Primoz Bozic

Impact Over Revenue

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How to Increase the Success Rate of Your Online Course From 1-2% to 80-90%

don't settle for a 1-2% success rate of your online course

Over the last few days, as I shared my thoughts on improving the broken online course industry, a question kept popping up:

HOW can we do better?

How can we go from 1-2% success rates of online business courses…

To 50%, 80%, or 90% success rates?

The truth is, there is no one thing we can do. The answer is a lot more complex than that. There are a lot of things.

In this post, I shared my ideas, based on what worked for me and my clients, and what I’ve seen other impact-driven online entrepreneurs do.

I’m planning on researching this topic a lot more, but for now, here are some ideas that can help YOU do better.

Idea #1: Set better KPIs

Instead of focusing so much on ROI, conversions and sales, start tracking and improving:

-The completion rate of your courses
-The percentage of students that ger desired results with your courses
-The specific results your students accomplish

You should be able to get these above 50%, and ideally to 80-90% through some of the methods below.

Idea #2: Set better expectations through copy and testimonials

This one is huge. I feel like too many online courses create BIG promises based on a handful of star students. Then, “if they can do it, you can do it too”.

Unfortunately, these promises often stem from results from (1) very best students that made going through the course their full time job, were ultra self-driven, had previous momentum / results, and additional support in form of coaching from the author of the course. This is often not clear from the sales copy.

Then, these promises are used to “inspire” people that aren’t the same audience. People who are not as committed and dedicated, might not be a good fit to be entrepreneurs, might not have good business ideas, might have way too little time to actually get the results, and don’t receive support in terms of coaching, but just the “information” they can go through at their own pace. Hence, the dream they were promised is not attainable for them, at least not in that time frame.

A better way is to be transparent in who the course can really help, what it really takes to succeed, what the typical results are, what a realistic time frame is, etc. instead of claiming that the course can help everyone.

In line with this, you need to track who the course is working for and who it isn’t working for once you release it, and then adjust the messaging on your sales page to attract the right type of clients.

Idea #3: Know which topics you should create a course for, and which you shouldn’t

Certain topics have more developed, proven techniques for success that have been tested for years or even centuries.

Topics like:

  • How to play the violin or guitar
  • How to cook
  • Math / Chemistry

With these topics, there’s little guesswork. You can follow a step-by-step system, and if the student does the work, it typically works.

Of course, feedback from a teacher to spot blind spots will always be more effective than just the course alone, but using the format for these topics makes the knowledge more accessible to a larger audience.

There are also topics that are less researched and tested, but you can still develop frameworks and systems that work for 80-90% of the people that go through them.

Examples that come to mind:

  • How to hire and work with a virtual assistant
  • How to negotiate
  • How to program in Java

These can still be taught well through courses, but might require a bit more testing and iteration to make sure the success rate is as high as you want it to be.

Then, there are topics where there is no one proven approach that works for everyone, and where the approaches are constantly changing.

This is typical for most things related to building an online business because the industry evolved and changed so much:

  • A good niche from 10 years ago will not be a good niche today
  • Certain strategies you could use to validate your business idea don’t work as well as they did 5 years ago
  • You could say the same for SEO, FB Ads, generating traffic to your website, promoting your content, building an email list, etc.

Here is where things get a lot more nuanced.

If you do discover an approach that DOES work for 80-90% of the people that try it, by all means, build a course about it. But as soon as it stops working, it’s your duty to either evolve/improve the course, or stop selling it (so no “passive income until the end of your life” for you).

But then, you also need to take into consideration that many approached simply won’t work for everyone.

If 30% of the people hate writing / are not good writers, and your recommendation is to build a business through a blog… There’s a high chance that this approach won’t work for them.

That’s when you either need to make sure that you’re transparent about it (don’t join this program if you hate writing), OR develop and test alternative approaches that work for them (for example, growing a YouTube channel).

There are hundreds of situations like this where approaches don’t work for the majority of the people, which is why the courses don’t work.

Here, you have a choice to make:

Either spend years developing and improving your course until you fix all the holes in your system…

OR create separate courses for separate types of people if you can break it down into specific patterns…

OR focus on coaching, instead of creating a course.

Idea #4: Don’t start with the course. End with the course.

If you create an online course in a vacuum, over the course of a few months, sell it and forget it (like many marketing gurus teach you to do it), it likely won’t have a very high success rate.

Your course will have holes in the system, and the holes will be the barriers that will prevent your students from succeeding.

From my experience, it takes 1-2 YEARS to thoroughly develop and test a course to an extent that it actually works for 50%+ of the students that take it.

In industries where “proven approaches” constantly change, it’s a never-ending battle. When changes happen, you have to adapt your course.

This involves iterating through:

  • The frameworks you share in the course, and their order
  • The type of an audience you can serve best with this course
  • The industry changes, and adapting to them

Now the problem is that if you just create a course, and don’t have good feedback loops within it, you likely won’t be able to find these holes very quickly and efficiently.

Instead, the completion rate will be low, and you’ll wonder why, then need to do a lot of guessing or digging to get to the bottom of it.

Starting with the course sucks if you want to make it the best course on the market.

Instead, I suggest one of the following approaches. Both can work well.

Approach #1:

  • Stage #1: Offer 1on1 coaching
  • Stage #2: Transition to group coaching
  • Stage #3: Create a BETA course, deliver it live, and constantly collect feedback on what works through tools like feedback surveys
  • Stage #4: Continue with a live course (delivered live, with Q & A sessions)
  • Stage #5: Finish with a recorded course (ideally with some sort of support that actually helps your students complete the course)

This approach works well if you love working with people 1on1 / in small groups, if you don’t really know what the proven approaches / frameworks are… You develop them through stages 1-2.

Then, once you start seeing the patterns, you can transition to stage 3 and repeat the BETA course as many times as necessary until you get your students the desired results.

Then, do a big launch of stage 4. Repeat and iterate a few times.

Finally, when you see that your live course works well over and over again, you can turn it into a recorded course.

As you do that though, it’s your duty to keep tracking the results and to find a support framework that works with the course (if one is necessary for success).

The final stage is typically the hardest part of the process, as you’re removing yourself from the equation, and need to teach REALLY well to maintain a high success rate.

Approach #2:

Skip stages 1-2, and start with stage 3 (BETA course).

This approach works well if you’ve ALREADY intentionally or unintentionally gone through stages 1-2, and you have a good idea of what the proven patterns and frameworks are.

Typically, this will apply when you’ve been coaching or tutoring people on a specific topic for years, and now want to help a broader audience with the specific problems.

You can see how this approach is VERY different than just whipping together a course over a weekend. But it’s what it usually takes to create an online course with a 50%+ success rate.

Idea #5: Screw courses altogether and focus on coaching.

Finally, if you don’t care much for passive income and enjoy working with your students live, consider replacing recorded courses with more hands-on formats like:

  • 1on1 coaching
  • Group coaching
  • Masterminds
  • Live events
  • Workshops
  • Accelerators

These are all formats where I consistently see 80-90% success rates, if you follow the principles I shared earlier on setting the right expectations and attracting the right clients, and iterating to perfection.

These formats are less scalable, but if you want to scale them, the best way to do it is by hiring and training coaches that coach with you (and later on, instead of you).

These are my long-winded initial thoughts. I hope they give you some sort of an idea for a direction to go into!

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What about you? What do you think we can do to increase the success rates of our students? What have you seen work? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. There has been a lot of research that shows that one-shot workshops don’t create behavioral change. That one would have to paired with some kind of ongoing support to work. Also, have you looked at how price point affects completion? How do we know if people just don’t show up because they don’t have enough skin in the game? How much of this is on us, and how much responsibility do we put on students to do the work?

    Reply

    • Hey Karen, that’s interesting! I need to dig into that research for sure.

      I wonder what the nuances are with workshops though.

      For example, I’ve attended a lot of weightlifting workshops as an athlete. I would soak in the information, take notes from the feedback I get on my technique, then focus on applying what I learned over the next few training cycles.

      The caveat? I already had a well-oiled routine for training in place, so it wasn’t really huge behavioral change – it was minor tweaks.

      On the flip side, I can imagine that you won’t lose 20lbs in 3 months just because you attended a 1-day weight loss workshop (as that requires a lot more behavioral change).

      Curious, do you have any go-to studies on this topic that you could point me to?

      In terms of pricing, I’ve seen this argument come up often – charge a premium rate, weed out bad clients / people who are not serious, increase success rate.

      I’ve seen this in my own coaching. When I first started coaching, and charged $25-$50/h, I did attract more clients that were less serious than later when I started charging $200/h+. Still, even at those rates, the price alone wouldn’t always bring in the right people though, so I needed to learn how to qualify better as well.

      On the flip side, I’ve seen $2,000 or even $8,000 programs with miserable completion rates, and I’ve seen $200 courses and $50 e-books with much higher success rates.

      I’ve also tested running my Ultimate Guide System program at a $997, $1497 and $1997 price points, and the price didn’t seem to affect client success rates / quality of clients.

      What did make a huge difference was running the program live (way higher success rates) vs offering a recorded version of it.

      Now what if I charged $50 for the program instead? My assumption is that that WOULD attract a lot more less serious students. My assumption is that there is a “barrier of entry” price that weeds out less serious clients, but that’s based purely on my own experiences and observations.

      Curious, what are your experiences on these topics?

      Reply

      • Primoz that’s really interesting that you point out that a high price point alone doesn’t weed out people who don’t finish-I’ve found that to be true as well.

        I have had people in my $497 course go all the way through but then I had someone in my dissertation program not finish at a $5k price point (and that person had already invested thousands of dollars in to a degree program and not finished, which is why she was working with me in the first place. She did have some traumatic things happen in her life but lots of other people have trauma and still finish). Anyhow, I just read Gretchen Rubin’s book about the 4 tendencies, and I do think personality, habits, and tendencies play a part in completion. Some people just need more external accountability regardless of how much they pay. But the interesting thing is that no one complains or tries to overstep with the higher price point, while people have done that more with my lower priced products (or try to “pick my brain” for free).

        As a student in these programs, I know I’ll do the work on my own. I don’t need anyone else giving me accountability. Where I get stuck and need that coaching is when I don’t get questions answered and I start to doubt the process. So then if I don’t buy in, I won’t do it. If I look at myself, an N of 1, my completion isn’t impacted by whether the actually trainings are pre-recorded. I actually prefer that because I think it respects everyone’s time and I can re-watch. I actually will start dreading ANY type of live call after awhile because it makes me feel tied down (even if I really enjoy the people on the call). But I always feel more confident in implementation and get better results if there SOME type of live opportunity to interact with a real person to implement the trainings. The program I’m going through now is hybrid like that (sold on evergreen, pre-recorded trainings, live coaching each week), and they have a really good completion rate (don’t know exact #s). I’ve actually had better results personally with a hybrid approach when I compare it to the 1:1 coaching I’ve done (so whether I complete it really isn’t the only factor).

        Regarding the one-shot workshop research, most of what I’ve drawn from has been peer-reviewed research in education and healthcare (I had access to a lot of that stuff when I was going through my university program, but I don’t have access to as much as I used to since you need subscriptions for each individual journal). However, there are some articles like this one though that sum up some of it that I often cite: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2018/06/response_professional_development_does_not_need_one-shot_wonders.html

        Reply

        • Hey Karen, so many great insights!

          Thanks so much for sharing your experiences and research with me.

          I’ve definitely seen the pattern of overstepping boundaries less at higher price points. It more or less never happens to me, but I do remember it happening more often at lower price points.

          Now what I would highlight is this:

          “If I look at myself, an N of 1, my completion isn’t impacted by whether the actually trainings are pre-recorded.”

          I function the same way.

          But what I’ve found is that thinking that everyone else is exactly the same as me is extremely dangerous.

          I did that in the past, and then assumed that if people don’t finish courses by themselves, it’s their fault (because if I were in their shoes, I would finish them). Later on I realized that different kinds of people need different levels of support, and prefer different programs.

          I do feel that my obligation as a business owner is to either:

          -Focus on attracting ONLY people who are exactly like me (which can work well with a high-end, few students model, but means I have to turn away most of my potential customers)
          -Focus on attracting a broader audience, BUT make sure that the format of programs I offer actually serves 80%+ of my students.

          I do a mixture of both.

          In my small, high-end group coaching where I work only with a handful of clients, I only work with ultra self-driven entrepreneurs.

          In my larger programs, I know I can’t expect everyone to function exactly like me. I strive to provide the best possible type of support for the range of students I can attract while making sure I don’t work with people that I’m not the best at helping. In my case, those are entrepreneurs without business ideas with existing traction or entrepreneurs who are super overwhelmed / scattered / struggle with taking action in the first place.

          So that’s just one important nuance there :).

          Reply

  2. This right here. I have a hard time with the “evergreen” concept- granted, that is what books have always been, but as a college professor and clinical supervisor, it’s not in my comfort zone. As I look to doing more online programming, it affirms that even at a light touch, direct interactions are probably a personal “must” for my courses.

    Reply

    • Amanda I used to question evergreen models. However, that model has been a complete game changer for me-but more for the sales mechanism rather than the course. You do have to have a way to have live support for people, but I don’t think content needs to be delivered live for eternity or always launched live. I come from academia as well and I’m so disappointed that the traditional continuing education models are focused on vomiting a bunch of info at you over the course of a day and totally overwhelming you, and then offering no implementation support. The hybrid coaching model with courses has been my favorite so far when I’ve been a student. Whether it was launched live or evergreen hasn’t made a difference; it was more whether there was a way to get live support with a real person in conjunction with the training. Especially when you get up there in price point.

      Reply

      • You’re so right Karen. Evergreen is probably a poor word choice for my meaning, which is also an offering without access to implementation support and some personalized support.

        Reply

    • Hey Amanda and Karen,

      here are my thoughts on evergreen. They’re not black and white.

      An evergreen model can work exceptionally well in situations where there’s a lot of natural urgency.

      Two typical examples come to mind:

      -Some sort of job interview prep
      -Some sort of exam prep

      If you’re preparing for a job interview and want help, you want help NOW, not in 3 months when the entrepreneur decides to launch their program (it’s too late by then, because you have your interview in 4 weeks!).

      It’s the same thing with any sort of exams as well.

      In those cases, I’d argue that the evergreen concept is actually the best way to serve your readers and students as best as possible, as you’re providing the information they need when they need it most.

      In those specific industries, I’ve also seen recorded courses work better than in industries without natural urgency. If you have an interview coming up in 2 weeks and you’re weak at a specific area of your knowledge, you already have the gun to your head, and you’re a lot more likely to use the recorded courses (although a hybrid approach of course + coaching will still work better).

      In the industries where there is no natural urgency (where you can learn about a specific topic at any time you want to), I’ve seen the evergreen model to be way less effective. Especially with recorded courses. You join a course, feel like you’re late to the party, don’t meet any other students,… and don’t end up doing much with it (at least most students don’t).

      Karen, thanks for sharing that you haven’t seen a difference with evergreen vs. non-evergreen enrolment with hybrid courses. That’s a super interesting and useful data point :). I can see that the hybrid approach if done right, can work well despite evergreen enrolment.

      Curious, how do you address the concern of “being late to the party”? I have noticed a lot of excitement from my students when I launched my programs live, had cohorts with welcome calls where students get to know each other, etc., and I personally prefer those programs as well to those where I need to join in on regular calls / conversations where I don’t know anyone yet and everyone is more advanced than me. Curious, have you seen that concern pop up, and if yes, how did you address it?

      Now, the one thing I do not like at all with SOME evergreen funnels is fake urgency through tools like Deadline Funnels (saying that “this is a one time offer and it expires TOMORROW!”, but in reality, the person could just sign up to your email list again tomorrow with a different email address and they’d magically be able to enroll again). I don’t find that approach very ethical and prefer leaving the cart open in that case.

      Reply

  3. You’ve come a super long way, Primoz, and I admire the way you have systematized and evolved the thinking around coaching and online programs. You’re now taking the discussion to the level it deserves. Bravo. I also happen to be obsessed with seeing the results of every of my programs through. Having quite an extensive experience in designing and running programs online and offline of all “5 stages“ (as you very specifically stated them) — I find that the combination of Online Prerecorded Courses + 1on1 / group coaching have the absolute highest success records, followed by Live Workshops + Accelerators: where do you position these kinds of combo-approaches in your “improving the broken industry” mission and do you plan working this way in the near future?

    Reply

    • Hey Cleo, thanks for sharing your experiences! I’m glad to meet other entrepreneurs that are obsessed with the results of their students and hear what works for them :).

      To answer your question, I do believe that’s the future of the online business industry. My dream is to shift the industry from 1-2% success rates to 80-90%, using the approaches described above.

      I’ve been using the approaches mentioned for the past few years, and have always seen them work exceptionally well, with all of my programs hitting 50%+, and the majority of them hitting 80%+ success rates (which is why I advocate these approaches as well).

      I teach the same things to my clients as well, and am super happy to see when their students are getting incredible results as well!

      -Primoz

      Reply

  4. Primoz, Amanda (and whoever else is on this discussion point),
    Yeah I totally agree-it’s all about transparency with who you attract and building in accountability for different types of people. And attracting the right people.

    I have had the similar ethical dilemma with deadline funnel and things like that. I always go back to “why”. If something takes the stress out of the enrollment process, then that’s going to free me up to enroll more people and allow me to be present for serving people in the program. On my list in particular, if I look at the time-span of the year I actually ended up serving more people on the evergreen model because people could sign up for my webinar and enroll not just during my launch window. So when people ask me, why is there a deadline, I just say it’s because I want to do things in a way that gives people the best experience. If that urgency is what gets them to make a decision to do what’s in their best interest AND it frees me up to serve them more, that’s enough of a rationale in my mind because that will set up all parties to succeed. I don’t feel bad for just saying that the urgency exists because I can ethically say I’m doing what I believe is in everyone’s best interest.

    Regarding being late for the party…I went through a high ticket program last year that was structured in an evergreen format but with live calls (the hybrid model). They also advised me to set up my programs like this. I was SO resistant because I thought it would be all disjointed with people coming in at different times. But it just wasn’t. Same with the program I’m in now.

    And also, with my course, it’s not an issue either because people just don’t “get it” the first time around. They get so much out of review from earlier modules, and it’s a constant state of unpeeling layers of the onion and deepening their understanding. It’s kind of like how when we went through ZTL, talking about immersion and understanding your customer psyche is always relevant. Or, there were people in the group that joined during a previous launch and everyone is going at a different pace, so everyone is in a different place anyways.

    So it really is only an issue if you decide it is (which is fine either way).

    I am in this mindset program right now and one of the sayings he often comes back to is “The world is this way or that way because I say it is”. It’s all about finding the model that resonates with you…because if you decide something isn’t going to work and feels inauthentic then it won’t.

    In other words, what if the model that works best for people is simply the model that resonates with them (whether it be live, hybrid, evergreen, etc)? Because that’s probably going to be the thing that’s going to work best because you’re naturally going to show up the most for that type of task? Who’s going to show up to implement on a model they don’t believe in?

    Reply

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