I’m addicted to courses. I can’t help it. I love learning. I love learning how to be a creative entreprenuer, I love learning how to be confident, I love learning how to manage my finances. And if there’s one thing I learned as a blogger, it’s that I love teaching and helping others. So as I went through these different courses, it had me thinking, “You know, maybe I can create a course too! … But how do I even sell it? Wait, why am I even thinking that even when I haven’t create the course yet.” So what you’re going to learn today is how you can promote your course even before creating it. And in my experience, the earlier you can promote, the better it will be when you sell. So if you have a course idea or a course that you’ve been wanting to sell and you’re not sure how to go about it, you’re in the right place!

*I may collect a share of sales from links on this page. I’m very picky about the products & resources I promote. And I would only recommend the ones that are highly-rated or ones that I have had the best experience with. Read my Affiliate Disclaimer here.

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TL;DR

In a nutshell, this is how I promote & sell my online course, and how you can do it too:

  1. Write blog posts on your course topic
  2. Build an email list
  3. Create a lead magnet
  4. Create a sales page
  5. Open & sell your course for a short time
  6. Offer promotional coupons
  7. Use testimonials

Enroll into the Sales Accelerator Course on Teachable – Challenge starts August 1, so sign up soon before the end of July!

Click here to enroll into the Sales Accelerator Challenge. And get $10 off with my special coupon code: SAC-JOJO

The challenge starts on August 1 and is 4 weeks long. You’ll learn things like:

  • Week 1 – Marketing fundamentals
  • Week 2 – Promotional strategies
  • Week 3 – Word-of-mouth marketing
  • Week 4 – Scaling and next steps

You’ll also get live group coaching sessions, email templates and scripts, and accountability because now you’ll have a support system inside the Teachable community.

This challenge is perfect for you if:

  • You have an online course, and you’re not sure how to market it.
  • You’ve struggled to build an email list.
  • And you’re not sure where, what, or when to send your emails and post on social media to bring people to your course.
  • It’s also great if you have an existing audience, and they’re not buying yet.
  • And you’ve been trying to market your course, but you aren’t making sales.
  • And in general, you want a play-by-play for selling your course.
  • And even if you haven’t created your course yet, you can still sign up for the challenge.

Because a lot of what you’ll learn can already be put to use once you have your course idea finalized. Like I said, the earlier the better. So I highly recommend this challenge because not only will they go over the strategies I just told you, they also tell HOW to do it. And after 1 month, all the marketing jargon will make sense. After the challenge, you’ll be like “Gonna write copy for this.” “Gonna host a webinar for that. Gonna do an order bump for this. ” Your friends are going to be like, “what did you just say?”

Sign ups are open through the end of July. Click here to enroll into the Sales Accelerator Challenge.

And you can get $10 off with my special coupon code: SAC-JOJO

How I Promote & Sell My Online Course

Before we get started, I want to thank Teachable for working with me on this video to tell you guys about the upcoming Sales Accelerator Challenge that starts this August 1 and runs for 30 days. I’ve been using Teachable as my all-in-one platform to create, market and sell my online course, the Bold Blogger Academy. And the growth that I’ve had from my course alone is priceless.

And as a blogger, it really made sense for me to sell a course as my next step because:

  1. I was already helping people with my content abut blogging. So I was already teaching my course topic.
  2. So if anything, I’ve already done some of the work without even knowing. All I had to do was rearrange the content into a step-by-step process that made sense for others to follow. Essentially, turning my free content into a product.
  3. I also liked that selling a course made me be seen as a expert in my course topic. So it was really growing my brand.
  4. And on top of making money through ads, affiliates, and sponsored posts (like this video), I got to create an extra income stream. CHA-CHING!
  5. Plus, it’s so much more fulfilling to help others in a large way especially when I see my students and my clients transform.

So if you have that course idea you’ve been tinkering with or you have a course and find it’s not selling, using my experience as an example, here’s how to promote and sell your online course.

1. Write blog posts on your course topic

Write blog posts about different topics people would find in your course. In your blog posts, you can share WHAT the steps are of what your teaching. And your course will share HOW to do it. And writing blog posts as early as now powerfully sets your audience up when you start selling your course. Because now they know you’re knowledgeable in your course topic. And if they want to learn more, they can buy your course.

So the Bold Blogger Academy, is about how to start a blog. And as I was building it, I wrote blog posts like:

So all these blog posts touched on the topic of how to start a blog and also on the experiences of what it’s like to be a beginner blogger. And at the end of every blog post, I finish it with a call-to-action to sign up to my email list.

A call-to-action is literally what it sounds. It’s what you say to encourage someone to do something with the information you just shared with them. I like to encourage my viewers to subscribe to my channel for more blogging videos! Or to sign up to my email list so they can get notified whenever I publish new blogging content. So- email list! I highly recommend building an email list.

2. Build an email list

An email list is a collection of emails that a website collects after they ask visitors to sign up for their email list. And I love sending emails to my list rather than posting on social media. For one thing, it’s much more personal. Anyone who signs up to my email list specifically chooses me to show up in their inbox so it feels much more special & intimate when they read my emails as opposed to seeing a social media post on their feed. And when you promote your course, it’s much more effective because your emails arrive in chronological order. There’s no algorithm to beat.

So I build my email list with ConvertKit and it’s really easy to use. I create a sign up form and embed it at the end of every blog post. And I also embed this form all over my website like my sidebar and the bottom of every page. You can look around my blog and see it for yourself too.

And after I created my email list, I created a lead magnet as an incentive for people to want to sign up for my email list even more.

3. Create a lead magnet

A lead magnet is a free item that you give away in exchange for an email. And it can come in any format like a checklist, a worksheet, a guide, a mini course. Something that will easily go in tandem with the blog posts you publish. For example, my lead magnet is the Bold Blogger Launch Checklist which is a checklist and step-by-step guide on how to start & launch a blog. And at the end of every blog post, I add a call-to-action to download my checklist with a description of the kind of value they’ll get when they download it and a little graphic of the checklist. Graphics go a long way. And in order to download it, they must first subscribe to my emails.

Your lead magnet can easily be created as a word document. I like to create mine with Canva because it’s free, easy to use and I get to add some design flair to it.

4. Create a sales page

A sales page is a dedicated page on your website that has all the information one would need to know before they purchase your course. On my sales page, I like to touch on my audiences’ pain points and open up what’s possible for them. They, too, can achieve the successes that come with being a blogger. Then, I introduce how my course can teach them how to be a blogger and then share the syllabus so that they know what exactly they’ll learn. Afterwards, I’ll share about myself and what I’ve accomplished from blogging. And then at the bottom of the page, I end it with a call-to-action, with a button to enroll into my course.

5. Open & sell your course for a short time

So once you’re ready to sell your course, I recommend opening it for 1-2 weeks because it creates a sense of urgency for your audience to jump on the opportunity to learn more from you. Within this period, I post nothing but promotional content. I like to send a series of emails promoting my course each day sharing little bits of information like the outline of my course, about how blogging has changed my life, testimonials of my students, describing who can benefit from the course, and even getting into what will happen if they don’t buy my course or delay buying it.

And if social media is your thing, you can also post the same information on social media each day too.

6. Offer promotional coupons

I like to create promotional coupons as another incentive for my audience to take advantage of the opportunity to purchase my course. Sometimes, it’s a Black Friday sale. Other times, it’s just a simple “thank you so much for supporting. I love you. Here’s a coupon code.”

And these coupon codes do work. I notice an increase in sales when I offer coupon codes to use by a certain date.

7. Use testimonials

And nothing is more powerful than word-of-mouth. It’s like those Amazon reviews, the more reviews there are, the more you’re likely to buy it. The same goes for your course. You can collect testimonials from your students and also from beta testers if you haven’t sold it yet. I didn’t have beta testers but I collected testimonials from my first group of students and used their words as marketing materials the next time I promoted my course.

So in a nutshell, this is how I promote & sell my online course, and how you can do it too:

  1. Write blog posts on your course topic
  2. Build an email list
  3. Create a lead magnet
  4. Create a sales page
  5. Open & sell your course for a short time
  6. Offer promotional coupons
  7. Use testimonials

So these are *just* a few ways to promote your online course. And there are so many more methods to sell your course like writing engaging copy for your emails & sales page, hosting webinars, setting up an affiliate program, and using order bumps!

And you can learn exactly how to all of this & more with Teachable’s Sales Accelerator Challenge

Sign ups are open through the end of July. Click here to enroll into the Sales Accelerator Challenge.

And you can get $10 off with my special coupon code: SAC-JOJO

Thank you so much for reading! I hope to see you there! You’re going to get so much value. Please subscribe to my channel for more blogging content and I’ll see you in the next post too! Bye!