“Jenny, why are you teaching people to offer one-on-one services when you yourself sell online courses?”
I get that a lot. It’s a fair question!
And one I’m eager to answer because I love, love, LOVE the one-on-one services business model!
It’s the best way for anyone with some expertise to launch an online business.
It’s the business I created when I quit my corporate job.
And it’s how I made six figures for the first time in my biz.
I love that:
You don’t need a ton of money to get started….
You get paid right away …
You don’t need an audience, email list, or social media following …
You don’t need tons of experience to do your work …
You have minimal overhead costs, so you get to keep more of what you make!
Really, what’s not to love?
Offering one-on-one services is The Smartest and Fastest Way to get started online.
But you might be hearing something different … and that worries me.
Many folks out there are teaching that one-to-many business models—like online courses, group programs, membership sites, and digital products—are the best way to make money online.
They say one-to-many offers help you “leverage your time” and “create passive income.”
“Make money while you sleep”
“Do the work once and get paid forever”
“Stop trading hours for dollars”
I get the allure.
But although there’s some truth to that, they’re not telling you the WHOLE story.
I want to save you from making the same mistakes that brand-new online business owners make.
That’s why I’m about to shine the spotlight on the real numbers behind one-to-many business models. Stuff nobody else wants to be transparent about!
Because contrary to what others say, making one-to-many offers takes a lot of time and work.
Let me show you what I mean.
One-to-Many Businesses Are Sexy—If You’re Willing to Wait to Get Paid!
It takes much longer to get paid with one-to-many offers, because it takes a ton of work and time to get things going.
To successfully sell and profit from online courses, group programs, and digital products, you need nine things:
1. Product
You need a course or product. And not just any course or product. You have to know that it works! It must be effective at delivering the result or transformation you promise your customers.
2. Proof
Next, you need to have happy clients who will give you testimonials, case studies, and social proof that your product indeed works.
3. Solid Marketing Chops
You need to have solid marketing chops to market and sell this online course or product. This means knowing where to find leads, qualify who make the prospects for your product, and get your offer in front of them. That requires being a great storyteller, creating remarkable customer experiences, testing strategies and analyzing data to make decisions, etc., etc.
4. In-depth Knowledge of Your Customers
You need to also have in-depth knowledge of your customers. You have to know their language as well as their biggest fears and deepest desires. And you have to know the best ways to connect with them online and offline.
My Personal Recommendation for YouGet in the program that shows you how to make a full-time income working part-time hours!5. High-converting Sales Page
You can’t sell anything online without a sales page, so you need sales copy that is going to sell your course. It must use your customers’ language and leverage the testimonials, case studies, and other proof you have that your course or product works.
6. Email Sequence That Sells
Most people won’t buy from you the first time they see your sales page, so it’s a good idea to get them into your email list. Then you engage them, nurture the relationship, and warm them up to your sales message. This is where the email sequence comes in. You want to make sure this email sequence converts your customers into buying on your high converting sales page.
7. High-Value Webinar
On top of all that, you also need a high-value webinar or a free training. This should presell the course or program so that it converts people into customers. The webinar or training gets them to the email sequence, which gets them to the sales page, and so on.
8. Solid Pitch
At the end of that webinar, you must present a solid pitch or the part of your webinar where you present your product and ask for the sale. And you must execute this with clarity and confidence. That means you must be able to name your price unapologetically. Because if you’re not confident about the value of your product, then your prospects won’t be, either.
9. Combined Execution
And finally, you need to be able to pull it all off in one fell swoop! You need all this ready to go and working—before you can even make a sale.
Click to TweetOffering one-on-one services is The Smartest and Fastest Way to get started online.As you can see, with one-to-many business models, it takes a lot of time and effort before you make a single penny.
And that’s not all! There’s also the matter of …
One-to-Many Business Models Don’t Make Math Sense
It’s easy to get lured by seven-figure launches that course creators brag about. But what’s really important isn’t how much money you make, but how much money you get to keep.
Let’s look at a specific example:
Say you have a course for $1,000 and you want to make $100,000 per year. This means you need to have 100 people buy your course.
In general, your email list converts at 1% to 3%. Since conversion rates have been going down, let’s use the 1% conversion rate in this example. That means one person out of every 100 subscribers will buy your course.
To make $100,000 in one year (before taxes and expenses), you need 100 buyers. And to get 100 buyers, you need to have an active, engaged list of 10,000 people.
Those people need to be active subscribers. This list can’t be some random email list you buy. And you can’t create them overnight.
Your subscribers need to be nurtured. They need to have been loved on for a while. They need to know you. They need to like you. And they need to trust you in order to be ready to buy from you.
How do you get 10,000 people in your list?
If you’re starting at zero, it takes time. But you can get many subscribers quickly through Facebook ads.
As I’m writing this, the cost of Facebook ads is $8-10 per new email subscriber. Because you’re new at this, let’s just say your cost is $10.
So, to get 10,000 subscribers, you’ll spend $100,000.
Let’s look at the numbers now:
You’re going to spend $100,000 to build your email list, to then sell $100,000 in your courses. At the end, your net is zero. Awesome, right?
This is why it’s not advisable to start with online courses and other one-to-many business models.
I’m not saying they aren’t a great way to go. I’m not saying never make one-to-many offers. In fact, they are a great way to go as you build your business and expertise.
But when you one-to-many is your first step, it’s going to cost you a whole lot of money and it’s going to take you a whole lot of time.
Click to TweetThe math is clear: online courses, memberships and other group programs are not the best way to get started online.The Smarter Way: One-on-One Services
And that, folks, is why I teach aspiring entrepreneurs how to create and grow one-on-one, service-based businesses in my signature program, Make It Work Online.
It’s the business model that allows you to make money from the very beginning—without needing to gamble on Facebook ads or spend a whole lot of money building an email list.
Offering one-on-one services, just serving clients to do amazing work, is how I got started making multiple six figures.
At the time I thought, holy cow, what are all these people doing talking about courses as a way to get started?
Why are they thinking it’s trading dollars for hours?
Contrary to what others preach, offering one-on-one services does allow you to have a great life outside of work. You don’t have to work all the dang time!
(I couldn’t work long hours even if I wanted to: I was sick with chronic Lyme Disease in the early days of my business, so I could only work a few hours a week.)
When you do it right, a one-on-one service-based business is profitable, easy, fun, and life-changing. And you can do your work around the rest of your life.
I’m guessing you’re not here just to make gobs and gobs of money. You want to make a good living and you want to enjoy the rest of your life. You have all these other things you like to do besides just work.
Am I right?
The one-on-one service-based business model—done right—can absolutely make that happen. I’ve done it, and I’ve taught several hundred business owners how to do it.
And as a side benefit, working one-on-one with clients is the best way to set yourself up for success when you do create and sell one-to-many offers—whether they be online courses, group programs, memberships, or digital products. But there’s a right time for all that!
When you’re just starting out, and even if you’ve had a business for some time, It’s absolutely possible for you to make a full-time income working 30 hours a week or less, offering one-on-one services.
So if you’ve been buying into the common myth that you can’t make six figures from one-on-one services … or if you’re thinking of creating an online course because people say it’s the best way to leverage your expertise and earn “passive income,” think again.
My Personal Recommendation for YouGet all the training, templates, and high-touch support you need to build a thriving online, service-based business that revolves around your life
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