I recently launched my new course, The Business Confident Photographer. And during the launch, I made $25k in 10 days! Seriously, that’s insane. I’m still shocked and blown away but I’m excited to share some of my tips and strategy with you today! In this post, I want to break down how I broke into earning passive income through online courses, how my recent launch went, how long courses ACTUALLY take to make, and my plans for scaling this course in the future. I want you to know what these types of launches really look like in time and money – not just throw a number at you to be impressive. I like being transparent and I hope it’s helpful for you! 

Before we jump in, I want to clarify… Passive income = scalable income. Scalable income isn’t always passive. Think about this course: I want to continue to pour into my students. I’m going to continue to work with them. It’s not one and done but it is still scalable! 

My Launch Strategy

To start with, one of the things that was helpful to create hype and prime my audience was sharing behind the scenes of creating the course. This was happening months before my course, but it helped people get excited about buying the course when it came out! It’s super easy content since I’m physically doing the work – I just made sure to take some photos, Boomerangs, and things like that! Throughout the process, I also took the time to poll my audience to make sure everything in the course was actually useful to them! I think this was SUPER helpful to make sure that they really wanted what I was doing! It’s a good reminder to sell to what your consumers WANT (not what you think they need!). 

When it came time to decide the content, I spent over 6 months creating an outline based on feedback I received from my audience. I gathered these responses from Instagram, polls I posted, a survey in my Facebook group and some other places. These responses also helped me craft marketing posts! Finally, I had 11 beta testers complete the course before I launched to the public. If nothing else, the SOCIAL PROOF I got from the course was worth its weight in GOLD. It was SO helpful to have them review the course, too! 

During Launch Week

When I say launch week, I’m talking about November 12-November 20th. During launch week, I hosted a FREE webinar for photographers that shared some free educational content with them for about 30 minutes and a live Q & A. During the two webinars, about halfway through, I pitched the course to those attending. It was the first time they could join the course and they were given an early access discount. This was my first time launching a course with a webinar! I honestly LOVED it!! Those who participated got early access until Saturday, and then the course was launched to the public on MOnday. During the weekend, those from the webinar did receive reminder emails about the sale! 

And now, the stats of the webinar…. I had 729 registrants. And, I generated about 100 registrations from Facebook ads and about 500 came organically from my audience. I also did run ads targeting the webinar and during the rest of the launch week, totaling about $1,500 in ads. I also asked my beta testers to share about the webinar and the course, too – which is always helpful!! 

Launch Stats

From the sale, I generated $24,895 after my online course launch. Because of my payment plan options, a little less than half was paid now and the rest will come over the next 6 months. Additionally, I tracked my hours on Toggl while creating the BCP course and I spent 164 hours directly on the project (that’s 21 eight hour workdays!). These were spread out over 3-4 months while I worked on the project. And don’t forget, there’s other work that went into this too like creating social media content to prime my audience and all of that too! 

Making it Passive Income

Again, passive income is scalable income! I have a few plans to transition this into a more passive income stream for the business. First up is the plan to re-release the webinar for people to watch on webinar, which includes the sales pitch at the end. When they sign up for the webinar, they’re added to a sales funnel. There, they are presented with more FREE valuable content and pitched again to join us in the course. Additionally, I’m planning to try some more Facebook ads with my team to generate more leads and I hope it will convert well on evergreen! Finally, I’ll run sales for this course a few times a year to bring new students in. 

What I’d Do Differently

I’m no expert on any of this, but I’m getting better about launching my courses and products. With this launch, there were a few things I’d want to do differently if I did it again! To start, I’d want MORE help with filming and editing the videos. I’m glad I did it all myself this time but next time… more help would be great. My next course will be smaller, more focused on a singular topic to save myself time and energy – but again, THRILLED I was able to launch this. It was SO needed! Finally, I’d make better use of my VA next time. She helped a ton with the launch week (including being tech support on the webinar), but I could have used her differently leading up to launch week. I love having a good team and utilizing them the best way possible. 

What I’m Super Proud of…

Obviously, I’m SURPRISED and thrilled I made $25K in 10 days from the online course launch. It seriously blew my mind. I made a course that I’m COMPLETELY proud of because it is SOOOO start to finish for photographers. Everyone who purchased this is going to have their LIFE CHANGED and I’m beyond excited for them!! And I’m excited about the chance to turn it evergreen with the webinar replay and watch how sales in the future go! 

Now I’m just excited to start making passive (scalable) income from this course and to slowly start working on other projects after the new year! I am SO SO grateful for everyone who has joined us in the Business Confident Photographer!!