You might just be entering into this lucrative 300 billion dollar knowledge business industry. Or you might be a veteran coach or consultant who wants to shift online and build a freedom-based business model.

Whatever the case is, selling online courses can be a profitable and rewarding business model. People will thank you for changing their lives, and you will be making money from almost anywhere in the world.

This "new way" of selling online courses might give you the answer that you have been waiting to hear.

I promise I will be as quick as possible on the "how to create a course" part. If you already know, jump to the Question worth $100,000 section.

The Antithesis Method

When in 2019, I launched my first online course, I knew I had done something remarkable. But something behind the brain was questioning me "who would be so stupid to buy a course" from me.

Eight months later, I was able to sell my own courses worth $3000 and other people's courses worth $1500. While I am not eligible for the "Social media guru" badge with these stats, I don't care.

A few months before, I was a blogger and completely new to this industry, and now I knew stuff from my own experience. I was not among those who preach without experience. (narcist... huh!)

But I failed miserably later on. It just stopped working after a few weeks. I saw something was not right. I panicky started looking into my Facebook ads, my email marketing campaigns, and the stats. But it just didn't work.

I saw people stopped buying stuff, and I was getting overwhelmed with the information around me. Something that I was teaching, I was failing to achieve for myself.

And that was the moment I knew I had to step back. The devil was not outside. It was in me. I had stopped working on something that was working, and that was my biggest mistake.

A few weeks later, I received an email.

"A Question Worth $100,000."

Interesting subject line! Attention-grabbing. It got me.

... I opened the email and started reading.

John Saunders' strategy for making $100,000 from his online course

I received this email from Podia. Yes, the same company I was talking about. It’s a platform that helps you sell online courses, memberships, and digital products.

So, coming back to the story!

Instead of trying to create a “successful” course, John shows the reverse method of selling.

Making a product because you think your audience or the world needs it is gambling a lot of time, energy, and effort for something that might not ever sell.

This is where most new course creators fail. This is why I initially failed for the first two months.

John lived this firsthand when he created his first online course.

"It was a feeling in my gut that I felt the world needed this, and that was the first mistake," he says.

Profitable art is the product of the creator and the creator alone.

Profitable products, on the other hand, are the joint vision of the creator and their buyers.

I'm not saying you can't have a "Eureka!" moment and create the perfect product all by yourself.

I'm saying you don't have to, and so is John.

"What I do now is properly pre-sell the idea to an audience and have them invested before even developing the course."

And with a $10,000 launch day and recent $100,000 profit milestone to John's name, it clearly works.

This is why they called it a question worth $100,000 in that email. Loved it.

Creating a successful course needs a successful strategy. This is one of the most powerful ones.

Key takeaways