The Journal

Have you heard the phrase, “Make money while you sleep”? It’s a common phrase thrown around the internet marketing world that describes the power of passive income. Make a product one time but reap the rewards for years to come.

Got a tiny list? You’re not alone. In fact, every single one of the most successful, “have it all” entrepreneurs once had a tiny list. Marie Forleo, Carrie Wilkerson, Denise Duffield-Thomas—they all begin with a single subscriber, just like you did.

Struggling to stay connected with your growing mailing list? It’s a common issue. After all, you have all kinds of other business tasks to do. You have to create new products and programs, manage your social media accounts, write new blog posts, record webinars, and coach your clients. Let autoresponders become your best friend!

Want to know what’s more important than a great big mailing list? The relationship you have with them. It’s true. You can have 100,000 people on your list, but if they don’t know you, and worse, if they don’t trust you, then that great big list is worth next to nothing.

Think you can’t hope to make sales simply because you have no list to promote to? This kind of self-sabotaging thought is what holds many promising coaches and entrepreneurs back from creating great things. They believe that without a ready-made audience, there’s no hope for sales, and therefore, what’s the point?

No one opens up their brand new email management system and sees thousands of prospects from day one. We all start with a single subscriber, and we grow our list from there.

Think you don’t have time to create an eCourse? Think again. Many of the courses you’ve seen for sale—or maybe even purchased—were created in a single day. For savvy business owners, creating a new course is just a matter of putting the pieces together.

Struggling with how to price your eCourse? You’re in good company. It’s a struggle all online business owners face, and one that can even cause you to put off launching your product—maybe indefinitely.

Video? Audio? Written? Live? When it comes to creating course content, you have a dozen or more options, and all of them are useful in their own way, so how can you choose? There are three primary considerations.

When you focus your course on a single problem and a single solution, you can dig deeper and present ideas and information that won’t be found just anywhere.

Here’s the number one question I hear about courses—not only from new product creators but even from seasoned business owners: “How do I find a good online course idea?” What they really mean, of course, is “How do I find an idea that will sell?” No one wants to spend days or weeks or more planning, developing, and launching a course only to hear crickets on the big day. You want to know you’ll have at least some measure of success.

If there is one thing that confounds coaches and holds them back from building a solid business, it’s technology. You struggle to figure out how your autoresponder connects to your website, and what page to send buyers to after they complete their purchase. You’re confused by the sheer volume of choices available for every aspect of your business. And you can’t even decide if you need a credit card processor, or if PayPal is enough.