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22 Comments

Reached $20k in sales for my community building course 🤯

I like to look back on my life at certain points in time. Two years ago I never would have believed in myself enough to write confidently enough around community building, let alone lead a course on the topic.

Yet here I am. And also feeling a bit weird and meta about talking about it here on IH.

It's a mixture of cohort/live over six weeks and also a cheaper digital version is an option too.

Admittedly I feel inadequate in many places about this, but much like I did a paid newsletter to force me to write. I'm doing a course to force me outside of my comfort zone.

The sales are quite evenly split between the cohort and digital version. We have had about 80 sales.

What did I do to make the sales? Not a lot tbh.

  • I sent out one dedicated email to my email list of 1600 subscribers, I made it clear that I wouldn't be sending out any other reminders, it's not my style.
  • gave it small mentions 2-3 times in my curated newsletter
  • announced it on Twitter, pinned it to my profile
  • posted revenue updates on Twitter
  • posted in a couple of community Slacks
  • shared a fancy Cultivating Community model that I created for the course
  • I'm working with 4 other people on the course, to ease the workload and also bring more insights and different perspectives. So not all the $20k goes to me.

Tbh, whilst of course I love the sales, I was just keen to promote and share casually to people who like me and my work. This first version is very much a beta to me, there will be hiccups and things that go wrong, but I believe most of the people signing up will forgive me.

I intentionally didn't really share it here on IH until now.

I also have a lot going on in my life right now, which hasn't really given me the time to think about promoting it more.

Here's the course details: https://gum.co/fvqPN

Happy to answer any questions, also I will post something about the whole experience in May.

  1. 2

    Ok, you managed to convince me! I definitely need it for kingdom.so! Building a good community is hard!

  2. 2

    This is years of work to get to this awesome result. So happy for you :)!!!

    Thanks for sharing your feeling about this, it helps the rest of us.

  3. 2

    This is so exciting! We all have so much to learn from your many years of experience.

  4. 2

    Congrats! So cool to see you post here as an Indie Hacker.

    You know how to sell without all the icky.

  5. 2

    Amazing! Congratulations, Rosie! I admire your intention to act, firstly, in service to yourself. You're doing this because it'll help you become a better person and reach your own goals, and in turn it will help others reach theirs. Kudos!

  6. 2

    WooOo!! Congrats Rosie 🥳🥂📈

  7. 2

    Congrats! The course looks super useful. I really admire your will to go out your comfort zone and tackling new challenges with your usual humility. You're inspiring, really.

  8. 2

    Congrats to you!

    What I like the most is the part of getting out of your comfort zone. Most often times, we just don't give ourselves enough credit on our own expertise, so great to see that you've started this journey and see the results!

    Curious to see the results of your next cohort.

  9. 1

    Congrats! Thanks for the breakdown of the strategies that worked for you :)

  10. 1

    Incredibly done as always, Rosie!!

  11. 1

    Hello @rosiesherry congratulations on reaching this revenue milestone! I am curious about how you grew the email list you speak of/how long this took? I am noticing that this seems to be a common thing to do amongst successful IHers but I don't see myself really looking into my emails every day.

    1. 2

      About 18 months now. I don't really promote it that much tbh, I could definitely grow it faster, but really my focus has been on showing up and creating habits to continually show up and publish.

      It's definitely helped focusing in on the niche of community building. That's become the whole focus of 'my brand' now.

  12. 1

    Hello is the course over i clicked on the site and it is saying product not for sale

    1. 1

      Yes, the live cohort starts this week.

      We'll reopen the digital version again soon.

  13. 1

    This is great.
    Don't worry about the hiccups or that things might go wrong....Kudos to you for starting and taking the first step!

  14. 1

    This is really awesome and great work on achieving the milestone! 🏆

    Question:

    What’s your opinion of pricing for digital products and courses. For example $49 vs $499 digital products or courses. How would you market it differently or are there challenges you manage overcome with high ticket sales in the context of Gumroad pricing expectations.

    Thanks 🙏

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