So you have an online course or are thinking about creating one. You've heard the stories, of course, about creators having to turn off their PayPal notifications because their phones wouldn't stop ringing (bless their little cotton socks). Now you want to know if the stories are true and if you too can experience the great joy of waking up to sales every day.

Having worked with 100's of creators and generating millions of dollars for my clients, I can confirm that there is truth to the story. you can make sales while taking a nap, walking the dog, or binge-watching your favorite Netflix show. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as launching a sales page and waiting for the sales to begin. There are some non-negotiables that you must implement first.

Read on for an evergreen sales expert's guide to selling shiitake mushrooms off your online course.

5 Steps to Automate Your Online Course Sales

If you want all strangers to jump at the chance to sign up for your online course, you need to create a funnel. Simply put, this is a system to get people from “Who is this person??” to “Holy shit! I need this course!!“.

Here is the funnel I use for my clients, which I call the Day #1 Evergreen. Use it to win customers and experience what it's like to make sales while drinking an oat milk latte (mmm, delicious!).

1. Organize a master class on demand

Before you can win customers, you must first gain their attention and inspire them to engage with you. It's a big ask to expect a stranger to buy your $997 course, so you want to start by asking them to take one smaller action: by registering for your free masterclass.

Fortunately, you don't need to host your webinar live. You can pre-record it and let people watch it on demand. After all, in the age of Netflix and Amazon Prime, instant access is what people have come to expect.

As for what you're going to talk about for 45 minutes, you should align the title and topic of your webinar with the promise you make in your online course.

For example, if your online course promises people that they will be able to speak Spanish fluently in three months, your webinar title might be: Three simple tricks that will make you speak Spanish fluently in 90 days.

Make that headline even more delicious by overcoming a concern they have about achieving this result. For example: (even if you've been on Duolingo for years!)

At the 30-minute mark of your masterclass, your new lead should feel confident that achieving this result is possible, even if they've tried and failed in the past. This is when you will open them to cross the finish line with your online course.

2. Create a limited time offer

There's a reason people still line up outside Apple stores every time a new iPhone comes out. It's the same reason you can sit on a job for weeks and then finish an entire project a day before the deadline.

Urgency prompts action. And if you want to legitimately wake up with sales every day, you MUST optimize your funnel for this psychological fact.

A limited-time offer creates urgency because it expires after a certain window. For example, potential customers have seven days to save $300 on your course or they must pay full price. If discounts aren't your thing, you can offer a free 1:1 session with you, but ONLY if they sign up within five days.

You can use a tool like the deadline funnel to create this urgency without compromising authenticity. The offer starts when prospects register for your webinar and expires once their unique timer reaches zero. It's really just one time (even if they sign up for the webinar again).

3. Type “OMG you get me!” EMAIL

Apparently, people need to see your brand seven times before they buy from you. This means if you only promote your course at the end of your webinar, you are potentially losing some of your best customers.

Your limited time offer runs every day, you need to send automated emails to your new customers about your offer. These emails should talk about:

1. The amazing results they can achieve
2. Painful problems that your course solves
3. The concerns they have (and how your course overcomes these)

For best results, craft your emails from the voice of the customer. Interview and survey your customers so you can gather the language they use to talk about the results they want and the problems they want to solve. This is how you'll create those delicious “OMG you get me!” moments that make customers think you understand them (PSA: understanding drives sales!)

Every email during your sales window should send leads to a long-form sales page. This page should show them everything they will get in your online course and the impact it can have on their daily lives.

4. Flood your master class with traffic

You can have the best funnel in the world, but if people don't know it exists, you won't get sales.

Once you've set up your funnel, the next step is to invite people to watch your webinar. If you have an email list, send them invitations. If you have a social media following, post about your master class there.

The goal conversion rate for a Day #1 Evergreen funnel is 5-10%. This means that for every 100 people who sign up for your webinar, you should aim for 5-10 of them to buy.

To make day sales, you need to – at least – 10 people sign up for your masterclass every day. If you can't do this organically, you might consider using ads (but that's a topic for another time).

For a tip: Spend 15 minutes setting up a ManyChat funnel on Instagram to invite qualified leads to your channel. When people comment “MASTERCLASS” on your post, they will automatically receive a DM inviting them to sign up for your masterclass. It's easy for you, but it can help you multiply your course sales.

5. Make a plan for simple happy optimization

The biggest mistake I see course creators make when creating their evergreen funnel is that they treat it as a “one and done”. They expect to record their webinar, collect a few emails, and then immediately make sales. If only it were that simple.

The reality is that the vast majority of course creators won't set up their funnel and immediately convert 10% of leads into buyers. Chances are you'll need to experiment and optimize a few times before you start seeing the profit you want.

Fortunately, you don't have to be a PHD-level CRO to optimize your funnel for dreamy conversions. You can build customer feedback into your evergreen channel so you can dial in your messaging based on what your audience tells you they need to hear from you to buy (pretty awesome isn't it?)

I recommend building 10 customer feedback points for maximum conversion power. However, you can start by embedding a one-question survey on your thank you page after people purchase your course. This should beg the question:

“What inspired you to take the plunge and enroll in (course name) today?”

The answers will tell you what features won over customers and what desired results they bought your course to achieve. Use them to make sure you're talking about what customers care about in the same language they use.

While I can't guarantee you overnight success, I can guarantee you this:

The better you are at listening to your customers, the better chance you have of convincing them to buy from you.

Customer feedback is at the heart of profitable optimization and while the income you make may not be 100% passive… once you dial in your messages, you're sure to wake up with sales every day.