073: How to Create Passive Income with Online Courses

Kate Kordsmeier 0:00

Welcome back to the Success with Soul podcast. This is Kate Kordsmeier, your host and we are doing something a little bit different for the next few weeks and honor of Digital Course Academy opening up, we are going to do an amazing series all about online courses. So to kick things off, we're actually republishing a couple of our favorite episodes on the subject of online courses, as we're leading up to open enrollment for Digital Course Academy which starts officially on September 7 2022. So throughout the next few weeks, you're going to hear all about digital courses, and how to create a profitable, scalable business using your course from all different kinds of experts, including Amy Porterfield herself, we've got three interviews with her, myself Yours truly, and some other experts that have come on the show. We're also going to give you the opportunity to get a bunch of freebies over the next month and a half while we're in this series of online courses. So the best place to stay up to date on what freebie we're releasing this week is to head over to Kate kordsmeier.com/DC a that's Digital Course Academy DCA Kate kordsmeier.com/dca. If you have any questions or you want to learn more about how to create a profitable online course, head over to Kate kordsmeier.com/dca to learn more and get your freebies.

Intro 1:18

You're listening to the Success with Soul podcast with Kate Kordsmeier ex-journalist turned CEO of a multi six figure blog in online business. But it wasn't that long ago that Kate was a struggling entrepreneur who lacked confidence, clarity and let's be honest money. But all those failures, experiments and lessons learned helped Kay create a thriving business that impacts 1000s and brings freedom, flexibility and fulfillment to her life. If you're ready to do the same and make something happen with holistic, soulful, step by step strategies from Kate and other experts, you're in the right place. Here's your host, writer, educator, mom, recovering perfectionist, bookworm and sushi connoisseur Kate Kordsmeier.

Kate Kordsmeier 2:06

And we're back with the Success with Soul podcast. I'm your host Kate Kordsmeier. And today is a special bonus episode. If you missed it, we have been going live in my Facebook group Success with Soul come join us Kate kordsmeier.com,/Facebook, we've been going live for the past few weeks recording episodes live in the group. It's been super fun, I've been able to chat with you all throughout the recording, and interact with you guys, you've been able to be a part of it. You may even hear yourself if you are listening to this again on the actual podcast. And if this is your first time hearing this episode, then welcome. It's all about passive income today. As some of you may know, I actually just returned from a four month maternity leave with my daughter, Gemma. And I was able to actually bring in $135,000 while I was on maternity leave, in large part thanks to my online course which I put on evergreen and on April 1. Now if you're not sure what evergreen means, don't worry, we are discussing the differences between evergreen and live launching the pros in the cons how to do it. And in fact, I'm sharing seven tips for going evergreen to create passive income in your business. Let's do it.

Welcome to another live recording of the Success with Soul podcast. We are live in our Facebook group, I can finally see people in the chat and what you guys are saying. So I'm super excited to chat with you today all about going evergreen in your course and creating passive income. To give you guys some context, I wanted to come up with a way to automate my business and core sales while I was on maternity leave this year. So I had my second child, my daughter Gemma in May 2020. And I knew that during that time, and kind of the fourth trimester and the first few months being back to work, I wasn't going to be able to do live launching. And I had learned about evergreen funnels from of course, Amy Porterfield, I took her Digital Course Academy last year it completely changed my life and she has a whole module in there all about turning your course on to Evergreen, which essentially means you are launching every day or people can always access your program. It's gonna get more complicated than just like it's available to buy on your website at all times. That's not really the definition of evergreen. It's more about an automated funnel, where you're selling the course all the time through this funnel where Right, there's scarcity and urgency and you know, some other marketing tactics built in. And we're gonna get to all of that. But does anybody have any questions just like right off the bat of what evergreen really means. Okay, so I learned about evergreen funnels, and decided that this seemed like a great option to try while I was on maternity leave. So we started our evergreen funnel, we quote unquote, turned it on, on April 1 of 2020. And in those first four months, actually, in the three months that they were on, we earned over $58,000 on autopilot. So literally, we set all of this up, and then money. And course students, and revenue just started coming in as we got people into our funnel. So some days, I would wake up, and I would just open my email, and we would have made $1,000. And I was literally asleep. So it was truly passive. And while I did this, for maternity leave, it has brought so much ease into my business and my life, that I'm trying to figure out now how to keep this up forever, and never live launch again. So there's a lot of kind of behind the scenes that I want to get into today about all of this, we're going to talk the pros and cons of evergreen, because even though the way I just described, it probably sounds really amazing. It's not all rainbows. And so I want to talk about some of the downsides. There are obviously a lot of positives to live launching your course. And I want to talk about all of that. All right, so let's talk about the process of getting an evergreen funnel set up. So unlike a live launch, where you open the cart for a period of time, usually a week or two, and then you close the cart. And that means that people aren't able to purchase your course, outside of that cart open window. And usually people who follow this model will launch once a quarter, once a year, maybe somewhere in between there. But it's something where you have this built in urgency and scarcity, because it's like this is one of your only chances to get into the program. And it really helps boost sales. And there's a lot of other pros to this model, which again, we're going to talk about, but with Evergreen. So I mentioned this kind of in the beginning, but with Evergreen. Instead of just having your course available on your website to purchase at any time, you're creating this funnel where people are entering through some sort of opt in. And in our case, we use a webinar. And when people register for the webinar, they get put into our sales funnel. And throughout this period of time, we have used a tool called deadline funnel, where it gives a cookie to each person. So every person has their own individual funnel and timeline. So let's say Molly enters my funnel on Monday, she's going to have seven days from Monday, she's going to have this cart open period where she has seven days to purchase the course. And at the end of those seven days, it goes away. So it's kind of simulating a live launch. But it's all automated, you create this funnel and your email service provider using deadline funnel. And then it's really you know, it's true and authentic urgency and scarcity because you don't just say at the end of seven days, it goes away and you can't get in and then technically you really can the deadline funnel technology actually removes the access to the course it's basically by redirecting the sales page to like a waitlist page. And then Molly after those seven days would not be able to join my program. Now let's say Jessica registers for my webinar on Tuesday. So Jessica is going to have a different seven day period. So it's like everybody is getting their own seven day we've set it up for seven days. You could set it up for however long you want to but everybody's getting their own seven day timeline basically where they have a cart open period. And there's still even within this there's a few different ways you can do it. So like Amy Porterfield who I learned this from she does it where the courses actually I think that's how she does it. Her course is on evergreen is List Builder society. I believe that you can actually join at any time but her bonuses disappear. So you get into her funnel and her urgency and the way that she creates this sense of like, why now is that that you will not be able to get her bonuses once the deadline funnel is up. But her course is always available. Now I started doing a little bit of a different model. And I've seen a lot of other people do this where instead of just the bonuses go away, it's actually like, everything goes away, you can literally only join the course during this seven day period or whatever your period is. And then after that, it's waitlisted. And so unless you put them into a new funnel with a new deadline, then there's no way for them to join the course. And your sales page just becomes a waitlist page. So we tried that for the month of April. And we ended up getting a lot of people emailing us and saying that they wanted to join the course, but they didn't see it being available. And they were confused. And it felt kind of weird to me to say, well, the course isn't available to join. Right now we're closed for enrollment. But if you register for my webinar, you get access. And I think maybe there's just some finessing of that strategy that I needed to do. But because I was on maternity leave, I was like I don't, I don't really know where I want to go with that. So what we decided to do instead is that we put the course available, so you could purchase at any time, but it was at a different price point. And so the only way to get the lower price point was to register for our webinar. And then as a thank you for watching our webinar, we give people a discount on the course for a seven day period. So that's how we're using evergreen Currently, I am sure that we will try something new coming up. And we're constantly tweaking and seeing what works and what doesn't what feels right, what provides the best user experience, and just what you know, feels best to us and in alignment with our values. So that's kind of the process of getting it set up. So along those lines, the great thing about the process is that it's automatic. So like a major pro is once it's set up, it's super easy to just let the systems run on autopilot. And like I said, There have been days where like I was at the beach in may know, June, whenever it was, who even knows what day it is, in COVID time, we're at the beach, I'm not working, I'm literally sitting on the beach, drinking a margarita and a sail comes through. That's how cool evergreen is is like you do the work up front. And then you reap the rewards while you're drinking margaritas on the beach. The con of this though, that I want to be clear about is it is complex to get it set up. There's lots of moving parts because you're having to create multiple pages. So that like, Okay, if somebody joins deadline funnel, deadline funnel makes it really easy. But even with that, even though they make it easier, it is still a little complex to get the technology moving. And it's just there's just a learning curve to it right? Like anything, it's totally doable. We figured it out, Maura and my team is a tech whiz. And she really took leadership in this role over this project. And she was amazing. And so it's totally doable, you can do it too. But it is a little bit more complex to set up than just like a live launch where you just have like one sales page. And then when your cart closes, the sales page goes away. So that is a con that I want to be honest about. On the flip side, it's way less stressful than live launches, because you don't have to be on all the time. And you're not like doing five live webinars in a week. And you're not showing up and like having to, you know, be on social media and actively promoting and it's just, it's done on autopilot for you once you've got the system set up. So I really like that and it's like you don't have to start over every time. So even though with a live launch, you're not like setting it up once like with evergreen and then just kind of forgetting it. I mean, I hate using that like set it and forget it because then like nothing in your business, if you forget it is you know, I don't like that way of doing business. You're still need to be watching and tweaking and, you know, monitoring things, but you're not really having to do a whole lot new. Whereas even though live launching is easier to set up. You have to start over every time. So every time you watch you're having to create like, everything again. Now granted, there's a lot of repurposing that can be done and you can like you know, utilize emails and opt ins and acids from before. But everything has to be like kind of new and fresh. And so I think, again, pros and cons to all of it. So Amanda says, How much time did it take to get all of this set up? So Amanda, it probably took us, Mara, what would you say like a month, I want to say, I mean, it's not like a month of working on it all day, every day. But it was definitely a few weeks of learning the system. I mean, we took DCA so we took the course, to teach us how to do evergreen, you know, that probably took a few days. Then we played around with the systems and the tools and signed up for what we needed. And then kind of wrote out our email sequence, which we did repurpose from our live launch. Okay, Maura is kind of confirming with me, yeah, she says it was about a month as well. But we were also doing other projects. So again, like we launched the podcast, the same month as we watched evergreen, so we were doing multiple things at a time. But I think give yourself at least a few solid weeks of working on it, testing things getting the technology set up and all of that. Jessica says evergreen equals efficiency. And we love efficiency. Yes, me too. I'm all about doing less and making more. So I love that Molly says would love to hear about a hybrid, even if you're evergreen, do you still have pushes? So good question, Molly. This is totally going to depend on your personal preferences and your business. And you know what feels right to you. A lot of people go evergreen, and then like once or twice a year, they'll do a live launch. And I think that could be a great way to do it. And that was what my plan was like when we rolled out our 2020 plan, which of course totally went out the window as soon as March it. But when we wrote it out, it was evergreen turns on in April, when I come back to work in August, we evaluate and plan to live launch again in q4. And now I'm coming back and saying wait a second. Evergreen is amazing. I love this model. And I think I want to continue doing this and not live launch six FBA again. Now I will probably launch new programs and courses myself in the future. And we will live launch a few times at least if not always before going evergreen because I know Kimberly is saying you just answered a question I was thinking about is it better to live launch for the first few times 100%. And I also learned that from Amy. And I would second it, I feel like each live launch, I increased my conversions. Because what you want to do is make sure that when you go evergreen, you have a really dialed in funnel that you know converts, if you are testing the funnel for the first time when you go evergreen, it's going to be so much harder to figure out where people are dropping off and what's not converting and all of the moving pieces. I mean, there's so many moving pieces in the launch. And I think you just need to do it live a few times, get it all optimized. And once your conversion rates are where you feel like okay, this is working, we could do this, then put it on evergreen. Okay. So another thing about evergreen that we have to talk about, of course, is the money. And there are pros and cons to this as well. And I hate to make generalizations like this because there are plenty of people who have figured out how to do evergreen and be insanely, wildly successful way more so than doing live launches. And there are people that will tell you that absolutely not a live launch, you're gonna earn way more money than being evergreen only to each their own. Everybody's business is different. Everybody has different experiences, you figure out what works for you. The Pro, I think of evergreen is that you're getting recurring revenue and passive income that creates sustainability in your business. So especially if you have payment plans, then that's sort of a form of recurring revenue. And if you're using Facebook ads to get people into your funnel, you can dial it in pretty well where you say, Okay, I spend X number of dollars, which gets y number of people into my funnel, and we know it converts at 3%. And so that equals this amount of money. And if we just keep this going, more or less, you could count on kind of making that same amount each month. Now, there's no guarantees, and if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that things can change at a moment's notice. So like our evergreen funnel was doing so well in May we made like 17,000 I can't remember the exact number somewhere around 15 to $17,000 that month in new revenue from our evergreen funnel and we only spent like 2000 Isn't dollars on Facebook ads. So it was like pure profit, not pure profit. It was majority profit. And then June hit, and we had this big social justice, awakening and movement and people weren't thinking about this, and our revenue tanked. And then it started going up again. And then like, you know, summer, I mean, it's like, things are seasonal, there's no like, it's gonna be like this forever. And that's why I say like, it's not 100% passive, because you need to be monitoring things and tweaking things based on what's happening in your environment and your circumstances and the world. And if you know, sometimes things just kind of stop working. And so you got to be paying attention to that. For someone just starting out. Do you have additional resources somewhere for live launches? Yes, Amanda, I have tons of resources available for people just starting out, this is a little bit more of an advanced training. So go back to last week's Facebook Live, it was another live recording of the Success with Soul podcast. And we shared all about my personal path to just creating my online course in the first place, and how I was able to do that. And it talks about my live launches in a lot more detail. So that will be a great resource for you. And we have tons more coming, we Mara can drop in the chat, some other resources that we have, and some are from us, and some are from Amy. So we have a great quiz from Amy that is called What's your personal path to creating a profitable digital course, you can find that at Kate kordsmeier.com/course quiz. If you are listening to the podcast, that is an awesome resource to get started and kind of get like a step by step guide to what your next steps should be. Likewise, Amy is hosting a 30 day boot camp right now. This is an amazing Facebook group. And everyday they've got prompts and activities and things to do to help you start your digital course. And you can join that at Kate kordsmeier.com/course boot camp. Oh, and we have our narrow your niche guide as well. So if you are getting stuck even just on like, Okay, I'm convinced on online courses, but I don't know what my course should be about, or I don't know how to, you know, narrow my niche down to get more specific, we have a great resource for that, that is ours called the narrow your niche guide. And Mara can drop the links to all of these in the chat. And then if you're listening to the podcast, they will be in the show notes. Okay, Makayla says, Do you think you have to do a webinar as your opt in to a sales funnel? Could it be a freebie of some sort? Okay, so, yes, and no, I think you can get people onto your list from offering them a freebie, but if you want to convert them into a purchase, I think you likely need to do either a webinar or a video series. So this is kind of like Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula, it's like a three part video series. Video really is going to help you convert them into sales, it's much harder to do that. And I'm sure there are ways but what I think has been most successful. And what I've seen in my own business, and in others is doing one of those two, but you can start them out in your funnel by giving them a freebie for sure. So The con of being evergreen, when it comes to the money is that you have to be constantly driving traffic to get people into your funnel, right. So you have to be consistently promoting your course through blog posts and lead magnets and your email marketing, you're always kind of like thinking about how to drive traffic and optimize to keep up the funnel. Amy says this and I agree, doing evergreen without any Facebook ad spend is probably not a good idea, you likely are going to want to use Facebook ads to be consistently getting new people into your funnel that you can then get into your course. And unless you just get like insane organic traffic, which is difficult to do, then you probably are going to want to use Facebook ads. So I think that could be a kind of evergreen too, is that there's maybe a little bit more upfront cost than if you're doing a live launch where you're able to get a lot of the momentum from having this be like this limited time event. So there's that to think about as well. On the same token, or by the same token, we have found it's very difficult to engage your affiliates in a evergreen model. So we use affiliates to sell our course as well. And when we did a live launch affiliates accounted for like over 55% I think of our core sales. So that's where other people are telling their odd and about our course. And then there, those people are coming in and buying our course. So affiliates and partner programs are an amazing way to let somebody else do some of the heavy lifting for you and get some new some new eyes on your stuff. When we went evergreen, we have had success with a few of our affiliates who have done like we do kind of affiliate only launches, or they've done their own webinars or bonuses and reviews and stuff of our program. But I feel like they really don't promote as much or as often as they did when we were doing live launches. So we've lost affiliate income course income from affiliates, I should say, going evergreen, which is a bummer, because I love working with affiliates and partnering up with people. And I wish I could convince them to see the value in like, hey, unlike a live launch, where you only have a week or two where you can earn affiliate income by promoting our course, you can just put like an email in your welcome series about our program. And because it's always available for them to get into our funnel, you can literally be earning hundreds or 1000s of dollars every single day, even because it's evergreen, we're still working on it. But there's something there about, like kind of tweaking the mindset. So that's been a struggle with being evergreen as well. Michaela is asking, is there a good ratio of Facebook ad spend to conversion, money to aim for?

Okay, I'm not 100% sure I understand your question, Mikayla. But I think what you're saying is, like if you think your funnels can bring in $10,000, how much should you spend on ads? And that's just going to be different for everybody. And you're going to have to play around with Facebook ads to see like, what's your cost per lead? How are things converting for you? I mean, to me, as long as your Facebook ads are profitable, spend whatever you're comfortable with, like if you can spend $1, to make $2. Great. I mean, I do that all day, we have eased into Facebook ads very slowly. And so we started with like $500 a month, and now we're around $3,000 a month, but as long as their return, you're getting a return on your investment. I think it's just totally up to you what feels like a good ratio. I don't know that there's like a standard or one right answer to that question. So a con about going evergreen is that some people will argue that you could possibly earn less money overall, since live launches, get that momentum, which can really skyrocket sales. But you're in this kind of feast or famine mentality when you do that. So like we made $100,000, from our live launch in January. But then if we don't live launch again, until the next January, for example, that 100,000 has to last us the entire year. So when you average that out, I think it's going to depend like what are you earning from your live launches? And if you average that out to a monthly revenue basis, do you think you could get evergreen to generate more than that on a monthly basis. So again, it's all about getting your funnel super dialed in and optimized so that you can make make the most from it. But there is an argument to be made. And I think a lot of times when people make this argument, it's just because they haven't been able to figure it out. And it may be hard to figure out if it was super easy, everyone would be doing it right. But I tend to think when people say, oh, you can't do that. It's like, No, you couldn't do it. That doesn't mean I can't do it, it means you couldn't figure it out. Maybe it's possible that I could so trust your gut here and just know that one person's experience, including my own, does not have to be your experience as well. The last thing I want to talk about with Evergreen versus live launching is the user experience. And I think this is really, really important. And there are pros and cons to both models, of course. So the pro of going evergreen, I think for the user experience is that you really get to meet people where they're at with their personal timing and give them an opportunity to take action when they're ready. So like when you're live launching, and let's say you only live launch once or twice a year, like you are only giving people that if they're not ready at that exact moment or that timing doesn't work for them, then they're gonna say no, and then you know, you're not giving them a great experience or they say yes, because they don't want to miss out. But then maybe something like this happens to them, which is what happened to me recently. So I really wanted to join Steve McLaren's tribe heard amazing things. And he only watches it once a year. And he launches it at the end of April. Well, I had my daughter on May 11. And so it was like, well, I could get it, I could make this big investment into a course that I know I'm not going to touch for many months. And that doesn't feel great, or I can miss out. And then I have to wait a whole nother year before I can get back into it. So I think there is keeping in mind, like, what's going to help my people because maybe I would have been like, great. If I could buy in in September, I would do that all day long. But I didn't have that choice. So it was like I had to make a really hard decision that didn't necessarily align with my goals and my timeline and all of that. And I don't really want to put my people in that position, either. So that's one side of it. And also like, if I join a course, and they're live launching, and they only live launch once or twice a year, then they probably are going to be putting a lot of emphasis on like the first, you know, four to 12 weeks of that program where they're going live and they have a Facebook group. And they're doing all these things to keep up the momentum for those students. And if you miss out on that, because the timings not right for you. That kind of sucks. On the flip side, that's kind of also a pro of the live launch model is that you can do stuff like that. So you can get one cohort into your course. And everybody comes in at the same time you have like this kind of mob mentality, you get like a lot of excitement. People are like raring to go, and they're really ready to start taking action, and you can build on that momentum and really help people get results fast. And that is a really cool thing about live launching that maybe you kind of lose a little bit of that in Evergreen, I think it depends. Because if you have an evergreen model set up where it's like, well, I go live every week, or our Facebook group has like, you know, again, there are ways to figure this out. But it's maybe a little bit harder to create that kind of momentum and excitement with a big group when you're on evergreen, because when you're on evergreen, it's more like a couple of sales a week or a couple sales a day, it's not 100 people joining all at once. So keep that in mind. Those are kind of the pros and cons that I've experienced of going evergreen. So I want to just close out by giving my seven tips for going evergreen, and then answer any remaining questions y'all have. So I've already shared a lot about my first tip, which is do at least one, at least one, if not two, or three live launches, to prove your model, get your conversion rates where you need them. And then make sure that it works before you go evergreen. Number two is that I would recommend you invest in the right technology so that you're creating that true urgency and scarcity and automation. So evergreen without urgency is probably not going to work. Evergreen without automation is totally pointless, like you want this to be done on autopilot. That's the beauty of it. So next week, we're actually going to be doing another Facebook live recording of the podcast all about the tools that we use. So I'm not going to go into a ton of detail here. But again, I recommend deadline funnel in order to create that authentic scarcity. Number three, on the topic of creating scarcity and incentives. So this is what works so well about live launches. So what you're going to need to do to have a successful evergreen model is to integrate that scarcity and incentives. So it's extremely helpful and will give you much better results than just having the doors open all the time, no incentive, like if you could just go to my website at any time and buy the course. Why now, you're not really giving people enough of a reason. And yeah, we do have it set up currently that way, and we get a couple sales every now and then. If that was the only income I had coming in from the course right now, we would have to shut down. So it's interesting to see how much more you can make when you get that scarcity and those incentives. So we offer bonuses, so like, join now and you'll get this extra bonus, we'll give you this blog audit, we'll do that you know, like you're giving your people more value, and then you're creating that scarcity of like, but if you don't do it now, it's gonna go away. Samantha says I prefer evergreen than a sale at certain times of the year plus many of my readers are pensioners and they hate live launches. Plus I have a constant stream of new readers. Yeah, awesome. When you have a constant stream of new people coming in, whether it's from organic or paid sources like you, you have a great business model then for you have a great foundation I should say for going Evergreen, so that's awesome. And ya know, your audience, like if your people hate live launches, don't do live launches, right? You got to listen to what the people want. Okay, number four tip have some kind of live engagement component to ensure a great student experience and value. So even though we're evergreen, that people are still getting a live component, so like our webinar is not live, it's pre recorded. We don't pretend it's live. It's a replay, right? So people get that. But then when they join the course, we're giving them like, every month I go live to do a group q&a, where people can ask me all their questions. Sometimes I have like a curriculum that I'm teaching from. And that really helps get people just to ensuring like a good user experience and getting people excited and keeping the momentum up. And the Facebook group really helps a lot with that as

well. I have a lot of ideas for the Facebook group that we could improve, to really build that community and keep people believing like this is possible for you. And I think that kind of buzz happening in your group is so important. And so I think we're going to be putting a big emphasis on that going forward, because being evergreen does make it a little bit harder. I mean, for my live launch in January, we had, so we had I think 86 people join the course. And that first group coaching call, there was like 50 people live, people were pumped. Now when I go live, or even like before we went evergreen in March, when I went live, we'd have like a dozen. So it's just like the momentum kind of, you know, people lose some of that momentum, they kind of fizzle out a little bit. And so having a Facebook group or a live component, where you can constantly keep that momentum going, is really important when you're evergreen. Tip number five, invest in Facebook ads, Facebook ads are the best way to grow evergreen, I probably don't recommend you doing evergreen, unless you're ready to invest here again, unless your organic search is just massive. And you know, you have hundreds, if not 1000s of people getting added to your list organically every single month. But I know that's pretty rare. And especially if you're just getting started. So invest in Facebook ads, Amy teaches you in Digital Course Academy, how to get going with this are some really great video tutorials. And she actually has Rick mulready, who's a Facebook ads expert teach some of those modules, or you can hire it out. If you don't want to do it yourself. I've done both. And currently we are working with an amazing I'm in love with her. We're working with an amazing Facebook ads expert, and it's going really well I had a really bad experience with an agency last fall. And so just because you're hiring out doesn't mean it's going to work. So make sure you hire it out to the right person. Or take DCA and let Amy and Rick teach you how to do it yourself. They have some really helpful lessons. Even if you're doing a live launch model instead of evergreen, though, you probably still are going to want to run some Facebook ads. It's not necessarily necessary. But most course creators that I know that have big launches and that really convert well use at least some Facebook ads spent. So tip number six, be committed to optimization and testing your funnel. So like I said, you set it up once, and you can forget it. If you're listening to the podcast, you don't see me doing air quotes around Forget it. But not really. Like you're not having to host a live webinar every day of the week. Right? That's the beauty of evergreen, but you still need to be looking at your funnel. Where are people dropping off? Paying attention to what are the conversion rates at the opt in at the webinar and the course overall with certain bonuses like are people converting live on your webinar when they're watching it, you know, live? How can you improve? And so what we found after the first three or four months of being evergreen is that our conversion rate was like between one and 2% said okay, great industry standard is more like 3% What could we be doing to increase our conversion rates, which would hopefully then mean we can spend less on ads and make more and then as we ramp that up, you know the profit will just continue to grow. So be committed to testing, tweaking and optimizing. And along those same lines. Tip number seven my last tip for going evergreen is to have a great tracking system in place. So you need to keep tabs on What's happening? If suddenly you don't make sales for a few weeks, something is probably up and not working. Maybe there's even a glitch because as we all know, today is exhibit a technology breaks. Sometimes there are glitches. So pay attention to that. Sometimes you might look and go, Oh, okay, like we looked, like I said back in June, and said, Oh, things really dropped off. Is it us? Did something happen with the funnel? Is there a glitch? Is there something wrong with our messaging? Or is it what's happening in the world right now.

And, you know, sometimes you'll never know for sure. But if you don't have a tracking system in place, you won't have any idea. So make sure that you have something in place to investigate, figure it out and fix the problem. Things go wrong, the world changes. So you need to have someone on your team. Or if you're a one man or woman show, then it needs to be you but have a system in place so that you can track all of your data and tweak as you go. Okay, Andrea says how far in advance of a live launch do you advertise on Facebook? So I learned about the pre launch runway again, from Amy Porterfield Digital Course Academy. This was a complete game changer for me between my launch in October where I lost over $12,000, to my launch in January, where we made over $100,000. And she says that your pre launch runway should be 30 to 60 days. And I agree. And that's what we did. We found a lot of success with that. And so we started running our ads around that time as well. Now, we weren't advertising for the course at that time. You know, in preparation for our live launch, we were growing our list. So we were growing our list by having freebies and like PDFs and checklists and guides and stuff that would help people especially get into the right mindset that they would need to be in in order to be ready to buy our course when we launched in January. So they were all lead generation ads, rather than like trying to sell them on the course we weren't even talking about the course yet. Okay, Katie's asking, Are you making more money off courses or your blog these days? So definitely off courses? Yeah, we're making more money from courses these days. But we still do make 15 to $20,000 a month from my blog where I don't sell any courses. So they're two very separate businesses. And we've had we're on pace right now to make $250,000 a year from just my blog. This is a wellness blog. I don't sell anything of my own. I don't have a course I don't have a membership or you know anything. So this is purely just like blogging comm. Hope that's helpful. Thank you all so much for tuning in live. This was really fun. We will be back next week talking more about the tech and the tools that we use in our live launch and evergreen courses. So tune in next week, and we will see you then. Bye for now. Hey, y'all, Kate and Amy here wanting to jump in and tell you all about Digital Course Academy which as we mentioned is opening for enrollment on September 7 2022. In the meantime, you can check out this year as a brand new freebies. Or if you have other questions and want to know more about Digital Course Academy. You can get all of your questions answered when you head to Kate kordsmeier.com/DCAA. You'll be alerted when DCA opens up again this year, you can learn all about our bonus suite, which is absolutely incredible, over $3,500 worth of free bonuses when you enroll through our link. And we're giving you all the information you need about Amy's five day bootcamp and all of the other incredible freebies we have coming up for this month. We'll see you over there at Kate kordsmeier.com/DCA

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