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The Art of Selling Online Courses
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!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
Meet the Artist Running a $2M Online Business
🔗 FREE Customer Avatar Course: Email me at john@data-driven-marketing.co with "Customer Avatar" in the subject line and I'll send you our client-only course to help you understand your audience better.
In this episode, I chat with Florence who built a $2M art course business from scratch. She shares her fascinating journey from being "just an intermediate" artist to creating nearly 200 courses and a membership bringing in $80K monthly.
We dive into her Facebook ad strategy (spending $50K to make $55K in front-end sales), why her $150/month membership works so well, and how she discovered that "charging more gets you better customers." Florence is refreshingly honest about the struggles, sharing that "when something works is the worst moment to go take a vacation" and how she tests everything constantly. If you're building a course business or thinking about adding a membership, you don't want to miss this one.
🔗 Check out Florence's website at https://www.wealthierartist.com/free-teach-online-training
The higher you charge generally, the better quality is the customer and the lower you charge, less quality. We're about 150k a month. The leads were costing 20 cents, which is incredible.
Speaker 2:Who said that artists have to be starving? Art and Drawing is an example of a passion-driven business who allowed its owner to live off her dream, making a living as a traveling artist. Today we're going to talk about Flo's business, how she built it up to multiple millions in revenue, how she drives traffic, grows her list, sells courses and more.
Speaker 1:I was not an expert, but I was good enough to teach total beginners. It's so relaxed because you know you already have this. Even if you sleep this month, you're going to make that Everything goes fine. And then suddenly the cost per lead is three times more than yesterday for no reason and nothing works anymore. It's like that all the time. The way I sold the most classes is through.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is John Ainsworth and today's guest is Florence Morin. All right, Florence, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Hi, happy to be there.
Speaker 2:John. So one of the things that you've said before is you think that not everybody can succeed in a course business. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1:Well, when you think about all types of online businesses, it looks like online courses are pretty simple you just sell a product and there's pretty much no more expenses, maybe just advertising your website, that's all. So it looks full of profits. And then you make your sale and you send a product and it's all good. But the fact is that there's a couple of difficulties along the way. I think if someone can start with a minimum viable funnel, that's great, but soon enough, everyone's going to discover that there's a little bit of tricks and that they're going to need to find solutions at every step of the way.
Speaker 2:So is it that you think that people can't always manage to do that because there's just so many problems to solve on top of knowing how to teach something?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. First you have to be an expert about something which can already take years. If you have no skills in life, no passion, nothing you have done by yourself, well, you first need to live a little bit to get some experience so you can teach about it. In my case it was art. I did it for years just by myself, just for fun, until I was good enough to teach it. But for any expert, that can be anything else. It could be fitness, it could be coaching, it could be wealth management, it could be teaching music, anything. Anything can be taught, but you first need to be good at it if you want to teach it.
Speaker 2:So that's the first thing that can take a lot of time. So how did you get started, then, with this business? So how long had you worked or how long had you been an artist before you even kind of got started with running this?
Speaker 1:I was already trying to be an artist for more than 10 years before I started this business. So I'd say when I started my art was, let's say, just intermediate. I was not an expert, but I was good enough to teach total beginners. So if you can just add a couple of steps ahead of your customers, it is generally enough to teach something. You don't need to be an expert yet, but at least have some experience or steps ahead.
Speaker 2:Nice and then so how long ago did you start this business?
Speaker 1:I started five years ago. But yeah, I started five years ago, but prior to that I tried a lot of things for five to seven years.
Speaker 2:Got it, and how have you managed to make this business work? What is it that was different this time around?
Speaker 1:Well, I told you about the different types of skills you need to start this type of online business. If we look in the order, you first need to have good media buying skills. So it's clearly being good at Facebook, being able to sorry meta. You have to be able to make an ad that makes sense to your audience. So there's a little bit of copywriting, there's a little bit of creative, there's a little bit of tech setup, because it needs to go on the website. So that's the first part.
Speaker 1:Then you're going to have to sell something or bring people in your funnel. So either you have to be good at creating lead magnets or sales pages or, like, let's say, a marketing mechanism you need to study. So you need to study marketing in a way that you'll be able to convert people to do something you want them to do, and then, when they get in touch with you, you also have to build a relationship, and building a relationship is not only about writing emails and talking about a topic, but it's also about establishing a good connection. So for that, you need to really really understand your audience and your persona, and this is a step that we jump over way too often.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's been a really interesting thing that I've seen is that almost nobody has done the research into their customer avatar. And we're like really, really big on this and I mentioned this in the podcast a couple of weeks ago. But if you want to get hold of our course, where we normally just give this to clients, but if you want to get hold of our course about the customer avatar, then drop me an email, john, at datadrivenmarketingco, saying customer avatar in the subject line and just promise me that you will actually do the work. Toco, saying customer avatar in the subject line, and just promise me that you will actually do the work to make your customer avatar and I will send you that course for free so you can access this.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I've really really noticed this is that loads of people they're like, oh, I kind of know my audience and it's like, yeah, how well have you done the research? Have you sent out surveys? Have you done customer interviews? Have you done the analysis? Have you looked at exactly what language they're using? If you looked at exactly what the top pain points are, the top desires, how do they describe all these things? And almost nobody has done it. Everyone kind of skips this because it's boring and it's not the bit that directly makes money and I don't know what it is exactly like I can't imagine doing marketing without a customer avatar written up.
Speaker 2:It's like you crazy, Like I wouldn't even know where to start to do a good job of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of right You're writing a love letter to someone you don't even know. Like building a relationship with your customer is, you need to know who you're talking to their specifics. It's nothing general, it's everything about being so customized and fitted to their needs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's phenomenal Work on that, then. So how did you go about developing your customer avatar and understanding your audience?
Speaker 1:Well, I got a good chance, that, let's say, I got lucky in my timing. I was already with my setup to start this. I don't know how many business I started before that maybe three businesses. So that was my third businesses. I was ready to start a little bit just before COVID, like February, like literally a month or two before COVID.
Speaker 1:I was like, okay, this time I'm going to start going live, stream my art and just give some advice for free, just for fun. I was having that in my mind. I started on Twitch, which was a video game platform, so it was absolutely not my audience actually, because they're more like gamers and people who are maybe in the manga industry or like, let's say, comic-cons or things that are more like comics related. So it was really not my niche. I didn't know that at that moment. So I tried to stream.
Speaker 1:Nothing goes well, nothing at all. Like I have one viewer for multiple weeks in a row, so it's very discouraging. And then one day I'm just like maybe I'm going to try on Facebook and I have this in my head and that week they said, well, it's COVID, now everything is closed. So it was just the perfect timing because I was planning to go on Facebook live that weekend. So I literally had like a 24 hour switch between the moment they announced COVID and when I went online, which allowed me to very quickly get a lot of people in my life, and I was running Facebook ads at that time and I can tell you the leads were costing 20 cents in Canada, which is incredible.
Speaker 2:You're killing me Really, holy shit 20 cents, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that was really easy to bring a lot of people live. So I was lucky for that. But as soon as I had this big exposure to the audience, I was reading all the comments and they were actually like running on my screen as I was going live and people were asking all sorts of questions. So as I was drawing, I would see questions pop and start to realize how people would think what question would emerge, in what order, what were the topics that people always want to learn about, what drives curiosity, the pain points All of that was just written on my screen as I was live, so it was kind of too easy.
Speaker 1:But then after that, I started building. After that I started to build a mailing list and I asked in surveys Literally, just asking is probably the most powerful tool you can do. If you have access to an audience, just send a message like hey guys, what do you want to learn? Oh, hey guys, what's your pain point about that? Hey guys, why can't you do this thing they dream about and they're just going to tell you.
Speaker 2:It's so obvious this thing they dream about and they're just going to tell you. It's so obvious, okay, so talk us through a little bit more detail about who is it that you're generally helping, who is your custom avatar and what exactly are you helping them with? Like, what kind of stuff do your courses cover?
Speaker 1:well, that's a good question, because it turns out my avatar was more like an elderly woman who's having time to do art. Actually a little hint for everyone who's teaching online. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of women who are interested in crafts. So mostly at the well later in life, when the kids are gone, they start to have more time. They want to develop themselves again. They become a new priority in their life. So that's why they start allowing time and budget for themselves.
Speaker 1:But it's still a hobby. They still have like a family, they still have grandchildren to take care of, they still have to go to the gym, take care of their health. So they have many concerns in their life. But building like a hobby side or creative side is really important to them. So it's going to work for art, but also for knitting or for I don't know anything. Music, writing, poetry, book club, like all of those things are activities people want to do later in life and women are really eager to learn from other people, more than men from the same age maybe. So that's that's what's making them a great audience they want to learn, they're available and they like the relationship.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, and so then you're helping these women. What kind of age range we're talking about?
Speaker 1:Let's say we're talking about 45 plus and I'm helping them to learn how to draw, so it's literally just art projects. Either it's faces, either it's animals, either it's landscape. It's discovering techniques. It's not becoming a professional, it's just enjoying a new passion.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. And then, in terms of the business side of things, how does it actually work? In terms of you mentioned Facebook ads already is that your main traffic source?
Speaker 1:It is because it's mostly predictable for us, so we're very easy to just run on the same type of campaigns. We know our metrics, we have like our structure that works very well. We did also some Google ads that also work. I'd say the Google audience is maybe a little younger and they also know how to search on a search engine, so maybe they're already on YouTube for watching videos. So they need less help than people on Facebook who are very impressed by time lapses of artwork or beautiful artworks. That's mostly our two main sources of traffic, but Facebook mostly.
Speaker 2:Do you have any content marketing that you do? Do you post on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or any of these other places as well?
Speaker 1:We do not post on those organic platforms, but it came with time. So we started from well. I started from zero audience on Facebook and as my mailing list was growing, I would shoot new YouTube videos and I would send a mailing list on YouTube. So I built my YouTube channel this way, mostly from people coming from my mailing list first, but now we have like maybe 300 or 400 new subscribers a month that come from I don't know where, by just keeping posting about the topic of art.
Speaker 2:OK, so it's nearly all ads and then that drives people to your mailing list and then some of those people then join and go and watch on youtube. So it's kind of like a middle of funnel stuff for those guys in terms of like warming them up. But there are now new people starting to find you through youtube as well. Okay, isn't. Is your youtube your main organic source then?
Speaker 1:I'd say it's the main organic source. Instagram is not working too well for us, tiktok neither.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just chatting with another guy who's in London. He's also in the DC. If anybody listening who doesn't know what the DC is, I do talk about this from time to time. It's like a business network that Flo and I are both in and it's for people running online businesses. If you want to check it out, it's dynamitecirclecom.
Speaker 2:So I know at least one person who listens to this podcast has joined the dc because he came up to me at a conference and told me that he only joined it because, uh, because he'd heard about it on this podcast. So if you do join, come up and say hi, but anyway. So so another guy I was chatting with in the dc earlier today who sell, who runs like a multi-million dollar um course business, and he was saying how he's another ads person. He's another person who, like ads is his main traffic source and most people who listen to this podcast are like organic is their main source and it was really interesting hearing him bitching about how organic is so like difficult to get started with and he doesn't kind of get the hang of it, whatever, and it's just like whereas everybody I know who's got organic, when they try and run ads they're like I can't get this to work. It's like so it's like anyone, if you can get good at a traffic source like that Facebook ads or Google ads or YouTube or whatever it's like it's not a small feat.
Speaker 2:And I think it's easy for us to sometimes forget, once we've got the hang of one traffic source, just how hard that was. Maybe, I mean, maybe it was easy for you because of COVID and it get going and you know. But it's like at some point you try and start another one. You're like Jesus, this is hard work. This is harder than I kind of remember it being, you know, or so. You were kind of making a face there like was it? Was it not as easy as all of that getting daring with facebook either?
Speaker 1:I told you the great part, like that's the, the part where everything was going fine, but priorly, like needing to learn ads, I did that trying to start multiple drop shipping businesses in 2017, 18 and 19, so there was like a bunch of money throwing in meta ads, just like a casino. I did that. I learned that way, so that's great, but that was not easy, so there was a learning curve as well.
Speaker 2:Um, I also say years, sorry, interrupt yeah no, no, please, please, go on. I'll go on with the rest so you'd spent years doing other businesses where you'd learned facebook ads the hard way you brutally difficult, you know really, really working at it. And then when you came to this business where Facebook ads did work better, you had to. You already knew how to do it and so you had this jumpstart there.
Speaker 1:That's it. So when I decided to go live on Facebook, I knew how to run a Facebook ad. It would take me 30 minutes to set up and to launch. Well, if I didn't know how, I would have needed to watch. I don't know how many tutorials try it out, figuring out during COVID, which would be like maybe still working, but for how long would that take before you get results? But when you know you already have the parameters, you already have like all the structure, just have to launch. So it was a skill that was already mastered before. I'm coming back to the question like you need to master some skills to put together. So if you know ads, at that time it's much easier than if you have to learn them just to sell a course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, I did. When I was a college student I did door to door sales for four years and so I got really good at sales and then kind of over the years, I kind of forget all the pain that I went through because I sucked so badly, I was so terrible, I was so unbelievably bad when I started and I just had to work and like every day, just work on how can I get better, how can I try more? How can I improve a little bit? There's one little step. And then I look back years later and I kind of forget about all the work and I just kind of feel like, yeah, of course you could do this thing. Why can't other people do this thing?
Speaker 1:About sales and, if you allow me, I want to tell you a bit about that, because selling is it's not exactly the same thing as marketing. Like marketing is like everything that comes before the sale, but there's a moment where you have to convert the customer and this is the sale moment. Selling is really about the relationship as well, and so many people are feeling bad of selling. They're like, oh my God, I'm salesy, I'm trying to take money from them. No, you're trying to give them value and to do something in their best interest, if you believe in your product and your expertise, of course, and that's really hard for people to be in the right mindset to sell.
Speaker 1:The way I sold the most classes is through live webinars, so live events. So we would draw something, we would make a dramatic demonstration of something that works, and then we're like, hey guys, do you want to be helped doing that in a course? Well, if so, yes, and we had a transition toward the sale and that was so smooth because we gave value, there was a good interaction and then bringing the sale. But many people are maybe forgetting that they're helping and they feel bad about selling.
Speaker 2:Okay, so is that your main way of selling now through live events?
Speaker 1:Not anymore. It used to be, because live attendance was just skyrocketing during COVID. Right now we're selling mostly through direct marketing. So it's just a sales page with, like the good wording, the good thoughts that are happening in the person's head. So it's just a sales page with, like, the good wording, the good thoughts that are happening in the person's head. So it's all coming to knowing your audience very well and bringing them smoothly. And bringing them smoothly from an ad to like a psychological process where they would believe your product is going to help them, is going to give them what they want, is going to reduce the friction. Won't take too much effort and just allow them to have a good time, of course.
Speaker 2:And how are you driving traffic to those sales pages? Is that through email? I guess it's like ads. Some of the ads Are the ads straight to. Sorry, I asked two questions. So yeah, how are you driving traffic to those sales pages? Is that through email?
Speaker 1:Through ads.
Speaker 2:Through ads Okay cool. Are through ads through ads okay cool. And then do you send people through email who don't buy straight away to other promotions as well, or how does?
Speaker 1:that run for you of course. Of course, like, let's say, there's the front end of the business. So there's many things. There's the lead acquisition. Lead acquisition is always getting people in your mailing list. You're going to give them something for free. Either it's a PDF, either it's a free workshop, either it's a tutorial. They're going to join the mailing list and the mailing list it's the bottom thing that goes all year round.
Speaker 1:We're always sending a promotion, we're always sending something valuable all year round. So that's the part. The front end is the lead magnet. Then there's other front end, like direct ads, direct to sales pages, where people can buy immediately. But when they don't buy, what we do is we have an opt-in page between the sales page and the order form. So everyone who's going to kind of initiate their checkout on the order form becomes a lead. They have to, of course, accept. So they're now subscribed to the mailing list. So they're gonna have first a sequence that is like an add to cart sequence, allowing them to convert if they didn't on the spot, and then later they're going to receive values to go toward the youtube channel, for example. They're going to be invited in another live event that we're going to hold here and there and eventually would potentially convert. So we're not losing the traffic from the sales pages.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay. So you've got ads to lead magnets, you've got ads to direct sale and in your direct sale pages you have a two-step checkout, and the first step you ask them for their email address and then in the second step, they can actually check out. If they don't check out, they're still on your email list. As long as did they have to, like, tick a box on the first step of the checkout page to join that?
Speaker 1:they do. They do okay, but it doesn't affect conversion. People like they want to see the full price, so they click just to see yeah, okay, and then email you've got your.
Speaker 2:You said you're always sending promotions. How often, uh, are you promoting any of your courses?
Speaker 1:We have at least one big promotion a month. If we can go live, if I can go live once a month, I will. There are some moments where it's just less relevant, because either I'm traveling or maybe we don't have a specific product to promote. So at least once a month we're going to have an invitation to a live event with a sales pitch, because it's still a very good way to convert people. In between we're having other types of promotions, so we would have flash sales that are maybe just three, four emails squeezed on three or four days with a promotion, so people can just buy this. And of course, the list is very well segmented. So we have the past students, the current students, we have also the people who never bought anything, so we kind of know who's going to open the email or not. So we're not sending emails at large to everyone. We're kind of segmenting to target the best part of the list for a specific marketing campaign.
Speaker 2:Got it and how many courses have you got?
Speaker 1:How many courses? Almost 200. What?
Speaker 2:How is that possible, 200?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, okay, here's the thing I like to teach live. So the way I build a business is everything I'm teaching live in a month. After that we package it as a module, so it becomes a module. I've been teaching live for five years, every month of the year, Plus I'm giving different workshops here and there, and I'm also pre-recording other classes that are specific for some skills. So this way we got a lot, a lot of content created almost too much.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, that is mind-boggling. Wow, okay, that is a lot of courses, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a lot and that can be a problem, because if you want a simple business it's better to have one or two great offers. You can't market everything at the same time. So obviously we're going to have like front end products that are very well packaged and designed. The other products will be accessible. So if someone asks, they will find. But we're not really promoting all of those courses when they're released. Makes sense.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you've got these multiple promotions. You're trying to go live once a month, but you can't always. Depending on whether you're traveling, You've got at least one big promotion a month If you're going live. Is that the same thing or is that like a big promotion and going live as separate things?
Speaker 1:Well, going live is the best way to sell recurring products. We haven't talked about that yet, but that's a very important part of the business. You can sell one of classes, so you sell once and it's done. You have to reconvert the person another time if you want to make more money with that same person. Of course, lifetime value for customers is very important in all your calculation of marketing. If you're acquiring someone for just one time, like it's breaking even, good, but you have not made profit yet, so it's the next time you're going to start making profit.
Speaker 1:I think if people are starting businesses right now with zero audience and absolutely no mailing list, it's probably hard Like maybe they break even, maybe not, because they need to get the capital of building the relationship before being able to make easy sales. So that might take a little bit of time for people who are starting out. So one-off product is good for that. You get the customer Recurring product when you sell it.
Speaker 1:Well, people are having a harder time to convert because they're like, oh, I don't want to pay every month, I will probably forget to cancel, I don't want to be stuck in a subscription, but then when they see all the beautiful drawings, they'll be able to do month after month after month after month.
Speaker 1:And when you see that a skill needs the progression of regularity, month after month, it makes much more sense to have a course that comes over and over again because you still need to progress. You never reach, like a final level in drawing, so you kind of need to continue, and this allowed us to sell subscriptions that are month after month classes and people really love it because they see the progression and we see the beginning, we see the end and because of that we're also able to plan our revenue for the future, for the next month, and we know that the average lifetime value of a customer is much bigger because they just decide once but they keep paying, and going live is the best way to sell a subscription, because they really trust you more what price is the membership, then, to be able to access all of that, that subscription?
Speaker 1:at the moment it's 150 per month and that would allow them to have one live lesson every week and there's a group where they can participate. I have other coaches in my business, so it's, you see, like there's different types of businesses that offer coaching. That is maybe more professional because it's like a group coaching. It's small advice on drawing, it's more like encouragement, so it's not a very professional coaching. It's more like support. So that's why we're able to offer it to to everyone for such a low price per month. It's more like a group coaching and, yeah, they will draw five beautiful drawing every month and make their portfolio richer, but mostly see the progression nice, okay, cool.
Speaker 2:So you're selling one-off courses and you're selling a membership and I really and you've got like a relatively in the kind of hobby space relatively higher ticket coaching. You know, there's there are. Yeah, let's say, the hobby niche is the higher ticket, but it's yeah it's like I'm just saying relatively because, like a lot of people are selling stuff like 27 a month or 49 a month.
Speaker 2:You've got 150. Like I'm a big fan of like having a having a high ticket offer. I think we've probably talked about this before. But like I've got a friend who I'd badgered for ages to say he works in the music space, he sells music courses and he was. I was trying to convince him to set up a high ticket offer and he's like I tried, I tried that, I tried something for a thousand dollars and people didn't buy it, and I don't know if it's because of me or if it was his own. He figured it out some other way, but eventually he did start selling it and he went way past what I would have thought of and he sells it for ten thousand dollars a year. Amazing, wow, in the music space, like in a hobby space, right this isn't I don't think this is professional musicians like maybe, but I don't think so.
Speaker 2:So then he told another friend who's actually been on this uh podcast as well they both have. Second guy was uh scott from scott's uh bass lessons. So if you go search through the podcast you'll be able to find that episode as well. And I think scott talked about this on the episode and he talked to christopher.
Speaker 2:Christopher told him he was running this high ticket program for ten thousand dollars a year and so scott runs, he puts the phone down, he goes oh, like he finds out how much christopher's make. He puts the phone down, runs through, he wakes his wife up and he says to uh, he wakes her up and he's like I'm gonna start selling a high ticket coaching program for ten thousand dollars a year and she's like I don't care, can I go back to sleep now? And he's like I'm doing this lady goes, he rings up his business like guys from his team and he's like a month later they'd launched it and they're making, like I think, a million dollars a year from selling this high ticket program, which I would never have thought. I was like something for a thousand dollars, and they sold something for 10,000 a year, which I'm like, oh my God. So yeah, I don't think 150 is high ticket, but it's more expensive than what most people are doing.
Speaker 1:It is, and I love what you're saying because it's all come about daring and testing something, daring and testing something, but it goes in all directions. In our business we've tried different things. Just something we know the higher you charge, generally, the better quality is the customer, and the lower you charge, less quality. So we ended up launching also smaller subscription afterwards just to test, like $27 a month, for example, which is great too, but we're having much more cancellation, people complaining, people who can't log in, like all sorts of problems that we don't have with the other subscription. So there's really a value to sell more expensive thing because you kind of get better people, sometimes people who are maybe more dedicated, like they paid for something, they're serious, they're going to do it the right way, they're going to figure it out. So that's a good thing. But it brings it to also test it out and ask the audience.
Speaker 1:Lately we were having some conversion trouble with our webinar because people were saying I don't have money anymore. So what we did? We sent a survey and we asked people like what's wrong? And it turns out that it's not. They don't have money, they don't have time anymore because COVID is gone. Okay, so instead of, for example, one hour 30 of drawing a week. We reduced it to 30 minutes of drawing a week, so it's just less content, but people were way more enthusiastic about this new program. So it's just a little thing. So sometimes it's not the pricing, sometimes it's other criterias, but yeah, I think pricing has to be tested as well. Well, even higher or even lower, because some markets are maybe not made always for higher tickets, but you have to try.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely yeah. I was chatting with uh somebody earlier today who he's testing a high ticket like I don't know three thousand uh. He's in like a um, I won't say what niche uh, but he's in a niche that is, I haven't yet seen a high ticket offer yet work and they've sold like a hundred thousand dollars worth of this offer. But that is like you know, part of that revenue goes to the supplier and part of to the person who's doing the actual delivery and there's cost to them and blah, blah, blah. So it's like it wasn't like a perfect fit, but I'm like, yeah, but there'll be something. I'm like I'm not saying that you have found product market fit. I am saying there is going to be a percentage of your audience who will spend more money, like a lot more money, and if you figure it out, then you get to like help them.
Speaker 1:Well, it all comes to maximization. Let's say you have an audience and it's like a normal curve. You're going to have like a certain amount of people who have a certain amount of money and that's kind of easy for them, and every audience will have a different curve at a different level. Like, if you're targeting I don't know moms at home, for sure they will have less money that rich businessmen or even rich businesswomen, to give credit to everyone, your lifestyle can be really different and you won't have the same budget for things.
Speaker 1:What I mean by that is if you're able in your audience to find different cluster of customer. For example, you have the customer who has less money or the money is not replenishing as fast, so maybe you can have a lower tier subscription for those people. But they will not have as much help, not as much content, not as much ease, it's more like by themselves. So it's a lower subscription. Then you have a medium subscription that gives a little more and maybe a very high subscription. This way you're going to target all part of the audience and then you're going to see what's the proportion and which one is easier to sell, because always go toward the easiest sell instead of pushing, we have to do high ticket and push it, and push it, and push it. If it's not working like there's going to be a balance or an equilibrium, that's going to be fine with the combination of the things I like that okay.
Speaker 2:So we've got individual courses and membership. One thing I'd love you to talk about is how come you've got both, Because lots of people seem to think you go with one or the other. Right, and I see this all the time. People who have course businesses then stop selling courses and start selling a membership and then they've, like, reset their revenue to zero because the membership starting from nothing at that point, right, they don't have any members at all and I'm like it's not an either or game. You're allowed to do both, right. So can you talk to everybody about why you do both, how you see that with your audience, the kind of reaction you've got to any insights you've got around that?
Speaker 1:I can say that I found subscription by accident, by just feeling the pain very deeply of selling again the same thing the next month. Okay, so I would go live. I would go live, I would sell something. It would work. It was crazy like students coming, 50 students, 100 students on one day wow, that's amazing. But the course would last four weeks to six weeks and it was done and I was like, okay, I need to do another live and sell again.
Speaker 1:But I knew those people would come to the live and they were already asking well, can we have more? So I was just thinking I will ask those people what do you think if I prepare a course for the next six months and you have to pay month per month, I will ask you to come in because it's the first time. So if you come into six months, I'll give you a special price. Still sell the course like a one-off offer once a month to new people and to you while you're already subscribed to the best price. Is that working? And people were so enthusiastic. So that was my second month in the beginning of COVID. So I already got about 100 students who decided to pay monthly for the next six months with a commitment. So I was so relieving because they were ready to just follow. And then I would go live with new students and I would sell them a first class and then tell them oh, by the way, we have this membership, do you want to join and get a better price? So we kind of did both at the same time and realized that it was actually fitting a lot with the kind of circumstance we had at that time.
Speaker 1:People were able to plan a couple of months ahead, knowing they would be home anyway. So that helped. But eventually people in the subscription were like well, I would like more content about this thing and more content about this thing, and I would not have time to teach it live all the weeks. So I would just say, okay, I'm going to take a time to pre-record something and it's going to be an extra module. If you want to buy it, you buy it. And it worked. So the current audience still wanted more and I add a new course then. So it's just going all together. The more you go live, the more you make offers, the more you'll realize what works. And when you see everything works, you just have to organize everything so you're not working too much, or you go like to the easiest thing first and then you upsell another thing and things start to make sense like by themselves.
Speaker 1:Give people an idea of the size of the business now like what you're doing, kind of on average monthly revenue, we're about 150k a month right now, a little up, a little down, and it's growing like a fair pace. So it's, um yeah, continuous growth of improving the processes, making the products better, launching new products. What allows us to grow is, of course, having recurring member that stay longer than the members who are canceling. So there's a couple of metrics which are very important the join rate how many people are joining every month? So do you have a mechanism that allow you to get new members every month? What is your churn rate? So do you have a mechanism to stop people from quitting? Are you going to offer some retention, something to keep them, because it's much better to keep them at a lower fee, for example, than just losing them?
Speaker 1:Having different tiers allow us to get a cluster of customers who maybe don't have as much means as others. These balances and so yeah, following like the metrics for the recurring thing allow clear growth because it's very predictable. Then the rest would be proportionate to how much we invest in ads. So if we invest a lot in the one-off product, we're going to break even pretty much all the time. So we're making a little bit of profit and not much.
Speaker 1:But those people are now in the mailing list. They're going to come to the live. Some of them joined the other programs and end up having a lifetime value that is much bigger. So, yeah, the other factor would be how much you spend in ads every month and also constantly having a little bit of a lean magnet to keep your mailing list alive, because the mailing list is something that is very dynamic, I think like there's like there's a rotation of people, so I can have a mailing list all the year. Let's say that has about the same size, but maybe one third of the list will have changed. You know constantly people coming and going and you have to put new oil on the fire all the time to keep the mailing list alive. So what?
Speaker 2:amount are you spending a month on ads? Because that sounds like one of your biggest costs probably.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at the moment we're about 40 to 50,000 a month on ads. That would bring about 45 to 55 000 a month on one of courses, which can be maybe 500 new customers, new paying customers. So those are like new leads and customer at the same time. So it's like high value customer, I value leads.
Speaker 2:Let's say that and why not spend more on that? If you go higher, does the return on ad spend start to drop and you kind of can't, can't justify it anymore we're in the process of scaling it.
Speaker 1:so far the best we scale was maybe to 60 000 a month. But the rhythm at which you have to produce like new creatives and like be on ads all the time, it's a lot. We're like a small team of three persons full time and we're having like some consultants here and there for small things, but, yeah, only three person to manage ads at this level, like it's, and creating, like updating sales pages and giving the classes and making the creatives and shooting the videos. Like we have enough work for now. So we're in the way, but it's taking the time it's taking.
Speaker 2:How many new creatives do you need to come up with? A month to kind of carry on that ad spend.
Speaker 1:I personally dedicate four hours a week to content creation for marketing. So I would film myself, I would take new pictures, so I'd say it's probably one new video a week. Let's say that. And the lifespan of a creative really depends. But in this rb initiative sounds like it's not too long. We kind of have to produce a lot of content because it gets like seen too often quickly okay, I was chatting with the there's.
Speaker 2:There's somebody it might be worth you having a chat with. I can intro you afterwards if it's useful. He gave a talk at dcx london about how they're running. I forget what the number was, but it was something like 2000 new creatives per year or per month. It was some number. I was like what, how do you even like manage that, you know? Which was like super interesting to hear kind of what's working for him for doing like ads on the front end. Okay, so let's go back a little step because we've got a lot of stuff we've gone through. I want to recap, but then I think there's some like gaps in here that I need to kind of get my head around a little bit. So you've got traffic sources of facebook ads, google ads, youtube. Facebook ads is the biggest one you're pointing people to. Uh, you've got a percentage of the ad spend goes to pointing people to just lead magnets to get them on the emails. About how much a month is that?
Speaker 1:Maybe 5,000 a month on lead magnets.
Speaker 2:And then you've got an additional about 35,000 to 45,000. That's going into direct sales and with that you're pointing people to an individual course that they can buy If they go to the checkout page. It's two-step checkout If they go and they put in their email address, they join your email list, and if they don't check out, well, they're still on your email list, which is great. What price point are you generally selling stuff for when you've got that front-end kind of offer?
Speaker 1:We're under $100, but more on the higher end. I started $49. I increased to 59, then 69, then 79, then 89 and it did not really affect the conversion so much and we're still profitable. So we kept it that price, which is good, like everyone well, not everyone, but good. A lot of people have this money to spend on a first time purchase nice, okay, and what have you found in terms of the conversion rate from?
Speaker 2:can you take us? Do you know those numbers? Can you take us through? Like you know? Cost per click conversion rate to sale, like anything? Would you know that off the top of your head? I don't want to put you on the spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it would be easier if I had the stats in front of me. But let's say we're able to be profitable up front, so the cost per acquisition is definitely under $90 for a first sale. Of course, there's not a perfect exclusion in Facebook ads, so you're going to have some people who already know you, who are already warmed up somehow, and I have some people who already know you who are already warmed up somehow. Let's say, in average we maybe get 60% of new customers, 40% of people who were already in the mailing list but not necessarily active, and saw an ad again later and eventually purchased. But those people they had the chance to buy this product on the mailing list before and they didn't. Maybe they did not open, they did not see it, but they receive later an ad on Facebook and they're oh yeah, I was on your mailing list, I'm going to buy.
Speaker 1:So this proportion, like of course, would influence. So in perfectly cold traffic probably we wouldn't be profitable. So that's what I'm saying. If someone is starting just now, maybe perfectly cold traffic sounds like it's not profitable, but a percentage of those people will buy again later and that's going to become profitable in the course of maybe six months or a year. So yeah, the metrics Cost per click can depend one, two dollars, depending on the ads. I can't say on the top of my head.
Speaker 2:Apologies for putting you on the spot. Then you've got, so that gave us like about 50,000 or a bit under a month and you're at 150 000 a month altogether. So it's 100 ish plus a month that comes from um, either core sales to existing members or the membership. So how much is the? What does the membership make up a month in terms of revenue? Because you got out of your, your total, your three tiers yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's say we're having a two tiers membership. Maybe it's about a 70 80 000 a month okay, let's wow.
Speaker 2:So the vast majority is from the membership okay yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So like a good like, we're starting the month and we're already made like a good amount of our number by just the membership, which is a. It's a very low risk business. It's so relaxed because month and we're already made like a good amount of our number by just the membership, which is a. It's a very low risk business. It's so relaxed because you know you're already have this, even if you sleep this month, you're going to make that. But if we're thinking about the future, you always have to make tests. You always have to prepare for when things are not going to be as easy. So that's what we do. So we get, like the new customers from the ads, we're launching promotions to the list and we're also dedicating a little bit of time of just trying stuff all the time.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, cool. Yeah, I'm a massive fan of having the recurring payments. Like that's basically how my business works is that we do sell individual courses and that's cool. But most of it comes from a group coaching program or ongoing consultancy with people or done for you clients, and that is just people stick around for like a year, two years, and it's like you kind of know like once someone starts with you, you help them to succeed and then they want to carry on and they want to, you know, do more stuff the next month. It's like I see I have friends who are running businesses where every month they have to start again from scratch with sales and it's like it does make me feel a little bit, a little bit sick, because it's like you can't, you can't screw up on the sales side of things any one month. You know it's tricky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's just like the way you think about things. You're going to have to do some work anyway. It's better to do it for money, that which is going to come back every month, and we're doing for just the one. Of course it's. It's almost the same setup, it's just the messaging or the way you presenting is a little bit different. Maybe the conversion rates are a little bit different, but it's pretty much the same work. So better to think this way if you want to have a business, if you want to have a business that makes money more automatically.
Speaker 2:I think, course businesses can be different, like I've definitely definitely got a lot of clients who are just selling courses each month and that runs fine. Like I think, partly because the margin is so good, in course businesses Like so, therefore, you know, if you do well one month and the next month is not so good, it's like that's all right because you haven't got that much payroll to pay or whatever. But it does sound lovely what's working for you in terms of having that, just like. You've got that 70,000, 80,000, that's just there. You know that's coming in.
Speaker 1:I guess it depends of the niche and the problem you're helping with your course as well. There's things you're going to need just a one-time fix and it's done. Other things are going to be over time and there's courses you can maybe sell cheaper but get tons of tons of customers. Maybe the audience is more restricted here, Like there can be so many factors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a whole like I heard someone describe it once as like a mixing desk. You've got all these levers, all these things that you can push up and down that like to try and make it just right for your, for your audience, okay, cool, anything else that you find it's like a bit of wisdom that you have gained that you'd love to share with the audience in terms of stuff that's been difficult or you figured out eventually, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Well, I mentioned it quickly is the amount of tests, like when something works is the worst moment to go take a vacation. So I'd rather say it's good to think about a new angle, a new way to get the result, the most optimized way to get to your point, because there are some things happening and things stop working and that's very scary. Like if you've been doing Facebook ads as well, everything goes fine and then suddenly the cost per lead is three times more than yesterday, for no reason, and nothing works anymore. It's like that all the time, all the time. But we still manage to scale, we still manage to find solutions. So you constantly have to be okay today we're gonna try a new thing, or let's try that new type of creative. I'm preparing for my next creative already in advance. That's where the Facebook ads. But that's the same thing sometimes with the offers. So we're having an offer that's working well, but then you start to see the conversion rate is lower and lower.
Speaker 1:What's going on? Send a survey, try already to find a new offer or repackage it so it's already gonna be working better next time. Same thing with the mailing list. People are not opening. Why Just list? People are not opening, why? Just look at all your headlines, all the titles, try to find a new way of writing, remove the banner, I don't know, try things. So yeah, testing and trying we do constantly. For that, of course, you have to listen to the metrics a lot. So we have like a big dashboard with, like what we do weekly, the target, how much it costs. Were we profitable on ads this week If we had the live event? What was the attendance? Was it cost? Were we profitable on ads this week if we had the live event? What was the attendance? Was it better, worse than last time? So we're constantly comparing and wondering are we going up, are we going down? And as soon as it goes down a bit, we're like, okay, let's, let's find ideas but the audio listeners flow has just rolled her sleeves up and it's getting to work.
Speaker 2:I love that all right, cool, if someone wants to go check out your website, see what you're up to. Uh, where should they go?
Speaker 1:well, they have to go on the French version of the name, so it's aridesseincom artanddrawingcom, so you can probably look in John's description to find it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's a website for people who want to become obvious artists when I was doing the intro for this episode, I I tried pronouncing it in the french version and florence was just like, just say, art and drawing. You can see she's just like. Your french accent is so bad it's painful to me but french fits so well with art nice, okay, cool.
Speaker 2:So art and drawing. We'll put the link to the french version in the, the actual website address in the description and the show notes for the for the podcast version of this so you can go check it out. Anything else you want to leave people with before you go well, it's great to build a business about your passion.
Speaker 1:I think every passion could probably be monetized, but everyone also has to think about if this is what they want. Personally, I love it because business is also a passion. So I mix my passion for marketing and art and I have a business that works. That allows me to travel, but some people I know will have a hard time making art or making music after, which is not my case. To me, it allowed me to have actually more time to do personal projects. But, yeah, I think it's more a message for everyone who wants to live from their passion. Just think about how you would balance your life and if you also love business enough to just do business, because it has to be a passion, I think nice flo.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for coming on the show. I really really appreciate it. Uh, you're coming on and sharing your experiences with everybody. It's been a fantastic episode. Uh, thank you very much thank you, john.