How Danavir Built A Full-Time Online Course Business Without Facebook Ads

• Course Instructor: Danavir Sarria
• Website: https://www.danavirsarria.com/
• Course Topic: Ecommerce Marketing
• Interesting Stats: A client who lives in a 3rd world country now charges thousands of dollars after taking my course.
  

1. Who are you?

My name is Danavir Sarria. I’ve been a digital marketer for the past 11 years. My background is in direct response copywriting, but I’ve done everything from email marketing to Facebook ads.

I’ve helped 7-8 figure online course creators such as Jim Kwik and Scott Oldford grow their businesses. I’ve also helped 7-8 figure ecommerce brands like Kettle & Fire, Drink02, and Verb Energy grow their brands.

In addition to my client-work, I’ve also built an online course business called CopyMonk, where I taught copywriters who to write better copy. I’ve since closed down that business and now make online courses for ecommerce businesses.

2. What’s your course all about?

Inside The Email Copywriting Workshop, I teach copywriters, marketers, and business owners how to write high converting ecommerce emails. This includes both flows and campaigns across the entire email funnel, regardless of what ecommerce category you’re operating in.

Try Thinkific for free here.

3. What makes you an expert in this field?

I run an ecommerce marketing agency, SupplyDrop, that helps 7-8 figure brands scale with email marketing. This includes brands like Kettle & Fire, Drink02, and Verb Energy. 

A normal engagement involves taking over a brand’s entire email marketing operation and boosting their total revenue from email from under 20% and boosting it to 30% of their entire online revenue. 

Because of my background as an email copywriter though, we put an extra emphasis on the email copywriting behind each email.

4. What is the transformation your course offers to the students?

By the end of the course, you should know everything you need to drive over $100,000 in additional revenue through Klaviyo. While the course focuses on copywriting, you don’t need to become one to really do well with email. The course also goes beyond just the copywriting, so you’ll get a crash course on email strategy.

Not to mention you can always give the course to your copywriters so they can learn and do the work for you.

5. Which market does your online course serve and how did you get into it?

My course helps ecommerce business owners, whether it’s the founder themselves, their in-house teams, or other ecommerce agency in-house teams.

Before ecommerce, I was in the online course market for 8 years. During the final year though, I realized that I wasn’t happy selling high pressure, direct response sales letters anymore. I knew that my dream was to one day build an ecommerce brand though, so I made the switch cold turkey and haven’t looked back since.

6. Why is it important to you to serve this market?

I believe the simplest way to build an online course business is to help people who are on the same path you are. This means other email marketers who work with ecommerce brands.

It’s a category where there are almost no good resources. I had to learn everything myself by trying and failing with clients. It’s also a category that I’m extremely excited about, so it makes for a perfect 1-2 punch.

7. Describe the moment when you decided to create your own course. Where were you, what happened and why did you decide to do it?

I’ve been into making my own courses since I was 16 years old. When I was 21, I already had my first successful online course business teaching other copywriters how to write better copy. Plus, I’ve helped other online course creators scale their businesses with my copywriting services.

So the decision to launch this course was really simple. 

I already understood everything that went into building an email list and selling them an online course. 

The inflection point was 6 months ago when I realized I didn’t want all of my income to come from client-work. There was no single point where I just woke up and decided. It was more of a slow burn of being frustrated with different aspects of client-work.

8. How did you overcome doubtful moments during your course creation journey?

Again, because I’ve been in the online course space for a long time, I didn’t really have any doubts when it came to the actual course creation. 

My main doubtful moment was in my ability to build an organic audience again from scratch. Luckily, I had a friend who was an SEO expert and he offered to teach me SEO. After 6 months, I furiously wrote 100 SEO-driven articles. Now, I’m seeing my traffic and email subscriber count going up every single day with no additional work on my part.

9. What are some of your tricks to deal with imposter syndrome?

There are 2 main ways I deal with imposter syndrome.

The first is that I realized I need to be actively doing whatever I’m teaching. So even if I only have 1 email marketing client, this is enough to help me feel like I’m “in the trenches” rather than another huckster telling people how they can be rich.

The second is realizing that there are people who know way less than I do and make more money doing so. There’s no one to ask for permission. It’s not like I have a horde of angry customers. Everyone likes what I do. I just have to keep doing it.

10. How long did it take you to create your course?

It took about 6 hours to create my course.

The filming took about 2 hours. Then I had to spend another 2 hours editing it. In addition to the primary video in my course, it took another few hours to come up with all of the supplemental resources to provide extra value.

11. How did your first launch go?

It went better than expected.

I launched it to my old list of freelance copywriters. I hadn’t emailed them in almost a year, so they were cold. In addition, I did no pre-selling or anything else to “warm up” my list. I just made sure to write longer emails to get everything across.

The launch netted me 4 figures in sales during Black Friday. 

12. How do you structure your launches in general now?

Typically, I like to follow the Gain-Logic-Fear sequence.

The first day of the launch, I focus on all of the benefits and potential transformation a customer will experience from buying my course.

The second day is focused on proof. This is where I hammer testimonials, guarantees, payment plans, bonuses, and anything else that make it an easy choice to buy now.

The last day is focused on scarcity. It’s all about telling customers they only have a few hours left to buy and if they don’t do nothing, they’ll miss their chance at achieving my promised transformation and the amazing deal.

13. Where does your traffic come from?

Over 95% of my traffic comes from SEO.

I do plan on launching a Youtube channel and an Ambassador program for my newsletter within the next 6 months, but I’ve only worked on growing my blog.

I wrote 100 SEO-driven articles in my first 6 months, which is an extremely aggressive pace. But now, I just need to wait while my articles rank. Next year, I plan to refresh the top 25 articles that have the most promise to rank first on Google.

14. Which content do you like producing the most?

I enjoy writing email newsletters the most.

The reason is that there are no rules. I can write anything I want without having to worry about SEO or how many shares it’s going to get. I can write my unfiltered thoughts, which people appreciate the most.

It’s also the only medium where people actively choose to hear from you. So after someone has read a few of my newsletters, they tend to become fans of my work. This makes writing newsletters more enjoyable.

15. What online course platform are you using?

Right now, I’m focused on using Gumroad.

It’s not the best platform for maximizing conversions and overall revenue. However, it’s by far the easiest place to sell your online course. And if there’s anything I want right now, it’s a low stress business to balance out my high stress client-work.

Once I go full-time with online courses again, then I’ll work on using Podia or some other platform so I can maximize my revenue per subscriber.

16. What is amazing about this platform?

It takes about 5 minutes to put my product up for sale.

It also makes it super easy to host pre-sales, which can completely change the dynamic of an online business.

Pre-sales makes it possible to validate your product before you ever create it. In addition, it also allows you to quickly add a new product to your catalog if you’re looking to sell a bigger bundle during a promotion.

17. Which features do you wish this platform would have?

I wish Gumroad had a better sales page that was built for conversions. It would also help if it helped you set up one-click upsells, each with their own sales pages.

This would make it really easy to make much more money.

18. Why did you choose this platform over other platforms?

Gumroad is just easy and low stress.

I’m not in the online course business to become rich. I’m in the online course business to eliminate as much of my worries as possible.

19. Which other tools do you use to keep your online business running?

Aweber is my most important tool.

Online course businesses basically live or die on newsletters. So, it’s a good idea to have an email service provider that has good deliverability, is easy to use, and has pricing that makes sense.

It’s the first ESP I used when I was 16 years old and I’ve never looked back.

Try Thinkific for free here.

20. How many students have you served so far?

At this point, I don’t know the exact number, but I would say in the hundreds.

21. How much revenue have you created during your first launch, and ongoing?

The first launch made 4 figures.

I haven’t been keeping up with my online course business because I needed to build a new audience from scratch. It’s only been in the last month where my SEO efforts have finally really started to kick in.

22. What are you running costs to keep the online course business going?

Right now, I just need to pay for Aweber, which is around $40/month for now. I can also include Gumroad fees, but seeing as those are only charged if you make sales, I’m not spending any money on it at the moment.

23. What are some of the biggest mistakes you made along the way?

Doing too many things at once.

When I was running my 1st online course business, I was writing a blog, running a Facebook group, writing my email newsletter, making cheap courses, getting on podcast interviews, and more.

Now, I know the smarter way is to triple down on 2-3 things.

For me, this means focusing on my blog and newsletter. I may start Youtube, but that has less to do with building my online course audience and more to do with learning Youtube growth so I can transfer my learnings to other projects.

24. How has your business changed since implementing an online course into the business model?

Nothing as of yet, but once my audience grows a bit more, I’ll be able to slowly take on less and less clients.

Instead of trying to build an ecommerce agency, I’ll be able to focus on building a lifestyle business.

25. How has your personal life changed?

It’s definitely made me happier, overall. 

If you’ve ever done client-work, you know that it can be fun. However, it’s also a stressful business. Knowing that there a light at the end of the tunnel has me motivated to (ironically) work even harder.

26. What’s the greatest transformational story you can tell about one (or more) of your students?

One of the best stories I heard was when a customer bought my course to teach himself how to become a freelance copywriter for ecommerce businesses.

He lived in a developing country where there wasn’t much opportunity for him to build a financially-stable life. So he studied to become a freelance copywriter. And with my course, he went from 0 to charging thousands of dollars working with clients from across the world.

27. If you could use a time machine and send yourself back to the time before you started out, what advice would you give yourself, knowing what you know now?

If I could start my online course career all over again, I would tell myself to focus on getting good at one traffic skill. It doesn’t matter if its SEO, paid ads, Youtube, TikTok, or something else. The entire online course business is 100% dependent on you building your own audience of people who know, like, and trust you. 

Most businesses fail because of a lack of traction. Avoid that by getting good at traction-based skills.

28. What is your million dollar piece of advice to those who are just getting started in their online course journey OR for those who are looking to scale?

Online course businesses live and die based on their newsletters. So my million dollar piece of advice is to get good at growing, nurturing, and selling through email newsletters.

This not only means getting good at traction, such as SEO, but getting really good at email copywriting and email marketing strategy. If you can combine all of those skills into one online course business, it’s impossible to not do well.

If you want to scale an online course business, then it’s all about economics. You have to know and optimize your numbers so you can maximize every sale you make.

For example, one of the best things an online course business owner can do is focus on selling high-ticket courses. You’ll make much more money for nearly the same amount of work with a smaller course. It’s also the only way to earn as much as possible per subscriber, especially if you have a small email list.