How do you improve your course sales?
Hey all,
TL;DR - I quit my job to focus on selling my course. I have a plan for how I'll approach the next few months, but I want to hear your thoughts on my strategy and what your most effective strategies are.
Back in 2023, I started building my course Component Odyssey
https://component-odyssey.com/
I released it in April 2024 and had a tidy batch of purchases (woo!).
Along with building the platform and recording the content, I wrote articles. A few of them popped off and gave my subscriber count a little boost.
So fast forward to July 2024.
I've had a few purchases since the official launch, and have taken the plunge to quit my job and dedicate the next 3 months to marketing the course and improving the platform.
I have a strategy for how I'll be spending my days, broken up into 3 groups of activities:
- Sales
- Marketing
- Development
Sales
This consists of cold messaging Universities and Engineering Managers. The hope is to establish partnerships, like bulk purchases.
I haven't had any responses, and I’ve sent out 50 messages.
This isn’t time efficient, as I need to do prospecting, and personalise each email. Maybe I’m being foolish expecting people to read these emails, considering how much noise they must receive in their inboxes daily.
For me, this is what I’m least sure about. Is this worth investing time in? Are there better ways to find folks interested in these kinds of partnerships?
Marketing
The goal is to either:
- Increase my newsletter subscriber count
- Direct people towards my course
This consists of:
- Writing articles
- Responding to relevant threads and posts on social media
- Propose talks to conferences.
I enjoy this part of the strategy a lot more. I like writing, and my articles frequently pop up on developer roundup emails.
With that said, I don’t do anything growth-hacky or special. I don’t feel like I think outside of the box or go beyond my comfort zone.
Development
I dedicate time to build things that other developers will find valuable. My most recent mini-project was Learn WCs
It’s a free roadmap for learning web components. I built it in my spare time over a couple of weeks, and it had a modest success when I launched it.
Other tasks include:
- Building open source projects
- Contributing to other projects
Wrapping Up
I feel like I’m in a bit of a rut. I do the things that I’m used to doing, but I’m not sure if they’re the most effective use of my time. Now that I’m committing 3 months to this, I don’t want to feel like I’ve misused my time. So I’m happy to hear of any suggestions that this community has
