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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
How I Built My Course Business at 18 (And You Can Too)
🔥 Want the free KPI tracking module I mentioned? Email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.co with "KPI tracking" in the subject line
Stefano started teaching Italian online as a side hustle when he was 18. No formal experience, no fancy credentials. Now he's got 280,000 YouTube subscribers and over 4,000 paying customers.
What's interesting is how he did it. He barely touches Instagram or TikTok. Posts maybe once every two weeks just to keep the pages alive. Instead, he's doubled his email leads in the last year while keeping his views roughly the same.
In this episode, Stefano breaks down why short-form content hasn't worked for him, how he thinks about lead magnets differently than most course creators, and why he puts 60% of his effort into free content.
If you're wondering whether you're wasting time on the wrong platforms, this one's for you.
🌐 Check out Stefano's work:
🌐 https://teacherstefano.com/
🌐 https://teacherstefano.com/podcast
🌐 https://www.youtube.com/@teacherstefano
Get your free resources for course creators:
🔗 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/resources
#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing
🤝 Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.
As soon as I turned 18, I applied to be a teacher on iTalking. When I started, I didn't have any formal experience in teaching languages in Italian. From there, I just thought, well now I know how to teach. Maybe it's time to make a little bit more money, and I started my course business. The first thing that allowed me to grow my audience to where it is now is being authentic. First of all, if you're authentic and you have an actual teaching, then you can learn everything else. The marketing things, the video editing things, the course things, the money things, after two, tweet up delete ourselves nothing like course languages. We don't have a method. We have 30% of still money is coming from.
SPEAKER_02:Hello and welcome to the Art of Stelling Online Courses. We're here to share winning strategies and top performers in the online course industry. My name is John Aspert, and today's guest is Stefano Chiaramonte. Now, Stefano started teaching Italian on the internet as a title in 18. And during COVID, he started uploading videos and podcasts on the internet. From there, everything started. Now he's got a YouTube audience of 280,000 subscribers and over 4,000 customers. And today we're gonna talk about what Stefano did, built this audience, and why Instagram and TikTok are useless for course creators. Stefano, welcome to the show. Hello, John. Thank you for having me. So very excited to be here. This is great. I love this. So uh how old were you when you started teaching Italian online?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I was 18 because I uh so I did one year abroad in the United States uh during high school. And uh when I was back in Italy for my last year of high school, uh as soon as I turned 18, I applied to be a teacher on iTalkie. And so it's just from there I kind of started getting the experience because uh I mean when I started I didn't have any formal uh experience in teaching languages, in teaching Italian. And uh just year after year, I kind of like uh built my I would say method to teach uh languages, to teach Italian to uh foreigners. And then from there I just uh thought, well, now I know how to teach, maybe it's time to make a little bit more money with that, and I started my course business. But yeah, it was just uh only 18 when I started. Nice, that's amazing, man.
SPEAKER_02:So we've had a lot of language course creators on the show. Um Shoner from Perfect English Grammar, Lucy from English with Lucy, uh, Michelle from The Intrepid Guide. It's a it's a very common kind of group that we work with. And I'm just super curious with with you, what's what's allowed you, because it seems like you've grown your audience pretty fast. Like what's allowed you to do that, do you think? What's any of the the tips, the tactics, the the approaches that you've used that you see maybe are different to what other people are doing online?
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's a very interesting and big uh question. But um what I think, I think we need to like take um kind of there are two ways, right? The first one, or I would say maybe two requirements. Some technical requirements, so to be a little bit of a tech savvy, to uh know a little bit of marketing, a little bit of uh uh video editing, and all of that. But for a second, we're gonna put all of that aside because the first thing that allowed me to grow the audio my audience to where it is now is being authentic, first of all. And uh I think kind of understanding the struggles that students go through, and um being a good teacher in the sense of I know what I'm doing, I know how to teach, and teaching is my biggest passion. If you have that, if you're authentic and you have an actual passion for teaching, then you can learn everything else. So the all the marketing things, the video editing things, the course things, the money things. And but that's after you know you have a big passion for it, you want to help people because we are in the business of helping people, of helping people even change their lives sometimes. Because I mean, for languages, we're not helping people make money, uh, but we're actually helping people connect to a different culture, to maybe their relatives, but they couldn't talk to them before they took one of our courses and stuff. So it it's about that. It's about being authentic, having the passion for teaching, and uh helping people, just be able to and uh be ready to help people.
SPEAKER_02:Where did that passion come from for you? Why does that why are you so passionate about that?
SPEAKER_00:Actually, I think it's kind of uh in my DNA because my mom is a teacher uh in high school, and both my grandparents on my mom's side were uh teachers in elementary school. So I think my dad on the other side is a is an entrepreneur. So um and so I think I kind of like got the the the best of them and it just like the I'm I'm a little bit in the middle because I mean I have my own business, but I'm also a teacher. So I I think that my mom and my grandparents kind of like transmitted that to me, that that passion for uh teaching and for just helping people. So I think it was at least for me was like pretty, I would say innate. Like it just uh it just it it just it it comes to me kind of like natural, but of course I perfected it over the years.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Now one of the things you'd mentioned before before we jumped on the call is that you you found that Instagram and TikTok audiences just uh not been much used for you in terms of course sales. And I've talked a lot about that on the podcast recently. So I've got theories about it, but I want to hear what you think. Why do you think those don't convert as well to to people who are buying courses from you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, we tried. And at first I would say that when we when we started, we were we were doing a lot of things on not TikTok, but Instagram, and uh we collected quite a few leads for Instagram at first. Now we're just basically uploading one reel and one TikTok every two weeks just because we don't want to let the the pages die. Uh, but it's not we don't even like, I don't know, uh have strategies for Instagram and TikTok. So some sometimes I post stories, for example, just because I want to, but I kind of like treat my Instagram page, my business Instagram page as just basically a personal page for like memories and posting very basic things when I want to. And the main reason why you think uh it's not isn't it's not working as well as, for example, other platforms like YouTube or podcasts is just the way social media like Instagram and TikTok uh work. Because what we when I go on YouTube, this is personal, but I think this applies to a lot of people. When I go on YouTube, I'm searching for something, or YouTube is actually giving me recommendations. Uh, same goes for podcasts, and uh I actively choose to sit in front of my computer, in front of my TV, or to just have my headphones on for uh while I walk, while I I don't know, cook, while I clean, and uh watch or listen to um uh a long form content that I know that it's gonna be long. And I know that I will have to pay attention to that for quite a long time. It might be 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. For Instagram and TikTok, the attention span is completely different because I'm not going on Instagram or TikTok just because I want to uh watch a specific thing, but just because I don't know what to do. I'm bored, I don't want to think, I don't want to put effort in what I'm watching, and I'm bombarded with a lot of different content. Maybe some of it is good, some of it is bad, some of it is funny, some of it is stupid, it doesn't matter, but I'm not going there with a specific intention, studying the language or ex listening to the language. So I I guess that's the first thing. The attention span on Instagram and TikTok is so low that people are don't have enough time on those platforms to actually appreciate and fully use, uh fully take advantage of your content. And second thing is that we're selling courses. If you're buying a course, each lesson is not gonna be 20 second long, maybe it's a 10-minute, a 15-minute, a 20-minute long lesson. So I'm targeting people on at least on YouTube that I know are watching hours worth of content on YouTube and are okay with doing that, with sitting at the computer, on their phone, whatever, and um watching longer videos. So if they can do that on YouTube, perhaps they can also do that with an online course. And another thing is that this applies mostly to Italian or other, I wouldn't call Italian like a niche language because it isn't, because lots of people in the world that are are actually learning Italian. But uh most of our customers are like I would say 50 uh and older. So they're usually retired, they have a little bit more time than uh than than than people in the younger group. And so naturally on YouTube, we can actually see that most of the people that are using YouTube, uh, or I mean in general, the maybe we can we can see this the other way around. On Instagram and TikTok, the public is general is generally younger than YouTube. So because of that, I think that YouTube is a better fit for um courses, online course uh businesses, and uh and also YouTube is a bigger platform whatsoever. I think it's uh right now maybe the second one, maybe TikTok recently surpassed it, I don't know, but it's still one of the biggest platforms in the world. So of course it's uh it's still an amazing uh source of traffic, uh even though it right now it's a little bit a little bit lower. Uh but I still think that it it it it is what now converts better for for us. Nice.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I agree with pretty much all of that. I think that because TikTok and Instagram are it's all short form and it's it's just not as good of a fit with people who actually really want to learn a thing. And I think even within YouTube, if you look at YouTube Shorts, they are way, way less effective than long form content for YouTube for for growing your pardon me, for growing your email list for making course sales. And also, even within long form content, search-based content is more effective than discovery-based content in terms of driving sales. Now it's a much smaller number of views available within search than there are within Discovery. So there's there's pros and cons to each one. But if you get an equivalent number of views on a search-based video, like people actually searched for that topic to one that some people found through Discovery, then the then those are those number of views on the search-based one will be worth four times maybe as much money long term because those are people who are like, they actually want to learn this thing enough to be searching for it. They found it, they found your video, they're they're like way more likely to put in their email address and sign up for your lead magnet. They're way more likely to then buy something afterwards. So it's like even within that is nuance. And I was talking to someone the other day who was saying how they've tracked the direct sales from every single YouTube video they've ever done separately. So put in different UTM links for every single video. It doesn't tell like the entire story because some people will have watched eight videos before they bought or something like that, right? But it's but it's something. And they were telling me how some of their most popular videos have brought in no sales, and some of their smallest videos have brought in tons of sales. So it's like even within that, then even within discovery-based videos, there's nuance and this kind of thing as well. Do you just put effort into YouTube now? It's how it's how it sounds. You like Instagram and TikTok are just kind of the tiniest amount to just keep them uh taking over.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, YouTube and podcast. I mean, we uh last year, well, in January actually, we just launched uh uh three new podcasts, and uh we are putting a lot of effort in that too, because we feel like that podcasts are still like uh an amazing platform. And uh of course I cannot be sure about that, but I predict that especially with now you uh Spotify, for example, turning um podcast into basically videos is uh is another big uh discovery platform, especially because we're talking about very long, usually longer content than uh than on YouTube. So, yeah, right now our main uh focus is YouTube and podcasts.
SPEAKER_02:When you say podcasts, how are you growing those? Is it through a YouTube podcast, is it a video podcast, and that's bringing in new people, or is it the audio podcast that's that's a bigger driver of downloads and and listens? How's that how do those kind of balance out?
SPEAKER_00:So, no, our podcast right now is only audio. And uh so I had a podcast uh for four years. Uh so just when I started, I started with a podcast, but it it was a little bit of a mess. We were not doing any tracking, we were not doing any uh like lead magnets. So we stopped that and we just basically started from scratch. Uh at first we thought, okay, are we gonna do audio or video? We are going for audio only for now, we might change in the future, but simply because we wanted to have two completely separate platforms: one for YouTube, one for viewers, and one for podcasts for listeners. Because what we realized it is that not necessarily all the people in your audience just use and watch or listen all of your content. Of course, we have the super fans that are watching everything, they're listening to everything. But maybe some people actually prefer learning a language through podcasts and just listening because maybe they don't have time to actually watch a video. I'm thinking about all those people that, for example, commute for, I don't know, like an hour, two hours every single day. And then we have people that just want to watch content because for them, podcasts just they do not work as as as much. So what we thought is to completely separate the two platforms, and uh even the content is completely different because on YouTube we do a lot of the teaching on uh podcasts, what we do is basically just uh just conversations, very natural conversations in uh in couples, because I do one uh podcast with uh my teacher and one podcast uh with my best friend that works with me. So, because of that, people love it because it's completely different. And if they don't want to learn the grammar, the vocabulary, or maybe if they know it already and they just want to practice their listening, they have the podcast. So right now it is two completely separate platforms. And uh well, I would say that of course I promoted my podcast when I started in uh in January uh through my email list, uh through my newsletter. And I guess that right now it's growing mostly because people are looking or are searching it on Spotify. So they're just putting teacher Stefan and then they found our podcasts. So of course, right now, I mean we're kind of uh getting listeners just because of that, because people know me already. Uh but we prefer it right now. We prefer to keep the two platforms completely separate. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that podcast from my experience, podcasts are probably the best middle-of-funnel content for course creators, but it's so much harder to grow a podcast audience than it is to grow a YouTube audience because there isn't really that much discovery in in podcasts. Now, there are some exceptions. So I've got um a podcast episode 170, it was with Tim Timothy Moser, who teaches uh runs a um Learn Craft Spanish. So they teach Spanish online, and they had a they have a podcast that's their main traffic source, Learn Craft Spanish Podcast. And that has grown mostly through search. So they've managed to become optimized for when people are searching for Learn Spanish Podcast or whatever the search terms are that people might search for in in the podcast app, they're coming up, and so that's allowed them to grow that and that's built the whole business. And then now he's he's flipping, so he's now getting into YouTube. He's like, Okay, we've we've chopping out on the Spanish on the podcast side, now we're gonna do YouTube as well. Um, and another one is uh Charlie Baxter from British, the British English podcast. Um, I can't remember how he'd grown that, but he's got hundreds of thousands of downloads of uh of that podcast as well. So if you can grow what I've seen is if you can grow the podcast, people become raving fans because they will listen to everything and then they will listen while they're out walking and while they're commuting and washing the dishes, and so you're kind of constantly in there, and they'll consume way more content than somebody will do on YouTube. But it's harder to grow it. So I love that you've got both because YouTube kind of acts in one way, podcast acts in another. They're cross you're crossing over because you're cross-promoting them through your email list. Um that would be super interesting to hear kind of how that how that works for you. If you started them this year, have you started to be able to track any of the results from that in terms of how well the podcast is leading to sales, or is it too early to say with that?
SPEAKER_00:I would say that we do not have like um enough data right now to actually see how much that is converting. Because so what we do is that we offer uh like a PDF, uh like a transcript for every episode. So every single episode has a lead magnet. Um and uh I would say that right now, uh to be fair, I we were expecting a little bit of a higher uh conversion rate from the down from the lead magnet to actual uh sales, but again, we don't have enough data yet. So um in January it's gonna be a year, I think. After a year of content, we can safely say if this is working the way we expected. Uh uh. But I uh I'm not sure. I think with podcast, especially for the thing you said that people start from the very beginning, right? Um it's a long-term investment because we continue to upload uh one episode per week mostly. And uh I think in the future, especially if, and I don't know, this is just my prediction, but I think that Spotify, especially Spotify, will become much better at actually um be able to let people search content. So I think the algorithm is going to get a little better, especially with the video thing, because right now um I noticed that I'm getting uh far better recommendations for podcasts compared to what I was getting maybe even a couple of years back. In I don't know, just thinking about that and thinking kind of long term. I think that starting a podcast now is a very good investment for the future, also because podcasts are usually much lower effort than YouTube. But as you said, it's slower. So if you want something a little f faster, YouTube is better, YouTube is still kind of slowish compared to, for example, Instagram and TikTok. But at the same time, I think that the long-term investment will pay off because eventually people that listen to our podcast will become just a huge fan of our work and they will buy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, I've definitely found it from my business is that people who listen to this podcast will message me and be like, I've listened to every single episode and I love it, and I want now I'm ready and I want to work with you guys. You know, it's just like this is this is like we I've listened to everything. I want I want to get actual access to Yosip and the team and everything else. And it's like, how can we work together? And they'll know like everyone in the team who's been on the podcast. They're like, Oh, I know Yosip, I know Dominic, I know Boris, what have you. Um, so it's that's definitely been for us a massive, a massive success. What's for you is your what's your email um system like? How do you you mentioned that you've got a separate lead magnet for every podcast episode? Do you do the same thing for every YouTube video as well?
SPEAKER_00:We used to. Uh right now, I mean, every single YouTube video that we have uploaded in the last uh couple of years, I guess, has some sort of lead magnet. Uh before we were doing something pretty simple. So the lead magnet was just the basically PDF note, I mean the notes of the lesson, PDF notes of the lesson. Right now, uh we're doing it a little different. So we are adding always, we're always adding something extra to the lead magnet. So it's a video, and then you've got the lesson notes, for example, but you also have some exercises, for example. Uh you've got um extra rules. You you have always extra something. And uh we also have some big lead magnets that we know to be very valuable that we kind of like rotate. So, for example, if we do a specific video but the lesson notes are not necessary, or we're talking about something that don't need a PDF, we just place a very valuable PDF as lead magnet in that on that specific video. And uh, we kind of like changed the strategy a little bit this year and it paid off. We we doubled the leads compared to uh last year. Um and uh we just rethought the idea of giving out something for free because we wanted to make sure that what we were given was extremely valuable, because the more you give, the more you you will receive eventually. And what you said earlier uh is actually something that uh has happened to us uh as well, because there are for ex for YouTube videos, usually YouTube videos with uh with more views don't tend to convert as much as videos with a with a smaller public. And I'm talking about conversion to, of course, like um um the newsletter, the email list, so people who download the PDF, not conversion to sales. We don't track that at the moment. Um so we realized right now, this year, that we don't want to necessarily optimize our channel for views, but we're actually optimizing it for leads. And uh compared to last year, we pretty much have the same number of views, maybe a little like a five percent more, so not significant, but double the leads with the same amount of views. And this just uh showed us how important it is to offer a PDF or offer a lead magnet, whatever, not just because you want to grab someone's email, but because you actually want to give them something extremely valuable that is going to be super valuable to them as well. And uh that way the customer is happy and uh well the potential customer is happy and eventually they will convert because through that lead magnet they download it, they actually understand the the the power and how good are what we do is.
SPEAKER_02:So you're trying to, with the lead magnet, not just get them to give you their email address, but actually the lead magnet itself is part of the sales process because you're trying to wow them by giving them like, oh my god, look at how good this free stuff is. Imagine how good the paid things will be.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, that's that's that's very important to us. And um and this is actually the thing. Like it what we do, um, I would say that maybe 60% of my team's work goes into YouTube. Maybe we can do 50-50, I don't know, like 50 for maybe let's do 60 for YouTube and podcast, and 40 for the paid stuff. So 60% of our work, of our effort is for the free stuff, and 40% is for the paid stuff. Because, well, to us, they're equally important. If you have things in the free things that are not good, people will not understand the quality of your paid stuff. To us, that's that is very, very important.
SPEAKER_02:With your email list, how often are you promoting anything to them? Because you've got these different courses you're making. How often do you promote the courses uh with a with like a discount to them?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so right now for 2026, for 2025, and it it'll be the same for 2026, we are still promoting, we're still creating a lot of courses. So this year we we created uh uh five courses. So we had five uh promotions for the launch, the actual launch of these courses, and then we have two big promotions every single year uh that are usually the we we do summer sales or back to school in September and Black Friday. So basically we just do well launches for new products into big sales uh every single every single year with a discount. But uh for other like the other months of the year, we don't do anything, like we do not over-promote uh our courses with a discount, but they're evergreen, they're always available on our website. And uh if people want to buy, they they just do through our website at full price.
SPEAKER_02:And have you considered in those other months, so that the other five months of the year, having like a promotion of a previous core, a course that's already launched, you know, 2024, maybe even, and putting a discount on that?
SPEAKER_00:So right now, uh this is something that we might start doing in 2027 because we will be done with course production. So, right now, since we are focusing a little bit more on course production, we don't want to spend too much time in promoting old courses. Also, because we are pretty happy with how much we're making with monthly sales. Now, people of course can buy also from our funnel because once they download a PDF, we have a welcome sequence for people to buy with a little discount. Uh, but at the moment, we have decided not to do that. Uh one, because of a time factor. We don't have the time to actually think about work promotions. So that's the first truth. And then second is just because we think that right now with all the we're doing a lot of selling, sure, but we're also doing what people are still buying in the months, we're not promoting anything. And uh that's not a lot of work for us. Of course, we need to make a lot of YouTube videos and a lot of lead magnets, and that's the work we put in. Um and we're pretty happy with that. So right now, no.
SPEAKER_02:Cool. For future reference, what we've found, because we run a lot of tests on this in terms of what makes the most sales, is if you do a promotion once or even twice a month, so a full promotion once, and uh two in a month would be a full promotion and then maybe a flash sale for two days. But probably once a month, then that for most people leads to the maximum number of sales. If you do it less often, every two months, then the the goodwill that you build up because you're not promoting as often doesn't outweigh the amount of money that you'd make from those uh additional sales in terms of revenue. You know, you might choose to to value the goodwill in other ways, you know. But um and when we've done it more often, we've done with some clients two promotions in a month, then that leads to a decline over time because more people unsubscribe and more people are like, that's not I don't want to be on the email list. Uh I'm hearing too much promotion, not enough just value for being on the list, and then you you over time to start with you have more sales, and over time you kind of gradually get less. So like one big promotion, one small one, or just one promotion a month is kind of the maximum. Now I understand what you're saying in terms of you don't have to be a little bit more than a lot of. Exactly. One week of the month being a promotion. Yeah. And w the way we do it is we'll have a week of of useful, valuable content that is connected to the thing we're going to promote, that is build up, that is like hype building without any mention of a thing on sale, without any mention of a discount, nothing like that. But it's getting people in the right mindset and then a week of promotion. And that's that we've seen kind of lead to the highest amount of uh uh revenue from an email list. Um but I understand you're saying that that's kind of not not what's right for you right now. If at some point you're like, I would like to make more money with this, that is available to you, you built up that, you know, that potential, and you can you can turn that spigot from seven to twelve and uh and grow the revenue. Um what is anything that's uh that's challenging for you at the moment?
SPEAKER_00:Right now, I think one thing we are kind of like struggling with and that would would like to improve is tracking. Because um, for example, we don't track sales from a YouTube video to I mean sales from YouTube videos, and uh we don't have a lot of information on uh about like where people are clicking, what are clicking, how they're lending on our website. Every single month, what we have is 30% of sales every single month is coming from uh our email sequence. So, of course, we know that it's people that have subscribed either on YouTube or uh the podcast, and they have downloaded a lead magnet. So that's 30%. We know where it's coming from. Fine. We don't know. We and we also know, yeah, sorry, we also know what lead magnets are performing better. The the the funnel, but the automated part is good. What's not as good is the other 70% of revenue that we're making every single month. And we're not I'm not talking about launches, I'm just talking about recurring revenue from just courses that are always available on our website. We don't know where that is coming from. And 70% is a lot. I don't know, from the website. Is it from our blog? Because we also have a blog, is is it from a specific YouTube video that has a link, a direct link to our courses? We don't know. And so the the at first the the the how I saw it last year, and then this year I changed my mind. How I saw it last year was like, well, that this is luck, it's working, whatever, I don't care. But the way I see it this year is what if next year, for example, it starts to decrease? If the revenue that we're making from the welcome sequence starts going down, I know that we have a problem with that, and I'm gonna look for problems and event and fixes. But if that part of revenue starts actually going down, what am I gonna do? I don't know where it comes from, so I don't know how to fix it. So I kind of like started changing my mind about this. It took quite some time, and we made tracking uh a top priority for us in 2026 to just to kind of like start in understanding where people are coming from, where people are buying from.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think tracking is is super useful in a few completely distinct ways. One is you can see what's working, and you can go, ah, this thing that we've got is working really well. Maybe you've got one lead magnet that's doing way better than the other lead magnets, or a type of lead magnet's doing better, or a type of video, or whatever it is. And you're cool, well great, let's do more of that thing. And then you've got stuff that's doing less well, and then if you know where the benchmark is, you know, okay, well, most of our videos do this well, we've got this one that does less well. Are we going to do it differently, or are we going to stop doing that type of video, or are we going to tweak the lead magnet that goes with it? You can choose what to do to address it. And then the third one that I think is very important is when something breaks, you know what actually it is that's broken and how to fix it. So we had, I had a somebody we did an audit for, um, I don't know, maybe two years ago, something like that. And they had they had had declining, their their revenue had dropped two years earlier, and they they didn't know why, they didn't know what was wrong. And they kept trying lots of different things. And we went through and we did a full analysis and went through all the data, and we found there was one thing that they had changed on their website, one link that had got broken or something like that. And it had screwed up all this other stuff, and it had caused all these problems, and they didn't know that it was that one particular thing because they weren't tracking each step in their funnel as they kind of went through. And once they fixed that, it made this giant jump back up again. And I've seen that kind of thing loads of times, you know, like where someone's like, shit, what's going wrong here? And you break down the funnel into small steps and you go through and you do the analysis, you're like, aha. Did you change um like for example, sometimes someone will have changed their lead magnet opt-in form, and then there's some of the lead magnets that some of the forms aren't working anymore. And so people aren't getting onto the email list, or they're not seeing the right confirmation page, or they're not getting the right tag, and they're not going into the email sequence, or something along those kind of lines. And I think for for those things, tracking is vital because it's it's almost impossible otherwise to try and figure out what on earth it is that actually went wrong. Um so I I think this is great that you're really starting to dig into this. So what's your what's your plan for next year of how you're going to work on this?
SPEAKER_00:I think the goal is kind of, well, first of all, just change uh most of our links, uh whether on YouTube, podcast, website, and kind of uh connect them to um to the sales. Because I think that's the missing part. We we we have a solid tracking for YouTube in terms of what videos are performing well, um, what videos are converting better, lead magnets that are convert, we do have that, but and we do also a pretty good tracking in terms of sales. So when I say sales, I mean uh, for example, what people are buying, uh, order bumps, uh, conversion rates from launches, but we do have like a we like a a can we're lacking a connection in the middle. So the the the top of the funnel is not actually talking to the bottom of the funnel for us. We don't know what's happening in the in the in the middle, how people go from YouTube, from podcasts, from lead magnets to act to your to our website and actually buy. So that's what we'll we'll work on. That's our a idea. Nice.
SPEAKER_02:Nice. Well, that's exciting. I think that's gonna be a worthwhile investment. Like it's not a clear, like it's not as obvious a revenue generator as some other things, like sending an email promotion or growing a YouTube channel. But I think it's absolutely vital. And if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, man, I should do some tracking. I need to get started with this. I've got a module of our course that you can get hold of for free. If you drop me an email, now there's one requirement with this, you have to promise me that you're actually going to do it. Um, so drop me an email, put the subject line as being um KPI tracking, key performance indicator, KPI tracking. And uh I will give you access uh for free to this module of our course, and it's gonna show you exactly how to do like the fundamental KPI tracking that we do. Uh, and that's send that to John at datadrivenmarketing.co and I'll uh I'll send it through to you. All right. You want it as well? Okay, I'll send it through to you afterwards as well. You know my email. I do know your email, yeah. Okay, so let's have a little think here. You've got your plan for 2026 in terms of the oh, I wanted to go back a stage actually. There was something you'd said I wanted to hit on. You said that you're getting like about new email subscribers a month. Is that right? Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, perfect. Okay. Now obviously I don't know how many of those are coming from you know Instagram or TikTok or anything, but if it but if they're from YouTube mostly, it could be from the podcaster course as well, if they're from YouTube mostly, then that would put you at about a 1% opt-in rate, um, which in the language learning space is pretty good. So most people we see in the language learning space have got somewhere under a 0.5%. And you can you can generally get to about a 1% opt-in rate with um language learning YouTube channels. So that sounds solid, and definitely you've doubled it in the last year. So that's that's a very good, you know, a very good improvement. If you're listening to this and you're wondering, well, have I got, you know, am I at that kind of a good level? It depends on what niche you're in as to what kind of opt-in rate you can get. I've been looking at a lot of music channels recently. We've been talking to a lot of musicians, um, and we've got a lot of uh musician, uh people teaching music courses as clients as well. And there it tends to be more like about 2% opt-in rate. And there's a couple of reasons for that, uh, which if you if you go and listen to any of the music episodes that we've done, I'll I'll kind of talk about that in detail, but I won't cover that here. But uh yeah, so that sounds solid. Now, obviously, that depends on how many of the opt-ins are coming from elsewhere as well, you know, the podcasts and the other things as to whether I've calculated that number correctly. That's a bit more of a back of the envelope um sum. So we've got we've got a good opt-in rate from YouTube, you've got a uh a good number of views per month on YouTube, you're creating new courses. How have you decided what courses to create? Like, is it the standard like A1, A2, B1, B2 kind of thing, or are the specific angles that you you teach people about? Like, what's the type of courses you're making?
SPEAKER_00:So, right now, I think, and this is actually one decision that we made from just when we started, we want to keep things very, very simple. We advertise ourselves as not being like gurus of languages. We don't have a secret method, we don't have a special method, we just have a very simple method, very effective. So uh that's how we kind of um promote our school, promote our courses, and uh because of that, we just made very basic courses uh divided by uh just levels, so a one, a two, and uh so on. Uh, and we're also making um uh 30-day courses that are a little smaller but intensive courses on specific topics um in the Italian language, that it might be grammar, it might be listening, it might be vocabulary, maybe prepositions, whatever. So right now our course ecosystem is pretty simple. We have our level courses that are always open, and now we and we're also creating creating the uh these 30-day courses that we launch open one time and then close for enrollment enrollment, and they're not available on our website. They might be available as like order bumps, but they're not always available to to buy because we want to keep our offer extremely simple. If you're just starting out, you don't need to buy a specific 30-day course on a specific topic. You need the level course. And um yeah, we've always worked that way. We just want to keep things super, super simple.
SPEAKER_02:Now you mentioned order bumps there, and I am uh um constantly promoting to everybody on this podcast that they should have order bumps if they don't already. So I love that you've got those in place. But I don't think you've got upsells in place at the moment. What's the is there a is there a reason for that in terms of uh uh philosophically about it, or is it just something you haven't set up yet?
SPEAKER_00:Well, uh it's uh so upsells. Um I like the idea of an upsell, to be honest. I don't like how the platform that I'm using, can I say the name of the platform? Teachable. Is it teachable?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Teachable, teachable's got issues. Yeah. I don't love how the platform that I use um deal with upsells. The when we started, since it's like one click upsell, we started getting like, oh, I just didn't want to click on it. And so we need to kind of like do refunds and stuff. So app sales is not something that I do not want to use, it's just that it's it's uh the platform right now does not allow me to have apps the way I want. Um, and yeah, that's that's just it. But if I could use uh upsells, I think that upsells would be because right now what what I do with order bumps is that I'm basically just um selling the next level course. So we have order bumps that are pretty pricey. I mean, they're still, of course, a little cheaper than our main course, but for me, ideally, an order bump would be like a$20,$30 thing. So something cheap that you just add just because it's nice to have it and because it's super cheap. Then in the next page, once people have bought, there would be an upsell of the next level course heavily discounted. Let's say, I don't know, 50% off, whatever. So this is the ideal uh like checkout flow like that I would want. It's just not possible right now.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Teachable is a great course hosting system. And I love it. It's it's one of the two best, I'd say, Teachable and Kajabi. And but it's from a marketing and sales point of view, it's dreadful. The kinds of sales pages you can build in Teachable are very limited. You cannot make ideas good. Okay, okay, that helps. The checkout pages are appalling, absolutely appalling. I saw your conversion rates that you get from your email uh campaigns, email promotions, and that's fantastic considering the fact that you're doing it through Teachable. Because it's the checkout pages are just atrocious. But like we've got, you know, I I've I've taught whole um you know, obviously modules in the course, but obviously uh but also pol whole podcast episodes about checkout pages. In fact, let me link everyone to um episode 186. I did a whole episode with Boris about exactly all the things you should have in place on your checkout page, and you can only do about half of them with teachable, and you can kind of manage to to to jerry-rig um, sorry, it's a very uh English expression, uh, it together to kind of do some of them, but you can't do the whole thing, and the flow of it is bad, and the way that it does order bumps is bad, you know. And then, like you said, upsells is is is not good either. The only way around that sorry, carry on.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02:The only way around it from a technical point of view is to do the whole funnel through something else, and then use Zapier to connect it together with Teachable behind the scenes, or except it's just I've got I've got to work with what kind of teachable's got available. Like we'll often do it with uh click funnels and then connect that behind the scenes with Zapier. And in fact, we did that with somebody recently. I think we may have done a podcast episode about it. I know that I talked to my team about it a lot, and they'd managed to increase the conversion rate like 2x. Something like that by changing the sales pages and checkout pages and order bumps and upsells over to click funnels instead of teachable, then uh and then obviously you've got to do all the behind-the-scenes Zapier and everything to make sure everyone gets their course at the you know and gets their login and all of those kind of things, but it's it's dramatic the increase. It's probably not the the next thing for you because you've got so much on your plate already, but the possibilities are are huge in terms of conversions.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. I mean that would get pricey real fast with Zapier and ClickFunnels, but if you double Well, nowhere close to what you what you make. Click funnels.
SPEAKER_02:It's like 300, 300 bucks a month for unlimited unlimited funnels. For for click funnels.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00:And Zapier? Yeah, it's not too much.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Zapier, I don't know. You'd have to look at how many, how many automation? How many sales, of course.
SPEAKER_00:That's interesting.
SPEAKER_02:But I think overall you'd be it'd be way cheaper than what you'd make from it.
SPEAKER_00:Like way, way, way cheaper, you know.
SPEAKER_02:20 times.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. That's I I I I just think that the reason why I stick with Teachable and we still would use it. Of course, I mean, I think I think it's a great course platform, like in terms of the actual like course layout and everything. Uh and also because it uh for the the tax things, because it's uh like tax remiss. It's really nice, isn't it? That just saves us a ton of money, of course. And uh and it just I don't have to worry about that because that would be a lot of work, especially in Italy. I guess it would be the same all around Europe, not know about like other countries like the US or but uh but yeah, that's the only way, the the the only reason, or the not not the oldie, okay. I don't want to be too dramatic, but the main reason why we're we're we're staying with uh with teachable exploring other ways, like uh like a checkout on a different uh platform. Yes, that's something we might we might that's actually in the for us, it's it's something we're planning to do once we finish our courses because that that's the thing, and this is actually an advice for people that are just starting out or they have started just for uh maybe one year. And uh it's to keep things very, very simple because of course we we often talk about things that are very complicated, very advanced, that we probably don't need, at least when we're just starting out. And if you don't have any course to sell, it doesn't matter how well you optimize your funnel. If you don't have a course, you're not gonna make any money out of it. So, what we we're doing is right now is to work with just priorities. At this at right now, our main priority is to just to finish our course ecosystem and just to create all the courses we want to create. That's gonna be done in end of 2026, early 2027. After that, it's it's only about it's all about optimizing and how can we make more money out of what we already have. That is the goal. But first, yeah, we need to create the products.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. That makes total sense. I think that's really sensible. Yeah, there is you've got to make decisions about what to work on because there's too many things to do all at the same time. And that's one of the things that's challenging. You know, when you're starting a course business, it's like, okay, well, you've got to do work on building the audience, of course. Otherwise, you're not if you don't build the audience, then long term you won't you won't um have an audience, a big enough audience to sell to and make enough money. But you have to make some courses, otherwise, you're not testing out, well, do people does this audience want to buy a course? Well, you've got to make lead magnets, you know. Obviously, you've got to do that as well. So you you get people into your email list, but you've got to send valuable, useful email. It's like, oh my god, I've got so much to do. And at the beginning, you haven't got money. You know, when so if someone's if you're listening to this and you're in year one of building your course business and you're just getting going with it, it's like it's challenging. It I get that. It's it's really tricky. Um, and it gets slightly easier as you go, but it's not like you have no decisions to make and you've got, oh yeah, you know, we we're uh got our hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers, now it's all easy, I can do everything at once. No, you've got to decide, you know, you've got to choose. I love that you you're so disciplined about this, you know, in terms of you've planned out the whole next year and a bit in terms of what you're gonna work on. It's great. Yeah, Stephanie. I think that's very important, yeah. Yeah, and I think very few course creators do it. I don't think most people are quite as organized as you in terms of their approach with this. Um if someone's been loving what they've been hearing, or if they actually want to go and learn Italian, where can they go check you out?
SPEAKER_00:Uh well, my website, teacherstefano.com, or uh you can just search teacher stefano on YouTube and uh find uh a lot of videos on there. And also my podnice, yeah. Teacherstefano on all on all platforms.
SPEAKER_02:So that's in case you don't know, that's spelled S-T-E-F-A-N-O, Stefano, teacherstefano.com. Stefano, thanks so much for coming on today, man. This was absolutely amazing. I love what you're doing. Uh I love the way that you're kind of approaching your whole course business. And I'm I'm delighted for you in terms of all the success that you've had so far.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was uh it was a pleasure.
SPEAKER_02:If you want to, for any of the topics that we've covered today, if you want to get hold of some resources that go with it, I mentioned a few podcast episodes as we went through, but we have uh free downloads that go with any of those different topics, like how to improve your opt in rate or how to improve your order bumps or your upsells, uh, just go to data drivenmarketing.co slash resources and you can download like free guides and resources and templates from there for any of those different topics. As always, thank you so much for listening. And Stefano, once again, thank you for coming on. Thank you. Bye.