$1600 workshop presale in 24 hours

tl;dr: I started selling tickets to a Workshop called Community Building Crash Course yesterday, and in less than 24 hours I've earned $1600.

Background

Since the beginning of the year, I've started offering Workshops as part of my digital product portfolio. My first workshop was about writing Email Newsletters, and 37 people purchased for $40 each.

It was prompted by this tweet:

I'd just finished creating my course Podcast Like The Pros and I was too tired to product a full course. So, instead, I decided maybe I'd just offer a workshop.

I use ConvertKit for email, and they had recently rolled out their new Convert Commerce product. So it was really easy for me to create a "product" within ConvertKit and sell it right there to my own email list and otherwise.

It was unbelievable! I couldn't believe how easy it was and how well it sold.

Really pumped, I ran another workshop a few weeks later called Goal Smashing where I talked about my process for creating actual, very tactical plans for achieving the goals you set for yourself.

That workshop was a bit of a flop – only 7 people took me up on it. Lesson learned – maybe I shouldn't host a workshop that I assume people want.

The Community Building Crash Course

Since my community was acquired by Smart Passive Income and I began leading the SPI community team, I get a lot of questions about community. I even get asked to consult pretty regularly.

But I can't commit the time anymore, so I wanted a resource to point people to if I couldn't help them directly.

Also, I have an article about building community that generates a lot of organic traffic, and I figured that it would be great to have a digital product to offer at the end.

Enter: The Community Building Crash Course.

Like the Email Newsletter workshop before it, I knew I had people interested in this one. I just had to put it together.

Twitter outperformed Email

I first shared the workshop with my email subscribers as a stand alone block near the bottom of the email. This is my dominant method of sharing offers with people, and it's usually the most effective.

A few people bought it yesterday morning from the email, but it actually underperformed what I expected.

I decided to construct a short tweet thread about the workshop, because I knew a lot of my followers on Twitter are people interested in community.

At the last minute I went thread instead of link, because I know Twitter doesn't love to promote links in its algorithm. So instead, I had the link about four tweets down in the thread.

It really took off, and the vast majority of those enrolled came from Twitter.

How it works

The delivery is very simple actually.

1. I create the product in ConvertKit and list it for $40.

2. As part of that product, I create a Zoom registration line for the event, and in the "thank you" page and receipt emails, I share that link with the customer.

3. On the day of the workshop, I show up on Zoom and share a 45-minute presentation followed by 15 minutes of Q&A. I offer people who attend the option of emailing me any follow up questions, and I do my best to oblige.

4. Then I take the recorded session from Zoom and upload it into ConvertKit and change the Product Type to "Digital Download." Now, anyone can purchase the workshop any time and it's just a 45-60 minute video presentation they receive immediately.

It has the passive income benefits of an online course but it's much easier to produce, and even fun to have the live component.

Next Steps

Now that I have 40+ people enrolled, I'm going to be sure that this is the most information dense, mind-blowing workshop on community building possible in 60 minutes.

I also have nearly two weeks to continue to promote the workshop through my own channels (including a dedicated email), Twitter, and even those who are registered.

ConvertKit Commerce is an incredible feature, and really underrated. I invested in the Gumroad campaign on Republic, but I'm super, super bullish on how effective ConvertKit's products can be, especially if you're already using it to deliver your emails.

Happy to answer any questions about the process!