The Art of Selling Online Courses

217 We Made $800K in One Month. Here's How

β€’ John Ainsworth β€’ Season 1 β€’ Episode 217

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Everyone keeps telling me that course sales are dying. AI is killing everything. The good times are over.

I just looked at our Black Friday results and I have to respectfully disagree.

In this episode, I sit down with Josip Belina, our funnel strategy lead who has helped our clients make tens of millions of dollars over the past eight or nine years. Out of about 20 campaigns we ran, 75% of our clients had their best month ever. Combined, they made over $800K in November alone.

A guitar teacher went from $25K a month to $165K. A piano teacher expected $30K and hit $70K. A language learning client went from $13K to nearly $58K.

But here's why I really wanted to record this episode. Most course creators completely ignore January. That's a mistake. Your New Year New You campaign could be your second best promo of the year, maybe even your best if you're launching something new.

Josip breaks down exactly when to send your emails in January 2026, the promo structure that works, and something most creators miss entirely. If you've got existing customers who already bought your main offer, that revenue could be 50% or more of your total promo. You're probably leaving serious money on the table.

If you think your course business has peaked, watch this and see what's actually possible.

πŸ”₯ Add 30% to your revenue with order bumps in 3 simple steps πŸ… https://funnels.datadrivenmarketing.co/order-bump-blueprint

πŸ”₯ 15 sales page elements you can't afford to miss - free checklist πŸ“ https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elements

SPEAKER_00:

I'm hearing from a lot of people. Course business is uh going worse and worse, AI is terrible, revenues going down.

SPEAKER_01:

Is that what we're saying? That doesn't happen if you work with us. Seventy-five percent of people had their best month ever during Black Friday. The first one made eighty-five thousand and then the Black Friday one made another fifty-five thousand were able to add another fifty-five thousand just from that promo making it their best month ever. She had her best month ever at almost$51,000. Almost in a hot act multiplier. That's or in a half tax multiplier. Whoa. Seven times more than what normal needs.

SPEAKER_00:

This is one of the best results that we've had this way. This is this is a dramatic job for anyone who can't see this one at the moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we don't really see more of the world and people going to chat GPT to you know learn how to play guitar. That's not happening. But we need results our after taxes and all expenses. We have to make more.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my god. Hello and welcome to the Art Selling Online Court. We are here to share winning strategies. My name is John Edward. Today to get none other than YoStip the leader. Now YoStip is our funnel strategy lead and he has worked on dozens, maybe even by now hundreds, of funnel building optimization projects. And it's made our clients tens of millions of dollars over the past eight or nine years. And today is going to make you a lot more money. YoStip, welcome to the show. Happy to be here again. So today we're going to be talking about uh New Year New U and those campaigns. But first of all, before we get into that and why people should be doing it and how much more money they could be making and why it's a really big deal, let's have a quick look back at Black Friday, because that's just been we're recording this beginning of December. Um, how did it go this year? Um I'm hearing from a lot of people. Course businesses are uh uh going worse and worse at the moment, and AI is terrible and um revenues going down. Is that what we're seeing? Yeah, that doesn't happen if you work with us.

SPEAKER_01:

Um mostly all clients that we've done this for have had amazing results. And yeah, we don't really see AI taking over the world and people going to Chat GPT to, you know, learn how to play guitar. That's not happening.

SPEAKER_00:

So what kind of results have we seen? Like how many people were doing well, how many people were not doing so well with Black Friday compared to previous years, that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01:

We've done about 20, a few more campaigns uh for people. And we've had one that didn't perform. Uh the main reason was and is the list help. Uh-huh. Uh so this is a more systemat, more systems problem than anything else when it comes to marketing. So we will be working on that in 2026 with the client. Uh, but uh out of the 20 promos that we did, I think 75% uh of people had their best month ever during Black Friday. Some people have been working with us for uh for a year or plus. Some people have been working with us a bit longer. Most people have been working with us for about six to nine months, and they all had, or 75% of them had their best month, month ever in the uh in November.

SPEAKER_00:

75% had their best month ever. So not like, oh, it was a pretty good Black Friday, but down 40%. Now, if you're like, well, wait a minute, how does that work? There was a previous episode that we did about how to run a great Black Friday. That's probably not your main focus right now because it's uh I'm I'm recording this in December, I don't know when you're hearing it. But let's have a quick look at some of the results that people were getting.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this is always fun to look at because you know, when you say, Hey, yeah, we help people forex their revenue, and they're like, Yeah, right, everyone says this.

SPEAKER_00:

You actually have the graphs to prove it, which is fun. Okay, so this first one actually, I think maybe we should redo this graph because it looks like where the zero K is, it looks like it's actually a little bit up from Did this guy lose money one month then? She did because of refunds.

unknown:

My god.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, fine. So for anybody who's listening and not watching, I'm gonna describe these as best as I can. Um, there is a video version of this on the YouTube, uh, datadrivenmarketing.co slash YouTube if you are if you're just listening. But this this chart, somebody in the international law niche, he looks like he was averaging about what would you say, about$5,000 a month? He had a$15,000 month, one about zero, one about$8,000, uh, one where he lost a little bit of money. And then what was uh what was it like after he started working with us? And how was Black Friday? Talk people through that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so we helped him with promos. Uh the first one made$85,000, and then the Black Friday one uh more or less immediately after that first launch. Promo made another$66,000. And that's uh annual recurring revenue uh that's$2,400 a year. And um when he he did the launch about a year and a half or a year before that, and um he had 92% uh rate of people who were renewing, which is insane and unheard of. So wow.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's that's pretty dramatic to go from like about five or so thousand a month to hitting eighty-five thousand and sixty-six thousand. So part of that though was annual part of that though was annual renewals, right, in one of those months.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh last year when he first launched this, he made like 92,000, so 85,000 uh of renewals came in without him doing anything. There was no strategy around it. So it just happened organically. Maybe one or two refunds, but no more than that. And then what we did now uh with basically a bit even a bit smaller audience than what it was when it uh got initially launched, uh, we were able to increase the average order value by$750, uh and make another$66,000 in annual recurring revenue.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice. All right, that was uh average before was 4.4,000, and the average so far working with us has been 51,000. That's pretty dramatic. Okay, cool. So then this one in the candle making niche, they were averaging before uh something like, I don't know, fifteen thousand, ten to fifteen thousand?

SPEAKER_01:

So the average before working with us was around thirteen and a half, around that number. There were some good months, but there was not a standard, uh standardized strategy. So now we were able in four months, roughly four months, we were able to get to uh their best month ever uh at almost twenty-two thousand. And the average revenue right now is about four or four and a half thousand more than what it was before they started working with us.

SPEAKER_00:

Great. And so they had their best month ever on Black Friday this year as well. All right, so that's the candle making niche. Uh audio stories niche. Uh talk us through this one.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh this is in another uh monthly recurring uh membership business where they were underutilizing their email list. So we uh did the audit, uh we did that around October. So we took over their uh marketing for November. We did a promo with it, a strategy uh around Black Friday, and we were able to add another 55,000 uh just from that promo, making this their best month ever by far. So they went from 126,000 to 184,000 in uh basically a month.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice. All right. Then this next one, the making money niche. Um take us through this.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh here we started working around June. Uh and over a period of let's call that five months, uh, we did the audit. We figured out that the average revenue over the last, let's say, four to six months was hovering around twelve thousand, uh, thirteen thousand dollars. So we were able to go from there from that number to around 40,000 whenever we do marketing. And for Black Friday, she had her best month ever at almost$51,000, basically uh almost two and a half X multiplier.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, and then a language learning niche one. This is this is a dramatic chart for anyone who can't see this one at the moment. Talk us through this.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh this one went really, really well. This guy actually heard about us um from talking to other people in his group. And he reached out to us, asked us for help, we did the audit, we reviewed what he was doing, or more importantly, what he wasn't doing, because he was averaging about 15,000, a bit less than that, uh, before working with us. And then in two months we helped him prep his Black Friday, and he went from averaging 12, 13,000, with his best month ever being around 20, to making almost 60. So 57,000, uh, that's four and a half X multiplier.

SPEAKER_00:

And this is Whoa. Now that's going to be more dramatic, probably because it's Black Friday, right? Than if it was just any other if it if it'd been any other month, because Black Friday tends to be really big, but still that's going from 12.7k average to 57.7k in one month. And that's outstanding.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh we'll talk about New Year, New Me in a bit, but uh I wouldn't be surprised if January surpassed this or at least came very close.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, nice. That's gonna be one happy camper. Okay, cool. And then teaching piano niche. I love the music industry. I love you've got a if you've got a music course business. Ah, these are great, these are great course businesses. Talk us through this one.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this is very interesting. Super niche music businesses tend to do really well with smaller than what you would expect YouTube followings and audiences. 50 to 200,000 subscribers can allow you to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, which you know normally isn't the case for for most people. And this guy was making when when he did marketing, he would get to almost making 15,000, 20,000 um uh dollars, but he didn't often do it. Now we did an audit, uh, and then around September we started planning for uh Black Friday, and we helped him uh do that promo. And from averaging around 11,000, he made 70,000, more than 70,000 in November. His expectation was 30. Uh he didn't think it was possible to go over that. Um, my idea was that he would be able to make 50-ish, and he actually made seven. That's seven times more than what he would normally make in an average month.

SPEAKER_00:

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, and then this is another teaching piano class. These guys are awesome. They're from Germany and they have a uh German-speaking course. These guys are amazing. A uh they created a spin-off channel with the English one, so they now teach piano in both German and English, and uh they were roughly making 35, 40, I think 35,000. Uh, and uh combined revenue when we did uh the promos almost made them a hundred thousand, so they made 96k dollars. This is one of the best results that we've had this Black Friday.

SPEAKER_00:

These guys must be delighted. This is fantastic. Absolutely, they are. That's so good. Alright. And then another one we've got here in the teaching guitar niche. So music is uh music is going well, I can see. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

This one was very fun to do uh in terms of just auditing the business and what was in place. So the guy has 1.75 million subscribers on YouTube and was making decent money, averaging, let's call that$25,000, maybe up to$30,000, if we look at November results uh that he used to do for Black Friday, but he didn't really do regular email promotions. He would rely on uh just people buying and doing something here and there, so nothing structured. So the first thing that we did was we analyzed it and we prepped a promo to confirm what we can do, and we did it in October. And we went from twenty something thousand on average to one hundred and twenty-one thousand in October. Then in uh I know, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Imagine in your bank just having an extra hundred thousand dollars in your bank account on Monday.

SPEAKER_01:

So in Q4, uh in Q4 of this year, we're gonna make more money than uh this guy made in the last like 10 months.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. Combined. I told someone about about this the other day on uh I was chatting with another uh business friend, and it was just I had the same reaction from here, it was just like, I'm sorry, what?

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And the the the best thing is that uh this was just to confirm what we can do for Black Friday. Uh so we did a standard strategy that we used to do with one email promo early Black Friday and then one for Black Friday. And then we made 165,000. By the way, these results are after taxes and all expenses.

SPEAKER_00:

We actually made more. Wow. Okay. And I'm okay, we're going through so many of these because I really want to make this point to you. I'm like, I'm hearing so many course creators at the moment being like, oh, but you know, COVID was the peak, and then it's gone down since then, and then AI, and there's this like doom and gloom kind of mentality going around. It's like, guys, you are sitting on so much potential revenue, so many of you. Like, if you're listening right now and you're like, oh, I've got a decent sized audience, whatever, 50,000, 100,000, a million subscribers on YouTube. If you're one of those, I know not every you might not be, right? You might be starting out, you might be totally new. Um, but in which if you're starting out, there's hope, keep fucking working on it. If you have got that already, you've already built that audience and you've already got these courses, you are still almost definitely sitting on like the the good times are still to come. This is they are not past. And it's like, this isn't like what oh, we had one person who did really well. It's like, no, 75% of people had their best at month ever. And this is like so these are the uh some very dramatic results that we're showing now, but this is like nine out of twenty that we're kind of going through. This is not like, oh, there's just one guy who who kind of did quite well. I take a but now we're gonna go look at one more. And also I want to show you there's so many niches that this is working in. It's working in music and making money and making candles and all kinds of stuff. All right, great. So what about this one here then?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this is uh vet niche. And this one was very interesting. We took over uh earlier in the year. We did the standard audit, of course, and then we started doing regular promotions. And whenever we did something, or whenever the client wanted us to do something, we would make uh about three times more money than what he made on his own. Uh and then for this Black Friday, the client didn't really want to do a full-on Black Friday promo as we would normally do. So let's call this a light version of it. So instead of we would normally send nine emails or more, here we sent a lot less, so around five to six emails. Uh depends on how you look at some of uh some of the strategies there without going into detail. But we made almost$85,000, so 84.8. Uh when he started working with us, he was averaging 30-ish.

SPEAKER_00:

And so again, that's best month ever. Best month ever. So all of these, is every single one of these best month ever?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we wanted to showcase the best month ever. Uh, because we had there is seven or eight more that had like second or third biggest month ever. We didn't normally would, you know, share with supermarketing if we don't have to.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. So there's nine that have had best month ever, and then a bunch more who've had second or third best month ever, and you're like, oh, that's that's not exciting enough to even kind of talk about that one. Okay, got it. Right. So now let's look at new year, new year. Hopefully, hopefully, right. Hopefully, dear listener, you've heard that and are like, okay, maybe there is some hope. Maybe COVID was not the boom. Um, and because it was, right? COVID made it easy for course creators because people were taking courses online instead of doing it in person. But if you're not doing everything that we've been talking about on this podcast with email marketing and funnels, if you're not currently um setting up your sales pages with all 15 crucial elements and doing the copywriting exactly right, and got your customer avatar and got your order bumps and your upsells and your email promotions, all of the stuff that we're talking about, if you're not doing that fantastically well, then you're not optimised your business by miles. Like we've had people here who we've just gone through had like eight times what they made before um in revenue. Like that's not everybody, but that's like that's that's a that's the highest end, and then a bunch of people who are doing like an extra 50% than they've ever made before. So what's the next opportunity for people to run a campaign and make a bunch more money?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we have December, but I think the biggest opportunity is New Year. New Year, New Me, January, and the first two weeks in January where people have had their list of New Year's resolutions, and one of them might be what you are selling to them. So let's uh make sure that we offer it to people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Now you said to me about the kind of results people can expect to get with a new year, new you campaign.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so in terms of if we're looking at Black Friday or Q4, for most people, Q4 is their best quarter in a year. But Q1 should be their second best. With January campaigns, I would expect that to be your either second best or best promo of the year if you're launching something new. Because of those New Year's resolutions. So same as Black Friday goes. So the biggest thing you can do is just to make sure that you have a promotion, even if the strategy behind it is not wow. But if you actually strategize and prepare for it and then do uh warm-up before uh and then do the promo afterwards, and use the new year new me angle of look, you've you've been procrastinating on this for the last year or more, few years, you know you've made these new year's resolutions to learn guitar uh for the last five years, and you haven't done it. Well, if you've been waiting for a sign, this is it, obviously not so simple, but you know, uh strategizing around it and then hitting those pain points.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to hammer this because I I'm a bit embarrassed to say this, but I did not realize that in all these niches, in so many of these niches, that New Year's New Year New campaign would be so so high up there in terms of revenue. Everyone knows about Black Friday, right? Everyone knows oh Black Friday could be a really good month. We had some people actually in what in the WhatsApp on our uh course creator WhatsApp group say that they don't like Black Friday or something like that. It's like but do you like do you like money? Do you like do you like sales? Like I never buy anything on Black Friday. It's someone said we had the I'm tangent off a tangent here, but someone said to me in uh another community that I'm in, they they posted and asked, like, it's Black Friday, what are you buying? I was just like, Oh yeah, you could buy stuff as well, couldn't you? It never occurred to me to buy things on Black Friday. Black Friday's when you sell things, not when you buy things. Um but people who are talking about Black Friday uh like and about their personal emotions around it. It's just like that's not relevant, I don't think. Like, fine, you know, you can make your own choices about your own business, but like that's if you if your audience wants to buy on Black Friday, then sell to them on Black Friday. It's not about what you personally want to do. Um, so everyone knows about Black Friday, at least even if they're not doing it, they at least know that it's It's a big sales month. In the fitness industry, everyone knows about New Year New Year. Like a hundred percent. That's the biggest the time when gyms get all their new members. If you go to the gym, then you're really annoyed in January because it's always busy. You're like, what are all these people doing? Don't worry, they'll be gone in two weeks. It's fine. But there's all these other niches you're saying it's a really big deal as well. Is it everything? Or is it like hobby niches is a big deal and making money isn't such a big deal? Or like how does that kind of break down?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, hobby niches are very good at this. Language learning, but even business, because most people will say, okay, if they want to have a more successful business, is now is when I start. Now I'm gonna make a change. Now I'm gonna do something that I've been procrastinating on for the last five years. So for more or less every niche, it makes sense to run a campaign like that. Because it will inevitably make you more money. Um and one very important thing is that you do it sooner rather than later in New Year. Uh because according to people who've been calculating that, 75% of those New Year's resolutions are around 75, maybe it's 73, maybe it's 77, uh, you basically stop doing them in the first two weeks.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So we want this to be going out like starting on New Year's Day, or when do we want our first email to go out?

SPEAKER_01:

No, not really. If you want to start something on the New Year's Day, I would recommend starting with a warm-up campaign. For example, in 2026, the first of January falls on Thursday. Um so you have Friday, that's on the second. Uh I would start with a warm-up campaign on the first, so wish people a happy new year, and then do warm-up for three or four days. So from Thursday to Sunday the fourth, uh, do warm up. And then you can start your New Year's New Me campaign on the 5th, Monday the 5th, and then you can end it on the Sunday 11th. That would be, in my opinion, perfect timing for 2026.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, perfect. So let's go through this and break this down for people, and we're gonna point you off to some other podcast episodes where you can like get more details on each of the elements of it as well. So, what's the overall structure? Is it the same as the regular campaign that we would always suggest to people to send, or is there anything like gonna be different about this? For most people, just stick to doing it.

SPEAKER_01:

So the structure is the same.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so I've got three podcast episodes for you to go and check out about email promotions, and I've got some resources. And the resources are gonna be like the the shortcut on this one, I think. So episode 116, and that is called our$25 million funnel and email marketing strategy. That's from a couple of years ago when we'd made people a lot less money. Episode 118, make three million dollars using good email copy. And then episode 131, how to send more emails without sounding too salesy. So if you want to know the whole email uh structure and lots more about it, then go and check those out. But could you give everybody like the you know, the one-minute breakdown of like what's a good email campaign look like?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so well, we can do it based on dates uh in the new year. So uh starting on the 1st of January uh up until the 4th of January of 2026, I would suggest doing uh at least one uh Happy New Year email and then three warm-up emails. We normally do a pain agitate solution framework when it comes to copywriting there. Um and then you would start with uh a promo where you would do gain logic fear in the first three days, so Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Uh, and then you would do an SAQ and future proof email, Thursday and Friday, and then going, going, gone, Saturday going, number one, Sunday going and gone. Um, and that's more or less it. That's the structure, that's the framework that we use 80% of the time. Uh and that's the one you should be using if you are planning your Black Friday offers. There is a light version of this where you're offers. Exactly. There is a light version of this if you do um if you don't want to do FAQ and future proof emails. So you just do six promo instead of eight. So gain logic fear, going, going, on, you end on a on a Friday.

SPEAKER_00:

So if you go to data drivenmarketing.co slash resources, you can actually download some templates for some of this as well. It's called uh two secret high performing email templates. That's at datadrivenmarketing.co slash resources. Right, so that's the overall structure. What else do people need to have in place for their new year campaign?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh definitely have a good offer. If you're thinking of launching something, January is actually a pretty good time of the year to launch something because not only people that haven't bought something from you will be able to buy, but also people that have bought stuff from you before, which is where a lot of your revenue is uh gonna come from. Uh so if you can build something and launch it, perfect. Do that. Uh, make sure to have an offer for your best audience, for members that have bought by far the most stuff from you. It's one of the biggest issues I see with people where they stop selling to audience because the audience bought everything that they have, or mostly everything.

SPEAKER_00:

So talk to me about that. Let's say someone's not selling a new course, but they are re-promoting something that they've already sold, and they've got a bunch of customers who've already bought that thing from them. What do they do?

SPEAKER_01:

Mostly nothing uh with most people. Uh but if you want to. No, no, but what should they do? So what they should do is think about how they can either pre-sell something that's gonna be uh become a course in two or three months, maybe there is a cohort that they can run, maybe there is a webinar that they can charge for, or a master class that's done live. So something where you can leverage the fact that you know there are buyers with money that want to give it to you. So it depends. Uh, at the very end, it depends on how much time you have to do that. So most importantly, just run something. But if you can strategize a bit more around it than do that, it's gonna be helpful.

SPEAKER_00:

What percentage of the money that people get, if they do both of these, right? So they run the promotion to the general list who haven't bought something and they've promoted this course, I don't know, let's say twice before, and they've got a bunch of people who've bought that. What percentage, just ballpark, would you think would come from the existing customers buying something more expensive, the cohort or something like that, if they do a really good job, versus the main promotion to give just people an idea of like how much effort they should put into this? It could be 50-50 or even more towards uh the existing uh buyer base. So this is really worth doing then. Okay. Absolutely. Got it. Most people wouldn't ever do this. Most people wouldn't even think to do it, to sell. Oh, some people have already bought the thing that I'm selling. I should run another promotion to those people selling something different. Um so take us through again what were the options? Maybe a cohort. So that's basically like you've got the course, we're now going to do whatever, six or eight weeks, we're gonna go through it as a group, and it's gonna cost more money because it's gonna be coaching probably with the course creator, maybe with one of your coaches if you've got a big business, but probably with you. Um, like maybe live sessions once a week or something like this, which not all course creators want to do, but if you're willing to do it, it makes a lot more money. That was one kind of option. Another one you said was like a masterclass. Take take us through that whole list again.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it could be a masterclass or a webinar where you will do a live teaching of something that will then uh you can sell also the recording as an order bump and stuff like that. Uh, you could do a pre-sale if you know you will be launching something in three or four months, doing a pre-sale to just confirm that there is product market fit and interest before you commit to creating something for the next three months is a good good idea. You should always do that. And well, if there is nothing, well, obviously you won't you won't do much. But uh if you can splinter something or create something in a week or two, definitely do that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Work every Christmas. Come on. Money, money, money. Maybe don't do that.

SPEAKER_01:

We should end this episode like earlier in December. We need to see about next year.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, it's a funny one though, isn't it? Because Black Friday's only just finished, so like we'd have to have got this ready straight away, miles in advance. Okay. So take us through the rest of the funnel. Remind everybody, because even though we're obsessed with the with funnels, uh, not everybody else is, so remind everybody what else should they have in their in their funnel to make it convert really well.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and in an ideal scenario uh for any promo that you do, you would have the main offer, you would have a checkout page with an order bump, ideally two order bumps if you can have those. Uh, and then you would have at least one upsell. Uh the difference with order bumps and upsells is that the order bump is an extra thing they add before they actually commit to paying. So a checkbox on uh uh a checkout page. And then the upsell is the thing that they buy after they've already purchased the main product.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, so I've got podcast episodes for you about each of those. So what we have there is you've got to have a great sales page, you want to have an order bump, maybe two order bumps, you want to have an upsell, and all of these are gonna add significant oh, and you want to have a great checkout page, of course, as well. So let me give you episodes about each of those to go listen to because these each of these make a massive difference. So I'm I'm actually writing a book at the moment about funnels and email marketing for online courses. Um and I was going through the list of like the things to have on a great checkout page and looking at the results that we've got for some people by improving their checkout pages, and it was dramatic. Like how much difference the checkout page makes, which like almost nobody even thinks about making a good checkout page. They're like, oh, it's just whatever you get in Teachable or what have you. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is not what you want to do. So um let me take you through each of those. Sales page is the the first one. So episode 16, how to create high converting sales pages. And then you want to have a great uh checkout page. So the episode for that is episode 186, 12 checkout page tricks to get more sales instantly. And that's a that's a doozy. I learned a lot on that one from Boris. He's doing some stuff that I didn't even know. Um, and then you want to have your order bumps, and that's episode 96, the order bumps advantage, and then you want to have a great upsell, and then that is episode 183. It doesn't say upsell in the title, it says this simple strategy made 200k in 12 months. Copy this. Uh, but episode 183 for the upsells. And in terms of resources to go with those, we've got stuff around some of those as well. So if you go to datadrivenmarketing.co slash resources, you can get the order bump blueprint. And uh you can get 15 elements every optimized sales page must have. It's like a checklist for your sales page. That makes that super straightforward. And then I think for upsell, if you go to data drivenmarketing.co slash upsell, then that's gonna give you some resources around that as well. So that's gonna like make this whole process a lot lot easier if you go and grab all of those. Okay, so someone's got their funnel in place, they've listened to those podcast episodes, they've they've downloaded the resources, they've set up a good ups uh sales page, um, order bump upsell. Should everybody do all of those things? Because that might sound a little bit overwhelming if someone's listening to this.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, if you've never done it before, then uh I would advise not doing everything, obviously. Just do a light version of it, and a light version of it would be have an offer, have a checkout page, maybe an order bump if you can. Absolutely is not that important in that case. Just do the promo. I mean, make sure to send at least six emails and you're good.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think the most important thing here is do a promo. It's like every month that you don't do a promo is like just just burning money. It's like it's it's it I was talking to somebody yesterday about this who was telling me he'd only done like one, he hadn't done any promotions one year. I was like, it hurts my heart. I like I look at it and I'm just like, this is so bad. It's like it's like you've taken a big pile of cash, all your money, right? Your money, and you've taken it, and one at a time you've burnt each of these 50s. And you're just like, no, I don't like that 50, I'm gonna burn that one. No, I don't like this one either, I'm gonna burn that one. I was like, no, that's your money. This belongs to you, and you don't get that back. You can't just do two promos the next month or three if you don't do those for two months in a row. So it doesn't work like that. Um, so the most important thing is do a promo. If you have time, do all of the things we just said. Make a great sales page, make a great checkout page, make order bumps, make up sales. But otherwise, it's just like just have a promotion. Ideally run it starting like Josep said on the first of uh first of January with the warm-up. But make sure you do it before Blue Monday. Can you tell everybody what Blue Monday is if they don't know?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's a marketing theory from early 2000s, where the third or around the third uh Monday in the new year is statistically the one where you will feel the worst. Yeah. And it's everything combined that's not that people generally don't like, like weather and light exposure. It's generally shitty weather and you don't go out that much. Uh then there is debt because you paid for a lot of gifts and you paid for a lot of stuff in December. And then there is time since Christmas, because during Christmas you are happier, and then uh you start becoming less and less happy as the time goes by. And then uh those failed New Year's resolutions. Uh as I said, like 70 something percent of new New Year's resolutions just you just stop doing them in the first two weeks. So you are less motivated and you know you need to take action and then you don't do shit. So basically, you know, uh hit people with a good mood and good opportunities and in reinforce their new year's resolutions early. Because, well, uh people don't tend to stick to them after three or four weeks.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you can act as that positive change to be like someone has the plan to stick to it, well then they get the course and they follow through with it and that you did not like everyone's gonna follow through, but like they're much more likely to if they got the course about something and they now know what to do. Okay, let's look at examples of the kind of results people have had with this, because you've said it can be your your best or your second best campaign of the year. I'm gonna share screen for anyone watching and then I will describe everything for um for anyone who is just listening along.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we prepped one from uh a language learning niche and we only show Q4 of 2024 and then 2025. Uh basically when we started working with this person, the average was around 13,000 a month. Uh-huh. So we've bumped that up to 30 something thousand, then Black Friday was around 100,000. But the second biggest promo of this period was uh January, uh, with almost 40. And we've had a few clients uh this year where we were able to do really well in no November of 2024, and then January would be their second best month. Uh obviously we would be working on increasing that as we go, but if you are doing this yourselves, uh you will probably have Q4 as your best month, best quarter, and then Q1 as your second best. So make sure to focus on doing a good new year, new Mi and January promo.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so they were making 13,13,000 a month. They got up to we got them up to about 30,000. Then Black Friday was by far their biggest month, it looks like nearly 100. But January was their second best month of the of the year. Yeah, uh with about 40.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and this goes up until September uh of 2025. It doesn't show well Q4 of this year. Basically, Q4 of this year, uh the results for Black Friday were roughly the same.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, got it. All right, so hopefully we have been able to convince you that you should do a new year, new you campaign. Um if you're feeling overwhelmed, just do the absolute lightest version. If you've got enough time and resources, then put it in and do all of the other stuff that we've talked about. Um and then afterwards message me and tell me how much more money you made. I always like hearing that. Yosip, that was awesome. Anything else that we need to leave people with, or is that the is that the full kitten caboodle?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, if you don't trust us about these graphs, we will have them on our case study page soon. So with a with a short case study for each, feel free to have a look uh and browse our website.

SPEAKER_00:

Hmm. I think it's datadrivenmarketing.co slash case dash study or something. Just go to the website and then and then click on case study. Um fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on. As always, always a delight. Of course. See you next time.