What I Learned from Building a Course (Story Time)

I always wanted to have a course of my own. I believe this idea mainly came from those newsletter people with huge courses.

I kept seeing their newsletters bragging about how they are having six-figure launches, and were making a living off them. I wasn’t necessarily interested in buying their courses, but the thing that struck me, though, was that they are making millions of dollars by making a course.

Isn’t this wild?

I started playing with the idea of having a course of my own, and I started mentioning this to everyone. I didn’t know what to do or how to get started. I didn’t even know what I should make a course about.

This is my journey of fantasizing about having a course to having a downfall, to learning a bunch of lessons along the way. I hope this gives you the necessary talk that no one told you about.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

I made a course on GA4 after learning the platform from scratch and figuring out other stuff. After launching, the course didn’t generate a single sale. This made me realize that being authoritative, nailing the pricing, and having a good promotion strategy are very important for making your course a success.

Coming up with an idea

I recently got introduced to Google Analytics (GA4). I didn’t know much about it, but I was intrigued by it. To give you some context, at that time, Universal Analytics (UA) was not discontinued. And there were a lot of people who were not able to get the data similar to UA in GA4.

I tried searching for courses related to this very thing. Things like how to make reports in GA4 to get appropriate data. It was hard to find because most courses were about the fundamentals of GA4 and everything about the metrics and stuff.

I did come across a few small courses that were about how to make some specific reports in GA4. So this made me realize that there is not a lot of content that goes in-depth into report making.

So this was it. This was my chance to shine and become the go-to person for GA4 custom reporting.

But the problem is that I myself didn’t know much about GA4 lol.

Learning GA4 from scratch

Understanding GA4 is huge. There is a technical side to it that goes into implementation, Google Tag Manager (GTM), debugging issues, and more. There is also a side that mainly focuses on metrics and how to do reporting better. And then there’s the small but mighty world of custom reports.

I started my research with YouTube because I feel like YouTube has the answer to anything and everything.

I came across a bunch of tutorials, and I was again at square one because they were just too hard for a novice like me. I then found the official documentation from GA4.

Well, to be honest, it was complex too. But at least it was more organized than those videos. So then I got to learning. I discovered a lot of things along the way that were contradictory to the conventional advice out there.

For example, the most shocking one was that the bounce rate in GA4 does not mean the same thing it used to mean in UA. This made me so confused, because 1. One of my blog posts about bounce rate was irrelevant now, and 2. All the advice I was hearing on the internet was wrong.

The research part was fun and a little overwhelming. The language they have used in the documentation is a little complex, but I got the hang of it after being immersed in it for hours a day.

After a few months of this, I thought I was ready for my adventure of making a course. Except that I don’t know what platform to use for it. And a million other things lol.

Choosing a course platform

After I got the main thing done (Which was to get knowledge about GA4), I started looking for platforms where I can host my course. I searched through Google, YouTube, Reddit, and whatnot.

I then came across a bunch of names, and to be honest, my Indian frugal self was not ready to pay hundreds of dollars per month.

After a lot of existential crises, I came across Thinkific. I saw that they’re quite famous, and apparently, they were the cheapest of all the platforms I came across. It was $49 a month.

I basically bet on myself and told myself we would make this money back.

So I had my platform done. Now the next thing would be to figure out how to record those videos, edit them, make them look good, and put them on the platform.

Putting the whole thing together

I compiled everything in Notion because it was easier to keep track of everything.

I first started with understanding how many topics I would be covering and how many videos there would be. It turned out to be 20-ish videos. If you have made custom reports in GA4, you would have seen that there are options to make reports from existing report templates, or you can make your own without a template.

So I decided to cover every template as well as teach how to make reports without any template. I wanted to give this power to my students so that they could just whip up any possible report they could. I wanted to give them the fundamental knowledge of how to put a report together.

The next step was writing down what things I would talk about in the video. At that time, I was too bad at following scripts, and I didn’t like the idea of having one, so I skipped on that. Instead, I took the route to improvise (it didn’t go well lol).

I roughly outlined each video, and then it was time to record. It was May, and the heat was extreme, especially in my room.

The only “equipment” I had for recording videos was my phone, laptop, a half-broken tripod, and a cheap mic.

Because of all this, I had to edit the hell out of my videos. Sometimes my mic would not work, and I had to do entire videos again.

Over a month and a half, I finished recording those videos (and editing them). I had also made presentations to go with the videos, and so I made them available for download because I have seen people doing that.

So now it was time to put everything on Thinkific.

This part was fairly easy. I made a course, then added lessons and chapters to it. Then I added the video, along with a description that summarizes the video, and they also had examples of all the custom reports a video had.

To make things more on brand, I made a thumbnail for each video that included my brand font and colors.

Each chapter had two videos. One was about an overview of a report, and the next one was how to make reports using that template.

And because I was following these course guru people, they always talked about the idea of collecting emails. So I whip up a waitlist page that collects email addresses of people who are interested in the course. 18 people showed interest by submitting their emails.

So I decided to keep this waitlist page for a few weeks, and I tried to get some promo out there. I am bad at promoting myself, so I couldn’t get much traction other than those emails I collected.

I then made an official page on my website, and thought I would have a massive launch and all of those waitlisted people and more would just buy it, and I’ll make a lot of money.

Turns out this isn’t how the world works.

Let me put a price on it

I have struggled with pricing my services from the day I started working. I didn’t even know how much I should be asking for a salary, let alone trying to decide what my clients should pay me.

And trying to come up with a price for this course was HARD.

Coming back to those gurus, they mostly have their courses at $150. And I somehow thought that I could charge that. I was obviously wrong. I have learned a lot of things about pricing.

I also gave the course for free to 5 people to get feedback from them. I also thought of getting a testimonial from them so that I can showcase it on my course page.

After those kind people reviewed the course, I asked them if $150 would be a fair price for the course. I got mixed reactions on that. A few people said that I should charge more than that, and others said that it is a little too much for them.

I guess the better question would be, how much are you willing to pay for this course? But I didn’t ask this question at that time lol.

I then released the course at $150. It went on for a while, but I got the feedback that this price might be too much, and I am not that authoritative.

I also did the tiered pricing thing. So one tier was just the course at $150, and the second tier included a 1-hour call with me, which was $300.

But when none of this worked, I made the course $99.

I also saw that people do the coupon thing, where they share coupons so that they can get people to buy. The coupon stuff was on the paid plan, and that’s why I paid $49. I gave out coupons to a bunch of people. None worked.

The big launch day

The course was done. The pricing was set. I had the email list and a few people I know would be interested in getting the course.

One day before the launch, I sent out emails to all the people on the email list telling them that I have a course ready and that they should get their cards ready, lol (well, not like this, but you get the point). I had emails from a few people, and then I only sent 2 emails, and both were salesy.

On the launch day, I announced the course on LinkedIn and messaged all the people who were interested in it.

And then I waited.

It was crickets. Nobody bought the course. Not a single person.

I then waited for a week. That week turned into two and then three. The whole month went by, and I didn’t have a single person buy it.

That $49 seemed like a bad investment. I didn’t give up and paid another two months. In total, I paid close to $150. And then I was done because I was almost out of my savings, and this thing wasn’t working.

So yeah, after that, I kept the course on Thinkific, but moved to a free tier. I eventually permanently deleted the Thinkific account for good.

Right now, the course doesn’t exist. So if you’re interested in learning about custom reports, you can contact me for a 1:1 session(s).

6 things I learned from this experience

It was a painful and long journey. I had invested too much time in this thing to make it work. I didn’t earn anything from the course, but I did learned a lot of things that shaped my perspective about this experiment.

Those guru people who make a living from those courses are not something everyone can replicate (easily). It requires a TON of hard work, and you would have to be okay with promoting yourself day in and day out.
Making a course is not for everyone. There. I said it. It was certainly not for me. My intention when going into this project was to make a side income. But as I learned, stuff like this is not for everyone.
You have to have a certain level of authoritativeness (EEAT if you will) and a reputation in the industry if you plan to launch a course. Too many times, I see that people who launch courses don’t have any recognition or reputation in the industry (kind of like what happened with me).
Pricing a course is always the hardest part. The thing that I did wrong was to price it at a higher price point and then try lowering it (which felt so bad and weird, too). Instead, you can start with a lower price. A price that respects your work but isn’t too high for your audience. After that, you can increase the rates and add more extras later.
Believing in yourself is the biggest thing. If you don’t believe in yourself and your abilities, then it is hard to do or justify anything. I never fully believed in myself when I was doing this project. I always used to feel like this is just another experiment of mine, and something that isn’t “mine” but is being forced somehow.
I also learned that I could have done better. The best thing would be that I could have waited to get more knowledge and authority on this topic. I could have made better videos, and I could have promoted the course better.

GA4: The reality check

A little while later, I realized that GA4 is not as awesome as I used to think it was. I obviously can’t compare it to UA because I have never used it, but I can say that it doesn’t provide you with a lot of data. Also, we can’t see complete data sometimes. And even when you make custom reports and stuff, things aren’t always accurate.

I find that alternatives like PostHog are much better and suit me well for my needs. I can not only look at analytics data, but I can also check the heatmaps, session recordings, and more.

(btw this is not sponsored by PostHog. This is my honest review.)

What now?

I tried thinking a lot about it, actually. In the end, I closed and ended this chapter. I removed any traces of this course from the internet. It started as an experiment, and it didn’t end well. I might revisit the idea of making a course later, but for now, it is what it is.

However, if somehow this got you interested in the custom reporting thing, then you can book a 1:1 session(s) with me by going over to the contact page.

Final words

I would like to thank all the kind people who agreed to go through the course and for giving me your honest feedback. I also thank you for your support and your words.

This was a nice thing to try, and at least I can say that I tried making a course.

Until next time 🙂

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