10 HUGE Mistakes NEW Course Creators Make

It can be devastating to create a course, pour your heart and soul into it and not have it sell.

That’s what happened to me in my first course. I spend days creating a course and when it was time to launch all I heard was crickets.

Sound familiar?

Well I’ve learned a lot since that last launch and today I want to share with you the top 10 deadly mistakes that course creators make and the real reason WHY so many course creators don’t survive online.

Yes, you want to make sure that you launch a course that sells, but if you never launch it because you are overthinking every little thing, then you will never get to the…sales!

Whether that is overthinking your niche, overthinking the content that needs to go into your course, overthinking how you are going to deliver your course, or overthinking how you are going to market your course – overthinking is going to lead you to not being able to maximize the results or profits your desire.

What you do want to focus on is building the skills you need to create amazing courses and irresistible offers. And, in order to build those skills, it means you actually have to execute the entire course creation strategy and do a course launch.

The first course you create (or the second or third) is not going to be perfect. You may not have your niche nailed down, you may not know exactly who your ideal client is, you may not be 100% sure you’ve included all of the right content and you may just not get it all right.

And that is okay because the more online courses and digital products you create, the better you will get at identifying what you need to improve with your courses BUT if you do not every launch the course you are not going to be able to improve your course.

So don’t overthink your first few course launches. Create the course and market the course, then look at the data and get the necessary feedback afterward so you know what you need to know to improve with your overall course creation strategy before your next launch!

Yes, you need a niche, and the more of a specialist you are, the better but if you are new to building an online business or creating courses, it is OKAY to explore different types of course topics. When I first started my online business and blog I talked about everything from building a brand to growing a network marketing business online. I also created a bunch of different courses and over time, I was able to see which offers resonated with my audience the most. I was able to get a better understanding of what problems my audience wanted me to solve, the best way to teach my students, and what I enjoyed creating as a course creator.

Being able to now know #1 what solutions my students wanted me to prioritize and #2 what content I was passionate about teaching allowed me to double down on building a more profitable course creation strategy which in turn helped me focus on solidifying my niche.

So for all of my new course creators, don’t pigeonhole yourself too soon, you might just miss your calling. Be willing to experiment, try different things, and launch courses that may potentially flop all with the mindset that it will eventually lead you to the niche that is right for you.

Creating a course is more than throwing together a few thoughts into a series of tutorial videos, hoping it will sell. It takes extensive planning and preparation to ensure that the course you create is not only great, but that it sells!

I talk about this extensively in the post: 06 Step Content Creation Strategy and when you see online courses that fail to sell, it’s most often due to the fact that they’re missing one or more key pieces of the course creation strategy puzzle.

You want to have a content creation strategy in place that allows you to execute every step of the course creation process with as little chaos as possible. That means you want to have workflows in place for your course content creation, marketing plans in place when it’s time to launch, and sales systems in place to ensure you are converting as many people are possible into your program.

Having a well-thought-out and organized roadmap that you can follow will hold you accountable and allow you to have an executable action plan that keeps you on track.

And if you want to get your hands on my complete course creation strategy and launch plan click the link here to learn more.

You may love Instagram and YouTube and Pinterest, but you’ve got to handle social media with caution. Remember Myspace? Periscope? Even Clubhouse which was all the rave just months ago didn’t live up to the hype. So, if you do not focus on building your email list, and you only focus on growing your social media channels you are putting yourself at risk.

We hear stories all the time of Facebook deleting profiles and Instagram suspending, deactivating, or shadow banning accounts. And even worse, what if your social media account gets hacked (like mine did a couple of years back) or the company gets hacked? If you have not made strides to grow your own community of followers aka an email list then you are putting yourself and your business at risk.

Out of all the platforms, you can be doing, email marketing is the ONE platform that has stood the test of time. People may change their YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook profiles but most people do not change their emails.  Just think about how long you’ve had your email address! Since forever right? So when you’re able to build your email list you can secure your subscribers which allows you to contact them, build relationships will them, and sell to them one YOUR OWN TERMS!

Also as an online entrepreneur, you are more than likely selling a course, a product, or a service so email is a great way to be able to get into someone’s inbox.

Related: Launch Your List Email Starter Guide

Courses won’t sell themselves and many times the only difference between someone buying your course vs someone else’s course will be how YOU make them feel!

There has been a huge push for business owners to increase their personal brand presence online.

Why?

Because it is so much easier to sell whatever you want when you have a strong personal brand and a large audience aka community behind you.

Here’s a classic example:

Kylie Jenner.

How is it possible that someone like Kylie Jenner can become a “self-made” billionaire and be on the cover of Forbes magazine?

Her massive social presence and influence sell her products.

Same thing goes for the rest of the KarJenners, who have literally become the blueprint for social media money.

Another example would be:

Khaby Lame who is now the most-followed account on TikTok with almost 150 million followers.

And he doesn’t even talk on his videos!

And even for me. The content I created 8 years ago when I was just a mom who quit her 6-figure corporate Biotech job to stay at home with a newborn has allowed me to create a multi-6-figures a year…

All because I:

1. Found my niche
2. Created content consistently around that niche,
3. Grew and nurtured a community,
4. Sold relevant digital products, courses and memberships to that community

The people who have a strong online presence and personal brand will transcend those that don’t.

So when you are thinking about selling you want to focus on how you make your dream customers feel because it is that feeling, that emotional connection that will be the differentiator when it comes time for them to make a buying decision.

As a business owner, you’re expected to bring transformation and change to your clients and give them your highest level of service. Your potential clients need to understand exactly what you do and how you are uniquely positioned to help them. But the truth is, no one will buy from you if they don’t feel connected to you first!

So if you want to boost sales, building your brand should be just as important as building your business.

Related: “The Differentiator Difference”: Branding To Make Bank Not To Bore!

I’m just going to come out and say what I know deep down in your heart you already know! Get comfortable with video. Stop denying it, stop putting it to the side, stop being scared of it, and start asking yourself how you can get started.

The topics you teach and the results you get are not the only reason why you’ll get visible. Where you share your content and how people can find you is also the key to supercharging your success and visibility.

If you hop on any platform these days – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, Pinterest, Linkedin – video is the priority. Original user generating content in the form of both short and long form video is what people are consuming the most and it is what successful content creators are leveraging to get found online. Instagram Reels, TikToks, YouTube Shorts are all taking over and I’ll be the first to tell you that there are people out there who will be smarter than you, more talented than you, and have better results than you, but because they are willing to show up on video, they get found first!

The next big mistake I see new course creators make is packing their sale pages with too many buying options. I use to do this where I’d give people 3 or 4 different payment plans or offer packages just so I could try to appease everyone BUT in reality it was only hurting my sales.

Why?

People couldn’t make a decision because they had too many options. What you have to realize is that when you give people too many options, they don’t take action.

The key is to be very specific and precise with the offers you have and only give 2 options at most. THIS or THAT! So whether that is a…

• PAID in FULL option vs a Payment Plan
• an offer with all the bonuses vs no bonuses
• a DIY course vs a DWY course with access to 1:1 coaching…

You want to give people two clear options max and then detail what they will and won’t get with each option. When I did this, my sales conversions doubled. You have to be hyper-intentional on what actions you want people to take.

Whether you call them metrics, stats, insights, or data, you must know how to track your numbers. From your follower count to your email list to your opt-in conversions to your sales, knowing your key success indicators will eventually tell you what’s working and what is not.

When you know what’s working, you can do more of it!

If you are building on Instagram what insights do you need to know how to interpret?

If you want more conversions for your lead magnet opt-in page, what metrics do you need to track?

If you want to increase traffic from YouTube what metrics will you need to pay attention to?

As a business owner building online you will be required to know the ins and out of your business like you know the back of your hand and it starts with paying attention to your metrics.

Your sales will be a direct reflection of what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong and if you don’t know what is working and what’s not because you are not actively staying on top of your metrics you are missing out on thousands, maybe even millions of dollars in potential profits!

If you are just starting out and you are comparing yourself to me, you are doing yourself a disservice and not giving yourself credit. A huge mistake new course creators make is comparing their first digital product or online course to someone who is on the 20th iteration of their course.

Just know that even though I’ve created over 50 different digital products, courses, and programs over the years, my first course is TRASH compared to what I create and sell now. So don’t expect your first draft of your online course to be on equal footing as someone who has been creating courses for years.

The thing that really helped me when I was first starting out is that I would keep a running list of online coaches and course creators that I admired and use them as inspiration, but I wouldn’t see them as someone I was competing against because we are just in two different lanes.

Do not let Imposter syndrome kill your confidence, instead use what others create as motivation to what you can aspire to become one day if you continue putting in the work.

So here is a quick tip that I hope you hold close to you. When I first got online, and I was looking for people to model my online coaching business, if I found someone that inspired me I would follow them on social, subscribe to their email list and YouTube channel (if they had one) BUT instead of looking at their most recent content I would scroll all the way to the bottom of their Instagram feed or filter their YouTube videos from oldest to newest and use those as benchmarks instead. And if you do this, I promise you will see that the quality of the content and courses your favorite influencers were putting out when they first got started is nowhere close to what they put out now which shows you that they had to start from zero too!

So you gotta compare apples to apples because if you don’t, it can be a recipe for feeling like sh*t and creating unrealistic expectations for yourself.

I don’t believe in the one-and-done course creation method, especially for new course creators who are trying to see what resonates with their audience. If you create a course don’t be afraid to create more by repurposing your course into multiple digital products including membership site content, group coaching calls, or bundles to expand your profit potential.

If you have just ONE signature course or coaching program that you sell, at some point the audience that you currently have will get tired of you pitching that same offer over and over again, so you will be forced into two actions:

1. Increase and replenish your potential customer base so you’re getting new eyeballs on your offers.
2. Find something else to sell your existing customer base which gives your audience something new to get excited about.

There could be a number of reasons why people in your current customer pool don’t buy including price or bad timing so while they may not be interested in your signature offer at the moment, it does not mean they won’t be interested in a more entry-level or lower ticket option.

So it’s always a good idea to repurpose content from your signature course or framework and package it up into something new.

For example. I teach something called the 25x viral content matrix where I show my WomanpreneuHER University students how to turn 1 piece of long-form content (such as a blog post) into 25 pieces of content they can use across multiple social media platforms but if you think about your online course, it is basically a really long-form piece of content that people pay for, right?

So if we apply the same formula we used to repurpose our blog posts to our paid courses, it would just make sense that you could extract multiple mini products from our one signature course! So not only did you just 25x your profits, you are giving your existing audience multiple entry points to being able to work with you.

It takes a lot of work to create an online course so make your life easier by repurposing your content into new offers.

Want to know how to create your signature framework and repurpose it into multiple digital products? Join us inside of W0manpreneuHER University now.

I know I said there were 1o mistakes but there is a bonus mistake I wanted to share. Now as a course creator, it is extremely important to have a system that sells for you even when you are not actively promoting and marketing your offer.

The biggest and costliest mistake you can make is feeling like you have to constantly be promoting and marketing your course to make sales. This leads to launch fatigue, income yoyos, and burnout.

When you get leads, whether it’s from social media or paid ads, you need to be able to have a system set up that will allow you to convert and scale your income in a predictable and stable way and having a passive income system in place will take a lot of the pressure and time off your plate.

Saying that you want to make 6 or 7 figures selling your course but then burning yourself out with live launches is NOT success. The sooner you can get into automating your business and lead flow and learning how to drive traffic on autopilot, the closer you’ll be to amplifying your profits.

Without an automated system in place, I would have never been able to create the level of impact or income that I have. It’s all about activating your passive income sales funnel system so you can release the hustle and embrace the process of growing a wildly successful freedom-based business.

Having a signature course or group coaching program that you can sell passively is the only way to achieve real freedom – a program where you can bring in 100 students a year, a month, a week, depending on how high you want to go.

Bringing in 5-10 new students a month at $2000 – where you can commit 1-2 hours a week in training, is doing pretty good right?

Want to know more about creating a passive income sales system to sell your online courses and coaching programs?

Make sure to sign up for my 4 Secrets to $500K in Passive Income with Digital Produts and Online Coureses Workshop here.

Ladies, your money mindset is EVERYTHING, and opening yourself up to the belief that money can come to you just because it can and because you are worthy of having it (and having it in abundance), can change everything.

So to start your money mindset reset, when it comes to making money…

Ask yourself:

• How would I like my experience with money to feel moving forward?
• If anything were possible, how would I choose for money to work for me?
• If I were creating a new reality for myself what experiences would I be having with money?

Acknowledging these questions will set you up to start breaking through those blocks and generating the income you truly desire!

If you are in a funky place with money right now, if your beliefs about what you can have, earn, save, give and receive need to be shifted, or your energy around money needs a makeover, check out the FREE WomanpreneuHER Resource Library.

Inside you will find the following resources that will help you begin to reprogram your money mindset so you can begin manifesting the business and life you deserve..

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