The Art of Selling Online Courses

223 How I Made $1 Million In 10 Months

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 223

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🔥 Looking for predictable revenue growth? Access our FREE 7-day roadmap to increase your income without paid ads or sales calls! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmap

Allie Bjerk made $1 million in just 10 months selling online courses. But here's what makes her story different: she did it without building a huge audience first, without relying on freebies or lead magnets, and without spending years creating content.

Instead, she went straight to selling low-ticket products to complete strangers through ads.

In this episode, Allie breaks down exactly how she built her "tiny offer" funnel, from her $17 front-end product all the way through to her $25,000 coaching program. She shares why she believes you can grow your audience with buyers only, how to choose a low-ticket product that doesn't cannibalise your main course, and the psychological triggers that turn one-time buyers into repeat customers.

We also get into the nitty-gritty of running ads in 2025. Allie talks about how she tests new creatives, why she starts with just $25-30 a day in ad spend, and what happened when she dropped her price from $27 to $17 (spoiler: her conversion rate tripled while everything else held steady).

If you've been putting off selling because you think you need a bigger audience first, this episode might change your mind.

🔗 Connect with Allie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alliebjerk
🔗 Visit Allie's website at http://AllieBjerk.com

#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.

SPEAKER_00:

That's when my business really blew up. That helped me make a million dollars in my course business in the first 10 months. In 2019, I could not have predicted what was coming or how big it would grow. If I just make one sale, I will have validation. I'll feel okay about spending a little bit more than that. I was like running errands and I got a strike notification. I was like, I don't know this person's name. Like, what is happening? I just kept doubling my money day over day over day until I was spending like$4,000 a day and it just out and out my I made like three times my money back on the app. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03:

Hello. Well yeah, selling online forces. Performance in the online course industry. My name is today's guest is Ali. Now Ali is an award-winning digital marketer. Demand generation strategist, a framework methodology and psychology creates a foundation for easy pool for access marketing and sales success. She was introduced to me by a good friend of mine, Christopher, who's been on the podcast. I'm going to find for you when that was. It was very early. I think it was episode 16. So Ali has been recommended as someone who absolutely knows her chair is doing great stuff and actually works with course creators herself as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Ali, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_03:

So you've said something that I think is super interesting. You said that you believe you can grow an audience without freebies and only focus on growing with buyers instead. And I looked through the numbers that you said you kind of get in terms of conversion rates and your email campaigns. And I'm like, that looks like a list of buyers that you have got there. So that's pretty baller. So talk us through that. Like, how did you come to that conclusion and and why do you think that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so it really evolved out of necessity. I started my business. Um, it's been about 15 years ago now, and I had little babies at home, and I I couldn't be on social media all the time. So I knew I wanted to grow a really big business. I knew I wanted to make a lot of money with my online business. And the fastest path to be able to do that for me without growing an audience and without relying on a launch strategy was to sell low-ticket products from ads. So around 2019 is when I launched my after you know, some testing and some like dabbling, not really going all in, when I finally went all in with ads and low-ticket offers in 2019, that's when my business really blew up. Um, it's like I finally figured out the thing that works with low-ticket offers too cold traffic. Um, and that helped me make a million dollars in my course business in the first 10 months of finally like unlocking that strategy.

SPEAKER_03:

Nice. Okay. Why do you think that works for you? Like what or is that the wrong question? Like, what did you do to make it work for you? Like what's the how did you how did you get that working?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So a lot of people up until that point were like, you don't want to sell low-ticket products, you'll just attract like a very needy audience or people who don't ever take action and you know, just kind of like a low vibe um audience. But what I figured out is that if you speak to the right psychology of the right buyer, somebody who values their time the most, those are the same people who will want to keep buying other things. So if we could create an offer that was highly focused on the time-saving piece, you know, it's not just like a full course for$27. Instead, we we focus on solving micro problems, getting people really quick wins. Um, and then those same people, once they're on your email list, are the ones who will join the higher ticket signature courses. They'll join masterminds, memberships, all sorts of different offers down the road as long as you can hit the right psychological need in the beginning.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. So there's a couple of important bits there, it sounds like. So you've got to identify the right audience and then you've got to make a product that that audience would be interested in rather than the people who are just like after something really cheap for a whole course. You know, like the kind of people who maybe who want a whole course for$27 are then going to be bad customers in the future. Whereas you've got to have the right product. Like, and presumably then that's the right kind of messaging around that. And one of the things you've mentioned there is saving time. Okay. Could you unpick some of these for us? Let's start off with like who's the right audience? How did you figure that out for yourself in terms of knowing who exactly you wanted to target?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So for myself, um, I've always been behind the scenes, or I started out behind the scenes of other people's businesses. I was building funnels, writing copy, running ads, and I knew I wanted my own offer. And I I tried to create a low-ticket offer about how to sell from a sales funnel or how to create a sales funnel after doing live streams. And this was in 2019 when everybody was doing live streams. That was like the big thing. And nobody bought the product. Like nobody even hardly looked at my sales page. And I was stumped. I was like, but this is a really good product, and people shouldn't be doing live streams without having a way to get people from the live stream into a funnel. But what I ended up figuring out is that most people weren't actually like the mass market wasn't really doing live streams. There were a few, you know, outstanding people that were doing it. So then I shifted the offer to being a calendar of 365 ideas for how to do a three-minute live stream every day. You know, I created a new opportunity and I was like, this is how you market your business. You just get in people's news feeds every day. It doesn't have to be a long live stream, just show up and hear, you know, 365 ideas to get it done. This was pre-Chat GPT. So I actually had to come up with all of those ideas. It took a really long time, but it was totally worth it. And I once I put that out into the world, that's when people started buying it. Because once I realized, you know, the the majority of people aren't really doing live streams yet. So they don't need a sales funnel product from their live streams. So I moved my funnel product that I create or my training about funnels to my one-time offer spot. And then it started converting at like 30% of people who bought my low-ticket offer bought that product when nobody was buying it before. So it helped me see how important the placement is of the products and and kind of helping people see themselves transforming first, because when they buy that low-ticket product, they're already, it's like when you buy a gym membership, right? And you're like, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna get in shape. It's like the pure act of buying the product already started making people's um minds shift about themselves. So they're like, I bought a live stream product, I'm doing live streams, and then they would buy the sales funnel product because it logically made sense of, you know, of course, if I'm doing live streams, I'm gonna need to know how to sell from them. Otherwise, what's the point?

SPEAKER_03:

Got it. Okay. So what were when you did that? How sure were you that that was then targeting the right audience? Because sometimes you can make something that sells, but it's not your audience. And like, was it obvious right away, or did you have to like tweak it or?

SPEAKER_00:

It wasn't, it was not obvious to me right away. And in hindsight, I mean this now I I am focused on teaching low-ticket funnels or tiny offers, what I've trademarked them as in my coaching program, and I've built my entire business around that. But teaching people live streams isn't really the same as teaching them how to create a low-ticket funnel. So it did take a lot of um kind of evolving and settling into that, but it it also was created through demand. Of people saw this low-ticket product, this live stream product, and they're like, How are you doing this? Like, how are you getting all these buyers? Because I was talking about my results and how I was running ads and how I'd set up the funnel and my average cart value. And you know, I was sharing all this information. Like, my mind is blown, you guys, that this is actually happening from these low-ticket products. And then uh there's a lot of people in my DMs that were like, Can you teach me how to build a low-ticket product? Like, will you show me how to do this? And I was just gonna create a course about it. And like, I didn't love being in front of the camera. I didn't want to be front and center of my business. I was really uncomfortable leading a group. And I created this course and I had a friend who found the webinar, Evergreen webinar for the course. And he's like, You can't, you have to do a group coaching program and you have to do a live webinar. Like he kind of convinced me into getting out of my comfort zone, doing a live group coaching program and then selling it from a live webinar. And when I started doing that, I started doing a weekly live webinar every week in 2020. And that's when my business like continued to expand and blow up from there. So it was kind of like I got where I wanted to be from just taking action and just doing what I knew how to do. And then that kind of unlocked the next level, and then I did that, and then that unlocked the next level. So I didn't, I mean, in 2019, I could not have predicted what was coming or how big it would grow. But I just knew that, you know, if I could just make a little bit of money from a funnel, it would prove to me that it was possible. Like I could make the same or make money from selling to strangers like my clients were, because before that I just it didn't even seem possible to me. It seemed like monopoly money pretty much.

SPEAKER_03:

So who is your audience now? What's like your ideal client nowadays?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, probably course creators and and experts in all sorts of different niches. You know, everything from like homeschooling moms who are selling a homeschooling calendar for$17 that brings them into a 297 course. It's a client, somebody who is teaching SEO. I also have other, you know, marketers and course creators who are selling tools about um growing an online business. So it kind of spans the all sorts of different industries. I've got relationship coaches, health coaches, lots of different uh creators.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. Is it mostly people selling low-ticket stuff already or people who are selling the coaching program, like higher-ticket coaching programs, and then you help them to do the low-ticket stuff?

SPEAKER_00:

Or yeah, for a lot of them, they've already created something that's I'd say like low to mid-ticket, more like 297-ish for a course or something like that. Kind of the mentality of build it and they will come. Like they built a bigger course and it's either not selling as well as they want it, or they're not finding their ideal audience, may they're freebie, or their ads are kind of like dying and they're trying to stay profitable. Uh, that's usually when people find me.

SPEAKER_03:

And then your your kind of shtick, the thing you help people with is how can how can you manage to run ads to a low-ticket offer? Is that correct? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, primarily ad space. I mean, I have some clients who are on YouTube and just have been creating content without really selling anything, and then it's a matter of just tweaking their description and putting their low-ticket link in there or mentioning it in their video. Uh, but for most people, they are their primary source of traffic is uh meta ads.

SPEAKER_03:

Got it. Okay. Yeah. So what's the first step when someone comes to you if they're like, oh, I want to do this, I want to set up this low-ticket offer. Uh, my my what did you call them? Tiny offers. Sorry. That's what you uh your name for them, right? Um what's what's like step one? How do you get started with that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, usually figuring out what their bigger vision is for their business, what they ultimately want to be selling. So we always reverse engineer from there. We figure out um, you know, if somebody has a a membership, how do we get more people ultimately to join their membership? And if they have a high ticket, you know, what's the path between the tiny offer to their mastermind or their, you know, getting people on their webinar if that's kind of the conversion event that they're using for their higher ticket thing. And then from there, we we try to pull out either either something that's inside of their bigger signature program and see if if that's like the thing that's most attractive for people, or maybe there's a pain point that we can solve somewhere else that's like a quick win for their ideal person. Something that would be quick, plug and play. You know, it's oftentimes like teaching a framework that's different than they may have seen before. It could be swipe files, it could be like an organizational chart or something like that that's just kind of like an asset or a digital thing they can download and plug into their business or their lesson.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. So you kind of want something that the person who's buying it can can get use from really quickly.

SPEAKER_00:

Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. The quicker the better.

SPEAKER_03:

This is kind of similar, this is very similar for us. We we approach this in a very different way, but I I think that we're we've both found the same kind of strategy, but we approach it from one way and you approach the other. So this is nice. This is fascinating. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Um one of the things I say to people, we call it the uh tripwire product because we s one of the reasons what we do is we start with lead magnets. We'll do, you know, most of our audience have got um organic traffic and we'll point people from there to a lead magnet, and then the lead magnet goes into a tripwire, which is typically our starting point for testing is always$27, pretty much. Nice. And so what's what kind of price point have you found with your um up until 2025?

SPEAKER_00:

I I was exclusively$27, and then I dropped it to 17, and then my my front end conversion rates tripled. Oh everything else.

SPEAKER_03:

Very nice.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like and it it had gone down kind of over the years, you know, it was probably higher in like 2020, 2021. Um, and then a lot of my funnels were down around like three, about three percent of people who go to the landing page would buy it. And then it jumped to like 10 to 12% at 17. So I was like, well, I'm gonna keep doing that. But you don't know until you test, right? Like it's it's so interesting.

SPEAKER_03:

No, we'll always start 27 and then we'll test 17, 37, 50, you know, like every if if we've got enough traffic, we'll test whatever you've what what do you got? What's what's this audience kind of like? Like some it doesn't take any difference. You're up to$37 and the conversion rate stays the same. It's funny.

SPEAKER_01:

May as well, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So okay. So someone comes to you, you're you are reverse engineering it. So you look at what's your main program you've already got. Is it the 297 thing? Is it you've got a group coaching program, whatever it is. How do you get people into that? Maybe that's a webinar. Then you reverse back to like, okay, how are we gonna get people to attend that webinar? And then back to how do let's choose a product that's I I assume gonna get in the right kind of people who then would be a good fit for the the later on uh program, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yep.

SPEAKER_03:

Now, one thing that you mentioned there then was that when you're choosing that product, what you're looking at is maybe it's a framework, maybe it's a resource, something they can just plug into their business. I'm I'm gonna guess here that there's some a bit of an art to choosing the right product that will appeal to the audience on ads and also fit with the right with the the program that they're gonna be selling later. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03:

Do you have any tips for people about that? If someone's like, I want to do this, like how can they do that better?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So we usually we don't we call it like cannibalizing your higher ticket program. You don't want somebody to buy the low ticket thing and be like, I'm good. I don't, I don't need anything else to solve all my problems. Um, so one way we've described it is sometimes it's teaching them the what without really showing them the how. So kind of introducing them to the concept, similar to like what a webinar would do. You know, you're more about shifting the beliefs inside of the product. Um, other things that we've done have been kind of taking a piece of your signature framework and then renaming it slightly differently. So I have a friend named Colin Boyd, and he has a pro program called Sell From Stage Academy that's$2,000. And he pulled out his a piece of like creating your story and he renamed it to the conversion story formula. So it's almost like a mini course that he's teaching, the story formula in his tiny offer, but then it you have to join the bigger program to know how to apply that story to selling events or how to, you know, use your story to make more money. Uh so it's it's pulling out sometimes a piece of your bigger thing or um figuring out what it is that your audience thinks that they're stuck with, like where they're stuck the most. Like in the fitness world, I've had clients that create programs that are like the um ABS Accelerator program, and it's about how to get a six-pack, even though they know that like it's sleep, it's probably counting your macros, it's eating enough protein, it's like all these other things. But what her audience is often saying coming to her is like, I just want a six pack. Like I, as long as I have that, I'll be happy. So she she's teaching them like this ab workout program. But then once they're in, you know, the order bump might be uh a seven-day nutrition plan, or it might be, you know, the next, I think her next program is like a booty program as the upsell. So it's like she's kind of picking specific body parts, even though inside of her membership, it covers everything from the nutrition to just overall wellness. So it's it's like pulling out one tiny piece of it and and using that.

SPEAKER_03:

How often does it do you get it right first time, the offer that you try?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say for me, usually about 80% of the time. For clients, sometimes it's a little, I would say maybe like 30 to 50% of the time if they're in a a coaching program, especially if they're just getting started and they don't have a a ton of data on what their audience wants or needs.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So if someone tries this and it doesn't work, they shouldn't be like, oh.

SPEAKER_00:

Totally normal.

SPEAKER_03:

This doesn't work for me, give up, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, no, not at all. I mean, even for mine.

SPEAKER_03:

This is no use, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm not, I swear. Um, so it's even for me, like I my current tiny offer, I did this. This is how I figured it out is I did a reel about how I created a course in a weekend using AI to help me map it out and to come up with it. And the reel blew up, like it had a million views almost. And I was like, huh, this is like something people organically were really interested in. So I created a low-ticket offer called Course Creation Hyperdrive because it's relevant and it's what people want help with. And it was about how to outline, at least outline your course using AI and then how to help, you know, have it map out your modules and your trainings and stuff. And that's been my current tiny offer, but I it didn't hit the mark at first. Like it, I was just talking about AI. And people were like, ew, AI, like you shouldn't be a fake creator. Like you should actually know the thing to create a course. And I was like, no, that's not it at all. Like, this is to help people who have maybe been stuck or like overthinking or they're in decision fatigue. It's like to help real experts who have a thing be able to outline it faster. So then I had to like change all the messaging on the page so people didn't think I was like this AI course person, because you know, that's not what I was encouraging, like not fake, fake creators. Um, so once I changed the messaging and I even tested some stuff with ADHD, like if you have ADHD and you can't finish things, like this tool will help you do it. And then I realized I had all these ADHD people coming on my list that like couldn't finish things and weren't, you know, like like reading the email or the sales page or like, okay, maybe this is not quite the right angle for people coming into my higher ticket thing because. They wouldn't finish uh attending the webinar. They'd get distracted and they wouldn't buy. Oh, so it took some time to kind of settle into the right. I mean, it was the right product, but even the messaging around it to get the right person buying it who would ultimately continue up my value letter, it took some tweaking and some testing.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. So if someone's listening to this and they're like, okay, cool. I want to try this. I've got like a lot of people listening have already got organic audience, but some won't have it all, right? And they might just want to go straight with ads. Other people, I know that some people in the audience have got their organic audience, but they want to try ads as well. So this might be a thing that they're like, okay, cool, I'm going to try this out. So we're starting off with reverse-engineered back form, or what else are you already selling? How are you going to get people into that? How do you make sure you find a product that you've got? Maybe extracting something from your existing course and just selling like that one thing, something that's like useful but incomplete. It's just the abs bit rather than the whole body. Or it's here's how to write the story, but it's not here to how to then convert them afterwards, or here's how to create your course faster, but then you'll need to sell it. And so it's that little bit, you extract something from there, and then you start kind of testing it out. What's the when you're starting to put the ads together, what do people need to think about at that stage? I'm guessing you've got like some strategies that you found have worked really well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I I do something different than what I've heard other people talk about. A lot of people, when I was just starting to test ads, said, you know, never start if you don't have at least$1,000 to throw away on ads. And I remember thinking that was very scary. Like I don't ever want to throw away a thousand dollars. Like it doesn't matter how much money I have. Like, I don't like wasting money. Um, so when I first started, I spent, I think,$27 my first day on ads. And I was like, if I just make one sale, I will have validation, I'll feel okay about spending a little bit more the next day. And then I I made a sale that day. I think I made two sales that day and the order bumps and the upsells. So I I made like three times my money back on the ads. And I was like, oh my gosh. I'm gonna be rich. Yeah, yeah. I was like running errands and I got a stripe notification. And I was like, I don't know this person's name. Like, what is happening right now? So then the next day, I think I doubled my ad spend, which a little bit harder to do in the Andromeda update days, and Facebook ads have changed a lot since then. But I just kept doubling my money day over day over day until I was spending, I think I got up to like three or three or four thousand dollars a day, and it just held consistent. And I was mind blown, of course. But yeah, so even now with all the updates and changes that ads have made over the last five or six years, I still only tell people to start with like$25 to$30 a day in ad spend. And if they don't make a sale the first or second day, I already shut things off, tweak messaging, test a little bit different angle, and then I would turn them back on after I've you kind of made my control tests to see if that works better that time.

SPEAKER_03:

And so what are you finding in terms of like the kinds of ads that that are working for people nowadays? Does it vary massively or like what's any rules of thumb? Like how if someone wants to start with this, what what can they do?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So when I'm coaching people through starting, I usually have them the way that I've been seeing it work best now is one campaign with one ad set. So one set of targeting, and then inside of that launching with five to ten different creatives. So with the the most recent update that went through that seems to work the best right out of the gate. And I'll have people create a 60-second video ad that's like face to camera where they're holding their camera and talking kind of about what the product is, um, a real-looking ad where it's just B-roll with text over the top of it, um, mock-ups where it's a picture, you know, even like a photoshopped version of what the product is, where it's got, you know, the bonuses and everything laid out, or a selfie kind of branding photo. So really mixing it up on the different types of content, carousels that you can swipe through, um, kind of testing a little bit of everything and then making sure there's a good hook at the top, of course, of the ad messaging, you know, making sure that you're speaking to the right person because the biggest change that I've seen recently is that targeting is a little bit more relevant than it ever has been. You know, I used to get into the ads and be like, they have to like Russell Brunson and Amy Porterfield and Brene Brown, and I would like stack my interests. But now I just do broad targeting. And what we've been finding is that um Meta's basically adding a bunch of tags to all of our products of like um the example that I heard was that say it's a dog, a product for dogs. If the picture that you're using is an older dog, then Meta will add a tag that's like picture of older dog. So then if if I'm someone who's on the, you know, I'm like scrolling Facebook and Meta has figured out that I have an older dog for some reason because I'm clicking on different ads and articles about helping my older dog, then it's just gonna help us connect. So it's more about like the tagging that that probably AI is doing and Meta's doing and their algorithm that they're just trying to match up tags between users and advertisers much more than they could before. So you don't even really need advertising or not advertising, um, targeting like you used to. You just need really uh ads that are written really well.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. So a wide variety of kinds of creative, try all kinds of different things. There's a a friend of mine he runs um, I don't know, it's like a few million a year course business, and he does it all with ads. And he he told me the amount of creatives that he makes in a year, and I can't remember the number, but it was it was certainly a number that thousands made me just like almost feel sick in my stomach of like, how do you think of that many ideas? It was thousands. I know it was thousands, but I can't remember if it was two thousand or ten thousand, but it was somewhere in that kind of range. I was like, dear God, you know? People think, oh, ads, just set it and forget it. And it's like, no, no, you're gonna be creating a lot of creative.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. Yeah. So I will usually um refresh my ads at least once a week, and I use a lot of AI ideas to help me, or I go into Canva and I just tweak little things or tweak colors. I find a lot of Canva templates that I just use. Like I'm always trying to create as fast as I can just to get some some level of testing and an idea of what my audience cares about.

SPEAKER_03:

So, how much how many different creatives do you think you're going through in a week or month or year, or however you might figure that kind of thing out?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say probably if I were to say 10 per week, 52, probably like 520 roughly a year. Okay. I'm probably not on your friends level, so I guess I need to get there. I gotta up my game.

SPEAKER_03:

But I just I really think it's important because I think people sometimes want to start ads, but they don't realize if you're gonna do this, you need to do it properly.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

You know? Like you can't just go into this and go, I'm gonna come up with three creatives and it's gonna be for some. No, no, no, no. Almost just don't even bother starting unless you're actually going to be like, right, I'm gonna come up with enough creatives, I'm gonna test enough different versions, I'm gonna test different products, I'm gonna test different sales pages, I'm gonna see what kind of works, different types of messaging, and then just have the creative uh um like flow just going every week, coming up with more and and doing that. Does that take you a long time now? Sorry, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00:

No, I mean I'm I'm kind of always thinking about that. That's what I was gonna say is like for the organic people, they're just that's kind of their frame for life as they're going through their day. It's like, oh, that could be content, or I have a content idea, or I could write a you know, a blog, or I guess probably not blogging anymore, but like create a reel about that. Um, it's that's kind of how I see the world about ads. It's like, oh, I could test this ad angle or I could test this creative. I'm just kind of filtering my day through that perspective instead. So just kind of different, a different angle of how you're creating. But it used to work that you could, I mean, I used to set set it and forget it for six weeks where I would set up one ad and then it would just go and go and go. And then it would kind of slow down and stop working, and I would get very dramatic and like my business is done, the strategy's not working anymore. And then I'd refresh my creative, and then it was like bam, back to the top. I'm like, I just, you know, if I could like not get to the point where I'm being very melodramatic about like my 15 minutes of fame is over and the strategy is dying, like I would just create a new ad and it would just pop right back to the way it started. So then I kind of learned over time like I can prevent that from happening if I just rotate fresh creative in more than every six weeks. Those were like the glory days, you know, when the marketers are like pre-the-the Google slap. Do you ever read like those old books about marketing, what it was like when you could run Google pay-per-click and it was really easy? And then they're like, oh, the Google algorithm changed. It's like we always kind of have to figure out the next thing.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah, it always happens. I know back in the time when um Google ads was like pretty new. I I'd studied Google Ads, I took courses in it, and I ran it. But at the time I was running um like a charity, and so I was getting people great results with Google Ads, but I wasn't really making all that much money. And I kind of look back at it and go, if I had just been running a for-profit business back then, because I was pretty I was like pretty decent at it. And I was like, I think I could have made a lot of money back then with that. But it's like, ah, it's all right, you can make a lot of money now. Doing something else is fine.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, yeah. Yeah, you had to be there before you could be here, but I know. Always 2020.

SPEAKER_03:

So then what's your process after that? So for yourself, you know, so you run your your tiny offers, you get people buying, um, you build up your list. What happens next? What's the what's your order bumps? What's your upsells? What's your kind of your process afterwards to get them to buy anything else?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I have my my$17 front end, and then for the order bump, I usually do$27 or$37. Um, and and what I found is a calendar type thing works really well in that order bump spot if it's like an implementation plan or for me it's like a launch plan. So they're building their course, and then the launch plan makes sense for them to after they finish the course, be able to start marketing it. And then my upsell um is about it's a bundle of courses right now, um, kind of because I wanted to create something new and I didn't have a ton of time, so I just kind of threw it together, but it's converting at like 20 or 30 percent. And it's uh grown. Right. Yeah. So it's a course about um creating, writing the copy and then how to build a funnel. And it's kind of just the general next steps. Um, but I think because it's it's a bundle, it's not as succinct as my higher ticket program that really walks them through a clear path. So I think that's why it still works.

SPEAKER_03:

And then what happens after that? How do they, how do you promote the higher ticket program?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I have about three emails that welcome them into the courses and say, you know, make sure you make time to go through these. Our most successful clients go through module two first. And it just tries the goal is to try to get them to log in and consume something. And then after those three emails are up, I run a weekly webinar that's always at the same time on the same day. So then the emails are like, hey, join us on Monday where we're gonna teach you how to make$1,000 a day with your course or with your low-ticket. You know, I do low-ticket offers. So I'm gonna show you how I do that and how I've made$1,000 a day with them. So it's kind of like a next step or like an aspirational step that I'm teaching on this live training. And then from there, um, at the end of my webinar, it's a book a call, is the call to action. So then on the call, we can kind of figure out out where they're at in business. And then right now it's a a 3K program, a 7K program, or a 25K program.

SPEAKER_03:

I have been banging on to people on this podcast. If you're listening and you're sick of hearing me talk about it, then it's just you just have to do it and then you'll make a load of money, and then you'll instead of being sick of it, you can just be like really grateful that I talk about it so much. But about having higher ticket programs, because most people don't, most people listening to this don't have higher ticket programs. That's the you know, it's people who've set up low-ticket stuff, um, which is great. You know, it's a wonderful lifestyle thing, but then there's this opportunity to make a lot more money if you're also willing to do a higher ticket, maybe group coaching program or something like that. And people choose not to, logically, I kind of get it. But I think a lot of people are are not doing it because they're not sure how it works or they're not used to it, or they're they're a bit scared of the idea of it, or something. I don't know exactly. You know, there's like kind of it's just it's different to what they've got used to doing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

But can you talk people through like some idea of how much more money you make by having high-ticket programs as well as because you help clients to do that as well, right? So you'll have seen the number of these.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a lot. I was the same. I didn't want to have a group coaching program. Like that felt really scary to have all these faces on Zoom that were all looking at me and thinking I'm gonna answer all their questions. You know, like that was the last thing I wanted to do. Um, but I I was selling the course, it was gonna be$9.97, and I maybe sold like two of them. And that's when my friend was like, please just try this group program thing. Please just try a live webinar. And we did it, and I made$130,000 on the first live webinar, and I was like, huh. I mean, it was really fun to make, I still love making low-ticket sales all day, but like that was a totally different game. And it it blew my own mind for what was possible. Like it, I mean, it definitely stretched my nervous system out of like my reality for a while. But but I think for a lot of people, if 3% of people are gonna buy, like 3% of people would buy the$297 course, and 3% of people will buy the 3K course. Like every time I've tested different price points, it's always the same percentage of buyers. So the math is a lot more fun when it's 3% of people buying a 3k program or a 7k program. And it's not a it's not a ton more work to deliver it, I don't think. I think it's just a different. Um, I mean, sometimes it's a different buyer that's buying a higher ticket thing. I have found it is actually easier to deliver a higher ticket program than a low ticket program.

SPEAKER_03:

What is it that you are delivering this? It's group coaching, but is it like a six-week program, a six-month program? Like how does it kind of work? What's the what's involved?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so it's 12, 12 weeks right now. Um, and I say right now because we're always testing different things. Uh, but I do one call a week. So I do my weekly webinar that's on my calendar. Like I never move it around, I never touch it. And then I have my weekly call that I never move around and I never touch. And I've been doing that since 2019. So it's just part of my routine. You know, it's like, oh, Thursday, can't put anything else on Thursdays at 11 because that's when I do my group coaching call. And we have as much automated as we can. I mean, people pre-submit their questions. I just pull up the form right before we go live and I answer their questions. And then we have a school group where the community lives, and I pop in there every so often. But I do have a few coaches that I've hired that are in there just making sure everybody's taken care of. Um, so I've tried to make it as light of a lift for myself as I can, which kind of sounds bad. But you know, it's like that's part of growing and scaling that I can keep my brain in the CEO stuff and start scaling more with having some contractors on the team that help.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Nice. And webinars. Talk to me about why you do a webinar as the way to promote the booking a call and the next step with that, rather than, you know, just sending an email to promote it directly or whatever else it might be.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I use the webinar to, you know, shift beliefs of what people might be thinking about low-ticket products. It gives me just more of an opportunity to get in there with people and and show them that, you know, ads are an option. They're not as scary as they might think. Because I talk about ads a little bit, I talk about um, you know, just the importance of finishing things and getting support on finishing things that it's way harder to do it without having a community around you, which I truly believe. Um, and then, you know, just helping them kind of come up with their ideas for what their low-ticket offer could be. So I when I look at my audience, most of them are like, cool, cool, it works for other people, but I don't know what I would do. I don't know if this is possible for me. So there's a lot more um kind of like validating their ideas that I can do in the chat and I can connect with people and I can say their names and and it just starts to feel more real when I can say, um, yeah, you know, I had someone in your exact niche and they created this offer. So I can kind of go back and forth with people, which I think helps more than evergreen. Um my live converts. I've tested Evergreen, I've tested VSLs, video sales letters, I've tested emails, like we've done lots of different things. And I, you know, for a while, like during um, like I said, I've got little kids and during COVID, like I didn't want to be doing a live webinar. So we tested all sorts of different stuff and nothing else hit the way that that live webinar did. So that's why we ended up going back to it, even though, you know, I I always romanticized having an Evergreen webinar that converted at 3%, but it just never we couldn't get it.

SPEAKER_03:

It just doesn't, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

No, we just can't get it to hit.

SPEAKER_03:

So it converts 3% from what? People who registered for it, 3% of people who attended, or what's the yeah, who who registered for it? 3% of people who registered end up buying the program or booking a call?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, buying a program.

SPEAKER_03:

Buying the program, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's the general. Because I mean there's like the registration rate, the actually showing up to the webinar rate, the booking the call rate, the showing up to the call rate. So there's I mean, there's a lot of drop-off points like in any other webinar, but tracking all of those is is key, as you know.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I always find that I I I recommend webinars to people quite a lot, but I also say it's only worth doing when you're selling something expensive enough because the drop-off rate at each step is so high that you've got to at the end of it actually sell something that's, you know, like absolute minimum a few hundred dollars, but probably a thousand or more, you know, for it to kind of really be a good fit. Because you can sell stuff for like five hundred dollars. It depends on the audience, right? It's at least three hundred dollars like with just just through email, fine. And it's easier to sell through email because you don't have to get on the webinar and get all excited for people and be there at a certain time and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

But then if you're selling more expensive stuff, it's like it converts so much better with a webinar.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

I was chatting with someone yesterday, it's a friend of mine, Rob, and um he's he sells on an offer for I forget exactly, but like about 10k, something like that. And uh I was helping him put a webinar together for selling that. And um he said to me, Yeah, it did okay. It was like six percent of people who came on um bought. I was just like, he's like, you told me like 10% was good. I said, no, no, no. I said 10% is really good. Like that's the absolute like I don't know anybody converting more than 10%. 6% is like, Rob, this is you should do this again.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

You know? He's like, Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do it again. He's gonna start running ads into it cold as well, which will be interesting to see how that this is his warm audience. So he's gonna try cold directly to the webinar and and we'll see, you know. Um, but I'm like, this is great. Just keep keep doing this webinar.

SPEAKER_00:

Right, yeah. Yeah, it's the I mean the benchmark numbers I think really throw people for a loop sometimes. Like it you'd think six is low, or like you'd think an open rate or a click-through rate of one or two percent is low, but then you're like, oh, this is industry average. Like, I guess I'm not below, which is the power of peers who can tell you that helps a lot.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I was chatting with someone the other day and they were really freaked out that maybe their email was written badly and whatever and wasn't converting. I'm like, actually, your email converted fine, it's just your email list is too small. That's the thing you need to work with. So you need to know what step in the in the process to is at benchmark and which one is like sucking, so you can work on the right thing. Otherwise, you spend all your time improving the webinar that was already at six percent. It's like, no, no, no, just get more people on it, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, it's so interesting of which drop off point to focus on too. Because even webinars, it's like if you focus on getting your sign up page or your often form up a few percent, like that's way more valuable than trying to get your close rate higher because then you just have, you know, more volume at the the bottom of the funnel. I think people forget that there's all these different tweaking knobs to look at.

SPEAKER_03:

So are you often recommending webinars to your clients to for them to actually sell their program or does that depend on what it is they're selling?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it does depend a lot on what they're selling. A lot of a lot of my audience is probably in a similar situation where they don't have something higher ticket yet or they're, you know, high ticket to them is more like$997 or lower. So they're a lot of them are going from low ticket to like a$297 course, which they don't need a webinar to do. Then I just recommend email or a a good you know video explaining what it is. Or some of them, I mean I guess a lot of them too are newer in in selling a a coaching program. So they'll go straight to book a call um from their email sequence just to try to get the the highest volume of conversations and not even you know pitching a specific program but just trying to get people on the phone to understand what their needs are. I think it's really powerful in the beginning too.

SPEAKER_03:

Nice. Nice. If someone's been listening to this and they're like man I need some I need to learn some more from Ali about these tiny offers and and figuring this all out where should they go?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh so I hang out the most on Instagram and my username is just Ali Bjork. So A L L I E B J E R K. And then my website is the same. So Ali Bjork.com.

SPEAKER_03:

Perfect. Um anything else you want to leave everybody with?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't think so. I mean I I talk a lot about minimum viable products like just get out there, get testing, try to sell something um that's you know the best way to get data and and start scaling from there.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. Alice is great. I really, really appreciate your time coming on today. And uh thank you for for sharing your wisdom with everybody.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It's been fun.