Pre-Launched a course, over 60% slots filled in first 10 days. Story here:

Hello Everyone,

I'm Shravan Venkataraman from Chennai, India.

I have been quite active on Twitter since 2020 February. I am an entrepreneur (a food processing/mfg company) and a trader (systematic trading). In a previous life few years back, I worked as a Software Developer with PayPal's Risk product team.

I have been sharing content on systematic trading and investing on Twitter for a while. A friend quipped I should do a course on backtesting trading strategies using Python. I polled people on what I should work on (twitter growth guide, running a business in India, Python backtesting course) and an overwhelming majority voted for the trading strategy backtesting course.

I did not want to build a course and then go market it. So, I launched a google form to ask people if they are interested in the course. In the form, I also told them what all outcomes they can expect, how much monetary value the course will bring.

In return I asked them what they thought the course would be worth (a 3-month long course, a mix of pre-recorded videos, and live qna sessions, with projects and assignments).

After the polls closed, I saw that 50% people said $150, 30% said $75, and remaining 20% said prices ranging from $0-$5 to $1000.

This being the first course, I decided to price it at the average of all responses, and chose to go with INR 8000 ( ~$110, discounted from the average).

I took a couple of days to read some copywriting books. Learnt to write copy, and created a page on my blog site.

Then, I tweeted to my Twitter audience about the launch of the course (check my pinned tweet).

Once that was done, messages came from the very next hour.

Payments came for registration and in the first 7 days, 50% slots got filled.

Last 2-3 days, 10% more got filled.

I honestly didn't expect such response. With 10 days remaining to the registration close date, I expect at least 70-80% slots getting filled.

How did this happen? Honestly, I have no clue.

One common thing people who messaged me for registration said was that they trusted me and that they know I wouldn't give anything but the best to them. That was incredibly humbling with every single time a person said it.

So, since this is the first cohort, the following is what I did.

1. Took payments via UPI.
2. Decided to host the course on GDrive and give email based access along with assignments, projects, etc.
3. Mostly going with Microsoft teams for live qna in weekends.
4. Discord server for live community discussions.
5. MightyNetworks free plan for evergreen content community discussions.

I considered teachable, thinkific, podia.

For the first cohort, I wanted to keep it simple and use free tools that are available.

The course starts from Jan 17th. I have 1 month to script, film content, and start the course. So, didn't want to waste time on setting up those platforms.

Among thinkific, teachable, kajabi, and podia, thinkific seemed terrific for someone dipping their toes. Their free plan is awesome.

But I didn't have a PayPal account, and didn't want to hassle people with Stripe. UPI is very straight forward in India and so, I took payments that way.

I have included a 30-day no-questions asked refund policy. That probably contributed to part of the trust. That also puts my skin in the game to create a brilliant course experience that compels students to stay for the entire duration.

Also, SWIPEFILESCO by Corey Haines and Marketing Examples by Harry Dry were very helpful in understanding and refining the copywriting process for the course.

Feel free to ask me any questions. I will do an update post once the first cohort is over.