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! How I Made $20,739 From A Niche Course Launch
! How I Made $20,739 From A Niche Course Launch
Ryan Kulp
BIO
LISTEN
FAQ
LEARN
PROJECTS
Ryan Kulp
BIO
LISTEN
FAQ
LEARN
PROJECTS
every month i write down a list of goals in my notebook. this month i had something really ambitious in mind:
“outline a new course.”
fast forward 2 weeks, i built a landing page in 30 minutes and sold $10k+ in the first 24 hours. no course yet.
a week later my course was done and we sold another $10k before launching today.
some backstory
i’ve spent the last few years buying and growing small apps. and people ask me: “Ryan, how can i buy and grow
small apps?“
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24/11/2019 How I Made $20,739 from a Niche Course Launch
while i try to be helpful, a lot of these questions are the same. or the opposite: they’re too specific. and it takes
serious brain power + free time i don’t have to answer them all thoughtfully.
so finally, on July 4 when i was asked the umpteenth time for free help, i “snapped” with an aha moment —
maybe people would pay for this!
i told the person “look, i can’t keep offering free advice on the subject, but if i built a course about it, would you
pay for it?“
while most Americans were eating BBQ (Independence Day) i turned this email exchange into a business
proposition for strangers on the internet:
https://twitter.com/ryanckulp/status/1146776396666155008
i only have ~3,000 followers, which may sound like a lot but is peanuts considering i’ve consumed myself with
Twitter for ~10 years.
usually my witticisms get 0-2 retweets and 3-9 likes. real basic b*tch metrics. but this time was… different.
Hiten Shah and others immediately shared it with their followers, and for that i’m forever grateful. this led to 191
likes and 37 replies. nothing crazy, but a good bump by my standards.
in addition to “yes definitely” sentiments, a few folks replied with specific content they’d like to see in order to
consider buying.
this was the extent of my market research phase for the course.
i responded back to the guy who emailed me earlier that afternoon and linked him to the Tweet so he knew i was
“on the case.”
a couple weeks after the July 4 Tweet i got bored while out drinking wine so i ditched my wife and walked to the
office around midnight to build a landing page.
i signed up for Podia (referral link), a white label course platform with a simple page builder and great design.
combining my original tweet’s bullet points with some of the content requests i managed to jot down titles for 30
lectures.
unsure if this would make any $$$, i didn’t even change the default theme colors. i then recorded a pre launch
sales video in one take, with no script, ~drunk.
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since the theme colors were purple, and i wear this purple shirt almost every day, it appears intentional and
genius.
https://twitter.com/ryanckulp/status/1151485557962354693
remember all those people who replied to my July 4 Tweet saying they’d “definitely buy?“
yeah, i decided to hold them accountable. i made a spreadsheet of all 23 Twitter handles who replied positively and
manually sent each of them a direct message immediately after posting the pre launch sales page.
a few accounts disabled the direct message feature, oh well. and i sent them all a variation of these 3 texts:
1. yo {{ first_name }}!
2. < embed link to their tweet expressing purchase intent >
3. thanks for your interest in the Micro PE course. just opened up pre-launch @ 50% off, will be live Aug 1. <
LINK >
surprisingly, many of these people immediately purchased. one guy even purchased prior* to seeing my DM; he was
already following along closely.
it wouldn’t justify my time to record the lectures, but i rationalized it would become a passive income project that
pays itself back over time.
that said, why not capitalize on all the resources you have available? so i emailed the list of marketers subscribed
to this blog.
now before you pull out your “privilege!” screech, note that my list is only ~700 people. i’ve written nearly 200
essays on this blog since 2012 to earn those 700 subscribers one by one.
anyway, a few hours later the 25 promo codes from my email newsletter also sold out, and folks from Twitter kept
buying it at full price.
over the next 24 hours we sold $10,000+ in enrollments and it dawned on me: i have to really make this course!
producing a course requires a bit of soul searching. i know because i’ve done it twice — Sales Hacking, GrowthX
Academy.
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you spend weeks or months agonizing over “things you know,” debating if they’re useful enough to share and then
further debating how to disseminate the information in an organized way.
as i began creating slide decks, scripts, worksheets, and doodles, it became evident 30 lectures was not enough to
give students a zero to one in buying small companies.
so i staffed my wife — the one i abandoned at the bar — and asked her to produce what became some of the
greatest content in the course on financial leverage, managing your pipeline, and legal templates.
she was pretty pissed that i promised an August 1 launch date, and it was now July 18 with zero content completed.
i further had 7 days booked in a recording studio for my new [music] album, and we were collectively wrapping up
multiple software deals at Fork Equity.
i told her: this week is going to suck but it will be awesome. then we didn’t stop working until 4-6am for the next 7
days.
i’m a believer that if you owe a debt, it’s literally stupid to pay it back a moment before it’s due.
suppose you have a credit card with $1k expenses. the payment is due on the 15th of the month, and it’s currently
the 1st. you could pay it off now, but if you wait until the 15th you’d have 14 days to reinvest that $1,000. maybe
you’ll even double your money, effectively wiping out the debt simply by not paying it off early.
similarly, when we finished our course at 6am on Monday morning, July 29, i sort of felt stupid because the launch
date wasn’t until 72 hours later, August 1.
so we brainstormed how to extract value from the fact we finished producing content early. the result was this
welcome email with a few gamification techniques:
first, i offered enrolled students early access in exchange for sharing the course on social media.
second, i offered a 100% refund to someone that completes the course within a week and scores highly on the
quizzes.
third, i whet their appetite with the promise of upcoming bonus content. it was a hedge in case they thought v1
wasn’t worth the full $150. note: this content is being created as i type, NOT a bluff.
finally i inserted an Easter egg, which was inviting them to our affiliate program and then encouraging them to use
their affiliate link to get early access (see technique #1).
more than 35 students took advantage of this offer, driving thousands more clicks to the website over the next 72
hours.
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sales vs marketing
while most students purchased the course in a “low touch” fashion — visited the URL, clicked buy, no conversation
with me — some people needed more information to make the right decision.
to help this group of people self-identify i added a friendly email capture widget to the bottom of the home page:
this let prospective students know that, hey, i understand if you don’t want to buy the course, but maybe we can
keep in touch.
around 40 people opted in and i manually emailed each person a message like this:
for those who opted in with a work email, i visited their website first to find a broken link on the home page, or
really anything i could do to add a personal touch to my outreach. it worked.
https://twitter.com/SanjayAtPlay/status/1156065792414420992
at least 5 of the 40 people who opted into the newsletter bought my course within a couple back/forth exchanges.
in case we haven’t met, i’m a huge fan of social proof. i’ve even been called an expert, as i run a social proof
platform.
so in every one of my ventures, i try to figure out how to get customers to refer more customers. and i pretty much
put all my effort into this strategy. no fancy copywriting, no advertising, and no manipulation tactics.
the pre-launch email i sent to ~150 paying students on Monday, July 29 was all we needed to keep sales flowing
for 3 more days, leading up to tonight.
as a bonus, since students were encouraged to complete the course quickly (for a chance at a 100% refund), we
earned several 10/10 reviews by alumni within the first 12 hours of pre-launch.
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as you can imagine this further improved signup conversions, especially with “lurkers” who needed more proof
before committing.
between July 17 and July 31 we sold $20,739 in enrollments before the course even launched, thanks to students,
not me.
the impetus of this entire course was that email i received on July 4.
but just because the course is now live, doesn’t mean the email inquiries will go away. if anything i’m expecting
even more questions about Micro PE.
to handle this demand we created a paid, private, alumni-only community called Rainmakers.
this has two components: a private messaging board to share new lectures and a Slack team where entrepreneurs
can network with one another in channels like #buying , #selling , #marketing , and so on.
starting today, whenever someone asks me about Micro PE i can point them to the course ($150 /once) and then
the community ($49 /year).
https://twitter.com/ryanckulp/status/1155882360296157185
and by the way, that person who emailed me July 4 saying “yes, that’s definitely something i would pay for,”
never bought the course.
i’m not mad, he made me $20k richer. and he still doesn’t know anything about how to buy, grow and sell small
companies.
thanks to all the encouragement, early reviews, and of course sales, i’m amped to continue investing in the course
to make it best in class.
here are a few things currently in the works, which i believe can be abstracted and applied to ~any course
marketing strategy.
partnerships
it’s too early to announce, but i’m in conversations with leading brokers and Micro PE firms (tech, ecommerce,
content) to co-produce exclusive interviews.
serial entrepreneurs and multi-exit founders are also chipping in with guest lectures, presentations, and fat
discounts to give students access to the world’s best tools to grow their companies.
affiliates
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i made deals with a handful of talented blogger/entrepreneurs who are going to take the course and write detailed,
long-form reviews on their own websites.
i will not have any influence over their posts, so if the course sucks everyone in the world will know about it when
you search for “micro acquisition course reviews.”
affiliates (advanced)
throughout the course we recommend tools, brokers, and back office services to run your own Micro PE fund. we
only recommend what we’ve personally used, by the way.
so after sending a ton of emails and filling out a lot of application forms, many of these links are now referral /
incentivized which should increase our student ARPU (average revenue) significantly.
let’s say the average student applies for one of our recommended business credit cards, incorporates a new entity,
or hires someone to design their new logo… any single one of these referral links embedded in our show notes pays
$5-100 per sale, and we have dozens of them.
cross selling
since we like Podia so much, my wife and i decided to migrate a couple of our other courses like 60 Minute LBO
Model and Sales Hacking (cold email automation) so they’re now under the Micro Acquisitions moniker.
where relevant we link to these resources within the Micro Acquisitions flagship course, which in addition to
increasing our bottom line also increases our value to students. win win.
as an aside, when i migrated my 200 sales hacking students i had to send them password reset instructions to
generate new credentials inside Podia.
think i added a “PS, i have a new course…” to that email? you betcha. and did it convert to more sales? oh yeah.
custom apps
i’m perhaps most excited about this upcoming angle to the Micro Acquisitions platform.
since my wife and i both code, we’re building a few utilities to help our students scale their dealflow and run
portfolios smoothly.
things like:
legal contract generators (we already provided templates, but pasting values into Google Docs is painful)
RSS and API feeds for deals on broker websites, queryable by category / revenue / etc
tentative: a lightweight, dealflow-specific CRM for managing your opportunity pipeline, portfolio valuations,
and so on
we already integrated Zapier webhooks to send student records to our Rails app database, and all the other stuff is
just a few hour hackathons away.
summary
if you scanned this post looking for special tactics and advanced 37-drip pre launch email sequences, i’ve obviously
disappointed you.
you can de-risk most business ideas with the above strategy.
you can also do all of this without automation, without knowing how to code, without building a website, and
without hiring a designer.
https://www.ryanckulp.com/niche-course-launch/ 7/11
24/11/2019 How I Made $20,739 from a Niche Course Launch
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4 COMMENTS
Julien Reszka
AUGUST 1, 2019 AT 8:34 AM
Congratulations Ryan !
This is really awesome and inspiring, I hope I will eventually be able to replicate something like this.
Thank you for sharing your insights with us !
R EP LY ↓
Spencer Fry
AUGUST 1, 2019 AT 10:44 AM
R EP LY ↓
Mary Nemciuc
OCTOBER 31, 2019 AT 9:17 AM
Hi,
I am Mary, ecosystem builder from Moldova, a country you must visit as a traveler lover :)
In fact I want to invite you as a growth hacking expert for a bootcampt (five days) that we planed for December.
Beside the mention of the poorest country in Europe, that you may find as a first think on google, here in Moldova we have others super
attractive reasons to join: wine, culture, cuisine, breathtaking landscapes and beautiful girls.
Hope it will catch your attention and we can plan a call for more detail to come?
Respectfully,
Mary Nemciuc
R EP LY ↓
Ryan Kulp
OCTOBER 31, 2019 AT 10:28 AM
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