$30K Monetization Test: Testing a Cohort Course to my 15,000 Newsletter Subscribers

I’m trying to get more comfortable testing monetization ideas in public so I wanted to share what I tried with my newsletter community of 15,000+ readers this morning.

For skimmers, it’s a project I’ve been working on to help more entrepreneurs establish their voice and 1,000 true fans.

Last month, I surveyed my readers on some questions to get to know their goals with reading the articles each week. And after reading the survey responses last month, I noticed many of them (41% of answers) wanted more help "growing their LinkedIn community through 1-1 consulting".

So, when I connected with Gagan, the co-founder of Maven, and heard what they were building with their cohort based course startup, I thought his early instructor invitation would be a perfect fit to test out offering a course concept for my newsletter readers.

The topic? Helping entrepreneurs “find their 1,000 true fans” on LinkedIn. 🚀

The course details:

I'm planning to launch the class this summer if 100+ people sign up (currently at 80).
I’d teach live classes, unpacking everything I've learned scaling to 30K followers & managing a portfolio of ~2M followers
Ultimate goal of the class would be giving students a toolkit to position their voice in their industry.
I’m planning on accepting a first cohort group of ~20 people with an early invite cost of $300 each.

Marketing Launch Plan:

I posted a thread onto twitter (half decent response to my 2k~ followers)
I posted a LI poll last Friday, getting 12,000 views and 100 votes on my 30k+ audience
I wrote a newsletter today on LinkedIn and substack sharing about the story, the opportunity and an open survey to ask if people wanted to join the waitlist.

The Current Results:

So far I'm at 80 sign-ups within the last couple days. (quite happy with this as $300 is the highest I've charged for courses)
Forecasted revenue if I hit 100 signups at the $300 rate = $30,000. Pretty impressive that if this has legs and I continue to iterate, this could be very close to being a full-time job for most people.
As an aside, I assume only 20%-30% of sign-ups will convert but who knows how the traction will unfold
Several emails and DMs of people being excited about the idea, wanting more clarification etc
Some cross-sharing of other sign ups passing on the word on LinkedIn, twitter, etc.

To close:

I wanted to share this as a bit of a roadmap I used to try building in public with this course idea off my newsletter audience
I also wanted to share my insights of what I've learned in case other "build in public" folks are thinking of a similar path.
If you wanna check out the article I shared this morning that's still bringing in sign-ups, here's the link to reverse engineer for your future ideas: https://personalbrandbrief.substack.com/p/how-to-find-1000-true-fans
Typeform copy: if you wanna check out the simple course flow I used to "public test" my Maven idea: https://joelhansenclass.typeform.com/to/iVvxzRs2

My question:

Is there anything I could've down better in my launch approach this last week?
Anything I can still do this week to stir up more demand?
How do these numbers compare to other things people have tried?

Would love to hear other ideas and suggestions from everyone here!