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Two Ways You Can Offer Pre-Sales of Your Course (aka Pre-Selling)
Two Ways You Can Offer Pre-Sales of Your Course (aka Pre-Selling)

How Teachery can help you validate your course idea and prove your audience is interested and ready to buy.

Jason Zook avatar
Written by Jason Zook
Updated over a week ago

Are you at the stage of feeling like you have a ton of work ahead of you to create your course but aren't sure if anyone is actually going to buy it?

One of the absolute best ways you can validate your course idea is to pre-sell your course. 

Wait, shouldn't you create your entire course before selling it??

Nope! 

We're not saying pre-selling your course is something you have to do, but if you're feeling the pressure to create your entire course and have it fully finished before selling it, you don't have to!
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3 reasons why pre-selling your course works (we'll get to the "How" in a moment):

1. Your audience raises their hands and makes a commitment with their wallet/purse. Sure, getting email signups for your course launch is great, but actual paying customers is proof that people want what you're cooking up.

2. You get to see real dollars coming in for your ideas, which can be a great motivator for you to hunker down and finish creating your course.

3. You can talk with the course pre-sale buyers to find out exactly what problems they're having related to your course topic. By asking them a few simple questions via email (after they purchase), you may find a treasure-trove of course lesson topics you hadn't thought about.
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How can you pre-sell your course with Teachery?

You've probably already started working on the full-fledged version of your course. You've added a lesson or two. You've recorded or written some lesson content. Heck, you probably already have a sexy course logo and branding. 

Here are the two things we recommend if you want to pre-sell your course using Teachery:

Option #1: Add and lock all your lessons

Add the course lessons and their titles in your course (you don't have to worry about the content within the lessons yet if you don't want to), then lock all of them only to be opened at a date in the future when you know your course will be completed.

This will be using our lessons locking or drip content feature. When a customer purchases the pre-sale of your course, they'll get the experience of your course and see a bunch of lessons locked and waiting for them.

It'll look something like this: 

In the example I'm showing you above, Lesson One does not have a lock schedule applied because I want my student to see a lesson that explains when they'll get access to all the lessons.

Once your course is finished and ready to rock, you can go through and unlock all the lessons (just delete the day schedule you created). Then, send an email to your pre-sale buyers that the course is done and ready for them!

Option #2: Duplicate your course so you have an ACTIVE version and a WORKING-ON version

You would use the main version (active) of your course as the one you pre-sell. Let's say it only has two lessons in it after someone purchases (an Introduction lesson, and a second lesson that explains when the next lessons are coming and what they are).

Your WORKING-ON version of your course is only for YOU and it's where you build out all your lessons while your pre-sale buyers are showing up in the active version. When you're ready, you simply copy and paste each lesson's content from your WORKING-ON course to the lessons in the active version.

If you're done with the WORKING-ON version, you can delete that course!

In my example above, you can see I changed the Course Name and the Overview Header Image so my WORKING-ON version clearly stands out to me in my dashboard. 

Friendly reminder: You can update the content of your course at any time, even while you have students in it. Just remember, as soon as you update something in a lesson or other part of your course, it's immediately available to your course buyers (unless it's in a locked lesson).

**IMPORTANT** In both of these options, you would be using Teachery's Payment Pages to sell your course. Remember, someone will get dropped into your Course Overview page after their purchase. Hence why both of these options involve setting up your course.
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Pre-selling your course is by no means mandatory, it's simply an option to help you get momentum with your course.

We hope this idea gives you food for thought and possibly a way to validate that course idea with your existing audience. 

One thing to remember when selling anything (a pre-sale or full course): Your audience needs to hear about your course a few times and needs to know your course is solving a problem for them. 👍🏻

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