How to use A Newsletter for Thinkific Course Sales
Leveraging a Newsletter means building community around your Edutainment niche.
Hey Everyone,
A lot of people will be making courses as they try solo-entrepreneur diversified revenue streams. Thinkific is a pretty popular Canadian startup where you can host and sell courses.
Many of the best Substack Newsletters are actually an evolution of Edutainment niches, part education and part entertainment. That is, information that’s valuable to people either monetarily or for their well-being.
Newsletter Rec Stacks are Becoming Reliable Lead Generators
Pairing course building with building community on a Newsletter makes a lot of sense now that Substack has its own internal peer recommendation and referral opt-in and discovery network. It’s hard to fully understand this flow and network until you full experience it.
So instead of having to slave on social media walled gardens in algorithmic feeds and choked full of Ads and toxic trolls, why not just build a private community on Substack and up-sell your Thinkific course? That’s basically the direction the entire media industry has gone in, and the Creator Economy seems to be following in step.
It’s not rocket science, you have to be a thought leader and Edutainment center for your niche. Talking to various people who have Thinkific courses up, I’ve come to the belief that Substack Newsletters are the best match and low hanging fruit to set up an automated lead funnel specific and authentic to your Edutainment niche.
Compounding Discovery Means Creating Quality Content
While Thinkific has all kinds of sales and marketing tips, it doesn’t seem to understand the importance of compounding growth via recommendation and referral channels.
In 2022, Substack basically built these features into its product from a top down level (recommendations) and a bottom up level (Writer referrals). All you as a Course Creator has to do, is do the work. It takes between 18 and 36 months to grow the best Newsletter audience in your niche you are capable of, at that point here is what you can offer:
Diversified Revenue Streams via Newsletter/Course Combo is Legit now in 2023
Paid Subscriptions (this grows more slowly)
Upselling your Course(s) (this is more lucrative)
Substack Meetings: 1-on-1 calls like a consultant (this is more social)
Paid Sponsored Ads (flat fee, based on list size and value of your niche). (this requires more work)
That’s four different monetization streams in one - with just Thinkific and Substack.
Thinkific’s “growth-hacks” are hopelessly out of date, in 2023 it’s not the algorithmic Ad-based internet you want to be growing. It’s the private networks you want to be managing. Here’s where you are building actual value salient to people like you interested in the same things, curious about the world in the same way.
I’ve basically done all the research and hard work of finding the right channels, and these are the ones I recommend:
Gumroad (this is you are interested in offering something for free or making workshops)
Geneva (this if you are interested in the highest community experience)
beehiiv (this if you are serious about tagging content for SEO)
The crazy part about this is only Substack is really mandatory, and provided you have the time, motivation and ability to do it well to become one of the best in your niche category and do it long enough (minimum 18 months).
Forget all you think you knew about marketing a course online. Substack’s organic discovery if you network properly in your niche, is by far the best option to automate a lead funnel. Sure SEO and other things are still relevant, but not necessary. In fact, having a great Newsletter on Substack will accelerate your SEO plans.
Thinkific and Subtask Creator Flow
Inspiration strikes. You have an idea for an online course.
You start a Substack Newsletter, and build around your niche.
You think your course idea is amazing, so you commit to creating it.
You spend hundreds (maybe even thousands!) of dollars on equipment and software to record and edit your content.
You spend several weeks (maybe even months!) recording and editing your course content.
You set up your online course website (bonus points for using Thinkific). It’s published and you’re ready for customers.
You start promoting your course, hoping to get your first few sales.
Your Newsletter has grown at this point and you can finally upsell it very selectively to your paid and more engaged audience.
You continue to build Courses, and Substack revenue to drive your solo-entrepreneur career in your Edutainment Niche. Congrats, you’ve just become an expert in something.
The Barriers to Creators
Many writers can’t seem to fathom creating podcasts or videos. Many Course creators can’t seem to fathom creating a Newsletter. It really isn’t that hard, you learn as you go!
A lot of course creators aren’t native to marketing or the Newsletter economy, so they have no clue. They don’t understand the lowest hanging fruit in building a community and niche online. Substack’s recommendation engine is powerful, but it’s also just the easiest to set up (which makes up for Thinkific’s complicated system).
It’s important also not to rely on revenue from just Courses, but learn how to diversify it. Building a Substack Newsletter gives you that project experience (in revenue diversification) in doing just that and building real audiences across channels.
This means building Edutainment content in a bunch of different mediums, including written, video and audio formats. Especially focusing on building out community value, sharing and network benefits for and amongst your target audience of readers and Thinkific course consumers.
I hope this is helpful to someone out there who is building value for their community, no matter what your niche, you are building something that others hopefully value enough to pay for. Welcome to the life of the Creator Economy and learning how to be a diversified solo-entrepreneur. Just don’t pretend you are Justin Welsh, just be you.
Just focus on Thinkific courses and building a Substack Newsletter. Essentially that’s all you need in 2023 or 2024.