So far, I’ve shared the stories of my first two online course fails — Build Your Site, Launch Your Business & the 30-Day Challenge…
Which paved the way for my third course, Message to Money, which I created in 2012 and sold for 4 years before retiring.
Message to Money was a breakthrough for me in a number of ways, but I never would have gotten there if I hadn’t created those first couple courses.
That’s why I ask my students, “What if you don’t create your Blockbuster Hit Product until your third or fourth course? Would you still be willing to create Course #1 and Course #2, even if they’re total duds?”
Almost invariably, my students say, “Definitely, yes!”
But the truth is, you can’t predict the future and it’s so easy to give up after one or two fails when — so often — your greatest successes are on the other side of failure.
And — after Build Your Site, Launch Your Business & the 30 Day Challenge — there were many times when I doubted and questioned, “Shouldn’t this be easy if I were really meant to do this?”
“How come so many other people seem to be having huge success with their courses and programs, when I’m struggling to make a few sales?”
As my mentor Lisa Nichols says, “It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get up. So strengthen your get up muscles!”
And I gotta say, my “get up muscles” are rock solid 🙂
So – Message to Money was my first course to feature a signature system — My Live Your M.E.S.S.A.G.E. System — and that made a BIG difference when it came to selling this program, because it gave my course structure.
I called this an “inside out model” because you had to work your way from the inside out, and each of the 7 parts of the system became a module inside my program:
Make Your ROAD MAP (Module 1)
Energize Your MESSAGE (Module 2)
Shape Your Unique BRAND (Module 3)
Structure Your CONTENT to Sell (Module 4)
Accelerate Your WEBSITE to Get Results (Module 5)
Grow Your Tribe With the Right MARKETING (Module 6)
Explode Your Impact Through Smart ACTION (Module 7)
I didn’t know it at the time, but it was WAY too much.
At least 6 courses in one — all crammed into a single 6-week program with a starting price of $497.
At the time, everyone was making these mongo, “multi-point programs” that taught you “everything you need to know” about this or that…
So I followed suit, since that’s what I thought an online course was…
I slaved for months on the content, the sales page, the launch materials, the webinar, the emails, the membership site, and all that stuff. I even paid a well-known copywriter $10K to write the sales page for me, which felt like a FORTUNE.
I worked my butt off and I ended the year with 40 sales of that first course — and just over $20K in revenue.
It seemed like a small fortune at the time… and I was officially in business!
I continued to sell that course for 4 full years and, along the way, we raised the price from $497 to $697 to $997, ultimately selling 501 copies and bringing in a grand total of $470,412!
By the end I was making a pretty decent income… or so I thought.
Gradually, I started to see the cracks in the program, until I made the hard choice to stop selling it.
It all started with the refunds… 13.5% of our Message to Money students refunded, which dropped that revenue down by a full $33,488.
I was concerned. I thought something was wrong with my course and started to second-guess myself.
Out of desperation — I approached a colleague and asked, “Do you have lots of people buying your program and giving up before they finish?”
She looked at me, nodded quietly and said: “Marisa, maybe some people just aren’t meant to succeed…”
That felt like a punch in the gut because I believe that every person is meant to succeed. That every person — given the right education, the right support and the right guidance — CAN succeed.
But that WASN’T what I was seeing…
And when I dug deeper, I realized it wasn’t just me.
I discovered that the industry-average refund rate for traditional online courses is between 10-20%… but nobody tells you that when you hear about all those million dollar product launches!
And this was just the beginning…
I started to get this feeling in my gut that NOT a lot of students were making it through the course. And when we ran the numbers from our membership site, we saw the harsh reality — something that most online course creators never get to see.
We saw that only around 5% of our students were actually completing the course — which lines right up with the industry average completion rates for traditional online courses.
That’s when I found out that online courses and home study programs have an average completion rate of just 3%.
That means — if you’re creating products, programs or courses in the traditional way like I was — up to 97% of the people who buy from you will either: Not even open your course or program OR open it, but fall off… fail to complete it AND fail to get the results you promised.
Which — even if you figure out how to sell your course — leads to declining sales and reputation.
And that’s exactly what I was seeing.
My students weren’t completing the course, so they weren’t succeeding. Therefore, I wasn’t succeeding…
I had also made the huge mistake of offering lifetime access to weekly group coaching calls in that program, so my students felt like they had all the time in the world to complete the program… and they were disincentivized from continuing to work with me in other programs since this program never really ended 🙂
So while I was making money, my business wasn’t growing… and I felt like I wasn’t really serving my students in the way that I wanted to be.
That led me to make the hard decision to retire the program in 2016.
Uncoincidentally, that was also the year I launched my real Blockbuster Hit Program, the Experience Product Masterclass, which completely transformed everything I thought was possible for an online course — both for me and my students.
But that’s a story for another day since I created several more programs between Message to Money and the Experience Product Masterclass, which ALL gave me the experience and insights I needed to launch EPM.
So stay tuned because there’s more to come in my Throwback Thursday series! Each story will be sent to your email (so get on my list if you aren’t already :)) and I’ll also update this post.
Let me know in a comment your BIGGEST takeaway from my #TBT series…
But before you go…
Every fail paves the path to your future success.
So — while Build Your Site, Launch Your Business ultimately turned into Website ATM — the 30 Day Challenge planted the seed for a program I created 12 YEARS LATER: Success School.
Success School combines everything I learned about online courses and The Experience Formula (which I developed in 2016 as a result of making so many mistakes 🙂 inside a $97/month membership — and the results are blowing my students away…
I finally cracked the code on bridging the gap between learning and doing with a focus on results and transformation, but I never could have done this if I hadn’t #failedforward.
Throwback Thursday Series
Throwback Thursday #1: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business
Throwback Thursday #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!
Throwback Thursday #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail
Throwback Thursday #5: You Did What?!!?
Throwback Thursday #6: This Put Me On the Map
Throwback Thursday #7: Me? Do a Live Event?
Throwback Thursday #8: My First Upsell
Throwback Thursday #9: Course ✅ SaaS Next?
Throwback Thursday #10: 1 Launch > 4 Big Lessons
Throwback Thursday #11: Message to Millions
Throwback Thursday #12: Website in a Weekend