The Art of Selling Online Courses

John Ainsworth
  • 4.7 (15)
  • MARKETING
  • UPDATED DAILY

The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses. The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!

  1. 4D AGO

    231 Meet the Man With 980,000,000+ YouTube Views

    Send a text 🔥 Struggling with low conversions? Grab our FREE checklist of 15 must-have elements to optimize your sales pages! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elements Mark Smith films birds in slow motion. That's his niche. Ospreys, eagles, hawks in ultra slow motion. And it's got him 980 million views on YouTube and 6 million followers across platforms. In this episode I sit down with Mark and we get into how he built this massive audience from one incredibly specific niche. He picked up a camera again at 40, almost didn't start YouTube because he thought nobody would care, and his son had to convince him to post his first video. That video got a thousand views overnight and the rest is history. We talk about why he compares himself to Bob Ross and how the best creators make things look possible for their audience. We get into why YouTube crushes every other platform for selling online courses and why short form content doesn't convert the same way. I also pull up one of his sales pages live on the call and walk through what's working and what's missing. Mark is honest about the fact that he'd rather be outside photographing wildlife than working on his email list or his funnels. His email list is only 2,500 people despite having millions of followers. He knows he's leaving money on the table and we dig into exactly where that money is and what he could do about it. If you're a course creator with a decent audience but you know your business side isn't keeping up with your content, this conversation will hit home. 🦅 Check out Mark's YouTube channel! https://www.youtube.com/@MarkSmithphotography 🎁 Want the free customer avatar course I mention during the episode? Drop me an email at john@datadrivenmarketing.co with "Customer Avatar" in the subject line and I'll send it over.

    47 min

  2. FEB 10

    230 How To Actually Pre-Sell Your Course

    Send a text 🔥 Need better results from your email campaigns? Get our FREE templates and see the difference with two proven email strategies! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/templates What would you do if you had no audience, an email list of 50 people, and zero courses to sell? That's exactly where Trevor Dimoff was when he decided to figure out how to sell a course before he'd even built one. He talked to 50 people, listened to their problems, came up with a solution, and pitched it back to the same people he'd interviewed. The result was $2,000 in pre-sales for a course that didn't exist yet. In this episode Trevor walks through his entire process step by step. How he found people to talk to, what questions he asked, the three things he did during every call that made the pre-sell possible later, and how he delivered the pilot course live on Zoom. He's also really honest about what went wrong after that and why he lost momentum trying to scale too fast. If you're just getting started or thinking about launching something new, this is a really practical episode. Trevor doesn't sugarcoat anything and the lessons from his mistakes are just as useful as the wins. 🔗 Check out Trevor's work: https://trevordimoff.com 🔗 https://trevordimoff.com/aosoc 🔗 If you'd like to connect with Trevor or to ask him questions about having research conversations you can contact him at: https://trevordimoff.com/aosoc Trevor would like to thank Jacques Hopkins, the Online Course Guy and his Online Course Show podcast. Jacques interviewed Trevor on episode 90: https://theonlinecourseguy.com Trevor learned the process he used for market research and course creation from: Danny Iny, founder of Mirasee, where he helps online teachers and coaches monetize their gifts: https://mirasee.com #OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing 🤝  Get In Touch If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

    36 min

  3. FEB 6

    229 I Started Posting 1 Short A Day. Here's What Happened

    Send us a text 🔥 Looking for predictable revenue growth? Access our FREE 7-day roadmap to increase your income without paid ads or sales calls! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmap Jori Chisholm has been teaching bagpipes online since 2003… before YouTube even existed. He was literally the first person to ever teach a bagpipe lesson on a webcam. Fast forward to today and he's running bagpipelessons.com, reaching students in 30 countries, and last year he hit 3.2 million views on Meta and 320,000 on YouTube. The wild part? He wasn't even trying to hit those numbers. His strategy was simple… post one short video every single day. And it worked. In this episode we dig into how Jori built a thriving course business in one of the smallest niches you can imagine. We talk about why he has courses AND a membership AND physical products, how he uses his email list to actually drive sales, and why he thinks AI is going to wipe out a lot of generic information-only courses but won't touch businesses built on real personal connection and trust. Whether you're in a tiny niche or a massive one, there's a lot to learn from someone who's been doing this successfully for 25 years. #OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing 🎵 Check out Jori's work at https://bagpipelessons.com 🎵 Jori's YouTube channel:  https://youtube.com/bagpipelessons 🤝  Get In Touch If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

    37 min

  4. FEB 3

    228 Here's How You SELL Courses (Even If You're Not A Marketer)

    Send us a text 🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmap Here's something I hear all the time... course creators telling me they feel weird about selling. They got into this to teach, not to become marketers. Kerstin Cable gets it. She's been at this since 2013, runs a language learning business, has recorded over 240 podcast episodes, and recently started AI Language Club.  When I asked her about marketing, she literally said "but John, we're not marketers." And honestly, that's what makes this conversation so good. We dig into why selling courses has gotten harder post-COVID, whether social media is even worth the effort anymore, and how Kerstin promotes her stuff without feeling sleazy about it. Her approach is dead simple. Talk about what you know, then make an offer. That's it. But the way she explains it actually made something click for me. We also talk about the mindset stuff, why so many of us hold back from promoting our own work, and what changes when you reconnect with what you actually believe about your course. #OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing Connect with Kerstin: 🔗 https://fluentlanguage.co.uk 🔗 https://AILanguageClub.com 🤝  Get In Touch If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

    44 min

  5. JAN 30

    227 How I Made $650K+ Selling Courses

    Send us a text 🔥 Looking for predictable revenue growth? Access our FREE 7-day roadmap to increase your income without paid ads or sales calls! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmap Alison Ellis has made over $650K selling online courses to florists over the last 10 years. She's got 10,000+ students enrolled in her programs and literally built her office from the course revenue. But here's the thing.. a lot of the "proven" strategies just didn't work for her audience. Tripwire funnels? Didn't convert. Webinars? People signed up but didn't show. High-pressure countdown timers? Her audience doesn't respond to urgency the same way. Why? Because florists are creatives. They got into flowers because they love flowers, not because they love marketing. They'll spend $5K on a fancy design workshop but hesitate on a $500 business course. In this episode we dig into what actually works when you're selling to people who don't think like marketers. How Alison went from making YouTube videos she didn't think anyone watched.. to $9K in her first five weeks.. to building a course business that's been running for a decade. We talk about her Flower Math course, her $1,500 Art of Good Business program, her Patreon membership, the in-person workshop she runs in Vermont, and what she's changing this year to get more sales. If you sell to creatives, coaches, artists, or anyone who's not naturally business-minded.. this one's for you. 🔗 Check out Alison's website at https://realflowerbusiness.com 🌸 Find Alison on Instagram and YouTube at @realflowerbusiness

    43 min

  6. JAN 27

    226 How I Went From 4K to 11K YouTube Subscribers in 1 Year

    Send us a text 🔥 Need better results from your email campaigns? Get our FREE templates and see the difference with two proven email strategies! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/templates Aiko Hemingway is an English pronunciation coach who went from around 4,000 YouTube subscribers to over 11,000 in about a year. One video drove most of that growth. In this episode we talk about how she researched what was working for other creators in her niche and made her own take on a high-performing topic. We also get into why her attempt to repeat that success with a similar video did not work. We discuss the tension between making content that gets views versus content that converts into paying customers. Aiko has found that her broader videos get more views but her specific pronunciation content converts better. Most course creators deal with this same challenge. We also cover how she went from targeting everyone to working specifically with Japanese company executives and professional singers. When she said everyone is welcome she got zero clients. When she niched down she started making sales. There is a good section on the mental blocks around selling. Aiko has three courses she has never promoted to her list because of self-worth issues. We talk through how to get past that using a problem-agitation-solution email format. She also shares how she landed a TEDx talk after years of future journaling and practicing at Toastmasters. 🔗 Connect with Aiko at https://aikohemingway.com 🔗 English pronunciation coaching: http://hatsuonkyosei.com #OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing 🤝  Get In Touch If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

    36 min

  7. JAN 23

    225 How I Made 6 Figures in Under a Year Selling Courses

    Send us a text 🔥 Need better results from your email campaigns? Get our FREE templates and see the difference with two proven email strategies! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/templates Erika Quest started her online course business with just 167 email addresses scraped from her hard drive. Within a year, she had built a six-figure side hustle. Today she has around 5,000 people on her email list and 3,000 of them are paying customers. That ratio is absolutely wild. In this episode of The Art of Selling Online Courses, Erika shares how she built her platform Level Up Movement in the fitness and Pilates education space. What makes her approach different is her focus on high-touch customer service and relationship marketing. She actually responds personally to customers instead of relying on bots and automations for everything. Her philosophy is simple but powerful: loyalty is a relationship. We also talk about her business model of selling other people's courses. She finds experts in her industry, produces all the marketing and delivery, and splits the revenue with them. Her 2026 calendar is already fully booked with talent. All of this growth has happened organically with no paid advertising. Erika runs three promotions a month and hosts monthly live workshops she calls Claster Minds. She went from 20-30 attendees when she started to nearly 200 ticket sales for her most recent event. If you have been thinking about starting an online course business but feel like you are not expert enough or do not have a big audience yet, this conversation will show you what is possible when you just get started. 🔗 Connect with Erika at https://levelupmvmt.com 🔗 Connect with Erika on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erikaquest #onlinecourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing 🤝  Get In Touch If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

    36 min

  8. JAN 20

    224 How I Built a 4,000+ Student Business (What Worked)

    Send us a text 🔥 Add 30% to your revenue with order bumps in 3 simple steps 🏅 https://funnels.datadrivenmarketing.co/order-bump-blueprint Kate Bee has helped over 4,000 women quit drinking through her online course The Sober School. In this episode we get into how she built her business, what's working in her funnel right now, and why 52% of her students go on to join her membership. Kate started out as a BBC journalist and began writing an anonymous blog about her own journey with alcohol. That turned into a coaching business that now helps women stop drinking without the shame, labels, or deprivation that often comes with traditional approaches. We talk about her lead magnet the Wine O'Clock Survival Guide and why it works so well for her audience. We get into her £47 mini course called the Sober Reset and how 12% of those buyers convert to her main programme Getting Unstuck. And we discuss why her students stick around in her membership the Stay Sober Club. Kate also shares how she thinks about selling transformation instead of information, why she focuses on making her students feel truly seen, and how she's built a community on Mighty Networks that people genuinely don't want to leave. 🔗 Check out Kate's work at https://thesoberschool.com  🔗 Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesoberschool #OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing 🤝  Get In Touch If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

    41 min
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4.7
out of 5
15 Ratings

About

The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses. The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!

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