What you need to sell your courses in 2024

Welcome to The Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I am an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs, the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators. It is just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives.

They love if you are looking to up level your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator in business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you to play bigger with your life and go after your dreams.

We are going to have so much fun. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in. 

Hello, hello, amazing human. It's great to be chatting to you again today. I am so excited because I have decided that I am going to be hosting a live bootcamp. So my live Educators Income Booster Bootcamp. I used to do this a couple of times a year, but it was such a big event that I just could not sustain doing so many a year and I am doing just one this year and it's coming up pretty soon in the next few weeks, the doors are going to open. 

And it's almost like a mini course, but think of it like a live experience because that really is what it is. It's a live experience where we are going to be together for five to 10 days. So it's five days of training and then another five days of implementation where I dive into your stuff.

And basically what I'm going to help you do is I'm going to help you map a strong, hot, juicy offer that is positioned in a way that it can sell. That it can land with your future dream students or clients so that people are super excited to whip out their credit cards and actually pay you and work with you. 

Because that's what you need when you're selling something online. One of the most important things is to have a hot, strong offer. Call it a hell's yes offer. It's an offer where when you put it in front of your ideal people, they are like, oh my gosh, that is amazing. And the thing about these offers is they are scalable.

So you can have as many people in it and you can scale up and you can impact more students and you can make a whole lot more money when you create a scalable offer. And most of them are going to either be digital courses slash group programs that involve some live calls and some curriculum.

And for me, this is like the main thing that I believe in. The main thing that I teach is that to escape one-on-one teaching, to escape the treadmill of trading your time for money, you need to create a scalable offer and creating a scalable offer that can actually sell is a skill.

And most people don't know how to do it. So people think I'm just going to go create this course, and it's going to just sell. That isn't the case. You actually have to include a bunch of ingredients into your offer to make it desirable, make it juicy, make it something that your ideal students want.

And then there's an actual strategy to how to sell it as well. And so that's what I'm going to be diving into in this live Educators Income Booster Bootcamp. So if you've done a past live Bootcamp or my prerecorded version, then you're going to get a Alumni tickets invite.

So you must just keep your eyes peeled on your email because I'm going to invite all of my Alumni back and you're going to have 50 percent off the ticket price. So you'll be able to join this entire experience for about 18 bucks, which is incredible, right? And that's because the live one is so good.

And so often I have people coming back and back and back. They've done it like four times, and it's just testament to how powerful the live one is. There's this live energy. Everyone's doing it together. I'm bringing all of my energy. Everyone's showing up, expanding, activating themselves.

We're having a lot of aha moments. There's live feedback. There's live Q&A. Basically for 10 days, we're going to hang out with each other. So a ticket price is normally 37 bucks, but the Alumni you'll get 50 percent off and whoever's new to this experience, it's 37 for a ticket.

There's a waitlist. You can hit the link below this, wherever you're listening to this and just sign up to the waitlist if you want to be invited first. And there's an early bird bonus for those who are on the waitlist. So I've got a mini course which helps you the tech side of creating courses and digital curriculums and things like that, because I know tech is a big obstacle.

So I've got a mini course on that. And If you're on the wait list, I'm going to email you first invite into the Bootcamp. And for the first two days, whoever joins the bootcamp, you will get this mini course for free. That's the early bird bonus. It's really helpful in terms of actual creation of the course, the more techie side of stuff.

It's a bunch of videos and some tutorials and a PDF with all the tech you want to include and things like that. So yeah, that's going to be amazing. And you're going to get it for free if you're on the wait list and you join within the first few days. So you can hit the link somewhere if you can't find it.

You can always just check my Instagram or just message me or whatever it may be. Get on the wait list. The doors opening soon. We're going to host the Bootcamp in September, towards the end of September. And yeah it's going to be massive. It's going to be huge. It's going to be magical. I'm really excited for it.

Because I haven't done one for so long. I think this one's going to be extra special because I have the energy for it. So I really hope to see you there. Now, in terms of what I want to chat to you today. I'm going to talk about what you need to sell your digital products in 2024.  

Because the online business in the course creation market, it's always evolving. It's always changing with the time. And what it used to be is quite different to what it is right now. And I know this because I've been doing this for six years now. And I've seen the change quite a lot. So pre COVID, this is pre 2020.

Basically what you could do is you could create an offer and then you could host a webinar and you can run ads directly to that webinar and get people signed up to that webinar. And then you could sell your course for a thousand bucks on that webinar. And then by the end of it, You would have made like 10, 20 30.000. 

But basically you'd have these higher sales conversions, you could send someone who didn't know you at all to a webinar. And by the end of that webinar, they would have become a customer. There was a higher conversion, right? And so that's what everyone was doing.

People were just running ads to webinars and making a lot of money and impacting a lot of people. And it was wonderful. And I was very lucky to be a part of that. I found it was quite simple actually, in terms of things. And that's when I had a huge amount of impact in my business because I had a lot of people buying my stuff and nothing's changed about that, but what I've noticed is it's not necessarily gotten harder, but you've got to be more sophisticated in the way that you market and things like that, which is not a bad thing. 

So that's pre COVID. That was like, someone called, come into your world, see you for an hour and buy your thing. Now, post COVID from about 2020 to 2023, 2024. Now, things started to change. Webinars weren't performing as much, live launches were performing, but the numbers were declining slightly. 

And so you needed to do other things in order to improve the conversion. So one of those things that you had to do was you had to have someone, you had to nurture that person for a while before selling to them.

And that's just generally, I believe a very good rule. I wouldn't want some stranger to come and sell me stuff on the street if I don't know them. But if I've got a relationship with you and you'd like telling me about this awesome thing that you believe in, I'm more likely to listen to it.

But this became more important. So your journey from someone who joins your email list to them becoming an actual customer or student became longer, which meant they required more time to make that purchasing decision. So you had to build that into your marketing plan, right? You had to build the lead, however you wanted to get someone onto your email list.

And then from there, you needed to nurture that relationship. And then only later would you sell something and that's fine. That makes a lot of sense. And that's how it is today as well. But in 2024, I'm part of lots of courses and communities with business owners in the course creation space.

And I've got my own kind of mastermind, experience that I'm paying for. And so what I've seen is there is a noticeable change in the online industry where conversions are dropping. Sales are slower, but the fundamentals still work. So the fundamentals will always work. The thing is, the tactics and a lot of things change, and you have to evolve with also the market essentially, because the market itself is changing. What people need, desire, and want, and what's important to them changes. As the market changes, as the economy changes, as everything changes.

And so you have to always have your pulse on that in your own niche, always have a pulse, a finger on the pulse. Where they're at, what do they actually need? Because what they needed three, four years ago might be different to what they need now. So what we are seeing now is people are taking longer to make the buying decisions. 

They needing a lot more trust. So you're going to have to build up more trust for you to sell stuff. And I think that's always been the case. You always had to build up trust, but now because the world, the market, the people that you are selling to, because they have become more aware of online business and marketing and sales and stuff, they've become more sophisticated.

So the general public is smarter. Okay. They have more discernment. They've seen a lot of webinars. They've seen a lot of things being sold to them. There's stuff being sold to people all the time online because people are selling online offers. It's becoming just the norm to have your own offering and selling it in your own personal brand.

And like in 10 years time, we probably all have a personal brand and have our own offers that we're selling. So that's what's happening. And people are getting smarter. Which I believe is a good thing. It does mean you have to become smarter in the way that you do stuff and more transparent and, you have to do better ultimately, but that's not a bad thing. 

And people's pains and desires may be different. So obviously as the economy changes. So do the people's needs and things like that. So say you are in real estate and you're, you create an offer and the messaging about that offers all about buying property and this, and this, and this, you may find that isn't actually what your niche is thinking about.

That's not really the main thing that they want right now. Maybe because of the current economic state, your audience is more thinking about paying off their current property. And so you have to then pivot your messaging and pivot your offer to appeal to that, you have to evolve with your people, your audience.

And so you always have to be asking them, what do you need? What are your pains? What are your desires? Because they will change. And your offerings should change with them. Your products should change with them. That's really key. So in 2024, we have to treat selling digital courses differently, and we have to do better. 

So people are making millions of dollars every day selling digital products. So there is still, this is still massively profitable. I don't want you to listen to this and feel like despondent and stressed or upset or depressed or any of those things. This is just honest conversation talk and not sugarcoating.

Honestly, people are making bucket loads of money doing this every single day. And the E-learning market is projected to reach 848 billion by 2030. And in 2021, it was 210 billion. So in about, I think it's about eight or nine years, it would have literally quadrupled. So it is just growing, growing. 848 billion is basically like a trillion.

I think. That's like a huge amount of money. That's so much money. And it just shows that this market learning online studying online, whatever it may be, is only going to keep growing. And this is where the world's going. So do not think for a second that selling courses don't work online and that they aren't profitable and that this ship has sailed and that I'm too late because you are not too late.

Far from it. The ship has not sailed yet. There is so much money to be made in this world. There is so much impact to be had on everyone. This pie, this big 800 billion pie that we're moving towards. Everyone can have a piece of this pie. Okay. It's possible. And that's what I want to just say. 

So don't be upset when I tell you these things. Obviously it's not as easy as just running an hour webinar and making 10,000 off the back of that or 20, 30.000 off the back of that. But maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we need to do better and maybe lazy marketing and lazy sales and lazy everything and feeling entitled isn't actually the thing that's going to make you a lot of money and have a lot of impact.

This is why businesses not for everyone, because you constantly having to evolve, you're constantly having to change with the market. You constantly having to reinvent yourself and things like that. So here's what is required to sell digital offers in 2024 and beyond. And when I speak about digital offers, I mean, courses, group programs, memberships, low ticket offers, anything that is information based that you will sell online.

All right. So firstly, you want to have a profitable niche where people have buying power. Buying power means that they can, they have money to invest. That's important. You want to help people who can pay to be helped. It seems silly. But it's quite important that your niche has the means to invest.

You're a business. You're going to give value for some price in return. And those people need to be able to pay and make that investment, right? So they need to have the buying power. And also you want to be solving a problem that people are already paying to solve, meaning that there must be demand.

It's going to be almost impossible to sell something to someone already even before 2024. If you can't sell something to someone if they don't want it and they're not interested in solving that problem. So, if they are solving that problem and they are investing to solve that problem already, that's a good sign that that's a healthy market.

There is demand and you can create your offer in that area. The next thing is you want to have a strong brand identity and a voice that differentiates you. Because if you start to sound like everyone else, you just blend into the background because so many people are creating content online.

I'm sure when you're sitting in your bed and you're doom scroling Instagram or Tiktok, and you're looking at all these reels and videos. Everything is just overwhelming. There's a lot of competition. So what's important is you want to develop a brand identity. You want to differentiate yourself. You want to sound different. 

The way you teach should be different or whatever your methodology should be different or something needs to be a differentiator. Otherwise people aren't going to pay attention. It's just going to blend into the masses. So you want to differentiate. So the whole thing of, Oh, I need to look the same and do the same.

No, you want to be different as much as you can be different, do it. Lean into your unique quirks, lean into your unique views. You lean into your opinions. Be authentically yourself. And shine a light on your views, your opinions, what you believe in, what you stand for.

Even if it pisses people off, that's okay. You're going to attract the people that are meant for you. And you're going to repel the people that aren't. So that's important. Okay. The next thing is strong messaging. Back in the day, you could get away with generalized messaging. So this whole like I'm going to help you do X, Y, Z so that you can live your dream life or so that you can live your best life.

Or I'm going to help you improve your mindset so you can feel happier. That is vanilla messaging. And vanilla messaging may have worked maybe 2021, 22. From 2024, it's just not working, okay? You need chocolate chip with some mint messaging. You need To get more specific in your messaging. So you have to specifically tell people how you're going to help them.

You're going to have to speak very specifically to your person, your ideal clients. You're going to have to know your ideal clients inside and out, understand their deepest, darkest pains, understand their deepest darkest desires. And you're going to have to infuse that into your messaging. 

I want you to think of making it vivid. So make your messaging vivid and let them visualize something when they read your stuff, let them taste it, feel it, experience it, sharpen the messaging. That's going to make a huge difference. The next thing is hot offers. And this is what I'm going to help you with in my Educators Income Booster Bootcamp.

So definitely get inside if you want to either improve your offerings and you just think like they're a bit vanilla and you can improve them. Definitely get inside of this bootcamp or you have this online course idea or group program idea and you just want to map it out or you just have an idea or you have no idea, but you're really interested in doing this and selling something of your own and building your own freedom.

Get inside that Bootcamp because I'm helping you with creating hot offers. The whole thing of saying, oh, here are 40 pre recorded lessons and 10 workbooks and you do it in your own time. Like that kind of offer is not going to work. People are willing to pay money for something online, but they want to pay for something that's good and something that gives them what they want.

So your offer has to be packaged and positioned in a strong way. And there are certain ingredients that are important to incorporate in here. And that's what I'm going to share with you in the Bootcamp. But it is very, very hard to sell a five out of 10 offer. If your offer 10 out of 10, it's going to sell much, much easier.

So one of the most important things when you're trying to sell a digital offer of some sort, Is to make sure the offer is bulletproof. It's like a hell yes, right? It's a skill. And it's a very valuable skill to learn because once you learn in this Bootcamp, once you learn how to do this, you can do this over and over and over again with whatever offer you end up creating in your life, whether that's a teaching package or a coaching package a low ticket, a high ticket, whatever.

The next thing is people are starting to want more experiences online. So people are paying money for experiences that make them feel something. So how can you turn your offer into an experience that leaves them activated? How can you turn your online launches into an experience? 

You want to create experiences. For example, this Bootcamp that I'm having now. That is going to be an experience. You are going to be in that, and you're going to experience a whole lot of good stuff. It's not an event, it's an experience. And I do a lot of things in that 5 to 10 days with you that make it that experience.

And make it impactful so you walk away feeling, not only did I achieve something, but I feel like I've activated something in me, like something is different. That's what you want to try create for people. The next thing is automations that sell 24 seven. So these also known as evergreen offers, and it's becoming more important because if you just rely on active selling and live launching to make money, then when you're not doing that, you're not making money.

You want to be able to build in your business ways that sell your digital products more frequently to your people. And that way in online businesses, automations, and it's building like sales, email sequences and sales funnels that sort of do the selling for you. So this is a bit more of an advanced thing.

If you haven't sold something yet, then don't do this. But if you have got a course. And you've launched and things like that. The next step for you is to build out an Evergreen automation that sells the thing all the time, because that's going to add another level of stability in your business.

It's going to work when you aren't working and that's what you will want moving forward. So you don't only rely on live launches. It becomes like you use live launches and you have evergreen sales automations and they use them together in your business to create stability. 

On to the next note, you want to still do live launching. So if people are telling you that live launching is dead, it's not dead. Yes, things are changing and maybe the conversions are dropping. They are still profitable. And you still want to do them. I don't know how many times a year you can do it twice, three times, four times a live event where you're actively selling, you're actively showing up, you're actively serving your people. 

You want to still continue doing that, but you don't want to rely on that as your only thing. So that's why you've got these Evergreen automations that are going to be working for you when you aren't live launching.

So technically you want to be selling your digital products all the time. And have an Evergreen version of it and have a different live version of it. So you can sell the same thing, but you can have different versions of it. For example, I have the Digiteachers Biz Academy. That's my signature program, but I have lots of versions of it.

I've got the DIY version. I've got the gold group coaching version. I've got the platinum version. I have different versions of the offer that sell differently, and I've built out different ways of selling it. That's important. And the next thing is nurturing your people consistently with value.

Now this has always been the case. Nothing is different except it's more important. If you're going to let your email list go cold and then you're going to try sell to them, it's not going to work. And if it does work then that's amazing, but like it's going to become harder and harder for that to work.

You want to really prioritize building the relationships with people and giving value and being of service. That's really important and you do that through creating content of some sort. So you need to be consistent with, maybe a newsletter, a podcast, a YouTube video, Instagram, whatever your content form is, you need to be consistent with it.

And keep showing up for your email list because. Out of sight equals out of mind. And that's not what you want when you're selling your stuff, right? Now, this doesn't mean that you want to go and make your business really complex because I still believe simplicity always wins. And you can still keep your business pretty simple, but you do need to think about, how can I build out automations to sell my products 24 seven to create more stability so that I don't have to actively sell all the time.

How can I consistently add value and nurture my email list. How can I make my offers a 10 out of 10 if it's maybe a seven out of 10, how can I make it a 10 out of 10 because that's going to sell a lot better. How can I sharpen my messaging? So my dream students can't wait to dive in and pay me so they want to work with me. 

So that's a big one. How can I differentiate my brand, what I do and how I help people? How can I infuse more of my beliefs, my values, my perspectives, my opinions, what I stand for, who I am as a person. How can I infuse that into my branding and the content that I create. And how can I create memorable experiences for people that instill a feeling or an activation of some sort?

Because that's where it's moving towards. In the future, people are going to want to join these online experiences. And I think before we know it, we're going to have like holograms and crazy things are going to happen. You're going to have these experiences. I'm thinking about Tony Robbins, people go to them to have an experience. So it's a really good way of pushing yourself and making yourself think of how you can step into a new level in your business, how you can make your events better. How you can have a bigger impact on people. Have an event and leave people just changed at the end of it.

That's really, really epic. And I think as educators, teaching business owners and things like that. That's what you want, right? You want to have a big impact. And as a result of that big impact, you're going to see a byproduct of money and sales. That's how it works. All right. So this was very juicy.

It was a lot longer than I thought, but it was a very powerful jam packed episode. You might need to listen to it a few times and take notes. And definitely ask yourself those questions and look at how you can rise to the occasion in your own business. And as you sell your own stuff. Just another reminder to join my waitlist for my Bootcamp, which is coming up doors will be opening.

Soon, soon, soon with an early bird bonus. I'm really excited. I just feel like I need to have deep connection with people. And the Bootcamp because of the affordable price. I just get so many people in and so many people are hungry and activated and committed.

And then we can just dive deep into what they want to create for themselves, the offers they want to create. And the money they want to make and the impact they want to make. And it's really inspiring. So I'm excited and I really hope to see there. Otherwise, I hope you love this episode and I'll chat to you again soon, 

ciao.

 Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you haven't yet joined the waitlist for The Educators Income Booster Bootcamp, then head to my website at digiteach.biz to sign up. 

This is going to be the best live training experience, helping you take your knowledge and map it out into a desirable course that can sell for years to come. So that you can scale your income and impact like crazy.

I appreciate you so much and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.