Realistically, how much can I make with an online course?

There are people all over the internet talking about the seven million dollars they made last year selling their online course. These people have probably been at it for ten to twenty years. 

As a newbie course creator, you can calculate your potential income by thinking about what's possible for you in the next 365 days after your course is available. How many emails do you currently have in your database? Believe it or not, only 1 to 3% of your database will buy from you. That's a fact that's not shared enough!

When you first launch your course and already have a database of emails from people that love you, your sales rate will be much higher since you've already been warming this audience up. You can figure 10 to 20% of this warm audience will purchase. From there, yes, any newbies to your email list will be in the 1 to 3% sales category.

If your product is $199 and currently have a database of 500 people, it's likely 10% of them will purchase, so $9,950 will be your gross profit. As you continue to market over the next 365 days after initial course launch, then gain a following of 5,000 email subscribers, with a 1% purchase rate and a $199 product, you can expect to make about $9,950 more.

If you want to make more money, you either need to bring more leads into your database or raise the price of your product.

One other little known fact is that oftentimes, people won't purchase the first time your course is offered to them. They may not purchase the course until it is offered the second or third time around. So, just because someone on your email list hasn't purchased yet, doesn't mean they won't purchase in the future. The timing may not be quite right for them at this moment. It's your duty to continue to nurture them through weekly emails until they are ready to purchase your product.

If you start with the end in mind, then work backward, you can determine how many sales and how many leads it will take to make the income you're dreaming about. Let's say you want to make $200,000 gross a year, your course costs $297, and you have a 2% conversion rate. You have to sell 674 courses a year with an email database of about 33,671. Your goal is to collect at least 93 emails a day. The next step is to ask yourself how you're going to accomplish this.

Keep in mind that there are also other factors such as "unsubscribes". It could be that you’re adding 50 new emails a day to your list, but 5 a day are unsubscribing. You should be thankful when people unsubscribe because they're telling you they're never going to be interested in your product, so you don't have to waste time trying to sell them.

In summary, there are so many factors involved in how much you could potentially make from your online course. The only way to be sure of the answer is to get your course out there and start marketing it!