Today I want to share a story that’s a decade old – it’s about a young man named Ian Stanley and how he built his first Email Delivered Course and sold it to MY email list BEFORE we were great friends (and how he had his first $1000/day as an entrepreneur).
If you’ve been on my list for any length of time, you know who Ian Stanley is… but way back before Ian was known as one of the top email copywriters in the world, he was just a 24 year old dude working a low-paid job as a copywriter, dreaming of starting his own business.
Ian reached out to me via email and his enthusiasm shined through – so I agreed to meet up for a coffee.
(These are Ian’s words, not mine: he said he was shocked when I agreed to meet because he viewed me as an untouchable guru back then. Actually, I was just a marketing consultant who’d built one good Email Delivered Course called CopyHour. At that time, I had no real idea how powerful of a concept I’d stumbled in to with Email Delivered Courses.)
Anyway, we had a great meetup and Ian told me how many emails he was writing and sending for a company called Crisis Education (it was hundreds of different creatives sent to millions of subscribers).
Before that job with Crisis Education, he’d written 150 emails for a marketer named Jordan Hall.
At the time, "email copywriting" wasn’t really a career path or hot topic, so even though Ian was just 24 years old, he found himself in rare company and was one of the biggest experts on the topic.
We decided that Ian should write a course on email copy – he’d call it 8020 Email Copy – and we’d launch to my list and split the profits.
Ian didn’t really have to pitch me on the idea much, because I knew a way we could launch the course to see if people wanted it.
I told him we’d start selling it right away before Ian had written up any of the content. I think he was pretty unsure of that plan because I found out later that he’d written the first 5 course emails just in case.
We went from meeting for the first time, to having the course idea, to making our first sales in a matter of weeks.
Long story short, my list was still pretty small back then but we ended up doing over $12k on the launch of 8020 Email Copy before the course was built.
Ian fondly recalls that final Sunday of the launch – where the sales poured in and he had his first $1000 dollar day (and actually, it was $3000 for him).
The point of this story is two-fold:
- The safest and smartest way (sometimes called a barbell strategy) to launch a course is to sell an Email Delivered Course before you build the full content (You want to gauge interest and desire. If it’s a flop, just refund people – I assure you this is legal and no one cares. Often they trust you more after you issue a speedy refund).
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I talk about this all time, but if you don’t currently have an email list or audience, you must find a way to start "networking" with other business owners. If you do, you can start to work out deals (business owners want "in" on no-brainer deals) like Ian was able to setup with me.
(This doesn’t give you permission to hit me up about a course idea you have. You need a business owner you actually know, personally.)
In the "Sell" module of Email Delivered Courses I’ll teach you everything I know about selling courses before you’ve built them. This is truly the smartest way to operate and limits your risk of picking a dud topic no one wants a course on.
If you want to build a course (your first or 50th) and start selling it before you create anything and to validate your idea, then I encourage you to signup Email Delivered Courses today.
We start on Monday August 5th and the cart closes this Sunday at 11:59PM PDT.
The reason I encourage you to join now is, since I’m building this first version of this course as an Email Delivered Course, your direct questions and feedback will make it into the course materials.
There’s been enough demand in these opening days, that I’m a full go on this course. Which means I’m compiling the course materials, templates, and processes I’ve used these past 15 years, right now in real time.
After you signup, I’ll send you a survey and ask for your biggest hold-ups with creating courses. If you want those personalized questions to get answered, the sooner you join, the better chance I’ll answer your question in the course itself.
And the decision to join today can be made easily and risk-free: I’m confident this investment will return at least 100-1,000x ROI to you – or you can send me one email and get your money back.
(In fact you can get your money back for any reason at all within the first 30 days of purchase, and I’ll make sure that covers the entire duration of the course. It’s on me to deliver to you – if my content doesn’t blow your mind, then I haven’t done my job.)
If building and selling a course is something you know you need, I recommend you sign up now.
>>> Create an ultra-simple, ultra-profitable digital course in the next 30 days — over email
– Derek
P.S. Tomorrow I’m going to write about something I haven’t yet touched on in this series – and that’s how to make an Email Delivered course evergreen. I’ll discuss the simple systems for putting course sales on autopilot.
Stay tuned!