The Art of Selling Online Courses

212 How I Made $1M Selling Courses on YouTube

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 211

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🔥 Struggling with low conversions? Grab our FREE checklist of 15 must-have elements to optimize your sales pages! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elements

Asiya Miart has 1.9 million YouTube subscribers and has made over $1 million selling courses through her channel. But here's what surprised me most: some of her best performing videos made zero sales.

In this episode, Asiya reveals how she figured out which videos actually drive revenue and which ones just drive views. She explains the two types of videos every course creator needs to understand and how she strategically moves viewers from one to the other. This simple shift helped her triple her revenue from the same number of views.

We also do something a bit different in this one. I pull up Asiya's sales page live and walk through what's working and what could be improved. If you've ever wondered what a sales page review looks like in practice, you'll find this useful.

Asiya now helps other entrepreneurs grow their YouTube channels strategically. If you want to learn more about her approach, check out her case study on her website.

📚 Asiya's Case Study “from Zero to $1M Using YouTube”: https://asiyamiart.com/case-study/

🔗 Connect with Asiya on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asiya-miart/

🔗 Check out Asiya's YouTube channeL: https://www.youtube.com/@asiyamiart

SPEAKER_02:

I discovered that some videos generate quite a lot of revenue while others generate zero. And some of my best watched videos actually generated zero. I have a video to your IELTS level in 25 minutes. And it's a test. People love tests. A lot of views, probably 500,000. It doesn't sell. A third of my sales are from people who've never signed up to my email. They only watch videos. I drive my traffic organically from YouTube directly to host pages and also click my next newsletter and people click to the next video.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow! 30,000 students. Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We are here to share winning strategies and secret hacks, top performance in the online course industry. My name is John Angel, and today's guest is Atia Mia. Now Atiya is an educator and she's grown her exam preparation YouTube channel fast by IELTS to 1.9 million subscribers and has generated over$1 million of course bills through that channel. Over the years, she's found a way to triple revenue from the same number of views by approaching YouTube more strategically. And today ASEA combines running her exam prep business with helping entrepreneurs use YouTube to generate scalable revenue for their business. Now today we're going to be talking about ASEA's tips for how to grow a YouTube channel, why the most popular videos sometimes make the least money, and how she knows which videos the ones that do make money. ASEA, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02:

Hi John, thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01:

So talk us through with your course business with the IELTS channel. How long have you been doing that? And what are you helping people with there for people who don't know what that is?

SPEAKER_02:

I've been doing it for about seven years. And IELTS is an English language example for non-native speakers. And anyone who wants to study or work in an English-speaking country, the UK, Australia, Canada, needs to pass the test. The test itself is quite tricky because it tests not only your English skills, but also some other skills. And that's what I'm helping people with. I help them to nail all those little requirements they may not be aware of. So I sell uh exam preparation courses. These are self-paced courses, um, low ticket, high volume, and uh I drive my traffic organically from YouTube directly to course pages and also to lead magnets, newsletters, and then course pages.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. One of the things that you mentioned when we'd uh you sent over some information before was that some of your most popular videos actually don't make any sales. Could you give us some idea of like which of the types of videos are there that have driven a lot of views but but aren't driving a lot of sales for you?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so basically I discovered that several years ago when I started tracking uh all my links uh using Google UTM links. And so I could see which videos generate sales. And then I discovered that some videos generate quite a lot of revenue while others generate zero. And some of my best watched videos actually generated zero. And that was a bit surprising at that point, but when I started thinking about it, it made more sense. Uh because if we look at the video, for a video to sell, I think it needs to address the exact problem your product solves. There should be a perfect alignment and that video needs to open a gap between what people know and their desired outcome, and then your product fills in that gap. And then the video sells. And basically they are quite in-depth. The deeper the video goes, the better it tends to sell. But then those super deep videos don't generate a lot of views, they're not very attractive to people who just browse on YouTube, and so organic views on them tend to be low. Uh, while there is another type of videos, which what we what we call a kind of viral video, something that appeals to a lot of people. It just has this broadest appeal, something for beginners, or something quite entertaining or maybe emotional. So they can generate a lot of views because very much everyone who sees them in your niche may want to watch the video, but then people watch the video, they absolutely don't have any intention to buy anything, so those videos don't sell. If we take my channel, for example, uh, I have a video to your IELTS level in 25 minutes, and it's a test. People love tests, a lot of views, probably 500,000. It doesn't sell. It brings people to my channel, and then they start watching other videos, and then I deliberately drive traffic to videos which are more in-depth, go to the problems people experience, and those videos sell. So they those conversion videos, as I call them, uh, they don't generate a lot of organic traffic. I drive traffic to them uh intentionally from my other videos.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you drive traffic to them? Are you putting a link at the end of the first video pointing to the second one? Are you like mentioning them throughout the video? Are you putting links in the description? What kind of approach is you using?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh usually I just mention them at the end uh and um the traffic goes through the end screen.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh basically uh the last part of the video is kind of already a promotion of the next video. I try to make this transition very smooth so it feels like the next video is actually the next natural step. Uh for example, if you have a video with um six steps, you may call it a video with seven steps. And the next step is actually the next video. And actually I'm done about 25% of people click to the next video.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. Really? Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can work really well if you put a lot of thought into what people would really be interested in. If you just say watch this video next, it's about a 2% click-through rate. Got it.

SPEAKER_01:

How long does it take you now to script that whole flow out and make sure, not just for that 25% of the end, but like scripting out the whole video? Do you do that yourself? Do you have a script writer for it? What's your kind of process there?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh a bit of both. Uh I have a script writer I work with. He's a former examiner, so he has a lot of insight knowledge, and that's useful. Um I also script a lot of videos myself. Uh, I use Chat GPT to help me with certain aspects because I have certain um buckets of videos, like certain formats that perform well. And then um I use ChatGPT to help me generate, for example, new examples or uh certain parts of the video that may make uh previously successful videos. But to be honest, I still spend like a few hours on each script. So it's not automated. That's one part of this business that is not automated.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Okay, so you've managed to use this examiner and chat GPT, and kind of you've got certain structures and formats and like almost templates as a starting point or to help with certain parts of the process, but it's still what when you say a few hours, like does that mean two or three or or longer than that?

SPEAKER_02:

Three or four, I would say.

SPEAKER_01:

Three or four. Okay. And how many videos are you doing uh nowadays? You do uh a video a week, or what's your kind of um frequency?

SPEAKER_02:

On average, I would say it's a video a week. Sometimes I skip one. Uh I actually find that um consistency is not important. It's not important anymore for sure. Whether you skip a video or not, it doesn't really matter. YouTube selects which video to recommend and it may not be your latest video. Uh and I find that sometimes it's better to spend more time on a single video, uh, make it, let's say, twice better, and it can get 10 times the views.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh YouTube tends to recommend videos kind of exponentially. So sometimes a small improvement may actually uh completely change the trajectory of the video. Once I had a video that uh wasn't going anywhere at all, and then when I checked their retention graph, I could see that my introduction was too long. People weren't interested, they were dropping out, but then those who got to the main body, they watched it. So what I did is I cut out the introduction altogether, which goes against the YouTube um advice because there is no hook, it just starts straight in, and then the video started going up. And now I think it has like 200,000 views.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Okay, nice. It's it I find that stuff kind of stuff fascinating because it's like there's clearly different ways to achieve the same thing. If you look at two very popular interview YouTube channels, you've got Chris Williamson on Modern Podcast, and he starts with no introduction whatsoever. He just goes into the first question with people, and then you've got Dario, the CEO, and the introduction is so long, it's practically seems like the interview itself, it's like two or three minutes, and there's effects and there's excitement and there's music and all of this. And both of them are doing great. And I'm like, I I guess you just gotta figure out kind of what works for your audience, you know, rather than being a hard and fast rule on this one.

SPEAKER_02:

I would say it also depends on whether you have an audience or not. Uh, because if you already have a big audience, you may actually get away with a lot of stuff because people just know you, they know your videos are usually good, and they may click on a title that's not interesting, they may bear with an introduction that is long and boring, just because they know eventually it will be good. Uh, if you are new, they have never seen your face before, they're not sure they want to see you, they click to check out what's gonna happen, and then I think an introduction is much, much more important, and you really need to hook people to convince them that like a 10-minute video or maybe a 40-minute video is really worth their time.

SPEAKER_01:

I want to go back a step to something you'd said, how you started using UTM links to track to see which of the videos were driving sales. Now, I got uh two questions on that. Let me ask, first of all, what inspired you to do that? Like, are you naturally quite analytical? Did someone come along and say you should be doing this? Like, how did you decide that you were gonna start uh tracking?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I am quite analytical. I have background in economics and business management. I always loved mathematics. Um and then yes, someone mentioned me that I should be doing it, and I thought, yeah, let's let's try and see. The channel was reasonably small at that point, and we just started adding links to new videos, and then I could see sales, and like, hmm, that's interesting. Let's go back and add links uh to the top 50 videos, and I asked my VA to do that. And at first we could see some sales, but when the data is not sufficient, when there are just not too many clicks, not too many sales, you can't draw conclusions because it's not statistically relevant. It's just a chance. But if you keep on doing it, with time, you start seeing patterns, and that's when the data becomes really, really valuable. So I think um it's difficult sometimes for small channels because uh it feels like it's taken their time and they don't see an immediate return. Uh, but with time, that data will be more and more valuable.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that you've done that because very few people who sell courses, lots of m very few course creators who are YouTubers, are doing any tracking at all. Because m so many people, it's like they're more a creative person and they don't have that kind of analytical brain. They didn't like maths at school, they don't like spreadsheets, they're not doing any tracking. Um, and so one of the things that we do a lot with people is set up tracking for them for all of their email campaigns and for their YouTube and what have you. Um But you you just have that kind of the uh an approach to life, it sounds like, you know, the way you kind of see the world, and that's allowed you to have great insights, right? Which is like you might not have known that those videos that were getting tons of views weren't getting sales without that tracking. And then you could have carried on making those and wasted a lot of time on something like that. Actually, that's a slight, I want to go back to this as well. You'd mentioned that you have videos that get people in, and then you have other videos that might lead them towards actually making a sale. So that's the the the follow-one video on the end screen. It's the ones that are getting maybe less views. Do you think those ones that are more viral, that are broader, that aren't getting any sales, are some of those still valuable because they're bringing in a lot of people at the top end? Or are some of them missing the mark and they're bringing in the wrong kind of people or anything like that? Is there a distinction there between any of those uh high traffic videos?

SPEAKER_02:

I think for a channel to grow, you need to bring in new viewers. And actually the size of the channel doesn't matter. Small channels need to get exposure to new audience, and even large channels do. Because if you look at larger channels, they usually have this benchmark level of use on each video. That's their current audience. And to grow, they need to attract new audience. Some of that new audience will stick, a lot of them will leave, that's fine. I think what's important is that uh when you make a discovery video, it still appeals to your potential buyers and to your ideal viewers. If some other people come along, that's fine. But if it starts appealing to the wrong kind of audience altogether, that's where a problem arises. Uh if, for example, I make a video with a fun test about IELTS, that's fine because IELTS students still watch it. But if I make a uh fan about English idioms, it's not gonna work because it just attracts the wrong kind of people. And that's I think the the difference. But if um someone concentrates on high value videos only, the channel is just gonna be a lot smaller. And it can work for certain businesses. If you sell very high-ticket offers in a very specific niche, you might actually be fine with um 1,000 views per video, and you get a client and that client pays you five figures, and you are fine, you don't need to be discovered. Uh, but uh, if you sell lower ticket courses, then you do need scale. And for example, my courses are$55. So this is a high volume low ticket model, and I do need a lot of traffic to go through my funnel, and so I do need those discovery videos, and that's also why I make shorts, because that's another way to get discovered.

SPEAKER_01:

So the other question I've got you about uh uh for you about the tracking is do you also track for lead magnets where which videos drove sign-ups to lead magnets and then track through your email marketing process which videos have eventually led to sales?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Um I thought it'd be tricky to do. So I was really curious to hear if that's something you'd figured out. Because people might sign up for multiple lead magnets, so you'd have a lot of different tags in there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so they do tend to sign up to several lead magnets. Um I try not to create a lot of them. I believe that it's better to have like one, two, maybe three lead magnets which are larger, more valuable, um, and you just promote them in a lot of videos instead of creating a separate small lead magnet, maybe like a checklist to each video. Um I don't track those. In the past, I used to track lead magnets, and I could actually see that um very much every time I mention it, the conversions are pretty good, and um quite a lot of people who watch the video will download that lead magnet. Uh, so it wasn't as important for me to optimize for that. Uh, because for me, email is actually a smaller channel. So I'm not overly concerned about it. But I think for a business that sells mainly through email, then it's worth optimizing. But if you want to track a video to a sign up, it's easy to do with a UTM link, right? You just insert it and you can see how many people click and sign up. But if you want to track sales, then you need to have a separate sign up form for each link, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That's where business gets.

SPEAKER_01:

There would be other ways of doing it. You could do a hidden field. So you could there's there's some stuff you can do where you include the code that would go into a hidden field within the URL that someone clicks on. So, you know where with a question with a UTM, you have uh and UTM, um, question mark and UTM equals da-da-da-da, right? And it has all the code there. Um there's something similar to that with hidden fields. So if you had your lead magnet field and it uh form and it said name and email address, it could also have a little a field that didn't show to the user that said what video is this person from. And each URL that someone was clicking could have that information in it. So that pre-filled the form. And then when it gets added to your CRM or to kit or active campaign, whatever you're using, that information would be in there. Um it would be hard not to overwrite that if someone signed up for the same lead magnet twice, that that obviously would not happen that much. So it's it is doable. I'm not sure it's worth it, but technically it could be doable.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, but that's interesting. That's interesting as a solution. I didn't know you can do it.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's why you're in that field is very rarely talked about, but most like type form and and most form software can do it. Okay. I want to get a little bit into the sales process for you because you said that that the email is actually not that big of a channel for you, which is fascinating to me because you've got a good sized email list. Like what kind of size uh email list have you have you got now?

SPEAKER_02:

I clean it quite rigorously, so I have like 60k at the moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Generally, what we find is that course businesses, about 80% of the potential revenue is normally an email. So they just I don't know if it's that there's there's massive opportunities and you could be making more, which is what I suspect is the case, that you could be making a lot more through email. Or if for some reason your audience and your courses, because it's lower ticket or something, is a little different and doesn't work quite the same way. It sounds like you're very good at making sales directly from the video because of the way you structure your videos. Um could you talk us through like what do you do in terms of email promotions? How often do you send them and how many emails would you send in an email promotion?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's a very interesting question. I've been thinking about it too. I even dug into my data to understand more, and actually I can see that um a third of my sales are from people who've never signed up to my email. They only watch videos. Um, so if I only sold through email, I would miss them completely.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh a lot of people, like two-thirds, are signed up to email. Uh, I think that one factor is that uh I just get them earlier from a YouTube video directly to the sales page instead of going through the whole funnel.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh also my audience is a bit specific. These are mainly students. I think they're not as used to being on email every day as more mature adults are. Uh, but uh yeah, so in terms of what I do with my email marketing, so I use MailChimp and it's fully automated. Uh, we have a welcome sequence, and then people go through a number of automations because my tone is quite high. People join my world, prepare for the exam, pass it, leave it. I have no opportunities for um upsell. Well, I can upsell, but uh I don't really have repeated purchases. Yeah, I can't sell to the same customer over and over over a period of time like um English language channels do, for example. So that is a bit limited. So once people join, uh they get a little bit of information about my approach, about my story, and uh then I actually send them to some sales emails pretty early on, and those convert pretty well. Uh and then we relax into more uh a mix of uh valuable emails and um sales emails. Um, most of my value-driven emails still end up with an invitation to buy the course. They just provide some value in the body, but then the end usually leads to the course. And uh once a month I pause all my automations and I run a promotion. So those are set up manually. We reuse them from time to time. And uh yeah, so I sell probably 20% to my email list of all my sales, so really not much.

SPEAKER_01:

Fascinating. And when you are sending those email promotions, are you giving a discount during the uh the promotional period?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh yes, I give a discount and I give some bonuses. Usually there is an early bird bonus that expires after a day or two. Um so that helps with those early sales. And then there are a couple of other bonuses that are available throughout. A discount is usually pretty low, uh something like um 10 to 20%.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02:

And yeah, so not too many sales.

SPEAKER_01:

I wonder why that is. A lot of people, the reason they're not making a lot of sales to the email list is because they're not running regular promotions. But you are doing. You're giving a discount, you're giving bonuses, you're giving early early bird uh uh bonuses as well, like fast action bonus. What's the what's the gap there? Is it because your your courses or your your packs are quite cheap, aren't they, right? You said fifty-five dollars. Exactly. Would people often buy a bundle of those, or were people just getting one? I don't know how IELTS works, I don't know what would be included.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh$55 is already the bundle.

SPEAKER_01:

That is the bundle. Okay. Got it. So it might just be it's cheap enough that it doesn't need that additional promotion to email. And it might be like you said, because it's a younger audience who aren't on email as often as older people are. Um I was uh running doing a podcast interview yesterday, and I was chatting with someone and they said that their audience was mostly retired. What were they teaching? Piano, I think. Yeah, piano through chords. And I was like, oh, that's so common with our clients. It's so many people that we're working with. Their audience is like 55, 60 plus. They're retired and they're like wanting to learn a hobby and they're wanting to learn piano or guitar or banjo or what have you. Like a lot of these are much older. And yours is like way at the other end. You've got like what kind of age generally are people when they're taking the IELTS exam? What's your kind of range?

SPEAKER_02:

So most of my audience is between uh 18 and 25.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, okay, yeah. Really young. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

And some are even younger, and actually their parents buy the course for them.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. I was chatting with um oh god, this is really bad. I'm trying to remember who it was now, but someone is he's running uh uh Rich who runs tailored tutors. He's selling tutoring for I think it was either GCSEs or A levels in the UK. So the people taking the exams, I think it was A levels, are like 16 to 18 years old. So super young. And I was trying to convince him, I was like, I I reckon that there's a really good market in selling to their parents, because the kids don't have any money, you know? So the kids have got to go to the parents anyway. So I reckon you should run campaigns to the parents. And he was like, You might be right, but this is working now, and we're kind of sticking with it. I'm like, oh, you've got to give this a try, man. I really think that's like because I've run campaigns before to teenagers, and it'd just be an absolute pain in the ass. You know, no response whatsoever when they had when they were young enough that they had to go to their parents, and I ended up running campaigns to parents instead, and it and it converted better. Okay, so we've talked through YouTube and then how you're getting people onto your email list and then the kind of email promotions that you're running. Talk to me about uh sales pages. How do you structure your sales pages? Do you just have one or are there multiple different pages for the individual ones if if the$55 is the whole bundle? Yeah, let me stop there.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so basically I have a number of courses, and those courses are bundled into an academic pack for those who take the academic exam and general training pack for those who take the general training exam. So each uh bundle includes several courses. Um I think about five. So each course is$20,$25 if you buy it separately, and the bundle is$55, so it's already a big discount. But over time I tracked um how people convert when I drive them to the uh page with all the courses versus when I drive them to the bundle. And people buy more when they're driven directly to the bundle. So it's just a sales page and there is one button, buy. Uh the sales page itself does list the courses included somewhere on it, but it's not very obvious that that's a number of courses. It comes as a bundle, it converts better. So gradually I redirected all my traffic just to the two bundles.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh the sales pages are structured probably quite um the regular way. So we start with a problem and how I can help solve it, what's my approach, and then what's included in the offer, and there are testimonials throughout the page from different categories of customers who buy courses.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha. I'm looking at your sales page. If it looks like I'm looking away from the camera at the moment, it's because I am. I'm looking at your sales page and like trying to find what's going on.

SPEAKER_00:

Don't hold back. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you mind if I share screen and talk through like what stuff is good and what stuff uh.

SPEAKER_02:

I'd love to hear that.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Okay. So uh if you are listening, I'm going to describe what we're looking at as we go. And if you are watching on YouTube, you're going to see everything we go through. So you might want to uh if you really find this part interesting, you might want to switch over to to watch the video on YouTube. You can see that at datadrivenmarketing.co slash YouTube or search for my name on YouTube, John Ainsworth. Okay, so the first thing here is that you've got a way to get off this page. And generally on a sales page, what we find is if you you want to remove menu as much as possible. Now you have got some stuff kind of cut out, like you don't have here resources and success stories and all of this on the sales page. But you do have some ways for people to kind of flick off to other places. So you're gonna lose some people live.

SPEAKER_02:

That's why sometimes they land on the wrong pack and I want them to still find it.

SPEAKER_01:

You want them to go back here and then find the the academic pack instead, is that right?

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha. Okay. Second thing, um, I love that we've got some really good social proof straight away with the 4.8 out of five. I would say the title you could probably, um, and I'm gonna ask you a question about this, but probably improve quite a lot by making it more benefit focused. A lot of course creators will put the name of their course as the type main title, which to a certain extent makes sense because people then know they're on the right page. But another way, uh, the title is the most important thing on an entire sales page, because 80% of people will read the title, and then everything else is a big drop-off from there. Um Do you think there would be any major issues from an understanding point of view if you changed this to be more benefit focused, more talking about like passing the IELTS exam?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I would actually like to add a sort of a promise uh that would be very visible when people open the page. But my fear is they will not know which bundle they are on. Uh, because I have two, they are very similar, the pages are very similar, and even today people sometimes buy the wrong one. So I somehow need to combine the name of the bundle with this promise, which is at the moment not very obvious at all, get higher writing and speaking scores. Uh so I'm open to any suggestions on this.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, let's have a look at another couple of people who are doing stuff. I mean, no, it's not IELTS, but this is. In the language learning space. See, because we're some people who have either helped them with their sales pages or Yeah, so if you look at this one here, so we've got the main title is Speak Confident, Fluent British English. And then it mentions in smaller text further down, you can master the B1 level in just three months. So that's a um a more subtle way of showing the right that you're on the right page while still having that big promise as the as the main headline. I think something along those kinds of lines could work here. Either putting IELTS General Pack in the sub-headline or or having a longer headline with it, and I think probably probably in the subheadline and and maybe somewhere else on the page as well. So if people miss that, they can still spot it. But definitely like having a strong headline with a promise, we find makes a really big difference for sales pages. Really, really helps.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01:

So let's carry on. We've got buy the pack,$55. One of the little this is a small tweak, but it's worth making. Is it's it's tends to be good to put the button in the first person, like the text to be in the first person. So for someone to say, yes, I want the pack, or yes, I want, or the whatever the benefit would be even better than the page.

SPEAKER_02:

Or yes, I want to improve my score.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly, yes. Something along those lines. Because everything that they're reading is reading it you talking to them, but the button is them taking action. So it's actually if it's written as them saying it, that's a small psychological tweak that makes a little bit of a difference. I think these bullet points here in terms of the benefits, get higher writing and speaking scores, learn how in just nine hours, and proven by 30,000 students. These are good, these are good, but I think uh the subheadline could be better. What the headline wants to do is make a big bold promise. And then the subheadline wants to expand on that promise in a little bit more detail because you've got a slightly smaller font, you've got a little bit more space. And I think all of these points are good. They might be included in the subheadline, but I think that you could do a better subheadline than this. I love that you've got a video here. Uh, we've found generally having a sales video that's a couple of minutes long on the right hand side of the sales page, um, when you're looking at it on a desktop, works really well. Because only a small percent, about 8 to 12% of people will watch the video. But those people, it does actually help them. They are more interested, they want to take the information in in the video format. So that's really good. This next section you've got here, you're going into the pain that they're feeling. So that says whether you've taken the IELTS once or more, but your results weren't what you wanted. And then a couple of examples of people saying what their issue was and how much this helped them. Or you're just starting your preparation and want the quickest path to passing your exam. Now, both of these are talking about the problem, but they're not bringing it to life at all. And one of the things that we find really helpful is to have not just a pain section here or a problem section, but agitation as well. So problem agitation, then solution. And what I mean by agitation is showing how that is affecting their life. And there might be that you even understand that in ways that they they don't or they don't think about a lot. So that could be um if if you're you know not managing to pass the IELTS exam and therefore aren't able to get the job that you want or travel to the country you want, or whatever that thing is, and that's holding you back in X, Y, and Z ways, and just bringing that to life. And they might kind of know it, but like showing that you understand it and then showing reminding them that that is a a big enough, it's a big problem that's worth solving, can help with that as well, can help to kind of get people in the right mindset to be buying. Uh, next section you've got here. I love that you've got big strong sub-headlines for each section as you're going through. So, next bit here, improve your writing and speaking scores with my proven step-by-step system. This is great. You're kind of breaking down like the approach that you take. Um, you're talking about the benefits. A lot of people don't talk about benefits. You're talking about scoring higher, saving time. This is great, giving yourself the best chance of passing your exam, and then you've got social proof baked in within that, saying over 30,000 students have taken the courses, rate them 4.8 out of 50, work directly with former IELTS examiners, all of this is fantastic. You've got testimonials here, more good social proof, 100% satisfaction guarantee. This is great. I love that you've got this. If you put that guarantee mentioned underneath the call to action button, that would help as well. Because then at the point where people are about to take action, they're reminded it's safe to do so right at that very moment. So under every call to action button, I would put just a very small text saying covered by our 40-day um money back guarantee. Oh, right. Here. More social proof than what you'll find inside. This is excellent. Yeah, really breaking it down for people who want the detail, explaining they get a big benefit. That's great. When you're doing the additional discount during an email promotion, do you have a countdown timer on the sales page at that stage?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I have a countdown in the email, not on the sales page.

SPEAKER_01:

I put it on both. So it makes a bigger difference on the sales page than it does on the in the emails. We found when we added it to emails during an email promotion, it it made about a five-ish percent. It was five to seven percent, something like that, increase in sales, but having it on the sales page made more like a 10% um a 10% difference to the to the sales conversion rate. So that might mean you need like a different version of the sales page with it on, or it might be um that you you just have already have that separate version. So I think that would that would really be worth doing. I obviously you can't have that here on this main sales page because people can always come back here at any other time. Okay, you've included what's included in there, stuff about you, this is great, I really like that. FAQs, this is good, more social proof, which is excellent, lots and lots of testimonials, buy the pack, again, we've got a call to action button. I would put towards the bottom of the page a um a summary of what they've kind of covered so far. Uh, what you've covered so far for people who've kind of scrolled through it. A lot of people won't read a whole sales page, but they will scroll and read little bits here and there, whatever they think looks interesting. So having a summary again at the bottom can be really helpful. Um got the testimonial. I might get rid of this go-to homepage bit here at the bottom. It's another place where they can kind of get distracted and leave. What else would I change on this? Okay, nothing else is coming to mind for now. So I think this is solid, but you could definitely make some tweaks, and I think particularly that headline uh could make a really big difference. And I think the next biggest one is probably then the pain agitation solutions section. Then the next is the button and adding in the guarantee straight underneath that. I think between those, you would get like a noticeable increase, especially because I know you're good at tracking.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I could AB test the pages and then report the result.

SPEAKER_01:

I would love that. That would be absolutely fantastic. Any questions about any of that? We've gone through there.

SPEAKER_02:

These are excellent tips. Um I can see how it can help improve the page. One thing I wanted to ask you about, it's not that much about my page, just about the sales pages generally. Yeah. Uh I see a lot of businesses with very optimized sales pages have this sort of a value stock that they um list everything included in the course with the value of it, even though those components are not sold separately. And it goes something like altogether, this is twelve hundred dollars, but only now you can get it for 200. And they give this very, very high discount. So I'm wondering whether this wins them more people because people think it's a great offer and they shouldn't miss out, or it actually to some extent um reduces the uh the value of the offer because it seems that numbers are a little bit random when the discount is very high. What's your take on that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so it does it does depend a little bit on the what audience you're you're targeting as to like if you're marketing to marketers, you market differently than if you're marketing to consumers, you know? Or if you're marketing to business people, it changes as well. But yes, generally, most of the time we do see that work well. We see it work well to have a value that you assign to the bonuses and you show them they're getting a discount. And then it's it it gives people the feeling, yes, that they're getting a good deal, but also that maybe this won't last and they need to take action on it now. There's six there's six things that were identified in the book by Robert Chald uh Robert Chaldini called Persuasion, uh, that he found by studying salespeople, there's six things were what affected how many sales people made. And depending on what market you're in and what kind of thing you're selling, different ones of them have different um importance. So for example, there's reciprocity. So if you give your audience stuff, they're more likely to want to get things from you. There's likability, like how likable are you as a person? Do they like you, in which case they're more likely to buy? Uh there's authority, and one of them is urgency and scarcity. Those are separate things, but he combines them together as one heading in the book. So urgency is when someone has to take action quickly because otherwise the discount or the bonuses or whatever is going to go away. And scarcity is there's only 10 of these, and when those 10 are gone, there's no there's no more that's gonna be left. When you have a high high uh value or high perceived value, and then you have a big discount, and there is a short, a shortage of time, it makes people feel like, oh, I really need to get this now. Otherwise, this amazing deal might not be around again later on. And one place actually that I want to look at in your uh in your funnel that you could quite probably put this and might actually, if you've not got it, it might make a really big difference, is uh I'm just gonna go to your YouTube page and see. Do all uh of your YouTube videos um have links to um uh lead magnets? Or would I get it? Well, there's certain ones I should go to. Okay, cool. Uh I'm going to fast track IELTS Okay. I'm just gonna click on one of them here, and I should share screen as we go actually, so everyone can who's watching can kind of follow. Okay. So if I click here on the free study plan, here we go. I want to see what the next the next page is that comes up. So I've just gone for anybody who's just listening along, I've just gone to the lead magnet page from one of the YouTube videos, and I'm clicking to sign up to the study plan. Okay, now if I click here, right, okay. This can make you more sales straight away. This is very exciting. So what we've got here is when someone's just signed up to the lead magnet, what they get is a thank you page saying we've sent you the PDF, might take up to 60 seconds to arrive. Asks people, are they serious about the IELTS prep, and then gives them two options, the IELTS academic pack or the IELTS general pack. And if they click on that, it's taking them through to the main sales page for the general pack, for example. I've clicked on that one. Um and and and there's no kind of uh um specific page just because they've signed up for the lead magnet. Now, what we tend to do in this kind of spot is we do we use an approach called um a tripwire funnel. Is that a term you're familiar with?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, cool. So what we'll do there is we'll have a a big discount for people who've just signed up. Now I'm wondering, because you've only got this one main this one main bundle here, but I s I suspect this would work still really well. What we'll basically do is then have them redirected to a different version of the sales page that has the discount timer, the um has a has a discount uh off and has the has the countdown timer. And then people can, if they take action straight away, then then they're gonna get that bigger discount. And we're normally doing something for about$27, but here it might make sense to do the funnel. Have you tried something, sorry, to do the the the main bundle. Have you tried anything like that before?

SPEAKER_02:

I've never tried giving a discount. Uh so I do give a 50% discount on the uh bump order, so that works really well. Uh I used to have a cheaper product on my thank you page, and actually the conversions seem to be pretty pretty close. Well, I mean not the conversions, but the revenue. Right. Uh so it seems that having a cheaper product generates many more sales.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02:

And I'm actually debating returning it back to a cheaper product, and maybe then I could do what you're suggesting and uh give a special discount on that product because it wouldn't be my main bundle, it would be something else. And that would be a unique offer available only on the thank you page, because that's amazing. I haven't thought about it, but I can see how it could work really well. But I'm just not sure I want to give a big discount on the pack because that kind of forms expectations and people will be searching for that discount further on.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. What you potentially could do is have then, if they buy that cheaper product, you could then have the main pack as the upsell behind that, whether it's for the discount or not. The benefit of discount is it gives a reasons a reason for urgency. It gives a reason to have the countdown time and make them go, oh, I need to do it now, not just come back and buy it at any other point in the future. Like you said, the slight downside is you don't have these other products to sell people. So it's like you don't want to discount that too much and then not be able to make as much money from it. But yeah, having something smaller. The the kind of conversion rate we tend to see is that between about three and ten percent of people who sign up for a lead magnet will then buy a cheap offer on the confirmation page if you do a really good job with it. So the highest we've ever had, I think, was was 12%, but that's like a real outlier. I think 3 to 10% is a good, a good kind of solid band to be aiming for. Your original question, I went on a slight tangent there. Your original question was um, does it make sense to have that high value and then and then the big discount? I think generally, yes, is a is a simple starting starting point. And then you can kind of check and see does that is that working with your with your audience. But yeah, it seems a bit cheesy, but then it also works. So you can choose to be like, oh, I don't want to be that cheesy. Um but uh especially if if you ever have sold those things individually and you can actually say it really was worth this amount of money, um then I think you can then be kind of ethical.

SPEAKER_02:

So basically it makes sense in my case to increase the prices for individual courses. In this case, this will be an honest um discount because the bundle will look even cheaper in comparison than it is at the moment, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Seems like such a great deal. Can't believe I'm getting this deal. I should really jump on it kind of thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, that makes sense because I don't sell a lot of um individual courses, anyways. So prices for those could go up a little bit, and then the discount will be an even larger discount.

SPEAKER_01:

It'll be bigger, yeah. Yeah. This has been great. I think what you're doing is awesome. This is fascinating to kind of see how you've got your whole business set up this way. If someone wants to go check you out, where should they go?

SPEAKER_02:

So uh my main business is Fast Track IELTS, and that's the YouTube channel and the website. And my YouTube consulting business is my name, rcmia.com. And uh I'm also on LinkedIn. And uh I've actually written a case study of um how I approach YouTube with this view of generating sales for business and uh the 25 lessons I've learned along the way. Uh and uh if someone would like to read it, it's available on my website, arcmir.com uh slash case study.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so that is, I'm gonna spell that out because this is not a name that everybody's gonna be familiar with. It's A-S I Y A ASIA M-I-A-R-T Miat.com, ASIAMiat.com. Um, you'll be able to see ASIA's uh name in the in the description or the show notes, whatever as well. So if you want to uh click it from there. And uh she's actually teaching people how to grow their YouTube channels. Um so definitely go go check that out and check out her case study as well. ASIA, this was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. Really, really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much for having me, John. It was a really interesting conversation and thank you so much for all your insights. I'm gonna implement them on my sales page and I'm gonna report the results.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. Thank you. Please do. Um, as always, thank you so much for listening. I want to point you to a couple more resources if you've been uh interested in the stuff that we've been just covering here today. So we've been talking about sales pages, and I want to point you to some um some links for that. So we have a couple of podcast episodes about sales pages, which I think are gonna be really helpful for you. Um let me find some of those. Should I just cut this part out, obviously? Okay. So episode 16, how to create high converting sales pages, and then um learn how to improve your copywriting and warm-up as well. And that's episode 12. And those two are going to be are gonna be useful for you. And then if you go to datadrivenmarketing.co slash resources, we've also got a PDF that's going to show you the 15 elements of a high performing sales page, which I was going through with Asia today. And there might be a couple that I missed when I was trying to do that sales page review. So you don't need to miss them in the future. Just go check out um datadrivenmarketing.co slash resources and download that guide. As always, thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.