8 Years Teaching Online: What Actually Makes Money

Send us a text🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapKyle Cook launched his first course after just 3 months of experience with the topic. He offered unlimited refunds from day one. He ignored every social media platform except YouTube.Today he's got 1.7 million subscribers, 14,000 paying customers, and course launches that bring in $30K to over $100K.In this episode, Kyle and I talk about why you don't need to be an expert to teach something — and why being an expert can actually work against you. We dig into his unlimited refund policy and why it hasn't hurt his business at all. We talk about how he spends 6-9 months creating each course, with 75% of that time spent before he records a single video.Kyle's also refreshingly honest about what he's not doing well. He's got over 100,000 people on his email list and almost no automation in place. No tripwire funnel. No real welcome sequence. He admits he's leaving a lot of money on the table — and we talk through exactly what he could do to fix that.If you've ever held back on creating a course because you didn't feel ready, or you've been nervous about offering longer refund windows, this conversation will change how you think about it.#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing👨‍💻 Check out Kyle's website: https://webdevsimplified.com/🧑‍💻 Follow Web Dev Simplified on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WebDevSimplified🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Send us a text🔥 Looking for predictable revenue growth? Access our FREE 7-day roadmap to increase your income without paid ads or sales calls! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapAshlee Young went from teaching 20 hours of private piano lessons a week to making over $70,000 a month with her online course business. And she did it by showing up just once a week to teach a single live class.In this episode, Ashlee shares exactly how she's scaling with ads, why she's phasing out her high-ticket program, and the mindset shifts that allowed her to charge $3,597 for her coaching program without feeling weird about it.She sends promotional emails two to three times a week and does a full promotion every single month. Most course creators I talk to are terrified of annoying their audience, but Ashlee's take on this is refreshing. She genuinely believes that not telling people about your courses is doing them a disservice.We also dig into her ads strategy. She's getting 20 to 30 new customers a day, with 60% of people adding her order bump and 25% taking at least one upsell. Those numbers are right at the top end of what we typically see, especially for cold traffic.If you've been sitting on the fence about running ads, doing more email promotions, or charging higher prices, this episode will give you the push you need.#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing🎹 Connect with Ashlee:🔗 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ashleeyoungmusicstudio 🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashleeyoungmusicstudio/🔗 Website: https://www.ashleejyoung.com/🤝  Get In TouchIf you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

Send us a text🔥 Looking for predictable revenue growth? Access our FREE 7-day roadmap to increase your income without paid ads or sales calls! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapVenkat Subramaniam has been teaching tech for 30 years and has never sent a single marketing email. Not one. Companies like Adobe and Nike pay him premium rates, he travels 300 days a year, and at one point he was actually turning clients away because he felt guilty taking their money.In this episode, Venkat shares what he's learned from three decades in education. We talk about why he quit online training after the pandemic even though companies were throwing cash at him, how he builds engagement that keeps students coming back, and the simple techniques he uses to get people actually completing his courses.If you're wondering whether live training beats pre-recorded, how to get students to engage instead of just passively watching, or how to build a training business through word of mouth alone, this one's for you.Check out Venkat's website: https://www.AgileDeveloper.com

Send us a text🔥 2-10x your email list size in just 3 steps 📩 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/guideToday I'm talking with Hadar Shemesh, an online entrepreneur and English teacher with over 4 million followers across her platforms. She's built an incredible business teaching English to international speakers, and in this episode she's sharing what's actually working right now in the online course world.We dig into something Hadar calls the "trust recession" - why people are so much more hesitant to buy online courses than they were a few years ago, and what you need to do about it. She explains why she believes courses that only offer content are becoming irrelevant, and why coaching and community have become essential if you want people to actually get results.Hadar also shares how she's built her business almost entirely through organic content since 2015, why 60-70% of her sales come from email, and what she's learned about the difference between YouTube subscribers and Instagram followers when it comes to actually buying. We also talk about live launches versus evergreen, why webinars still convert like crazy, and a simple tweak you can make to your confirmation pages that gets 70% of people to respond to surveys.If you're finding it harder to sell courses than it used to be, this episode will show you what's changed and how to adapt.🔗 Check out Hadar's website: https://hadarshemesh.com🔗 Check out Hadar's YouTube channel and podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@hadar.shemesh

Send us a text🔥 Need better results from your email campaigns? Get our FREE templates and see the difference with two proven email strategies! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/templatesEveryone keeps telling me that course sales are dying. AI is killing everything. The good times are over.I just looked at our Black Friday results and I have to respectfully disagree.In this episode, I sit down with Josip Belina, our funnel strategy lead who has helped our clients make tens of millions of dollars over the past eight or nine years. Out of about 20 campaigns we ran, 75% of our clients had their best month ever. Combined, they made over $800K in November alone.A guitar teacher went from $25K a month to $165K. A piano teacher expected $30K and hit $70K. A language learning client went from $13K to nearly $58K.But here's why I really wanted to record this episode. Most course creators completely ignore January. That's a mistake. Your New Year New You campaign could be your second best promo of the year, maybe even your best if you're launching something new.Josip breaks down exactly when to send your emails in January 2026, the promo structure that works, and something most creators miss entirely. If you've got existing customers who already bought your main offer, that revenue could be 50% or more of your total promo. You're probably leaving serious money on the table.If you think your course business has peaked, watch this and see what's actually possible.🔥 Add 30% to your revenue with order bumps in 3 simple steps 🏅 https://funnels.datadrivenmarketing.co/order-bump-blueprint🔥 15 sales page elements you can't afford to miss - free checklist 📝 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elements

Send us a text🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapCaleb Ulku went from making $5K a month from his course community to hitting a 7-figure run rate in just 7 months. And he did it with only 27,000 YouTube subscribers.What makes this even more interesting is how unconventional his approach is. He doesn't have a traditional email list funnel. Instead, he sends people directly from YouTube to a $27/month School community. No free lead magnet, no nurture sequence. Just YouTube doing the heavy lifting.In this episode, Caleb shares how ChatGPT 3.5 completely changed his business direction overnight. He saw what was coming with AI overviews and made the call to pivot his entire SEO agency from informational queries to local SEO within a day. That decisiveness is a theme throughout this conversation.We dig into his YouTube content strategy, how he uses Claude to write scripts (and why the AI keeps making the same frustrating mistake), and his two-tier School community model where 20% of people who join at $27 end up upgrading to his $197 pro membership.One thing Caleb said that really stuck with me: "A subject matter expert can replace a team of interns with AI, but an intern cannot replace a subject matter expert." If you're using AI in your business, that's worth thinking about.🌐 Check out Caleb's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@calebulku⁩  🌐 Check out Caleb's website: https://calebulku.com

Send us a text🔥 Download the $100 Million Offer Workbook Template and my completed version: https://datadrivenmarketing.co/millionWhat would you do if your course sales dropped 40-50% from their peak?Most course creators would double down on what's always worked. More launches, better funnels, new lead magnets. Lydia did something completely different. She canceled all her courses and replaced them with an AI product.The result? Her biggest launch ever. Three times bigger than anything she'd done before.In this episode, Lydia shares exactly how she built this AI mentor, why her customers love it more than her courses, and what this might mean for the future of online education. Whether you're thinking about adding AI to your business or just curious about where things are headed, this conversation will give you a lot to think about.Lydia is a polyglot who's learned nine languages on her own and has helped over 22,000 students do the same. Her TED Talk has been viewed more than 19 million times.👩‍🏫 Connect with Lýdia Hric Machová:🔗 Check out her TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/lydia_machova_the_secrets_of_learning_a_new_language  🔗 https://languagementoring.com 🔗 https://facebook.com/languagementoring 🔗 https://instagram.com/languagementoring 🔗 Sales page of the AI mentor (in Slovak): https://jazykovymentoring.sk/kurzy/almi/ 

Send us a text🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapWhat if you could build a six-figure course business while keeping your full-time job... and only working on it 1-2 hours a day?That's exactly what Michael Kilkelly has done with Arch Smarter, his course business helping architects and engineers work smarter, not harder.But here's what makes Michael's story different. He actually did it backwards. He spent 10 years working for himself as a consultant, built up his course business, and then took a full-time job. Most people are trying to do the opposite.In this episode, Michael shares why having a day job actually makes his courses better, how he cut his course setup time from two weeks down to 10 minutes, and his "less is more" philosophy for 2026. We also get into how he survived massive layoffs early in his career by teaching himself a skill that made him irreplaceable.If you've ever wondered whether you can build a real course business without quitting your job, this one's for you.🧑‍💻 Check out Michael's website: https://archsmarter.com

Send us a text🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmapThis week I'm chatting with Phillip Henry, an award-winning slide guitar player who has performed at Hyde Park, the Royal Albert Hall, and toured all over the world. He's now teaching slide guitar online and has built a fantastic community around his niche.Phil is one of those teachers who makes something that feels mysterious and out of reach totally accessible. He told me he has a hundred percent success rate with his students, and after talking with him I can see why.In this episode we talk about finding a niche inside a massive market, growing a Facebook group, the transition away from sales calls, and whether your pricing reflects what you're actually delivering.If you've ever wondered whether you're charging enough for your course or coaching, this one's for you.🎸 Check out Phillip's work:🔗 https://www.youtube.com/@UCA-Vhff-ng4NDrlUAQoQDTg 🔗 https://www.instagram.com/phillip.henry/🔗 https://philhenrymusic.com/

Send us a text🔥 Want a free funnel review? Email me at [email protected] with "free funnel review" in the subject line. Laura Spaulding has 1.5 million YouTube subscribers, over 4 million on TikTok, and a million on Instagram. She's had videos hit 14 million views in less than a week. And she's built a business selling courses and $45K coaching programs teaching people how to start crime scene cleaning businesses.In this episode, Laura and I dig into what's actually working for her right now and what isn't. We talk about the surprising difference between YouTube and TikTok when it comes to generating revenue. She shares the simple approach to video titles that's helped her content go viral. And we get into some of the gaps in her funnel that are leaving money on the table.If you've built an audience on social media but you're not seeing the sales you expected, this conversation will give you a lot to think about.🔍 Check out Laura:Laura's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCv6ycrTS6JXAEfs5dFZfijg Laura's website: https://lauraspalding.comLaura's courses: https://crimescenecleaningtraining.com