Courses are dead. And the reality is, they have been for some time.
Chat GPT Killed the Course
I can pull any information from the internet and most books from AI tools whenever I feel like it. The marketing “secrets” you were selling in your course? Why pay you when I can get it for free?
Courses have been on their deathbed for quite some time with an average open rate of only 5% and an even lower average completion rate of 3%. AI just pulled the plug.
Especially for businesses using a lower ticket offer as the base of a progressive product suite, this isn’t doing much for you.
In a world where anyone can pull the information in your $500 course for free, the information itself is no longer all that valuable. What will continue to be valuable? Customization. Implementation.
Recurring Revenue
Any business owner with half a brain knows that recurring revenue is really the only way to scale efficiently. Having an offer that allows you to stack your income month over month as you continue marketing & having that peace of mind when a new month rolls over and you know you have income locked in.
It’s the stability of a 9-5 without the blood-sucking managers and vapid coworkers.
Every founder knows the jitters that come when the first of the month rolls around and the Stripe account resets to $0.
Where is your next sale going to come from? Maybe you made it big the previous month, but are you going to be able to replicate that success?
Of course, a marketing strategy that isn’t garbage is going to help you a lot, but having revenue locked and loaded is a game changer for any scaling founder.
The Future of Passive Income
So what do I suggest?
If you’ve followed me for any amount of time on social media, you know that I’m a huge fan of the monthly membership model. My very first client scaled her membership to over a million dollars a month & our own membership has done multiple 6 figures in revenue.
For just about any service-based business (or anyone who already has a course), you can package your knowledge into a membership with different support elements and assets that will keep people coming back month after month.
Courses are a one-time sale. People buy them once. You make a sale once. You have no recourse for recurring revenue.
But how is a membership passive you ask? We spend less than two hours a month to manage ours. Any admin tasks can be outsourced to a VA.
It’s as passive as real estate.
What do I put in a membership?
The answer is it’s really up to you, but I’ll use our own membership as an example.
Inside the Social Media Millionaire Society, members have access to:
- A high-value resource vault with training and workbooks
- Templates they can install directly into their business
- Monthly Live Q&A with our executive panel
- Society Space for questions from members, networking, and support from our panel
The Takeaway
Memberships pair the fast education of courses with the support and customization of a group program. If you want your business to continue to scale, don’t get left behind.