re faced with that problem?

So like, Oh, shit, I’ve got
a rat infestation in my house.

Very likely.

How likely are they to say, Oh, shit?

And we’re like, Oh, shit, I haven’t
figured out my smart home system.

I have to press this button
for my lights to come on.

Oh, shit, no.
They’re not going to say that.

So there’s less urgency around it.

Another way is also to…

We talk about this a lot when we look at
niche research for blogs, is this health-

wealth relationship triangle.

And if you’re in one of those areas,
then very often you’re higher up on

that criticality or that oh, shit scale.

Not that the rat infestation or
pest infestation is probably an exception

there because it doesn’t really fall
under one of those three, but it’s still

a problem that people bring themselves.

I think it’s more like
the Maslow pyramid as well.

You can take the Maslow pyramid
and be like, How low are you on there?

It’s like, Are you
on the need for shelter?

Need for shelter is probably
like, Reinvestation.

Oh, the shelter is not safe, for example.

It’s pretty low on there, or as if it’s
self-actualization, probably not as good.

Basically, you can use search
volume, but you need to tame that number

with how critical the problem is to get
an idea of how much demand there is.

Now, this is a pretty
basic one, to be honest.

We’re going to jump into the example
because I actually run a lot

of this stuff that we’re going
to talk about in this podcast through

a Platinum event a couple of months ago.

I actually had the example of a website of
a member that had a website for devices

for elderly and dependent people.

If they felt or something,
they would send notification.

That was the broad niche.

And so he came to me with that site and
the challenge was like, Okay, now help me

make an info product for this site so I
can turn it around from A pure affiliate

site to a site where I can sell something
to people in this market, basically.

So the way I did that is actually
my goal was to find communities

where people actually talk about
the problem this audience has in general.

Not the device, but the people
who buy the device, right?

Because I’m relevant for that
on Google and it would be easy

to rank for keywords.

And I use ChatGPT.

Chatgpt, honestly, these days,
I use it more than Google

for many things in this process.

And you’ll see, I use a lot of AI
in this process, which is pretty cool.

And so I was like,
I explained the problem.

I was like, Hey, there’s this site
on these medical devices.

I’m trying to understand the audience.

I’m looking for subreddit communities
of the people

who would read that site on Reddit.

It gave me some that were not super
relevant, but one was very relevant,

and that is the subreddit ageing parents.

So it’s like people who have parents
that are in their elderly years

and they need to take care of them.
They’re dependent.

The world’s reverse.

You take care of your parents.
Great.

I went there and I identified
the threat topics that had

the most engagement and were recurring.

So what are the problems
people keep bringing up?

And what are essentially the things
that people comment on the most,

avoid the most, and engage the most with?

And it was pretty easy after half an hour
to come up with a couple of issues

that people keep talking about.

That was mobility-type issues,
so essentially, dependents on not being

able to do everything that you can do
while still living at home and not wanting

to go to a retirement home,
adapting the environment

to reduced independence, scams.

A lot of people were complaining
that their parents are

getting scammed all the time.

Apparently, Nigerian princes
are actually reached this point because

they are scamming all the old parents.

Loneless and issues with parents
left alone for a long time.

And psychological issues on both sides,
both for the parents, but also for

the children that are taking care of them
and it’s difficult for them, basically.

So like 30 minutes of rounding this up,
I just had these five bullet points.

And I was like, Okay, well,
that’s the starting point, right?

I start to understand what
these people are having issues with.

And then I gave these insights to ChatGPT.

And I use ChatGPT as a sparing partner
for thinking about ideas.

So I don’t necessarily take
what it gives me, but I use it

to give me ideas to dig towards more.

I did that chat.
We can show it on the screen.

I gave the link to the editor
so he can show you.

And it actually gave me a couple of ideas.

And here’s a few of the ideas
that came out from it.

There was an elderly workout plan
Because muscle mass is very important

to maintain your independence.

At an old age, it’s not
about getting huge biceps.

It’s about just being able
to move around and not fall and

break your bones, for example.

A senior check-in service
That’s a service, not really

a course in this case.

But for me, I was still interested in that
because I was like, Oh, with AI voice,

we could almost do that automatically
at this point, where you could have AI

call people, they answer, AI summarises
and sends a text message to the children.

Coreal would almost be a tech company
where you get automated check-in

on your parents, they just
talk on the phone, and then actually

you get a text message with everything.

But that’s not really a course,
so I didn’t keep that.

There was an online social community,
and we’ll talk about probably

the challenge of this one.

There was an accessibility course,
which I thought was pretty good.

You know how you need to adapt your home
for babies when you have a baby?

You need to put these things
in the power plugs, etc,

so they don’t put their fingers.

Well, there’s a little bit of that
for elderlies that are dependent as well,

and it felt like an interesting one.

Scam education course
seemed to be quite interesting.

So it seems like children
are spending lots of time trying to

educate their parents on not replying
to every phone call, text message.

This is not the bank
that’s actually calling you, etc.

Probably would save them a lot.
A lot of time.

And then psychology services.

So that’s pretty much
what we came up with.

Not everything is a course,
but I said I wanted only courses,

so I honed in on that, and
we decided to go for that, basically.

And then once you brainstormed your ideas,
very similar to the Authority Site System

where you first brainstorm ideas and you
have to run it through a bunch of metrics

to actually decide if the idea is good.

We want to validate the idea.

And so similar to SEO,
I took some of these things.

And in this case, I took one
because I don’t have time in this podcast

to do all the I took elderly workout.

I felt like it was pretty easy.

There’s lots of PTs.

It’s not that expensive to hire a PT.

You could make a course with a PT.

To most people, you need a course and hire
a PT and work on a programme together.

You could make an elderly workout system.

And my question is very simple.

How are people making money in this niche?

Is elderly workouts online
a niche where people make money?

If you search that on Google, you’ll find
a bunch of shitty articles on shape.

Com, etc.
It’s very hard to find paid products.

You’d imagine that there’s no paid product
and people are not making money.

But again, ChatGPT is way better
at this than Google is.

There’s a recurring theme here.

But I was like, Hey, can you
find me some paid workout plans

for elderly specifically?

And it found me several.

I will show it on the screen as well.
I have the chat.

So they gave me seven or eight.

I checked a few of them.

So the first one I went
to was an elder gym academy.

It’s a sales page built
on Thrive Architect.

I saw boxes.

I was like, it was a good throwback.

They sell a membership
for $20 a month or $120 a year.

The question is obviously,
how many sales are they making?

You want to know.

It doesn’t matter the price.

It’s just like how many
sales are they making.

You’re looking for proof
of activities here.

So I found like 45,
000 subs on YouTube, actually.

We stopped videos at over 500,
000, not just under 500,000 views,

but still doing pretty well.

And that’s pretty much the only thing
I could get because there are communities

on their site, so I could not necessarily
find numbers, etc.

But I was like, well, this YouTube
is definitely showing some life, right?

So I was like, okay, let’s
jump on to the next competitor.

This looks okay.

It’s worth digging deeper.

And I found like the…

Honestly, one of the best case studies
I’ve ever found in this market, ever.

I mean, not in this market,
but for info products, ever.

I found a company called
Grow Young Fitness.

The site is pretty amateurish,
but I went on their socials, again,

as a way to see how well they’re doing.

Their YouTube, top YouTube video has 1.

5 5 million views and
their YouTube channel has 140,000 subs.

Their Facebook has 850,000 followers
and every post has hundreds of likes

and real people comment.

It’s not ChatGPT, you can tell.

It’s just reels where he shows you,
move your arm like this.

I could be a PT for LL.

But it’s quite interesting.

Yeah, it’s real.

Same on Instagram, 462,000 followers
and so So much engagement.

One of the most engaging companies
that sells products that I’ve seen

on these networks ever.

And we’ll see why in a second.

On TikTok, you’d imagine all people
are not on TikTok, but apparently

they are because he has 63,000 followers
and some videos with over 700,000 views.

He’s like the Kevin
of elderly people, basically.

And then what was interesting
is actually they run their paid community

on Facebook.

Facebook ads, on Facebook group, sorry.

It’s very good.

Which makes sense, by the in
that type of audience because a lot

of more older people are on Facebook, but
not necessarily on these other platforms,

might find it more difficult to log into
a member area and things like that.

And they know how it works.

It’s easy.

It’s only for paid customers,
only people who can pay, right?

The membership is $10 a month
if you pay yearly or $20 a month

if you pay monthly, basically.

Some plans in between,
but that gives you an idea.

And in there, there is 30,400
people, which means that even if people

are all on the annual plan,
which is the lowest price per month,

that’s a $4 million a year business.

And he also sells supplements on top
of that, which tells me that this guy…

One caveat there.

So one nuance with Facebook groups
is it’s very difficult

to manage them when you’re running
a membership or a course platform.

And I’ve seen many cases where people just
won’t kicking out old members.

So that 4 million or whatever
it was a year is the high end

of the range estimate.

I think it’s possible, at
least, that there’s less actual

paying members than that in there.

If they don’t clean it, yes, I agree.

But it’s also I took
the lowest subscription plan for this.

So it’s like you assume they probably
have a mix of people who pay quarterly,

people who pay monthly.

There’s quarterly, it’s then $15 a month.

So it’s like 50% more money per member.

I It’s still crazy success.
It’s amazing.

But when you’re looking at these numbers,
you often don’t have perfect data.

That’s my point.
Yeah, I agree.

It’s like take these numbers with…

It’s like traffic estimates on the Etreus.
Very similar.

It’s a good guy, but you
wouldn’t bet your house on it.

But still, this guy is definitely making
seven figures a year from his courses.

If you add on top of that, he also
sells supplements and runs heavy to it.

So I went to his ad manager
and he runs tonnes of ads.

For the workouts, he runs chair workouts
ads, which is literally people

can’t even stand, but they just
sit on the chair and they just

do some small movements, basically.

And currently, it’s very popular.

But he also sells a tonne of supplements
to these people who love him.

And I would bet that he’s not far
from eight figures a year.

If you combine the supplements,
also, he sells DVDs on Amazon.

People buy for elders on Amazon,
and they have hundreds of reviews and the

Workhouse has a membership, basically.

If you add that all up together,
I would not be surprised if it was either

high seven figures per year or closing on
eight figures per year in that niche.

And to me, that’s pretty much
all the validation I need to tell

this is a great market.
Now, I found other competitors.

I’m not going to go over them because
this podcast would last literally hours

if we We kept going with that.

But the idea is that it’s a very,
very, very juicy market.

This guy is not necessarily
executing very well.

His video ads are just filmed
on his phone, same with his videos, etc.

It’s not very, very hard
to set up compared to how much

money he makes, basically.

Very, very big opportunity
here, in my opinion.

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And now, back to the episode.

I have a question about validation.

So have you seen this concept before where
people will, when they have an idea or

multiple ideas for a course,
they’ll try and sell them all,

and then the one which sells the best,
they’ll actually build, and then the

others, they’ll just refund to everyone?

Have you seen people
execute on that before?

It’s basically selling it
before you make it, right?

That is the idea, right?

What’s your thoughts on that
as a way of validation?

Because there’s this concept, right?

That people will tell you what they want,
but you only really know what they want

by how they spend their money?

So first of all, it depends.

You need an audience to do that.

You need an audience to do that.

And the people who bought the course
and you don’t deliver on, you basically

burn a bridge with them,
which I’m not a huge fan of.

So you’re making fans.

You’re working very hard to make fans,
and you disappoint them later, which

in my opinion is an average experience.

It’s almost like you’re training people
in the future not to buy your course

until it’s established.
Maybe they don’t get it.

My opinion is like if we
were doing that, for example,

I’d rather make a paid webinars.

So maybe I’ll make
a series of paid webinars.

I’ll do five webinars.

I’ll deliver on all of them.

Imagine this podcast, but
with me screen sharing, basically.

I’m doing that.

I would probably sell that for
$20 or whatever, $29.

And then see what got the most success and
then build a course based on that so that

I’ve delivered to everyone because it’s
hard to build an audience these days.

And so I don’t like
the idea of burning bridges.

And it’s like that lean startup
idea, but the lean startup was written

at a time where an ad click cost it five
cents, which it made economical sense

to burn bridges at that price.

But now an ad click costs £3.

And it’s like, I just cannot
afford to burn bridges at that when

it caused this much to build an audience.

So it’s like the world is changing and you
need to be mindful of the relationship

you’ve got with people Because that’s
probably one of the biggest sales factor.

If you disappoint people,
they will not trust you again.

And we’ll talk about that when we
talk about guarantees and risk reversal

when it comes to selling.

But it’s quite important.

I
would prefer

validating with my competitors doing stuff
and digging deep into what they’re doing

and potentially making very small products
initially, making products that cost $10,

$20, then you can build them in a week
and then expand, expand, expand.

That’s how we did with the AH Pro, right?
First version of the AH Pro was $37.

Last version of AH Pro was more than $3,000.

So it shows that it can be done that way.

Let’s go back to that.

So basically, that’s
my main way of validating.

I’m not going to go through
every way you can validate.

Again, that could be an entire
podcast, potentially I’m sure,

of course, one day we’ll see.

But at this point, I’ve seen this guy
killing it with low production value

and things I can build myself.

His sales pages are
pretty shit, to be honest.

They’re well-structured,
but they’re not well-built.

Anyway, once you have validated
your idea and you’re like,

Okay, I want to build that.
People are making money.

I can compete production-level-wise.

What you want to do is you want to then
list the main objections people

will have to taking your product
and then brainstorm ways

to overcome these objections already.

So we’re already thinking of sales
before we’re even building the product.

That’s a very important part
of building something that sells

is that you start with the sales
and then you regress back to the product.

So In my example of workout for elders,
for example, accessibility is an issue.

It’s like people don’t see very
well, people don’t hear very well.

What if they can’t really
follow the workouts because of that?

Can I find, for example,
a video player on the market that has

accessibility features where maybe
you can pinch to zoom so that people

can really make it really big
on their iPad if they’re using that?

Can I have really big subtitles,
for example, so people

who don’t hear very well?

Can I address the accessibility issue
that elders may have?

There’s going to be the equipment problem.

People will be like,
I don’t have equipment.

I just don’t have this.

It’s like, what I’ve seen
from my competitor is that they basically

tell people, you need a chair and a pair
of these pink dumbbells that you see

all elderly people have, basically.

Probably you need to do
something like that.

People seem to have
an accountability issue.

Following a programme when people don’t
nudge you, it doesn’t work.

Maybe I can build
some accountability system and maybe

you can even build it with AI.

I think a Zappie or Zapp can I can
actually do that for you in a way that’s

good enough to put in an info product.

And also people have obviously health
conditions when they’re old, right?

So it’s like I want things that
can be done on all level of abilities.

Again, that’s probably the chair thing.

And one thing that I’ve noticed as well
by reading that subreddit is like

a lot of people start walking
out after surgery when they’re older.

So I would want to address that as well.

So it’s like I’m making
a list of issues people

may have with following what I have.

And this is something I need
to keep in mind when I’m putting

my offer together, right?

And then after that, we’re essentially
building what we call the stack.

And the stack is that part of your
sales page that summarises your offer.

So we want a list of bullet points
of everything that’s going

to be included in what we’re building.

And that’s going to act as our checklist,
but we’re building it with the mindset

of selling and addressing objections,
which is why we’ve listed objections

before that.

The idea here is really to make
the offer so ridiculously good

that it really takes any doubt
out of the purchase purchasing decision.

So it’s like, Oh, I’m getting
all of this for only this price?

Wow, that’s amazing.

And then people are much more likely
to buy when you present it to them.

There’s also this psychological paradigm
or whatever you call it.

It’s called the bundling effect,
where if you have

six or 10 different items,
even if they’re all, say,

they’re all $100 each, 10 items,
so it’s $1,000,

there have been studies to show
that people perceive the value of that as

more than $1,000 because it’s in a bundle.

So that’s why you often see a lot
of, not just with courses,

but with other things that people sell.

They’ll bundle it with other things
and they’re playing

on that psychological trigger there.
Yeah.

I want to go through the stack that we
have for the Authority Site System, so people

get the idea of how this is put together.

The first item in your stack
is always your core offer.

In this case, we put like,
196 video lessons.

That was a lot of lessons in task.

But the idea is like, okay,
the lessons, basically, they’re here

to teach the main thing,
which was building an effet, basically.

Then the second item was the to-do list.

So it’s like, one objection people had is
like, well, that’s a lot of stuff to do.

I’m not very organised.
I need to stay organised.

Therefore, we built a
to-do list for people so people

can just go step by step.

And then The to-do links
to the lessons, etc.

So it’s like a different way
to go through the course and tick things

when you’re done, and it makes you
feel good about progressing,

and that addressed a lot of issues.

Second item, template library.

So it’s copy paste stuff.

So people liked…

Your bonuses or your extra items
in your stack should really be ways

to shorten the time it takes
to get result or make it easier.

Templates is definitely that.

You just fill the blanks and it helps you.

Another good way of thinking
about this is it’s the answer

to one of those even if statements.

So how to build a successful business even
if you don’t know how to use a computer.

You have right as block.

Yeah, so here’s the solution
to overcome that.

You know what I mean?

But we’ve had people over the that
they’re just not tech savvy and really

struggle with a lot of this stuff.

So the more you can pre-build for them
and really remove these barriers,

the more likely they are to give it a go.

So we’d have the EAT blueprint saying,
When that became an issue, we made

a blueprint that would go through that.

Discount library, people
have the objection that,

Hey, paying for tools costs money.

We’ve tried to get discounts
where we could support.

People have the objection
that they could get lost

and they might have some questions
that they want to ask in private.

We have a good support system.

Members only community, that feeling
of belonging together, talking with other

students, basically, like the not
be alone, that was the objection.

And updates, basically, people
are always afraid things are out of date.

So what you do is you
author updates and people do that.

And you can see at the end, we have
the total value because we’ve assigned

a monetary value to each of these things.

And the idea is you add the value
to a very high amount and you basically

discount that and then
that’s your price, basically.

So that’s pretty much
how you build a stack.

And you build that before
you build your course.

That’s Very, very important.

One really important thing, because I know
a lot of people see this stuff

and they go, Oh, that’s super salesy.

It’s like you just made up these values.

And you’re right, it is.

But one really important thing here is
that having a value stack like this, it

differentiates you from your competitors.

So people stop going into this in the case
of the fitness course, and say,

Oh, I just need another fitness course.

You’ve created something unique that’s not
a commodity, and therefore people aren’t

evaluating you based on what everybody
else is charging for the same thing.

So it allows you to really
play around at quite high level

with pricing, and that’s really when
you can start opening a lot of doors.

Yeah.

So what I did is I actually
went back to ChatGPT.

We had a chat together.

We had a little brainstorm session
and I built my stack for my elderly

walkout, and I put a beautiful image
with an elderly lady and pink dumbbells

next to it to make it a little bit
And we built that basically.

So if I was putting this offer on market,
I actually my co-offer, I put it

to be a 90 day core workout programme.

People like this time-based thing,
so they project themselves 90 days

from now being different.

And so I was like, okay,
the core programme is going to be just a

90 day programme most people can follow.

Then I put the weekly coach check-in.

So probably just an email thing,
really, where we just email people

and it’s the support, really.

I put a five minutes quick workout bundles
because one of the objections

was people don’t have time sometimes.

Like, are they busy or whatever.

They don’t feel good,
they don’t have the time, etc.

I put the community because it’s easy
and we’ll talk about platforms

and a lot of them have that.
So why not?

I put a fitness meal plan.

Obviously, a lot of people
do that to be more in shape.

So Nutrition is a big one.

So you’re taking care of that big thing.

And I put an extra bonus that is a surgery
and injury recovery package

because a lot of people
I found on this subreddit start working

out after they’ve been to the physio.

They went to the physio after the surgery.

The physio was like, Oh,
you have to do these exercises

and you have to keep exercising.

Otherwise, you’re in trouble.

People actually look into changing
their lifestyle and working out.

When they’re elderly,
it’s a bit different goals.

I basically did all my stack.

I did that up and it’s $49 a month or $4.

90 yearly.

It’s a bit more expensive
than the competition.

To be honest, this you
would have to test on the market.

You could launch at this price.

I like the idea of launching high and then
cutting prices with flash shells, etc.

And we’ll talk about that.
So that’s a way of hiding scarcity.

So maybe if I’m at 49 per month
base, I could discount it

to like $30 or something.

And that sounds like $29.

And then that gives me a margin
to run promos basically and use scarcity.

So that’s why I priced it that way.

So that’s pretty much the stack I’ve done.

Same thing.

Really, we spend some time
on this because that’s something

that pretty much nobody does.

That is building this
before you even build a course.

That is your checklist
of what you have to build.

Most importantly, you’ve put yourself in
the head of someone who has to sell it.

Because when you’re building,
it’s quite different.

You push back and you’re
like, What is feasible?

And that’s fine.

You will have that mindset
when you build a course.

But you need to first think of what sells
the most, and then you can regress back

a little bit on what’s doable
so that you have a high demand product.

And that’s really the difference between
a course that sells well and a course

that doesn’t sell well, similar to people
who plan their sites well before they

start it and do their site map
and do their topical maps, etc.

Tend to do better than the people
who just Yolo it and start a website

and just start posting.

So similar to SEO.

I think something that helped us quite
a lot, and this might be helpful

for anyone coming from a content
production,

content marketing, SEO side of things
going into this is thinking who you are

actually trying to speak to when you’re
creating all this stuff

for the sales page.

And I think it’s important to recognise
that if you have an existing audience,

you’ll have a set of people
that will buy whatever you’re selling,

regardless of whether you do this,
regardless of what’s on the sales page.

You’ll also have a much bigger chunk
of people that are just never

going to buy something
because you’re charging money for it.

It’s the people in the middle
who are on board with the idea

of doing it because they know you,
they trust you a bit, they’re already

in your audience, in your scope already.

But they either have other stuff going on.

You’re the sixth or seventh
highest priority thing in their business

or in their life that they need to solve.

Or they’re maybe a bit value-conscious,
or they’re just busy

and procrastinate and need something
to help them get over the line.

And all this is doing is really
moving it up from that sixth

or seventh in their priority list up
to two, three, or even one.

And then that’s the point
in which they actually purchase.

Yeah.

So it’s like you’re convincing
the indecisive people, basically.

That’s exactly what value stack does.

It reduces analysis paralysis or decision
paralysis and lets people take action.

It also presents your offer as
a comprehensive solution to the problem.

You’re going to fully solve the problem.

That’s why they’re buying the course.
They don’t want the course.

They don’t want the videos.
They want the solution.

They want the problem solved.

And also, a lot of people
just don’t read the sales pages.

So presenting it as a stack
on the sales page at some point, quite

often, our top call to actions draws
you down to that stack with the price.

So So people who don’t want to read the
sales page, they just want to see what’s

inside quickly, that’s a snapshot.

And it’s also helping us
shape some of the emails.

So we’ll talk about that later.

And we have more tools
to move indecisive people.

Really, it’s the game, right?

It’s like find this pool
of indecisive people.

It’s like an election.

In an election, there’s the people
who are for one party, for another.

You won’t change their mind.
It doesn’t matter.

The swing voters decide all the elections.
Exactly.

So it’s like, this is what we’re trying
to do with the sales process, basically.

So that’s pretty much it.

Build your stack and now
you’re ready to build your product.

That’s it.

That’s the point where you validated that
people are making money with this angle

and now you’ve built a stack
that’s inspired by them but not copied.

You will see I have different things
like the surgery stuff, etc.

And you have a core offer that will act as
your checklist to build a product.

Now, we’re not going to go into
extreme details of every technical aspect

of building a course because, again,
that’s something we could talk about

for six hours just on that topic.

But it works very similarly
to briefing an article.

The way I brief a call, I’ve
done probably like 15 or something,

if you count blueprints, etc.

Like 15, 20 plus on my own.

What I do is I basically first
write my headlines.

I make an outline of everything
that needs to be in my main course.

When I did like EEAT, for example,
it was obviously Expertise,

Experience, Authority, and Trust.

And under each, I made some subbullets
of like, okay, how do you show It’s like,

okay, like auto pages, schema, etc.

And I started just listing things
as basically two-level bullet list.

And what that does is your top-level
bullets, they’re basically

your modules for your course, and
your subbullets, they are your lessons.

They are what’s going to be inside there.

And then after that, for each subbullet,
you have to make another breakdown

of how do you explain that?

So how do I do a good
auto page, for example?

And then you go back to your notes,
you go back to your experience, you You

hire people and you consult with people.

I have calls with people
when I prepare that.

The goal is not necessarily
that all the information is yours.

It’s more like it’s packaged
in a way that you get everything

in a 10 minutes to 15 minutes video
plus notes below, basically.

It’s also about having coherence
from one lesson to the other

and grouping everything together.

That’s what building a course is.

It’s just a big outlining game, basically.
It was bullet points.

One of the first questions people usually
have is, how long should the course

be and how long should each video be?

Is there a guide for that?

Obviously, it depends on the topic.

It’s quite varied.

But for B2C, I would argue
long courses are not a good idea.

I’m not very excited by the idea
of rebuilding something like TAS.

Looking back at it, for example,
you could see it was like, 1908 videos.

I think that’s too much.

I don’t think most people
go through the whole thing.

And so you’re losing people.

My favourite size focus now
is about 20 to 25 lessons,

which allows you to go in-depth enough.

If you have 10 minute videos
and you have 25 minutes of them,

that’s a lot of content already.

We’re talking like 4
hours plus of content.

You can go in-depth in stuff,
especially if you edit well

and you just get quite condensed.

People can get a lot much deeper than free
content, and it’s still short enough.

Something I just want to clarify
because different people…

A module means different things
to different people.

But when we’re When you’re
thinking about it, a lesson

is like a video with some text.

It’s solving a problem.

It’s a lesson.

A module for us is not a lesson.

Some people describe that.

It’s a group of a lesson, so a category.

Of lessons.

There may be 2, 3, 4, 5,
10 lessons in a module.

For EEAT Blue Point, it was
each letter is a module,

and then each lesson is a tactic
to achieve that higher level goals.

If you want to show expertise
on your side, there’s five ways

to And then expertise is the module,
and then auto pages, schema.

I can’t remember what else is in there.
But I would go through all this stuff.

And then it’s like how to achieve
that goal and they’re grouped together.

So you just go through that.

You want to improve expertise on your
side, bam, you just do these lessons.

And that’s it.
That’s everything you need.

If I have more tactics to add, I add it
to that module, and it’s a nice way to

organise content for people, basically.

The other barrier that a lot of people
have is around filming equipment.

When We’re sitting here with thousands
of dollars of lighting, camera,

audio equipment on our desk,
but it wasn’t always that way.

If you go back to some of
the very early lessons, we were not

using expensive equipment at all.

A few hundred dollars
at most is what we spent.

First lessons are shot on my laptop.

You can hear the fan spinning
while I’m shooting, for example.

Even MacBook pros, the new MacBooks,
they have actually three microphones.

They have studio microphone
that has this noise cancelling, etc.

It’s pretty decent.

It’s not horrible.

If you’re just going to be in a corner
of the screen, you could literally

shoot on your laptop these days.
A MacBook is actually…

It’s not great, but it’s good enough
for your first version to get started.

And after that, if you get a microphone
and a little an IKEA light and you

can stick some paper in front to soften
the light, that’s actually good enough.

And we’re talking less
than $100 investment and

you’re already levelling up.

So you don’t need that So much stuff.

And the technology in just
a smartphone these days is so good

that if we had that 10 years
ago, we would have been laughing.

I say this to a lot of people,
but the iPhone these days It’s far better

than most cameras were 10 years ago.

And you can even get, if you have a 14
or above, you get this little magnet.

I’ve got this on the YouTube version,
but there’s a little magnetic thing that

sticks on your phone, and then that just
off the edge of the top of your laptop.

You use your iPhone camera instead of the
webcam, and it makes a huge improvement.

And that’s more than good enough
to film any course.

More than good enough.

I’m probably going to have to shoot
some podcast on the go at some point,

and that’s what I’m going for.

I’m not even bringing the camera.

I’m just going to use the iPhone
as a webcam, which works

by default on my attach it.
And then that’s it.

That’s my setup.

And I’ll probably just
bring the microphone to have good

sound, and then It’s fine.

You can just do that.

If you’re shooting real life courses
like PT, etc, a fairly modern iPhone

or Android phone that’s less
than three, four years old,

I think you’re good, basically.

You don’t need anything more.
It’s not that difficult.

And same for editing.

I mean, you could outsource editing.

It can be a bit intimidating, but now
there are tools that everyone can use.

It’s like it will take you an afternoon
to learn how to edit a basic video,

especially course videos don’t
need to be edited nearly as much

as YouTube videos, for example.

You don’t need to work on retention.
You don’t need to do all of that.

So you don’t need as many effects.

You can use tools like CapCut.
Capcut is free.

It’s on your phone,
but it’s also on your laptop.

They have a free version on desktop,
so you can edit with that.

You can use Descript, which allows you
to do script-based editing.

So you talk into the microphone and then
you have the script and you can literally

edit with words like you would
edit a Google Doc and that’s going

to cut the video based on that.

It even has AI functions
to remove repeats, etc.

So it’s very good.

And if you’re on a real
full-fledged video editor.

Da Vinci Resolve is actually 100% free.

It’s more complicated.

It’s a professional video
editor, but you can start for free.

So it’s like if you’re willing
to learn an advanced programme,

then Da Vinci Resolve is excellent
and you don’t need to pay for it.

It’s more accessible
than it ever has been.

There’s a crazy amount of very,
very good free training on how to use

all these tools and how to edit videos
to a really high level on YouTube.

Yeah, YouTube is fine.

You actually don’t need to
buy a course for that, actually.

That’s the one thing that is
very well documented.

Now, talking about distribution, we’re not
going to talk about shooting the course.

You have your checklist
you should have outlined, and then

you need to basically build your stack.

Depending on your industry,
it’s going to be different.

If I was doing my elderly course,
for example, I would be looking

for a personal trainer.

In Hungary, it would be
pretty cheap, to be honest.

Probably for like 30 to 40
bucks an hour, I’d probably

get someone that can do that.

Then I would just, yeah,
physio personal trainer, and I would just

go to the gym at one When there’s nobody
and just go shoot that.

And that would be my course.

And I do 20 videos on that
and I start selling that.

And if it goes well, add content
and make more products.

In terms of distributing, we could
see that this guy was on Facebook,

but there’s a lot of really good tools
these days that allow you

to run both a community and actually
distribute a course at the same time.

We use circle.
We like it a lot.

We think it’s very good,
but school is also very good

for people who like to do that.

I think circle is a bit more
refined, but that’s an opinion more

than something like this.
There’s tools like Kajabi.

I would not recommend, for example,
think if it can teachable anymore because

now they don’t really have this community
aspect, whereas these other tools have.

I would say it’s the same price.

I would probably use one of these.

My favourite being Socle
personally, but that’s just me.

You can, of course, use Facebook groups
and things like that for your community.

But if it’s the first time
you’re doing it, it’s sometimes nice

to have it all in one place.

I would say that having a community
as part of your course is

pretty essential these days.

It’s almost like an expectation.

And there’s that old adage,
people come for the course or come

for the content, stay for the community.

And I think it really remains true.

And I think in B2C, a lot
of these things are now subscriptions.

And without a community,
it’s hard to justify a subscription.

Whereas when there’s a community,
you can justify it.

You could see these guys
in the elderly workout space,

they all charge a subscription.

It’s 10 to 20 bucks a month, basically.

And without a community, it would be hard.

With something like Circle,
the problem is like, circle

for elders, I don’t know about it.

Maybe stick to Facebook for that market.

That’s why it’s going
to be highly market dependent.

But yeah, I would use that.

Talking about checkout,
most of these platforms have a checkout

built-in, so you could use the checkout
from circle, you could use the checkout

from school, use the checkout from Kajabi,
but it tend to be a little bit subpar

compared to send-align solutions.

So I would recommend you start with
the checkout from these things

because that’s not what’s going
to make break your offer.

If people like your product, they
will buy it regardless of the checkout.

But you can definitely squeeze more money
by having a better checkout system.

So once you level up,
there are better tools.

We use ThriveCart.

It has its ups and downs, to be honest.

Sometimes it’s good, sometimes we hate it.

You can build your own checkout
on WordPress if you’re

a little bit more technical.

So like Cartflow and Woocomers together
is a pretty cool system where you can

build like these sales funnels
and upsells and downsells, etc.

Which things like School
or Circle don’t necessarily

We have all the bumps as well.

So these are all the things.

We’re not going to go through this
because this podcast is going

to be six hours otherwise.

You can use…

There’s also SureCart
that is interesting at this point.

It’s like an alternative
to WordPress if you want to do that.

But otherwise, ThriveCart, if you
understand the whole solution, is still

the best because there’s no subscription.

Otherwise, the other card solutions
tend to add up over time.

Strivecart is like 400 bucks, I think,
for the smallest plan for one-off,

and then you never pay again.

And We’ve processed millions
of dollars through it, and we’ve never

paid them again, which is very nice.

And just to point out for these solutions,
you do need your own Stripe or Braintree

or other merchant account,
which is very easy to sign up for

and get approved for these days.

It used to be quite challenging,
but Stripe and these tools

make it quite easy.

You can use PayPal,
obviously, if you want.

We use that in the internet marketing
space because a lot of people use PayPal,

but there are some issues with PayPal.
It’s quite expensive.

It’s old.

The technology is not very good.

In terms of setup, there’s a few other
things that you need to set up as well.

You need a customer support email address.

Make sure people can
actually get back to you.

You can have a custom support system.

You can start with an email address.

It’s probably good enough to get started.

We’re really looking
for the barebone set up here.

You need to add some pages
on your website, like your refund

policy, your terms and condition,
disclaimers, all these pages.

If you are a merchant, then
you should have them on your site.

Otherwise, it’s not good.

Make sure that you go through that.

You can use AI to help
you write these pages.

You can index them so that they’re not
indexed by Google or whatever.

You can do all of that,
but add them to your site

so you’re a legitimate merchant.

And you need these to run
ads as well, for example.

So, yeah, build these.

Otherwise, you can’t even
get them from your other account.

So that’s pretty much the tech set up.
We don’t want…

Again, if you want more on that, let us
know in the comments because we could

take any of these sections
and talk for an hour on it, honestly.

But we need to go.

So let’s talk about building a sales page
because I think that’s From my experience

with seeing a lot of Platinum members
transitioning to this model, that’s

probably the most challenging part.

Most of their sales
pages are not very good.

And they can be better.

And I think that’s something
that we can help on.

But I’m going to go through
what I think is going wrong with people

and how to structure it overall.

First of all, you don’t need
a specific tool to build your sales page.

Don’t buy another tool.
Save your money.

If you have a modern WordPress
website, you can build your sales page

on It’s all done with it,
whichever builder you’re using.

We’re using Generate Blocks.

All our sales pages are
built on Generate Blocks.

It’s lightweight.

There’s a free version.
You don’t even need to pay for it.

But if you use Elementor,
if you use Brex, which is very good

these days, anything like that,
they’re all excellent choices And you

can build a sales page on all of them.

So don’t buy a sales page tool
or something like that.

You don’t need that.

And with the WordPress pattern system
these days, you can really quickly build

sales pages elements and just reuse them
many times and it’s fast and easy.

So highly recommend that
you just stick to WordPress.

There’s three tools that
you can use to boost your sales

on your sales page, right?

And we’re going to sprinkle them
throughout the elements,

throughout the sales page when I’m
going to talk about the structure.

But there’s basically social proof.

Social proof is people
using other people’s trust

so that they don’t have to fully vet you.

That’s something that is achieved
to, for example, logos of companies

that have featured you.

I’m not going to say Forbes
because it’s not exactly

an editorial standard at this point.

But if you’re featured on, I don’t
know, Wikipedia, The Verge, whatever.

Wikipedia is not either.
Go on.

Whatever.
Some big newspaper.

For us, we put like Ahrefs, SEMRush, etc.

Industry-specific is better than generic.

If you’re featured there,
then that is social proof, basically.

Then are there big personalities
in your industry that endorse you

or have said something nice about you?

And also, did people get results with
what what you are selling, basically?

In a lot of sales pages, that’s going
to be testimonials and before and after.

It’s quite hard to get those testimonials,
though, if you’re doing

this for the first time.

So one good hack here is before you do
the launch, you should probably do this

anyway, just to test out your product,
but gather a group of eager people

who want to test it out, give it to them
for a few weeks, for a month, and then…

For free?

Yeah, for free, and then get testimonials
from those people at the end.

And they’ll be genuine.

There’s nothing worse
than a fake testimonial.

John from California with no photo
says, This is the best thing ever.

People see through it.
Yeah.

Actually, it’s something
you can do on Reddit.

So while I was researching the elderly
workouts on Reddit, I found people that

launched a check-in thing for elders,
and they just asked people for feedback

and gave it to them for free.

And that’s how they collect testimonials.

That’s how everyone in e-com that launches
a product on Amazon does it as well.

They They send hundreds
of products for free.

People drop reviews
that boost their rankings.

They start selling organically.

So very similar.

And on Info products,
it costs you nothing to give it for free.

So really, you should do
that effort at the beginning.

That’s basically social proof for me.

The second selling tool,
main selling tool is guarantees.

Why?

Because that removes risk
from buying from you.

I mean, lots of people are
afraid of scams online.

It’s like they think you’re
going to take their money,

give them nothing or something bad.

You have their credit card information,
it’s scary, and so on and so on.

And you know, guarantees is something
which I feel really strongly about.

There’s not too many people
in our industry that actually offer them,

and I think they’re making a mistake,
to be perfectly honest with you.

So one thing that a review really
demonstrates is that you have a lot

of confidence in the product
or offer that you’re presenting.

So people pick up on those subtle cues
and are more likely to buy.

I think there’s no actual big study
that shows that having a

money-back guarantee will get you
more sales than the amount of money

you lose from people that refund.

There’s anecdotal evidence.

It’s very difficult
to do that at big scale.

We certainly feel, though, that whenever
we’ve offered guarantees on products,

and we haven’t always done this,
certainly other projects and stuff in the

past, it’s always been a big convincer.

It’s always been a big way
that gets people to leave

a positive sentiment about the product.

So even if they buy it, it’s not
for them, they don’t get value,

they’re too advanced, whatever, fine.

They get their money back
and that’s a good experience for them.

The reverse is that they buy this and then
they realise, Oh, I actually don’t really

need this or this isn’t quite for me.

And then they can’t get
their money back, they’re stuck.

And then it just leaves
a bad taste in their mouth.

And I think that’s unnecessary for
a little bit of extra revenue here

that it could generate.

I think what it does also
is it prevents bad reviews online.

So instead of people dropping a bad review
like, Oh, I bought this and I didn’t

like it and now I lost my money.

If they were treated well
in the refund process, then they don’t

drop that review and that in turn
helps your business maintain a cleaner

image, which helps sales in general.

So it’s like there’s a lot of long term
investment that you’re doing by doing

this, but you don’t have to just offer
your money back to to offer guarantees.

Your support system is
also one, for example.

You’re not going to be left
on your own when you purchase this,

especially for like, elderly,
for example, in the example I had,

that’s a very important one.
They need some extra support.

That’s why you need to charge a bit
more for them.

One other thing about the guarantee
is it essentially works as a free trial.

But if you do a free trial, you get
a whole load of people signing up

that are just not serious about getting
results or not serious about buying.

So them having to commit
the full amount of money up front

with the guarantee that they can
get it back if they don’t like it.

That process filters all the non-serious
people out, but lets them try it.

And it lets you use that trial
as an argument when you’re selling.

Yeah, we use that a lot.

I’ll talk about the emails
in a second, but one of the last emails

is like, Try our product risk-free.

And so the idea is like,
because you can get your money back

and we offer all these guarantees,
there’s really no risk for you to try for

30 days or 60 days or whatever you offer.

And so go ahead, look at our reputation.

We will give you your money back.

And usually what I do is I actually
put screenshots of people

who got their refund and thanked us
for getting their money back.

Because what it does is it
shows that it’s actually happening.

It’s not just our world,
we actually do it, right?

But for these guarantees to work, I wanted
to say that you need to maintain a good

reputation of not being a scammer online,
because if you are, people will not trust

any of the guarantees you put together.

So it’s like You need to work on
your company’s reputation in general.

We have a reputation for actually
giving people their money back.

Therefore, when we make a claim
that we give people their money back,

they know there’s a good chance
they will see their money again.

And so it’s very important.

And that’s why it plays together,
because when people don’t have

a bad experience and can get their money
back, they don’t do bad reviews.

Therefore, people are more likely to
believe the guarantee and are more likely

to try and in turn, generate small sales.

Another mistake a lot A lot of companies
that do offer guarantees make is

they’ll put it all over their sales
page, but then they’ll hide it.

What we do actually is the first thing
that you do that you get after buying one

of our courses is we remind you
that you have that guarantee in place.

So all that does is it really alleviates
any buyer’s remorse and reassures people

that they’ve made the right decision.

Everyone, when they make a purchase,
has some level of buyer’s remorse.

To me, it’s a natural thing.

And psychologically, us not
reminding people about the refund and

these things, we’ve done away with that.

And we will actually put that front
and centre of all our messaging

in the first month when people
are signed up to one of our products.

Yep.
And now let’s jump on to the next one.

We start to have a carabium
of stuff to go through.

And that’s probably one
of the most powerful,

but you need to be a bit careful
on how you use it, and that is scarcity.

And scarcity, basically, That is also
taking the indecisive people

and basically putting them
in front of a hard choice.

If you want this extra stuff,
you’re going to have to take action now.

Otherwise, you will lose it.

And that FOMO, that fear of losing or
missing out, is extremely powerful.

We see it in our launches.

When we do a product launch,
I would say 35 to 50% of all sales

are done in the last 36 hours.

It doesn’t matter how long the launch is.

It could be two weeks or whatever.

You still make this much of this amount
of sales in the last 36 hours

because of that FOMO.

Now, scarcity is basically
putting a deadline or putting an

availability limit on what you do, right?
How do you do that?

Well, availability limit,
so that would be more for services.

I can only take three
clients, for example.

That can be price increases.

For example, one thing that
I like when people launch a new course

is basically do an early bird price.

Be like, Hey, you get 50% off
if you buy it in the first week.

After that, the price goes up.

A lot of people are
going to take that offer.

You If you don’t want to do that,
you can do that with bonus is expiring.

You could add a bonus.

Let’s say I had my surgery
bonus, let’s say, the one

that I had for the elderly one.

I could be like, Well, you get this
for the first week, but after that,

it will not be part of the package.

It’s $49 either way,
but you get that extra thing

if you buy in the first week, basically.

That is a little bit less
powerful than a discount.

But what you can do is you
can rotate the bonuses.

So you can actually put the surgery one
the first week, then you can put the diet

guide the second week, another week, etc.

And you can keep expiring bonuses.

It’s very much like how Netflix
works as well, for example.

They add and remove movies
from the catalogue all the time.

You can do flash sales, so holiday sales,
like mother’s day sale, veteran day

sale, whatever your day is at.

There’s a day for everything
every day, right?

So you could just run something like this.

And then you can just do a time
limited launch, basically, where it’s

like the product is not available
after that time, which is basically

availability Equality scarcity, sorry.

And so you need to use one
of these, usually, because otherwise,

if you do not use a deadline
for anything, your sales will be poor.

People are very afraid to do that.

You will not get good results
if you do everything we talked about

and you don’t put scarcity in there.

So it’s like implementing scarcity
is one of the main ways to make sales.

Just don’t do it in a shitty scammy way
where you extend the deadline five times

and you don’t actually close it, etc.

When you say you close
things, you close them.

And that’s how You earn trust
from your audience as well.

And that’s the problem with
our industry, especially, I think.

And remember what we said earlier in this
podcast about how you’re trying to sell

to those people who are on the fence?

Well, there is nothing, nothing
more powerful for getting people

off of that fence into the buying camp
than some scarcity like this,

either pricing scarcity, price
goes up, or just the offer going away.

I’m going to talk about the main section.

Now we talked about the tools.

Let’s talk about the actual sales page
and how use these things

within the sales page.

But let’s do it quickly because
this podcast is running really long.

Here’s the main sections
you will see on any sales page

we work on pretty much every time.

First, you’re going to the hero section.

The main thing is you have a big headline
that says how to solve problem even

if main objection, how to get in shape
even if you can’t stand, how to build

a website even if you’re a beginner.

It’s always that.

It’s super simple.

And then you get some You have
a big image that illustrates it

and you have a big CTA that basically
tells you buy it now, basically.

There will be other elements,
but these three things

are going to be the main thing.

Below that, we’re going
to have a social proof section.

Usually, we do logos.

So that would be logos of big publications
that have mentioned us, things like that.

That could be people as well.

On the Otoy Hacker Pro sales
page, for example, I put faces of

prominent community members, for example.

Anything that is social proof,
that can be done in a compact way.

Then you I have a section called PAS,
which is problem, agitate, solution.

And the idea is you highlight
the problem that people have.

So my elderly worker, I’d be like,
Look, if you don’t have

enough muscle mass is associated
with essentially losing autonomy.

If you don’t maintain your muscle mass
as you get older, you’re very likely

to be in an accident, like
two, three times more, etc.

Problem, agitate.

If you have this, 80% of people who fall
at home never come back to their home

and never maintain that autonomy
because they need more assistance.

Agitate the problem.

Solution with simple workouts,
with only 5 to 10 minutes exercise a day,

you could actually maintain enough muscle
mass to reduce your chances by 80% that

you are not going to be dependent after
a fall or something like this solution.

And then you introduce your product.

That’s pretty much the same thing.

So it’s pretty much that was on the fly
version of this, but you get the idea.

That’s how you structure
your first section.

So you show You have a problem, you
essentially explain what will happen if

you don’t address it,
and you present a solution, and you have,

I call it the product presentation slide,
where you have an image and then

introducing product and maybe some bullets
that show more or less what’s inside.

After that, you can have a section
that show the results people have had.

You appeal to the emotions.

It’s both social proof
and the emotional side of things.

Then you have a breakdown
of what’s inside.

So usually different modules,
maybe pictures, what you What is inside?

Yeah, essentially what is actually inside.

So people actually know
what they’re buying.

Sometimes I have a section
with emotional argument.

So that would be like, Stay at home
for the rest of your life.

That would be I have fun
and connect with the community.

Things that are not features, but benefits
of what you’re getting from the product.

And then after that, when I’ve
put people back into an emotional state,

then I introduce the pricing.
And that’s my stack.

That’s what we’ve built
when we planned the course, basically.

So that should be done already.

Then I introduce the guarantees.

So when people understand the price,
you introduce risk reversal.

So that would be like
you can get money back.

There’s a support system.

We have a community.

We have all these things that essentially
make you feel like it’s less risky.

We tend to have a section that explains
who is it for, and that is essentially

for people to recognise themselves.

They read this and they’re like, You’re
an elderly person living alone at home

and you’re losing mobility, for example.

That would And then it’s like if people
see that, they’re like, yeah, that’s me.

And so they’re likely to buy it.

And then after that,
I’ll put a testimonial roll.

So that’s usually, it’s
pretty frequent these days.

There’s even companies that actually now
just sell that feature for your website

with a way to manage your testimonials.

And it’s basically anything good people
have said about your company that you

put in a mentionary type thing to like,
over one people with positive feedback

your company has received.

Then you have an FAQ section
that takes the main objections

and addresses them in plain language.

If you haven’t had a space to do that
on your sales page or all the stuff

that you can address on your sales page
that often hits your support section.

We use the support tickets that we get
to come up with FAQ sections, usually.

And at the end, you have a final CTA.

You can use what we call a close.

It’s like, okay, now you have two choices.

You can either go back to your life
and do nothing or you can take action,

change your life, blah, blah, blah.

And you put a button
and people can buy it.

And then you have your footer, basically.

There will be variations
on how you build sales pages, but if

you build sales pages It’s that way.

It’s a pretty strong model
and it works pretty well.

It’s like the bread and butter
of building a sales page.

And you can’t really go
wrong with that structure.

It’s a bit classic, but it works.

That’s pretty much how we do that.

And because you’ve done all that
brainstorming of objections and you’ve

built your problem in a way to address
objections, then you have a lot of strong

arguments to put in your sales page.

All the prep work now
pays off when you put this together

because you put yourself in your mind in
the in mind of selling before, basically.

One thing I’d just add to this
is I think it’s quite important

to put some information about you and
full use of yourself, your own…

Just because people want
to know who they’re buying from,

and I think that personal connexion
on it is quite important.

Yeah, okay.

You could add about you, you could put it
after the who is this for

and before the testimonial.

That’s probably where I would put it,
towards the end of the page.

But yeah, definitely, you can add that.

Then how do you actually
launch your product?

You have a sales page, you have a product.

I’ve done my workout for beginners.

I’ve built a website,
I’ve built everything.

I would definitely start
with a product launch.

The idea is like, I would probably,
if you already have an audience,

I would probably just try
to sell to them on my first launch.

My idea is like, maybe the first launch
is not the biggest because I’m not

going for a cold audience.

But if I’m missing testimonials, which
you offer now when you’re launching a new

product, then your first batch of people
will eventually become your testimonials.

And so I’m just taking my warm audience
and making a 5-14 day product launch.

And it’s like, okay,
it’s available for 5-14 days.

I’m closing it after.

Or you could do the early
bird if you wanted.

And the way I would organise
my communications through my email

is would be I would send value emails
a week or two before the launch

that are around the same the topic.

In this case, maybe mobility decrease
and living at home alone When you’re

an elderly person, share some stories
and that stuff, just pure value stuff.

And just in the PS, just
tease that something is coming

next week or the week after that.

Then the day you launch,
just send a very short email saying,

Hey, the product is live.
Check out the sales page.

The sales page has lots of information
for people to consume already.

There’s no need for a big email
to to overrun people even more.

Then the second email would probably
be essentially my stack.

I tend to explain my stack.

It’s just like a headline, what’s inside
in a paragraph or two for people

who are too lazy to read the sales page.

So that they actually read it.

Then you get to the mid-launch, which
tends to be your lowest volume of sales.

If we relaunch the product,
I put a what’s new email.

So I put whatever has been updated.

Customer stories and results,
like testimonials, etc.

You take your time to show that.

We have an email called Five Reasons.

So five reasons to buy
the mobility workout programme.

One, your chances of injury
will reduce by 60 %.

Two, it’s actually fun
and you connect with people,

with other people of your age,
with with similar interest than yours.

Three, it’s accessible.

So even if you have issues, whatever.

And then I would just give
five reasons for that.

And then I like to make emails
that zoom into bonuses as well.

So I’ll pick one bonus
and I’ll write an email about it.

So let’s say the post-surgery
bonus, for example.

I’ll be like, imagine you
just came out of surgery.

It took you two months
to start working again.

It’s been complicated.
It’s been difficult.

Your physio has been hammering
that you should be doing some exercises

if you want to gain your mobility back.

And then I’ll just jump into what’s
inside, maybe some testimonials, etc.

Then the end of the launch, you need
to send several closing emails, right?

We send two or three, actually.
It’s quite heavy.

The reason, I would rather cut emails
in the middle of the launch if you want

to send less emails than cutting end
of launch emails because they just make

so much more money, to be honest.

In your close emails, they do two things.

They remind people of guarantees,
so money back, support, etc.

And they play on the FOMO
and the closing soon, basically.

We use a tool called Deadline Funnel
that shows the deadline on the email,

and they tend to be very short.

So you just pick one thing,
be like, Hey, one of the emails

is like, Try the product risk-free.

And that’s explaining the money
back, showing some screenshot of people

who got their money back, a big Timer
showing it’s closing soon, and that’s it.

Another one will be just closing in 6
hours, guys, and then last email

or something, and people will just
click on the email and buy.

And then for As, I would just
do retargeting to start And

when you have purchased data, I would
play with cold audiences, actually.

Start small, get some data, collect
some testimonials, and then do that.

And then if it’s successful
or if it’s semi-successful, even,

usually it’s not super successful
on your first one, and that’s okay.

If you had some sales and you did okay,
then you can repeat that two months later

and basically make notes
of what went wrong and change that.

We do always test our emails,
we do A/B testing with our tools, etc.

We keep improving things.
Same with ads.

And eventually, when you have sales
data, you can open to affiliates

and you can open to cold ads
to bring in people who are not part

of your audience and actually
grow your audience with your product.

So that’s pretty much the process
from coming up with an idea

to doing your first launch, basically.

And then after that, having a product
that you can relaunch, having a product

you can evolve, and you can expand that.

Anything I’ve forgotten in the last steps?

So maybe the abandoned cart sequence.

So what a lot of these tools
do, ThriveCart, for example, what we use

is it will identify when people come
to your cart and then don’t check out,

and you can trigger actions from it.

So a real simple email that can increase
your revenue by 10 % or something

is when someone abandons cart, check
that they haven’t already bought and then

send them an abandoned car email.

Hey, you were just about to check out.

Here’s a link to check again.

And again, it’s speaking to those people
who are on the fence and they just

need a little nudge to make that
buying decision and get over the line.

It’s our highest sales volume email
in all of the launch, actually.

It’s always the cart abandonment email.

It’s only a few hundred people
who get it, but it’s the one

that generates the most sales.
So very, very important.

Another reason why it’s a good idea
to use an independent shopping cart

that has these functions
over something like circle, etc.

Because I don’t think they
will have that at least as well

implemented as a real shopping cart.

So that’s what you get when
you switch to a proper shopping cart.

Another thing I wanted to say as well
is that we’re actually opening

a JV branch to what we’re doing.

So we really, really, I mean,
we’ve done that several times

for a lot of products, etc.

And we are actually
partnering with very few people.

We’re talking like one to two people
at this point to essentially,

they provide the audience and the content
and we build the funnels with them

and then we run a profit share.

So it’s not an agency.
It’s nothing like that.

We actually are looking for
profit shares here in joint ventures.

If you’re interested, there will be
a link that is pinned on YouTube

or there will be a link in the podcast.

I’m not even going
to talk more about this.

Fill the form and then
we’ll see if we’re fit, basically.

So, yeah, that was pretty much it.

That was our run on how we
build launches, how we build courses.

And I really think a lot
of company types can use that.

Whether you’re SaaS,
whether you sell a service, etc.

Courses are It’s a good idea.

I’m not a huge fan of free courses
because if you don’t pay for a course,

people don’t value it.
Exactly.

You don’t watch it.
They don’t take action.

One of the biggest challenge
is, of course, is actually

getting people to go through them.

There’ll be a significant percentage,
like 30, 40% of people buy your course

and never go through it.

Even when they pay.
Exactly.

If it’s free, that number
is like 80%, something like that.

That’s the game, is getting people
to take action.

And that’s why I would argue that
a cheap course will probably get you

better results than a free course.

And it’s like, what you should do is you
should charge for it, but you should

charge very little compared to
the value you provide to people.

And that is going to be
a very strong lead generator.

You get less people going through it,
obviously, but the people who buy

will take more action and be more likely
to upsell to the main service

you’re trying to sell, actually.
And you know what?

Even the people that buy and don’t
go through it, they’ll still

have a scan through it and they,
Oh, there’s a tonne value in here.

This was a good purchase.

Even if they don’t go through it, they’ll
still think it was a good purchase.

Yeah.
That was my recommendation.

We gave you some examples
of being in the podcast.

If you enjoy this podcast,
let us know in the comments.

That was quite a bit too
prepared, to be honest.

I’d love to hear that in the comments.

Also, drop us a review
on the audio podcast platforms

if you are listening there.

We haven’t been pushing
this very much recently,

but we should definitely do that.

Thanks for listening and
we’ll see you in the next episode.

Bye, bye, bye.

about the author
Hey I'm Gael, one of the guys behind Authority Hacker. I make a living working from my laptop in various places in the world and I will use this website to teach you how you could do the same.

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