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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 Man Who Made $1.6M Teaching Pole Dancing
🔥 Get the complete guide that shows you exactly how to turn your checkout page into a conversion machine: https://datadrivenmarketing.co/orderpage
Dan Rosen expected maybe 200 people to join his free challenge. 10,000 people later, he accidentally launched a course business that would generate over $1.6 million - despite operating in one of the most censored industries on social media.
In this episode, Dan reveals how he built his pole dancing course empire using strategies that go against conventional wisdom. While most course creators chase email subscribers, Dan's biggest revenue driver comes from an entirely different source. While others play it safe with content, Dan explains why you sometimes have to tell people what they don't want to hear.
Most surprising? Dan admits he's been leaving massive money on the table with one marketing channel - and explains why that might actually be good news if you're making the same mistake.
You'll discover why starting "for free" can be your biggest competitive advantage, the psychology behind why people abandon purchases at the last second and how to stop it, and how to build a profitable course business in a heavily censored niche. Dan also shares the counterintuitive reason word-of-mouth became his primary sales driver and why "pure intentions" aren't just nice to have but essential for long-term success.
📍 Website: https://poldancewithdan.com
🤝 Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.
They are strict with their content on there. So a lot of our stuff gets deleted, even though it's not pornographic in any way whatsoever. As soon as they see a poll, as soon as anything like that comes up, they just delete your content and sometimes your account just get banned. Word of mouth actually probably is the biggest seller for me. They've scrolled, they've scrolled. Now they're 10 scrolls deep. They're not going to be buying anything off of you. You need to catch them in that moment. I did it for free, because it wasn't for them, it was for me and they were joining in with me, and it just turned into something bigger than I thought it was going to be. I thought maybe we'd get maybe 100, 200 of us. Well, 10,000 people. Later I had 10,000 people doing this challenge with me.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling online courses. We are here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is Jon Ainsworth and today's guest is Dan Rosen. Now Dan describes himself as a pole dancer instructor and occasional Instagram menace. Known for his iconic tricks, hilariously unfiltered teaching style and infectious energy, he's helped thousands of dancers worldwide to feel stronger, more confident and more themselves on the pole, and we're going to talk today about how Dan has built this business to make $1.6 million so far teaching courses on pole dancing, why he thinks you have to put out courses and content with pure intentions, and why you can't be loved by everyone and sometimes you have to tell people the things they don't want to hear.
Speaker 1:Dan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you, god, I should get you to do my introductions to me all the time. That was amazing instruction. That was wow. You're a very good hype man, yeah. Love that Love that it was perfect. I'd love to know, so tell me a little bit more about. I've been going through your site have a little look, but like, can you tell me a bit more about like, who do you help with your courses? What kind of problem are you solving for?
Speaker 1:so, um, yeah, I'm a pole dancer, so, like my main customers are obviously pole dancers, I, during covid, I, um, well, before let's go back before covid, before covid, online pole dancing was not really a thing. We had a few people in the space but it wasn't very popular because we just all we ever knew in this industry was using pole studios, like going to a studio and learning from a pole studio. So then when COVID happened, we had no choice. We all had to go online and many of us were like, actually, this is actually quite good, like it's not a bad environment to learn in. You kind of have your own space to kind of learn at your own pace. So it became quite popular, especially during covid, because we couldn't go to the studios. So it's very much like gyms, a lot of the gyms working online.
Speaker 1:So were we, and at the beginning, I'll be honest, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. We all were just like trying our best. I just set up zoom classes for my. So I actually had a studio at the time like a physical studio in hemel Hempstead and, um, yeah, I basically was just funneling my uh customers through that business, but obviously a lot of these customers that were coming to me were from all over the world. Um, so it was really a really interesting time where I just literally scrimped by the skin of my teeth. Really, it was just like I just about got through it with tech, the technology side of it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and it was, it basically ended up becoming that when we went into our I think it was the first like we were near the end of the first lockdowns, maybe, and we were then going into like the new year and I was like do you know what? I'd gotten to a point where I was like I need something to kind of boost my own morale and kind of get me back training again, because we'd all kind of like been at home so we just were teaching. Really we were every training for ourselves. I need to get some strength back. So I was like I basically put it out there to all of my instagram following. I was like right, guys, do you want to? Who wants to do conditioning with me? Like three like every day. We're going to do it every day, 30 minutes. We'll just do it together. I thought maybe we could, maybe 100, 200 of us.
Speaker 1:Well, 10,000 people later, 10,000 people doing this challenge with me and I just had to learn as I went and like. At first I was like, oh, I'm going to do it all on Facebook. No, that was a nightmare. No, we're not going to do it on Facebook, we're going to do it through Zoom. Wait, I can't fit more than this amount of people on Zoom. I need Zoom webinars, zoom webinars. I was just learning as I was going. It was free anyway, so people were just really grateful for the challenge and doing that good service opened up my online platform, which is the pole destroyers, which is basically, um, just all like everything, pole with dan rose, and basically I've got some guests that teach on there as well. And, yeah, that's really how my business started was through covid.
Speaker 2:So what was different between that that? So you said you were teaching pole dancing online during COVID and then you started doing the conditioning thing. So why do you think it was the conditioning bit that really took off? Because I think.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I think it is? I think at the time I was just being really honest about my story. I was suffering with mental health at the time because I'm very much a routine person and during COVID we couldn't leave the house. That was very unlike me. Don't get me wrong. I love being at home, but I just was not used to being at home so much. I was a traveling pole dancer. I was always in different countries, I was always teaching people in different locations, and then all of a sudden I was like, oh, I'm at home 24 seven and it was nice in some ways, but in other ways it just, yeah, it was really difficult because it was just too much change for me A change which ended up being amazing for me, can I just add. So I'm really grateful for it.
Speaker 1:But at the beginning I suffered really badly and then, as a result of that, I ended up gaining loads of weight and I was like, right, how can I get myself back into this? And I was like, right, how can I get myself back into this? And I think because my followers and stuff were like, oh my God, I'm in the same position as you Like, yes, me too, like so many of us were like right, let's do this together. Do you know what I mean? I think it created that sense of community and I think that's why it's done well. So I think that's why it was just right place, right time, interesting.
Speaker 2:Interesting and where were you building an audience? Was it YouTube or Instagram or, like what was you mentioned, instagram, yeah it's mainly Instagram.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm on TikTok but honestly I'm too old for TikTok. I love watching TikTok. I feel like TikTok is such a great place for like, if you just want some feel good videos. I find my feed on there is quite feel good, whereas my feed on Instagram can be a little bit less fun. Um, because it's mainly poll stuff rather than like fun dog and cat videos but, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I find, like on tiktok, I'm just not as good on it and I wasn't posting on it consistently when it first sort of started. So I kind of relate to the game with that. Um. Yeah, so with like, obviously, different tools online that I've found to be able to post to multiple platforms at the same time, I've now started posting on there. Not as many on there, I've got like 114,000. I think it is on my maybe 13 on my page and then on my TikTok page it's five or 6,000.
Speaker 1:It's not very much at all but, you know it's extra people and let's who knows, they might become customers one day.
Speaker 2:So it's one of those things, right one of the things we found with tiktok so far and I'm always open to like seeing if there's anything that's changed is that even clients of ours who've got really big tiktok audiences, like maybe a million people on tiktok, they're still not making money from tiktok. They make money from instagram. They make much, much more from YouTube per subscriber or viewer or what have you, and then TikTok seems to be just like this black hole of money where it's like I know that people make money with TikTok, but it doesn't seem to be any of our clients and I don't quite know it, you don't quite get it, you know.
Speaker 1:Like I don't think it would. I don't know that. It's the place for course sales.
Speaker 2:Do you what I mean?
Speaker 1:like I don't know yeah, I don't know that it's the sort of place where you sell courses. Feel like tiktok is the place where you make money with content. You don't make money on tiktok through course sales. I mean, you might like don't get wrong you might sell course on there, but I feel like it's a generational thing. I think more of my generation, you know, 37 year olds and that sort of age, we're mainly on instagram and, I'll be honest, within my community as well.
Speaker 1:Uh, the reason why we're all on instagram is because that's where our community kind of originated, really was like youtube, and then we moved to instagram and we've just always been there. We can save our like videos and stuff easier there and it's a lot easier to sort of like communicate with other poll dancers on there. So it's just kind of been the hub really for poll. And also one thing I will say is the other reason why we don't use tiktok as much is because, um, they are strict with their content on there. So a lot of our stuff gets deleted, even though it's not pornographic in any way whatsoever. As soon as they see a poll, as soon as anything like that comes up, they just delete your content and sometimes your account just get banned.
Speaker 1:So yeah, instagram's more chill than tiktok about that. That's fascinating. It's still not chill I really still not chill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's actually a struggle that we face in the porn industry is that, um, we're heavily filtered, we get shadow banned a lot. I'm actually really lucky. I think because I'm a guy, it makes a difference, which is terrible. I know it shouldn't be that way, but because I'm a man, because I wear a lot more clothing, maybe my style is more like, even when I'm dancing, like I'm doing dance routine stuff, like even when I'm wearing heels, I'll be pretty fully clothed, whereas you know, our industry came from the sex industry. It came from the clubs, you know.
Speaker 1:So it's like a lot of the outfits that the girls wear. If they're doing a heels routine would be a skimpy outfit. A sexy outfit, um, you know, to keep it authentic to what it is, but also because obviously we need grip on the pole as well. That's the main. One of the main reasons why is because we need to be able to grip our skin onto the pole. But also the girls want to feel sexy. They want to feel good, because why shouldn't they? But the problem with that is it means that instagram end up either shadow banning you or, in worst cases for many people, just having their accounts deleted, which really sucks do you know?
Speaker 2:uh, mimi, midnight, I do, of course. Yeah, she's a client of ours and um, that makes so much sense.
Speaker 1:Can I just tell you why that makes sense? Yeah, if you're listening to this, this is gonna be so funny, because me and my friend were messaging and we were like mimi's changed, like something has changed, but I probably like the way she's posting has changed. We were like she's up to something. I was like, oh, let's just so. We just kind of kept watching and I found it really interesting because I really liked some of the marketing strategies she's been using and I knew instantly that she was using a marketing strategy company of some sort to help her with it and like getting her like all of her sort of evergreen products and all these sorts of things, all the funnels and stuff. I was, oh, it's really good to see.
Speaker 1:And you know, actually we don't have many poll dancers that really do it uh, because it's kind of frowned upon in a way in our industry. We just have this really weird thing in our industry where people feel like it's bad to make money. Yeah, I don't know it sounds really weird, but, like a lot of people don't like me because I'm very business orientated, I I know that this is an industry where I'm not gonna be able to do this first in my life, so my priority is my retirement. So I'm not going to be able to do this for the rest of my life, so my priority is my retirement. So I'm very much like I want to make sure that I work really hard now so that I don't have to be in hard times later down the line.
Speaker 1:But a lot of people just don't agree with that. We're very much like a struggling artist mindset. My job really is just trying to change that mindset and be like hey, we can still be artists and make money, guys like we should be making money. So yeah, um, but it gets mixed reviews, should we say yeah, there's.
Speaker 2:I didn't. My impression for a long time of art anybody artistic was like, oh okay, well, that's, that's very worthy and I'm sure you really enjoy it, but you can't make. You know, you can't really make money. It's very hard, very hard to make money that way. But I think with a lot of this stuff, it's much more doable If you can build an audience for your art.
Speaker 2:Like we've got a client of ours who teaches how to paint watercolors in a way that is true to yourself and is allowing you to use self-expression. He only teaches that to French-speaking people. He's doing great. It's just like that doesn't sound like a thing that would you know where you'd be making loads of money with it, but it's like, yeah, because he's good at youtube and so therefore he's able to build an audience, and it's not even like a massive audience that he's built, but he's really good at that. So, okay, cool. So let's take a step back. So you work, started working. When did you start building your instagram account? Did it? Was it with covid, or was that when you just started taking more seriously?
Speaker 1:oh no, it was before that. I probably I wouldn't say I had over a hundred thousand before covid, or maybe it was in the 80s or 90s, um, but yeah, and it just slowly goes up. The difficulty with poll is that we get really unlucky with the fact that obviously a lot of our stuff tends to get like banned or whatever. So then for a little while we'll just lose followers and then we'll gain loads of followers. So like, yeah, I, I will probably always sit around these, or like 100 ish mark. I think the difficulty for me as well is that I'm in such a niche market in the sense that you know a lot of the girls. For example, like Mimi, she'll be able to tell you like, so, um, you know, she will have a male following, she'll have men that enjoy watching her content, right, um, she'll also have women that, just you know, appreciate what she can do, flexibility wise, and then she'll have pole dancers to follow her.
Speaker 1:For me, I have women that pole dance. They're following me. No, straight men are following me. A gay men don't really follow me either, because it's that whole thing of like you know I'm married anyway, so I'm married also like, not the conventional like I feel like gay men don't really want to watch other gay men dancing in heels, and that's okay with me because I'm married anyway and then, yeah, it's like you know, women who aren't pole dancing wouldn't necessarily randomly follow a male pole dancer. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:So my, my following is, I'd say, majority it's got to be majority pole dancers, because I know that when I look at the little charts on instagram, it literally is like 98 women and like two percent men. I have a really low following of men, but you know what this is a good thing. I always say to people as well I work with a lot of people on their like, social media strategy and things like this for like if they want to do what I'm doing, and they're always like oh you know, I've only got 5 000 followers like this. I would rather have 5 000 followers that I can sell something to than 100 000 followers that are all men just watching me dance. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:I I want people who are actually going to be invested in what I do, so I think that's really important yeah, I mean we've got what I mean instagram, maybe 2 000 followers, 1 000 subscribers, 1400 subscribers on youtube, and we're doing over a million a year with it. It's like it's not it's not a direct correlation. Is it?
Speaker 1:you know it's like a million dollars. Yeah, all right, I thought you meant pounds. I was like that's even more impressive. Yeah, working on that. I mean to be fair, at the moment, the dollar is basically the same, isn't it? So, yeah, it's probably not that far off. It's probably about 800 and something thousand pounds, though, isn't it.
Speaker 2:Ballpark Amazing, so good. So is there like a process you've got at the moment of how to get somebody from following you on instagram to buying courses from you? Do you occasionally post stuff on instagram? Do you get them onto an email list? Like what's your kind of approach?
Speaker 1:I've got an email list I post on instagram. I run ads, um word of mouth. Actually, probably is the? Um the biggest seller for me. I think when people post their progress and stuff, I tend to get people through that because people will be like, oh my God, like who did it? It's very much like um, it's very similar. It's like PTs, like when they see their friend has lost loads of weights and they're like, oh my God, I'm going to go and lose some weight too With mine. It's like, wow, she's gotten really strong, she's gotten really good at pole, I'm going to go, and this program too. So, yeah, um, mine mainly comes through that, I would say.
Speaker 1:Secondary to that, I would say, would be through instagram, my instagram following, then it'd probably be ads and then last it would probably be email. Actually, because my emails, I mean I get sales through. I just find that, um, I've got more people on instagram on my mailing list. I didn't start until quite late, so I've probably only got oh god, I don't think I've got over 10 000 people on the mailing list, which I know is still really, really good. But when you compare 10 000 people on the mailing list to 114 000 on socials. It tends to work out.
Speaker 2:I get a few more sales through socials, so yeah, and what are you doing to get people onto the email list? Is that through your site or you point them directly? Do you use many chat, get them on from instagram or yeah, use many chat.
Speaker 1:I get them on from instagram. Um, normally it'll just be a case like if they go to my website, a little pop-up comes up. I register it on there because I do a lot of like freebies. So I do a lot of sort of like freebies where you can get like free pdfs to help them with certain things and like links to stuff and people have to be on my mailing list for that. Um, so a lot of it comes what I'm just checking out the moment.
Speaker 2:I'm just going through your, your site and your instagram just trying to see like how, how often do you think you are linking, you're setting up one of those freebies?
Speaker 1:how often have you got something that you uh, the freebies not so often at the moment because I have just been manic working. I literally just got back from a tour in canada. I've got somebody works for me, but she only works for me part-time, um, and then I, uh, my partner got a job in Dubai. So now, literally, I literally today I'm actually sat in my living room at the moment because my house has basically been empties. So I'm like, yeah, so I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna sit in in the living room, which is the only one with a sofa left. So, yeah, I'm just like just managing until we move. But, um, so it's just been absolutely manic, so I just really haven't had the time. But normally when I do them, it'll be like it might be a link to a blog, it might be a link to a YouTube video that I've made that's unlisted, it might be a PDF document of like you know it could.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I try to repurpose stuff as well. So sometimes, like I might have a blog that I'll repurpose into a pdf and I'll be like, hey, if you want this sent to you, and then they do through many chat stuff. But a lot of it probably is just, yeah, through, like um, if I've ever been doing like challenges and stuff. I'll be like hey guys, if you want to do this challenge, make sure you're on my mailing list. It's going to go out to everyone on there, so normally people sign up because of that. I guess I just give them a reason, yeah, to sign up to it and then hopefully they remain on yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool, that sounds good. Um, for anyone who's uh, listening and and doesn't know about this with instagram, could you talk them through? Like that process of using many chat, like what is it that they need to? Somebody needs to do like kind of commenting the free, the phrase word and then so the key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like many chat is a is a tool you can use. I know there's others, I mean many chat is just the one that I use. It's the first one I found out about. Many chat is a tool where people can use key. You can choose a keyword and you can be like I'll comment strength below and I'll send you a link to um. You know my program. They comment strength and it not only obviously increases your engagement because you've got people commenting on your stuff, it will also reply to their comment for you saying that they've sent it and it will automatically send the information. And I think, especially with us and like selling online courses and stuff, we really have to try and catch people in that instant moment. So when I see people do it manually and I can see that maybe they haven't messaged people back, I'm just like you might have lost them at that point because they've scrolled. They've scrolled. Now they're 10 scrolls deep. They're not going to be buying anything off of you. You need to catch them in that moment.
Speaker 2:So it was a really useful tool for me yeah, yeah, many chats, the one who nearly all of our clients who are doing Instagram are using. And, in case anybody doesn't know, the reason that you need to do this with Instagram is you can't put links in the comments, so you can't say, just click the link in the comment and then get taken to a landing page where you can then go and opt in. They just don't allow that. You can only have links in your bio, which is a pain in the butt. So ManyChat is kind of the workaround for this. Comment this, your bio, which is a pain in the butt. So many chats kind of the workaround for this. Comment this and then somebody comments it. Then they guess that they get sent the resource or send the link to it. Okay, and so email marketing wise, you've got this list of 10 000, but you said you don't get that many sales from it. What kind of email promotions are you doing? How often you're doing them?
Speaker 1:yeah, well, that's do you know what's so funny? It's actually just a couple of hours ago I had a meeting with the woman who helped me set up my email automations, because I've only really again, I've only really recently gotten into it. I've been really bad with it. I just didn't. I used MailChimp for a little while. I just like they were just really generic. I never really knew how to make them look good.
Speaker 1:I didn't know how to structure like the funnels and stuff like how to, like, you know, it triggers when someone does this, it triggers when someone does this, and now she's like got this fancy setup sorted for me, so it's all connected through Zapier to my website and so that's really good. So literally I'm in the process now of just like actually getting the body of the email sorted and then, once that body of the email is sorted, it will then basically automatically email people. So when they, you know, don't they go to the checkout, but they don't check out, when they, you know, when they sign up and then cancel, and they, you know, have been away for six months and all these sorts of things. We've just got these automatic emails going out. So definitely I'm going to be better at that, but not yet. So I'll come back to you in six months, yeah.
Speaker 2:I would say, like the email side of things is in this kind of business, it's where about 80% of the potential revenue is. So if you're not making much money through email at the moment, in some ways that's a really good thing, because it means you can be making a whole load more once you get your marketing game figured out. So I'll we can talk it this window I'm absolutely boiling in here.
Speaker 1:But yeah, no 100, I actually know as well. I feel like when you do really well through one form of like uh, marketing which for me was instagram you kind of just get complacent because you're like, oh, this is going great, I'm making great money, and you're like, why would I need to do anything else? And I I kick myself now because I literally just what you said, like when I first started this platform up. If I had like really gone fully in and done the whole, like email marketing, instagram, all of these different funnels to funnel it all into you know, the end product, god knows how much I could have, I could have done in sales. But you know what, at the time it wasn't really about the money for me, it was mainly about the training for me. I wish I'd been a little bit more business orientated back then than I am now. But it's fine, like it's still, and even now it still does great. It's just. Yeah, I've just got a few things that I need to get better at, and emails is one of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean and that's kind of why I started the business it's just that I could see there's so many people like you who are great at creating content on socials, great at creating courses. People love the courses. But there's just this step in between which is like, okay, well, how do we get more of those people to buy the courses, which is email, marketing and funnels. It's just like a whole different set of skills that people don't have, you know. So that's kind of why I'd, uh, originally got started with this to be like, okay, well, let's, let's help all these people running course businesses to make the kind of money that they they potentially can, and did you start making your own courses?
Speaker 1:was that how you started?
Speaker 2:no, no, I started by just working with course creators on this so that I made my own courses by. So the way that we worked was we started out with a done for you service and then we also added in one-to-one coaching, where we would help people do it, and then we added in group coaching and then to create the group, make the group coaching program better, I had to create a course for it. So it's kind of worked backwards, down from done and we still do all of those. So we still have all of those available um, who are your courses through?
Speaker 1:can I ask, just just intrigued to know what platform you use?
Speaker 2:We've just swapped over to Circle because the membership part of things is really important. We had the courses hosted on ClickFunnels before, which is great for funnels well in certain ways and terrible, for course, hosting.
Speaker 1:But it's what we've had.
Speaker 2:It was like ah, it kind of works all right. Circle's really good for the membership side of things in the community we were using because it's really, really it's a big deal for a lot of our group coaching clients that they can message and ask questions in some way online, and so we were using slack and then slack changed their uh way that people could ask questions and message to be so that we had to pay for every single client of ours who was then asking us questions in there and it started to add up and it was just like this isn't the best system, it's just the one we've already got and it's expensive, so let's swap over to something that's better for this. But most clients are using Teachable or Kajabi. That's the majority of clients. I'd say, yeah, I'd heard of Kajabi like that's the, that's the majority of clients.
Speaker 1:I'd say, yeah, I'd heard of. Could you have you heard of um use screen?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, you screen, yeah, yeah I've got a friend who uses you screen. Do you know what? This is the thing. They've all got their, their pluses and minuses. This is the thing like and I don't, I haven't left teachable because it's one of those things where I'm like if it's not broken, don't fix it. But one of my friends, for example, he has got a platform on um on what's it called you screen, and then when he's on you screen, when his customers like unsubscribe, it'll offer them these offers and stuff, whereas teachable doesn't have that function yet. But they're constantly trying to improve. So that's why I've always kind of stuck with them, because they've actually done really good for me, to be fair. But there's just a few things that I'm just to be like why does this system not have this? You know, it's like, yeah, why have you not implemented this? Surely you could have implemented this by now, but yeah, but I don't know the ins and outs of running a website like that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you know, when you're a bit like it's perfect, but it's like it could be so much better, you know, yeah what happened with teachable is they were started by a guy who was really passionate about it and then he sold it to a private equity firm and so everything's kind of become more corporate and more focused around just how do they make money out of it. But what's really ironic with Teachable is in terms of they want to be able to make more money. Their checkout pages are appalling. Their sales page options are appalling. It's really hard to make good high-converting sales and checkout pages in teachable, so we, when we're working with clients, will often move over from the, the funnel, from teachable, to click funnels and then it converts, but you still keep teachable as the back end for actually hosting hosting that's pretty much what I've done so like really, what are you using?
Speaker 1:so I've got. I don't know if this is what you meant, but like so I. So I've got my WordPress website. So my, I've got a guide. I say my WordPress website, like I made it. I haven't got a clue how to do that stuff, but I had a website guy make my website for me and basically all my sales pages and stuff are on there. It gives you all the information that you need to purchase the product, tells you what level you want to be and paying. Um, that's through teachable. Everything else is through my website because, like you said, it's terrible.
Speaker 1:Like I just hated their site, like hated the way it looks. I didn't like how unuser friendly it was. Some of the pages used to take ages to load and I was like, right, I'm just gonna speak to a computer guy and just be like help me. And he was like let's do it all off of the platform for sales and then onto the platform just to do the checkout and then, once they're in, they can just access, because accessing the platform is pretty good. It's mainly just like the sales side of it.
Speaker 1:Yes, I feel like the platform actually in terms of how it's laid out and stuff I mean, apart from the fact that it doesn't have, like I wish it had some sort of search bar so people could search certain classes. That'd be awesome. But like you can just press ctrl and f right and you can just find it that way. But for people who don't know how to do stuff like that, it's like you know. I know that if that had been me before I knew how to do things like that I would have been looking for a search bar to try and search for certain classes, and they don't have that yet. But again, it's feedback that I've given them and I hope that all these little improvements they're going to do later down the line, but for now it's doing good and I guess the difficulty is that you know, circle is another one that I hadn't heard of, but it's one of those things where I'm like if I looked at it and it looked perfect, I still probably wouldn't really be able to move over to it, because when you have such a base of customers in one place, to move them all, they all have to cancel and re-sign up again.
Speaker 1:I can't just be like, hey, can you move all their direct debit details over, because they can't legally do that. So it's just um, it's really difficult because I really I actually really got really close to moving them all over to you screen and um and they were like, oh, they were like we can move their details over, we just can't move their payment details over, so they'll have to sign up again. I'm like, well, that's me out yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the sale your sales pages. I'm just checking them out now. In fact, I'm going to share screen, if that's all right, and so anybody who's watching the video version of this will be able to check it out. It's going to be the part where you pick apart my sales screen. This is wait a sec. Can you see this all right? Yeah, this is showing okay. So let's go and look at your. This is your um, this is your site, and if I go through the classes and then choose plan like, this is all looking very beautiful, which is great. Um, I definitely can give you some feedback about like the, the headline and some stuff on the sales page, but the look of it, the, the branding, the style, the, the layout is all great. And then if someone clicks through to the checkout page, they're seeing this which is.
Speaker 2:It's functional. This is the teachable one, right? But it's not. Yeah, that's the teachable page. It's missing a lot of stuff that's like really good for conversion optimization. So a lot of people don't realize this, but the kind of check, a kind of conversion rates you get on checkout pages is, for most people, only about like 10 to 15 percent, which means you've got people all the way through the sales process and then like 85 of them 90 sometimes are dropping out at that point.
Speaker 2:And the reason is because people, when they get to this stage, they get really kind of nervous. They're like oh, I've actually got to part with the cash now and i've've got to put my credit card details in, and what if I'm not getting the right thing? And what have you? And so you need to have things on the page in order to make them feel reassured Testimonials, reminder of the product that they're getting, reminder of the benefits of it, but just little bits, tiny little snippets from on the sales page. So this is an example of one that we've uh, I think we've redone this recently. So, yeah, this is not absolutely perfect, but it's way, way better.
Speaker 1:This one you're talking about now is through teachable no, so we move this.
Speaker 2:So this is in sam car. You'll see in the um the thing, uh, uh url here so you can still have the course on teachable but the checkout page somewhere else as well sam car, thrive car, that kind of thing. So it means you don't have to move everything off Teachable. This is still a faff right to move this stuff over. It's not like it's no work, but it sometimes, depending on what kind of stuff you're launching, is enough to be worth it. And then after that, from then on, you've always got it on the new platform. So you'll see, here we've got a bunch of little things that all make a difference. So it's got a thing saying that it's 100% safe and secure. There's a URL as an email address if someone needs some help.
Speaker 2:That's like a minor thing, but that makes a difference. We've got the fact that it's got lifetime access and we've got the number of testimonials shown and the number of five-star reviews, like a computer and a mobile and an iPad all showing the products. People are like oh, I can get access to it on any of these things. It's got a reminder of what's included in the bonuses. It's got a badge for the guarantee. It's got a reminder that the price is reduced if they get it today and then more details about the guarantee. It's got these two order bumps over here, which you can only do. One order bump design is. It's almost as if they don't want anybody to buy it.
Speaker 1:I know, and again I freaking- hate that about teachable, this is a thing. But again, I kind of got trapped by it because at the time it was just like a rush. I was like, oh, my god, how am I going to do this? I reached out to one person I knew who did online. I was like who are you using each of all? Oh, and they only charged me this. But it's actually really reasonable. I was was like, okay, great, I'll go and sign up for them now, just because I had a review of someone. Had I in hindsight, if I'd had more time, absolutely I probably would have gone with someone else.
Speaker 2:But that page you're using Teachable's good though For the stuff you're using for actually hosting the courses. Teachable's one of the better products. It the sales part of it. So I think you probably made the right choice, because when you're getting started and you're in a hurry, use something easy. I think that's good. Later on at some point. I'm not even saying this is the next thing that you should do. I'm just saying this is a thing in the process that can make a big difference. But sorry, I interrupted you.
Speaker 1:But is that? Yeah, I was just going to say so can link that to teachable. How does that even work? Yeah, zapier, yeah, oh, so it will basically take their details from there and then zap it over to yeah, so you're taking the payment somewhere else and then when they, when the payment is taken, then it sets them up with an account in um, in teachable, which is this way. You have to enable the back end, um, the back office thing. Well, I'm not sure have you heard of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll talk to you about that another time. I assume this is probably really boring for anyone to see now, but yeah, I definitely want to talk to you about that because I definitely these are all little technology things that again, like I said, because when I started I just knew nothing about all of this. So this world and it really is like it's been eye-opening. Um, I just didn't even know that some of this stuff was possible. Like zapier, I didn't know I could get this website to tell this website to do this.
Speaker 2:I was like what the hell.
Speaker 1:I still. I'll be honest, I still. Now, when she's setting up for me, I'm like what the hell are you doing? She's like a wizard. I'm like what the hell? That is so clever, can't get over how clever it is. I mean, if she dies, I'm absolutely fucked, basically because I will not know how to do any of that. But yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? Like the technology and this is the thing is that I've slowly kind of gotten into it. Had I been hot on that at the beginning, who knows where I'd be at now.
Speaker 2:So what is next for you? What are you working on next?
Speaker 1:So at the moment, I'm just still, obviously, you know, pushing the online plans because it's my bread and butter and obviously you know, um, pushing the online plans because it's my it's my bread and butter and, to be honest, I actually really love it, like I still love teaching it. We have such a great community of people that do the classes that it makes it really fun for me to do so. I'm still going to continue doing that when I move. It means that, um, I'll have a lot more free time because I'm not going to be in the uk. So when I'm in the uk, I tend to be spending a lot of time out like training with people or, you know, teaching classes or teaching workshops in Europe, whereas, because I'm going to be further away, it'll be harder for me to do that. So it'll give me time to focus on some other online projects I really wanted to.
Speaker 1:I've got a course that I'm going to be releasing for people who are pole dancers that really want to make money from pole and, like I said to you about you know, we've been in this like struggling artist mentality for many years now and, um, I want to really teach people how they can actually make a living from this because so many people do this alongside a full-time job because they can't afford to go full-time into it and there's some of them that I just think it's just so sad when they tell me, like you know, if they're struggling for money and stuff, and I'm like that's really sad, because Tell me, like you know, if they're struggling for money and stuff, and I'm like that's really sad, because you are amazing and you should be, you should be thriving financially from your talents and they're not, and it makes me really sad. So I really want to help people with that.
Speaker 2:Nice, that's cool man. Talk to me. You'd mentioned in the info you'd sent over beforehand that you think that you have to put out courses and content with pure intentions.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by that? Interesting? So I feel like, um, if you're just gonna put a course yeah, I specifically said it that way, I didn't know how to word that but like, I feel like sometimes when you look online, sometimes people would just see the opportunity to make a load of money and they'll just chuck a load of crap out there. And I'm just like I don't like that, because I've bought stuff like that by accidentally before, back when I knew nothing about this industry. And this is the problem is that you know you're paying for these courses and then you find out that they're just trash and it kind of gives all the other courses a bad name. But also, I guess you just don't want to do. You don't want to be selling a course just because you want to make money. I just don't think I you don't want to be selling a cause just because you want to make money. I just don't think.
Speaker 1:I feel like you have to have a passion for actually wanting to educate. I don't think that just doing it because you want to make loads of money Do you know what I mean? It's like when you said about that the people that have bought Teachable now are just about making the money. That makes me really sad because obviously it was originally owned by someone who genuinely had a passion for making sure that people could. You know, I was really passionate about the business and stuff. I think it's got to be balanced. We all want to make money right, but at the same time I just think you've got to do it with good intentions rather than being like, oh, I'm just going to get as much money out of this as possible.
Speaker 2:And I think that's really similar to pretty much everyone we work with. I think there's a couple of different types of people who make money through courses, and nearly everybody who we work with is someone who, first of all, they built up an audience and then the audience wanted some kind of more extra support online and then they made courses for them, and they're that almost always has started from a place of excitement and enthusiasm and knowledge about a topic whereas there's another whole set of people who are like I want to make money online courses as a way to do that.
Speaker 2:How am I? What's the opportunity, what's the niche, what's the, what's the space? And sometimes those people are making bank and they're making loads of money, but the, the background, the intention, the way they're thinking about it, is quite different as a whole. It's almost like a whole different subset. It's almost like a different kind of business in a lot of ways because of the things that they do or don't know, or do the things that they you know, the approaches they take.
Speaker 2:Um, I just wanted to go back. For anybody who's was listening to what I was saying about the checkout pages and wants to go find, learn a little bit more about that. I did two podcast episodes just about checkout pages, um, so there was one with boris on july 24th 2025 called 12 checkout page tricks to get more sales instantly, and that we really went into detail about. Like every one of those little things I just mentioned earlier. I did an episode with yosip uh must have elements of a successful checkout page, may 24th 2023. And then also, if you want to get details about checkout pages, I think I have something on our resources page. I've just gone and had a look and I don't.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's funny.
Speaker 2:Okay, I've got stuff about sales pages and email templates. I might need to make one of those, so let's just see. I'll see if I can get Petra from my team to set this up. If you go to data driven marketingco slash, what should we come up with for it order page? Yeah, do that. Go to data driven marketingco slash order page and I will get a resource set up that's going to give you details of everything you need to have in place to get your checkout page converting really well. Okay, going back to you yeah, so where did we get to? We had, um, why you think there's that kind of pure intentions. I agree with that. I think that make. I think it makes a difference. I think it comes through. It improves the longevity of the business. It improves the word of mouth. That makes you feel better about it. Um, it's. It creates a whole.
Speaker 1:I didn't want it to be misconstrued when I said that. I mean because it's like I know that mimi, for example and I know she won't mind me saying this but obviously she went in a different direction with her course compared to, obviously, what her page was originally about. Yeah, um, because obviously I knew her page was like sexy style, pole and stuff. The truth is, though, is that actually flexibility? It was a really good way for her to transition a skill that she's good at to more than just pole dancers. I really liked that. I'd see that's different, see that's that's wanting to take another skill that you're good at, and just diversifying.
Speaker 1:I don't think that is bad intention, so I didn't mean it in terms of that sort of thing, but yeah, I don't know, I guess, when I said it, I was kind of thinking of like when I did this when I started. When I said it, I was kind of thinking of like, when I did this, when I started it, I did it all for free. So the first month of classes, and people always like what I did it for free because it wasn't for them, it was for me and they were joining in with me, and it just turned into something bigger than I thought it was going to be Um, and I just always say to people I feel like when you do stuff like that and your intentions are pure, the universe is going to give you something good back, so long as you put the work in um and I'm very much like one of those crazy people that's like into like manifestation and all that sort of stuff and I just feel like, by doing that, that service for free, it manifested a business for me and as a thank you, I genuinely believe that. I think that's why people still support me, because they remember when I did that for free, before I made any money from it, you know.
Speaker 2:So yeah, why do you think that you can't be loved by everyone and you have to tell people the things they don't want to hear? Tell me about that.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I mean that in terms of like social media, but also in terms of actually teaching as well, like sometimes when you're teaching people, but also in terms of actually teaching as well. Like sometimes when you're teaching people. It's like when I did a pilot of my social media course for pole dancers, right, and I did it with five other people, and sometimes you have to tell people that necessarily they might not want to hear you know, and it's a difficult thing to do, but I feel like you will gain more loyalty by doing that. And in my classes as well, when I'm teaching people, if something is not right, I will tell you. No, you don't have to be a bitch about it, you don't have to be mean about it, like. I just mean that you have to sometimes just put the hard truths out there, even though you don't want to. And I feel like with social media, a lot of the stuff that I do.
Speaker 1:And, like I said about the fact that we've talked about money on here, some of the people in our industry will be like, oh god, I can't believe they talked about money like that. Do you know what I mean? Because it's like we just have never talked about money in our industry, like it's only recently that I've even started talking about studios and how to make money, because I felt able to, because I sold my studio, and now I'm trying to like, educate people for the studio owners that still exist, because, again, we have this industry where people don't talk about money. It's so weird, like, and people will make comments like if someone, if a studio owner, turns up in a nice new car, they're like oh, that's a nice new car, how did you afford that? It's like, well, why shouldn't they afford that? They're running a business for you, a good quality business. I feel like they should be compensated for that.
Speaker 1:And um, it's really weird because you just I don't know whether it's in any other industries, like I don't know whether the dance industry has, or anything. But yeah, we have a really weird not me, but a lot of people in our industry have a really weird mindset for money. I just don't know how it's come around. Or it's weird that I interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay, if someone's been listening to this and they want to go check out your site, they want to see what you're doing on on Instagram, how you've got it all working. What where should they go?
Speaker 1:Um, I guess the best place is just to go to pole dance with dancom. That's where kind of everything is. Um, yeah, that's probably the best place. And then you can go to um at Dan Rosen pole on Instagram, same again on Tik, but I mainly use Instagram, to be honest, and it's probably the place that you can catch me the best. And, yeah, come and ask me any questions you have. I'd love to hear from you guys.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Thanks so much for coming on, Dan, Really really appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you having me on and please remember I want to remind you how much your support means to me. So if you would take the time, take a moment, to go and review the podcast give us five stars, ideally then it would be absolutely fantastic. You can go to rate this podcast, dot com. Slash online courses and then you can give ratings that it's going to take you to the right spot for, like Spotify or iTunes or whatever. Just link you directly from that. So rate this podcast, dot com. Slash online courses. Thank you, as always, for listening. Really really appreciate you guys. See you next time.