I Sold $3,283 Worth of My Books and Courses in One Month — Here’s What I Learned

Research by Statista notes that the total global eLearning market size will be valued at over $370 billion US dollars. That's a quantum rise from where it was currently valued in 2019 at $101 billion.

Plain and simple — the opportunity for entry and growth as an entrepreneur in the eLearning space is akin to making car tires in 1910 (two years after the Model T was streamlined to production).

OK, perhaps I'm being a bit hyperbolic.

Nonetheless, there is a prime opportunity for an individual to take their gifts, talents, skills, knowledge, and know-how; and repackage that into shippable products for an audience looking to learn the same.

I would know — I generate thousands doing just that.

And I've really been shooting by the hip this whole time trying to figure it out.

I wish I had someone like me to tell me how I could make this happen, but that's why you're here. You're that metaphorical me.

So without further adieu…

This article is about the lessons I learned selling over $3,000 worth of books and courses a month online. I've written about the more technical work of how to do that already. I want to talk now about things that you should keep in mind that can act as shortcuts for your own endeavors going forward.

Let's dive in.

Before the lessons: Establishing credibility

Perhaps I'm the only one that gets irked by this when I see it, however, I believe we deserve proof when someone makes this type of claim.

We see it all the time on the web, someone claims they made a bazillion simoleons selling Tetra Pak coconut waters from the comfort of their office chair, and nothing is backed up by proof.

Oh boy — the exaggeration is creeping back up.

Again, we deserve better.

So, in light of such a claim, in figure 1.1 below, you'll see my earnings report from selling my digital products.

(Figure 1.1 Source: Author CRM)

This is from the last full month (October).

I don't include this to peacock in front of you. I do this because I want to know that manageable and scalable enterprising and growth in this space is possible.

I'm not a millionaire (far from it in fact), however, I have been able to build a sense of sustainable industriousness. My sales are made up of three products:

• An ebook
• An introductory online course
• An advanced online course

The price of these products ranges anywhere from $30 to $300.

Okay — now that we got that out of the way, let's get into the invaluable lessons.

Your customers help you improve your products

I know, you may be rolling your eyes thinking that I'm pointing out the obvious.

But do you notice anything about the payments in figure 1.1?

Perhaps I should be more specific — do you notice anything about the chargebacks in figure 1.1?

That's right — like any business, I had customers request refunds on their purchases. This is something you deal with as an entrepreneur.

In the past, this would cripple me. If someone asked for their money back, I would think I was a failure, my product was a failure, and "imposter syndrome" would creep in.

Okay fine — you caught me. It still bothers me a little.

But after multiple chargebacks, I finally realized that they are an opportunity.

I have a refund policy and I stand by it. I also engage in asking the customer what promised value wasn't delivered.

Hey ___,

I'll send the refund right away. Please confirm when you receive it.

I am curious, what promises with the product weren't delivered and realized? What were you expecting to get that you didn't? What valuable tool were you looking for?

Cheers,

Jon

I have yet to get a response as to how I can improve the product.

And that's the cornerstone of any business venture: to help solve the problems being experienced by the customer to the best of the product/service's ability.

You're probably not charging your customers enough

When we create something — we want it to make a positive impact on the people who take a chance on us.

It's the life of the artist and the entrepreneur.

When we're a novice entrepreneur, we don't want to ask for too much money — even if deep down we believe we're worth it.

Why?

Because we don't want to miss out on a sale for God's sake!

Furthermore, you might be competing with more established entrepreneurs and think that by offering a lower price, you'll end up stealing a share of their sales. However, it's noted in the Harvard Business review that price undercutting doesn't always work.

What figure 1.1 doesn't show you, is I used to sell only one product for way less money. I would sell my ebook for $7 because I was afraid of exchanging my knowledge for too much money and upsetting people.

However, I mustered up the courage to test the pricing of the product and raised it more than double.

You know what?

The units per month sold remained pretty consistent, and my overall revenue for that product more than doubled.

When we put something out for the world to purchase — a product or service — many of us feel because we're finally stepping up to the plate that we shouldn't ask customers for too much.

But it's important to consider this:

You've done a lot of work that others haven't so you can charge for that work what others can't.

Plus, you can always change the pricing as you get more feedback, which offers us a nice segue into the next lesson.

Always Be [Testing]

Of course, I'm borrowing here from the famous line from the hit movie, Glengarry Glen Ross.

For our purposes, we're going to, Always Be Testing in the sense that we want to continuously improve our products.

How do we do that?

Well, we covered a bit of that already in a previous lesson by taking the feedback from our unsatisfied customers.

However, there are also technical tools that will help you with your digital product sales.

Consider the A/B tests you can be utilized with your site. Take note of figure 2.1 which outlines the impact of testing various sales pages of your products.

(Figure 2.1 Source: Author ThriveOptimize Dashboard)

So what are we looking at?

Well, it might not seem like all that information. Some of it is cut off from the screen capture but we can examine it further.

It is essentially running two sales pages and tracking the conversion rates of each one over a specific amount of time.

You can see that over the specified time frame (two days in this brief example), Variant 2 drastically outpaced Variant 1 in its conversion rate (56.25% vs. 30.77% respectively.)

What this tells us is there is a specific sales page we should go forward with our products.

Then, of course, we repeat the process over with further tests.

People that subscribe will buy; people that buy will buy again

Everyone and their mother will talk about how important a subscriber list is.

Heck, go to any established company website and see what happens within the first five seconds of loading the page.

Actually, let's do one better. I'm going to go to a major corporate website (image below:)

(Courtesy Adidas.com)

In this image, we can see this major, multinational corporation engaging in the basic principles all aspiring digital entrepreneurs are taught — to build an email list.

This is because an email list is where the money is. According to Hubspot, email generates $38 for every $1 spent, which is a 3,800% ROI.

Essentially what you want to do as a small business digital entrepreneur is build trust. Trust is already built with the multinational from our example.

Because when you build trust, you can make sales.

And when you can make sales once, it's easier to make another, bigger sale to that customer. Tim Ambler of the London Business School notes in his article, Marketing Metrics that the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60–70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5–20%.

While I definitely haven't seen the industry goal for the percentage of customers being repeat customers (25–30%). It's a goal that I'm working towards. My repeat customer rate for the range included above stands at approximately 4% (see the image.)

(Source: Author CRM Dashboard)

The most important element of all of this that we need to consider and take home is that you need to build trust to convert sales.

You build trust through being able to provide value through your email list.

You'll go through many versions of your products (and they'll never be perfect)

I'm currently on edition three of my ebook. The first edition was born in 2017. I have to be nice to myself here — I don't want to destroy my ego (it may result in me not being able to complete this article.)

Let's just say, it wasn't the best book ever written. In fact, it was really an attempt at glorifying myself.

When I came to grips with its lack of sales being a result of the quality of the book and not so much the perceived cluelessness of my customers — I went in and revised it.

The book was called, Zero to One Million in 3 Months.

First off… zero to one million whats?

• Hats in 3 months?
• Brides in 3 months?
• Pimples in 3 months?

Really — it was online article views in 3 months but I didn't have the wherewithal to notice that.

What's important for us to notice here is that I wasn't helping notify my future customers as to what they were getting in exchange for their purchase.

That's important for you to consider when creating, designing, and marketing your product. We've taken all this time putting our knowledge in this digital product — we should let the customer know what they're in store for.

What have we learned?

The point of this article was to give a brief overview of some considerations for building, marketing, and selling your digital product.

We're creators — we tend to see things in the world that we want to change and create things that provide a positive impact on the people who consume it.

But we're also entrepreneurs — we need to have the business sense to make these dreams into a viable reality.

The lessons included in this article help tend to the entrepreneurial side of this endeavor.

Those lessons are:

1. Your customers help improve your product: Disgruntled and unsatisfied customers are a part of this pursuit. Use the information they can provide to your advantage, however. When people are dissatisfied, they will often tell you what they were looking for. Use that for future improvements.
2. You're probably not charging your customers enough: It's scary to put a price tag on something you've created if you've never done so before. We've worked so hard to create this product — we should be rewarded adequately for our hard work.
3. Always Be [Testing]: Just because you've created something and it sells doesn't mean you should stop there. There are always ways you can improve. You can improve on the sales pages, the product itself, and the way it's sold.
4. People that subscribe will buy; people that buy will buy again: The money is in the email list. We've heard this 1,000 times. If you aren't building your list, you should be. With the list, you can build trust. When you build trust you can secure repeat purchases.
5. You’ll go through many versions of your products (and they’ll never be perfect): Perfection is a lie. As a creator and entrepreneur, we cannot settle on the first edition of the first version. We need to keep making it better. Making it better is both at the benefit of ourselves as well as the customer for it will solve their problems better.

If you haven't already created your digital product, now is the best time to do so. The industry of eLearning keeps growing.

What does that tell us?

It tells us that people are looking to learn new skills.

Furthermore, it tells us that you have the opportunity to teach those people.

So get started.

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