I am (possibly?) quitting my AI online course idea
So:
I created my landing.
I asked some non-technical / business people (my target groups) for feedback on it.
I adjusted my landing after feedback to make value proposition clearer.
I ended up going with an offer of one time 2 hour webinar explaining AI to non-tech people. It was offer of paid course - I priced it relatively cheap, but still substantially - equivalent of dinner in a good restaurant.
Context: I really wanted to test if people are willing to PAY good money for a full course, but preparing even an outline is extremely time consuming, so I just decided to start with well organised webinar - priced much cheaper than I planned to price the course. My thought process is - if someone is not willing to pay for webinar, they will not take (much more expensive) full course. I am looking for painkiller-type problem here, not vitamins problem, because I have very limited amount of time to work on my side-project.
From fb group for people interested in business/startups I gathered contacts to around 20 non-techinical folks, who ACTIVELY WROTE ME to let me know that they want to learn about AI.
I gave them landing.
0/20 singups.
I am still planning to follow up with all the people who did not sign up after all and consult them a bit. I will also try to get landing marketed in some other places.
But I am starting to get a feeling that there is not much BURNING NEED for ai course after all, which was my initial hypothesis. I guess I just live in ai bubble and I am biased to think that everyone needs/wants this knowledge.
But I am not quitting. I will begin to explore other business ideas. :)
Since I’m teaching AI for non-techical executives in the last 3 years, I know there is some demand for these type of courses. However, I’m not doing it online yet. You should establish some authority first (it took me 20 years of experience on the field to get the courage to teach this topic ;) ) because there are a lot of bad advice and courses and execs are looking for very practical advise what is related to their specific industry/company. For me the best approach was to talk with the HR departments of large-mid size companies, because they are responsible for internal training programs and they have a budget for it. Typical size of my course in this situation is 20-30 people.
Sorry to hear about this experience.
But I have a feeling you are trying to self the problem that simply doesn't exist.
I don't really know what is your course exactly about but if you're just trying to explain people the sense of AI there is no much money in it. Because there are so many free resources doing the same.
What if you instead would help people to solve a problem they have? (Willing to know about AI is not a problem, to be honest). For example, it could be some way to use AI in their work/business (really working examples). Or disclose some secret knowledge that can help them (not sure if it exists). Or helping people to make much more money (using AI, of course).
Or maybe to solve some health problems.
Hope it helps...
Why don't you release a few smaller fun tutorials on Youtube? Like solving basic games with ML. From there you can get people interested in a paid course by growing a subscriber base?
I would 2nd the idea of doing the webinar for free. It helps people get a taste of what is on offer and build up trust in who you are.
Mentally I associate and expect webinars to be free.
Hey,
About a month ago, I wrote an extremely long and actionable guide on content marketing. It took a long time to write and lots of research. It was pretty surface-level, but valuable for beginners nonetheless.
I released it for free on Medium. Readers told me I could have released it as a paid course. They couldn't believe I released it for free.
The thing is, without establishing any prior authority in this space, I knew they wouldn't buy it even if I did. So, I released it for free.
And now they know I'm not blowing smoke up their ass. They can see I know what I'm talking about.
Since I released it two weeks ago, my web traffic is up 509% and my conversion rate increased 2.35%.
I don't think it's an issue of people not being interested in AI. Like you said, you had people directly expressing interest in this webinar.
I just don't think that people are willing to spend money on something without getting to try it first. And that's understandable if you think about it.
There's nothing stopping these people from teaching themselves with free resources online. But they won't because they want structure. They want a plan and formula they can follow.
How can they be sure that they be sure that you hold the keys to this formula? How can they be sure they even like your teaching style?
You should consider hosting the webinar for free. If you really want to collect their credit card numbers first, offer it at $1. Offer lots of value and structure. This way they know they can trust you when presenting the advanced topics.
The webinar should act as a product hook for the REAL product: your course.
Then, at the end of the webinar, offer the course to the viewers. If there's real value there, you'll make some sales.
Feel free to pick my brain if you have any more questions.
Cheers.
-John
Thanks for the answer.
I am doing what you are suggesting for one year now, although for different target audience: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMEQFEKrsRFBXnUIreTACxg
I was aware that "lack of trust" problem you mentioned would appear - and that's exactly what I wanted to test: are people desperate enough to learn about this topic, to pay me upfront. They are not.
I don't want to spend time creating a personal brand, because I am already doing that with channel I linked to you (my Facebook group has over 1500 users).
I other words - one project I am doing "right" by building my personal brand first and taking things slow. Here I really wanted to test if there is some low hanging fruit / easy buck here. There is not, that's why I am moving on and that's completely fine.
Ah okay, I misunderstood the post then. Cool experiment.
It's really hard to even capture the low-hanging fruit without any authority. One of my old client's had this problem. He was selling e-books on his website and was confused as to why people wouldn't buy it for $5. Unless you can build trust and present a clear offer, people won't give you a dime.