What's New: Building a course in public

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Have you thought of building a course in public?

• Building in public is pretty common advice, and it can also apply to creating a course. Here's how to validate your course idea, attract beta students, and create community around your course before launch!
• Meeting likeminded people and making friends can be very difficult. Below, founders weigh in on how they connect with others both online and IRL, and surround themselves with inspiring people.
• Founder Sylvain Naessens leveraged the power of lifetime deals to earn nearly $12,000 in one week. Below, he shares his step-by-step process for planning and rolling out an LTD, including his strategy for engaging Facebook Groups.

Want to share something with nearly 75,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

👩‍🏫 Building a Course in Public

by Kevon Cheung

I get emails from people who want to create courses all the time, and I always ask if they've thought about the three most important things:

1. Do people need your course?
2. What should the curriculum consist of?
3. How will you put the course into the right people’s hands?

Having clarity about these three questions is essential, but many people new to course creation actually don’t think about them. I've documented the eight steps that I used to create my video course, Easy Content Magic, to show you how I did it!

1. Validate your early idea using data

My students at Build in Public Mastery often ask me how to validate an idea. In short, there’s only one way: You listen to what people are saying. If you have people in your community right now, there are many ways to get them to tell you things. I have done the following:

• Tweet specific, slightly open-ended questions to see how people respond.
• Send out a short survey, and let people know that you'll be picking two winners to get something free for completing it.
• Chat people up in private messages.

No matter how big (or small) an audience you have, chatting with people is still the best way to get data to validate your idea. When you see patterns of the same questions, frustrations, or complaints, you know that enough people are interested in a solution. It is then up to you to solve it for them.

2. Set up a 60 minute live workshop

The next step is not to spend 100 hours building the course, but to actually figure out the one thing that requires minimal effort to get to the next phase.

People want to know whether you know how to teach, whether your delivery is easy to understand, and whether you’re an interesting teacher to listen to. What’s the fastest way to get proof that you can do this?

For me, it's a 60 minute live workshop teaching a small group face-to-face. If people leave the workshop happy, you know that you have what it takes to create a profitable course.

You can also find out immediately what parts people find boring, and remove them.

3. Draw people into the workshop

Next, design a workshop sales page to pitch how you’re going to resolve this struggle for people.

If you have an email list or social following, use them to get signups for the workshop.

Should you make this a free workshop? No. If you’re doing a workshop to build your audience, you can absolutely do it for free! But in this case, you’re trying to validate the idea for a paid video course that you’ll build. This is why you shouldn't do it for free.

Free means that you will attract a lot of people who won’t pay later. Therefore, their feedback is not as relevant because they care less, and the word-of-mouth effect is weakened.

Make it paid to get a sense of how many people are willing to pay for your teaching. I set mine at $19 because I wanted it to be a no-brainer price that people could act on in less than a minute.

If you don’t have an email list or an audience, go back to the tip above: Chat people up privately.

In my early days, I shared what I was doing as I talked to people. A casual mention can draw a lot of people in, and people appreciate that they’re getting a personal invitation instead of a mass email.

If you aren't sure whose door to knock on, you’re likely not ready to build a course. If you don’t know who the student should be, or where to find them, you don’t have the right data to validate your early idea. Building the course cannot solve this for you. Instead of moving forward, go back to step one.

I mentioned to my live workshop students that they were beta students for my new course, and that, when I finally built out the full course, they would get it without paying more. This made it super attractive for people to want to get in right away!

4. Deliver a "Wow!" learning experience

No matter how many signups you get, run the workshop. Even if there is only one student, this is your chance to practice showing up on camera to teach. This is an important skill for creating a successful video course.

Your job here is to delight your attendees. If you're upfront about the workshop being a beta version, your attendees will adjust their expectations. I sold 22 seats to this live workshop, and 15 people showed up. Not everyone will show up, and that’s okay. Some people want to get in early for a good deal. Some prefer to watch the replay. Everyone has different needs and learning styles.

5. Observe, gauge, and ask

After the live workshop, most new course creators evaluate how it went by feelings alone. Use these questions to determine whether it was actually a job well done:

1. Did the attendees show enthusiasm throughout the workshop?
2. Did they stay behind to ask questions?
3. Did they share positive constructive feedback with you after the workshop?

I tell my students at the start that I am happy to stay behind for 10 minutes to answer any questions. I also designed a short two question survey to send right after the workshop wraps up:

I got 11 responses out of the 15 live attendees. You want to hear from them when they’re still feeling the high from your workshop. If you want to increase the response rate, offering a small reward always helps. It can be a paid product for free, or simply a link to a free product.

6. Iterate and repeat

After the workshop, it is time to be honest with yourself. If you feel that you can do a better job, run a second workshop to fine-tune it with a new group of people. With each workshop you run, you’re showcasing yourself and your expertise. These people become your community, and the source of your testimonials.

These days, people want non-fluffy, straight-to-the-point learning. Take out all the parts that people don’t want. I purposely made Easy Content Magic less than an hour long, because I want my students to spend time executing my frameworks, not just watching them.

7. Validate again by selling early

Whenever you feel ready, start planning a pre-sale. At this point, you don’t even need to have your course fully built yet. All you need is clear direction and a plan.

If you think you need another four weeks to finish the course, set the launch date at four weeks, and the pre-sale at two weeks.

The best thing about having run the live workshop is that now you have a relationship with all of the attendees. You can use their feedback from the survey as testimonials. You can also ask them to help spread the word.

It's more about getting sales over time, not having an explosive day. When you have pre-sale numbers, you can also use them to create extra momentum for the big launch.

8. Launch your course

If you've followed the steps carefully and mindfully, you should have a course that people are dying to learn from.

Throughout this process, the exact words that you hear from workshop attendees and your audience should be used to improve the copy on your sales page.

When you’re close to your big launch, you can ask all the people who you’ve interacted with so far, especially the workshop attendees, for help. If you give them a ton of value, they’ll be more than happy to help you.

Your course should not just be a tool for you to make passive income, but also a way for you to add value to people’s lives. It is you helping them. This is a perfect place to kickstart relationships. That’s the beauty of building a course in public!

Would you build a course in public? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

📧 Blue verified checkmarks are coming to Gmail.

🖌 An AI artist explains his workflow.

🔗 The top mistakes founders make when link building.

❓ Rephrasing H2s to questions may help boost organic traffic.

🌟 Five iconic B2B campaigns from the past 20 years.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

👋 Meeting Likeminded People in Your Area

by Eric Seitz

I'm on a quest to meet a lot of new people this year, and I would love to hear how others meet folks in their area.

Maybe I'm not using Twitter correctly? And LinkedIn seems too difficult to filter for likeminded people. I'm hoping I can find folks here, but it also seems like Indie Hackers is fairly remote. Meetup seems to be less popular these days, at least in Boston.

How have you made new connections with other founders where you're located?

Topic time

Gareth Roll recommends leaning into live events:

I once hosted a event called "Live Hacking: How to Hack Into a Website." I thought this would be a good way to start, since non-techies perceive this as an exciting topic.

Once the live presentation was set up, I put out some cheap flyers at the local university, and asked a speaker from the startup incubator there to talk about it. In Germany, a local feed app called Jodel is popular among students, so I did a few promo posts there.

In a co-working space, I rearranged the meeting room to allow up to 20 people to attend.

Result: There were seven people, two of them acquaintances of mine and two from the co-working space who were curious. One group even came from the incubator that I mentioned above.

I think if you do this regularly, you can build a local platform. In my opinion, if you want to pull this off, you shouldn't focus on the regionality, but on the topic. Focus on the context of such events, even if that means thinking beyond your own location.

Andrew Kamphey agrees:

I've made new connections by hosting events, not just attending them. I hosted the Indie Hackers meetup in Bali almost four years ago, and met some great people. It resulted in me joining a group that still meets every week, to this day.

I also host a board game night at various co-working spaces. Go to co-working spaces and share what you love. You'll find people who want to do that, too!

I also hosted an email newsletter meetup, and only one person showed up. It's not a huge group all the time. But that one person ended up cofounding a SaaS product with me within a year, so keep in mind that it's about quality, not quantity.

One simple question

Hailey Ellis-Kelley says that one simple thing added a lot to her efforts in meeting new folks:

I started straight up asking them if they want to be friends! It's an underutilized angle.

If I meet someone online or in person who I believe to be interesting, I will literally say, "Listen, making new friends as an adult is sometimes awkward, but here goes...I think you're interesting, and I'd like to get to know you better. Want to have coffee later?"

This truly works wonders when forging new relationships. Even if either party decides we're not really that compatible as friends, the connection was made!

Volunteering helps

Bryce Harper recommends starting with something outside of tech that you are interested in:

For me, it was helping homeless and mentally disabled people. This isn't a proven theory, but from my experience, the people that volunteer are usually older people who enjoy working, and were very successful in their careers. They don't need money, but they still like to work, be active, and be social. There's lots of wisdom to be gained from these folks!

Build your own community

Mei has met more interesting people online than offline, especially since COVID-19 started:

I actively scout for communities to join on Discord, Slack, or really any platform, and aim to schedule as many one-on-one chats as I can in those groups.

If you're based in a place where events are common, it's great to attend those. If not, there's always a great opportunity to be a host yourself.

Building a community of your own is also a great way to meet super smart people. I have been working on this myself, and can really say it's been incredible so far!

How do you meet likeminded people and make friends? Let's chat below!

Discuss this story.

🌐 Best Around the Web: Posts Submitted to Indie Hackers This Week

🤔 Here's why developers find marketing difficult. Posted by Mehdi Sakout.

📝 Everything I've learned about SEO as a beginner. Posted by Lior Neu-ner.

💻 What email software do you use? Posted by Maddie Wang.

🎯 Staying focused on your goals. Posted by Tim Leland.

🏠 Have you tried co-living? Posted by Majd Alsado.

🚂 Let's start a feedback train! Posted by Bfish.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

💰 Sylvain Naessens Hit $12K in One Week

by Sylvain Naessens

Hi, indie hackers! I'm Sylvain Naessens, and we needed cash. ASAP!

A few months ago, we launched a bootstrapped startup, Vuzers, a video engagement platform. In December, we needed a way to quickly generate revenue to cover our marketing expenses and hosting costs.

I wanted to experiment with lifetime deals (LTDs). I read about the pros and cons, and we decided to launch an LTD campaign. In fact, we had no other options!

Read on for the process and strategy that I used to generate $12K in one week!

Why we didn't launch on AppSumo?

Several SaaS products have run successful LTD campaigns using AppSumo, and running an LTD can bring in a lot of traffic and new customers. This would have potentially overwhelmed our customer support, and since I'm the only one doing support, it was a big no!

I remembered a discussion that I'd had with a French indie hacker, Arnaud Belinga, who had successfully launched an LTD campaign for Breakcold via Facebook Groups. So, I decided to copy his strategy.

I contacted several admins of Facebook Groups specializing in LTD offers and marketing tools. Those who agreed to promote our campaign were:

• Ankit Sharma from SaaS Warrior.
• Atley Joseph from MarTech Wise.
• Dan Lourenço and Tayshiro Kudo from LTD Hunt.

The admins were very helpful, and they didn't ask for any commission. They believed that Vuzers was bringing value to their community.

Our goal was to sell 100 LTDs in a week, and make $10K.

What do you need to launch an LTD campaign?

The key to a successful campaign is creating an attractive, comprehensive landing page that, not only provides potential buyers with all the necessary information to make a purchase decision, but also establishes trust.

Before designing your landing page, it is crucial to understand what buyers expect from an LTD campaign, and from your product.

- Analyze your competitors:

To achieve this, I researched all of our competitors' campaigns on AppSumo. I analyzed their pricing strategies and the features they included, read all the questions and answers, and combed the bad reviews to ensure that we did not repeat the same mistakes.

This process took a few days, but it was extremely helpful. By the end, I had a clear understanding of the features that my potential buyers would want, and what they didn't like about similar products. I was able to prepare a FAQ section that answered all of the questions I had read.

- Design:

For the design of our landing page, I decided to adopt the same style as the AppSumo campaign pages to make LTD buyers feel at home.

To ensure maximum effectiveness, your landing page should include:

• A clear, unique value proposition.
• A demo video.
• Screenshots of your product.
• CTAs for buying!
• A list of all included features.
• Testimonials.
• A money-back guarantee program.
• A transparent pricing plan.
• A countdown bar.
• A video widget.

To further establish trust with our audience, I implemented a video widget with Vuzers to greet visitors and offer support. I received 72 inquiries through our widget!

I shared the landing page with the admins of the Facebook Groups, and they provided valuable feedback and insights before launch.

To create excitement around our campaign, we decided to offer 100 LTDs only, a 30% discount for the community members, and a limited number of giveaways, in exchange for valuable feedback.

By offering these giveaways, we expected that people would engage more with our post, which would increase visibility of our campaign on Facebook and attract potential buyers. It was a win-win situation!

We didn't do this, but I saw others teasing their LTD campaign a few days in advance to create hype.

When your launch post is live, introduce yourself, share your story, and explain why you built this product in the first comment. Tell the community members that you are available to answer their questions. Be ready; there can be a lot of them!

Next, make sure to answer any questions in a timely manner in order to build trust and drive conversions.

Our results and feedback

We managed to sell all 100 LTDs within a week, for a total of nearly $12K.

We had eight returns. We can therefore say that our LTD campaign was a success!

• We managed to reach our financial goal! We generated net revenue of $10K+ to help us continue to grow Vuzers.

• The campaign generated a lot of feedback and suggestions, which we can use to develop new features.
• We made new friends along the way. I even went for a beer with one of our buyers!

If you'd like to see how Vuzers can help you engage with your audience through personalized videos, and collect video testimonials at scale, you can try it for free here!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Kevon Cheung, Darko, Eric Seitz, and Sylvain Naessens for contributing posts. —Channing