Online schools: hypotheses and test results

These are experts in helping professions, coaches, psychologists, tutors. Their pain — they want to earn more and spend less time working with each client. They feel they need extra tools to better get to know and understand the client, to give them a better result in less time.

PAIN — don't know how to make their videos go viral and become interesting. CONTEXT — they run a TikTok, shoot videos, but they get few views. They want to grow their profile on this platform so videos go viral and rack up hundreds of thousands of views, so their subscriber count grows. Inviting to a masterclass — How to grow your TikTok through the art of public speaking.

Automate sales on Instagram or another social network — a blogger or entrepreneur on Instagram — to stop doing it manually and free up time, get out of the routine, maintain a client base. A blogger, entrepreneur, or SMM manager needs automation for sales in an online store / on Instagram or other social networks Context: replies in Direct, answers the same type of questions. A lot of correspondence.

Online-school producers need a model for monetizing their base, for collecting money on an ongoing basis

Admins need a convenient platform to work with

Experts want to collect money from their audience without complicated marketing — without warm-ups and launches, without marketers

Online school owners want to enter the English-speaking market — adapting an existing product

People want to get an in-demand profession in digital and EdTech

Training in a promising profession

People work for themselves (or want to) and want to earn through marketing, and specializing in course production will open new horizons for them. Focus on entrepreneurship — self-employment, you'll always find clients because the field is growing, and there's a lot of money here. Pain: how to earn more.

Want to learn an in-demand digital profession

Share closed information in a club — they need security, control over entry and exit

An expert or producer plans to hold a webinar and wants to make a warm-up series. Create a broadcast in chatbots. They've already tried holding webinars, and broadcasts were a complicated and boring task. Need to automate this or get a ready-made solution, or at least have someone explain how broadcasts before a webinar should be done. A story sells better through numbers

People live somewhere in the tropics or in another country and want to promote their business while keeping their comfortable life.

Online school owners want to enter the Israeli market, adapting an existing product

Online school owners in Russia want to enter the foreign-currency market, adapting an existing product so they get paid in foreign currency

Experts run a lot of consultations, and want to go online and do the same thing, but at scale. Pain: how to gather more clients on the same topic. I don't have time to handle it all personally.

There's an educational business (club, courses, ulpan), but it needs an online component built so the quality of teaching is the same as offline. They're ready to learn in order to build an online product based on their offline product. Pain: how to reach those who want to learn online. How to reach new clients. How to ensure the business survives when not everyone can come to classes.

PAIN — don't know how to make their blog interesting CONTEXT — They run their social media pages and want to attract a bigger audience. To spark energy, shoot vivid and interesting videos, lead the audience along with them. Right now the blog doesn't stand out much from the general background, and our target audience wants to express themselves, their artistry, communicate easily with the audience — grab their attention. They want to be memorable. Feel free in front of the camera. How to grow their blog through the mastery of performance.

PAIN — boring videos CONTEXT — they constantly shoot videos, but they come out bland, few views, the audience doesn't respond. The expert wants their videos to become vivid and interesting, so the audience watches to the end and shares. They want big view counts, virality, for the audience to fall in love with the expert after watching a video

PAIN — hard to hold the audience. People who already perform. Run live sessions. CONTEXT — this segment of the target audience actively promotes themselves and is growing. They know what to talk to their audience about, but don't know how to hold their attention. They see listeners getting distracted, leaving, choosing other experts. So they're looking for tools that will help diversify their performances — make them vivid, memorable.

Women and men in helping professions who work offline but need to expand and promote their business, put things in order, and make it stable using business methods and motivation. They need a friend-mentor who will advise them and guide them through the process. They want their practice to become more like a business and their life to become easier — fewer consultations and more income.

Women in helping professions with expertise want to monetize their expertise online in soft niches (online consultations, or a course/challenge, or a service business). With an eye toward a mini-business with stable income. They want to be shown the way and led by the hand — to hand off responsibility. Pain points: lack of confidence, procrastination, confusion and indecision.

Women and men in helping professions who work offline but need to expand and promote their business, put things in order, and make it stable using business methods and motivation. They need a friend-mentor who will advise them and guide them through the process. They want their practice to become more like a business and their life to become easier — fewer consultations and more income.

Traders need a mechanism for a convenient paid subscription to broadcast signals

Marketers and businesses create a buyers' club, want to monetize the community activity that forms around the business

A beginner expert needs to launch a course, they've already made the decision, but can't calculate the budget because everyone charges differently. Pain: very expensive / unclear how much to pay and for what

Entrepreneurs who had or have an online educational project, with initial results, but they're not happy with them. They did it themselves. Chaotically, unpredictably, unsystematically. Like an ocean of art. They want a stable business with great analytics and a stable result.

Teachers who run kids' clubs and offline training for adults want to move their course online and earn more

Teachers, tutors want to earn extra money from their knowledge by selling their own courses, want to create a course from scratch

Online schools are afraid of market changes and losing sales, want a higher-quality, competitive product

Beginners want to create their own online school, but don't know what to do. They're ready to learn and build their business. Pain: how to build a business that will work and bring money and satisfaction.

CONTEXT — experts, bloggers who actively run their social media, shoot videos, do live sessions, consult. They're looking for tools that will help them sell better. They want to level up their public speaking skills so they can better win over their audience to themselves and their product. Engage the audience in dialogue and increase their loyalty.

An expert wants to run their courses somewhere other than GetCourse — looking for a simpler technical solution. Looking for an alternative to GetCourse because it's very complicated.

Create a course for subscribers — for a blogger or expert. Tired of little chats. The course needs to sell. Everything should be simple and in one chat, without hiring specialists. Build the course or challenge yourself. Fast. Broad approach — starting from course-creation skills

Bloggers want to create content not for free, but to receive monthly payment for it from readers

A beginner wants to create their own course and sell it, but for that they need to study a lot to understand what they're doing. There are producers who know exactly what to do and will guide you through a plan. Pain: don't want to study marketing / don't want to think

Beginners need full technical support for a fast and clean start of an online school, because they're afraid to trust freelancers, and can't handle it themselves. Pain: the technical part is very large and complex.

A person has expertise and wants to sell their knowledge at scale, but needs a plan and a team. Pain: where to find a producer who will handle all the selling for me.

People abroad, going through an adaptation period, looking for ways to earn money

Experts want to enter the English-speaking market and need to test whether the product is in demand in these markets

Producers and experts want to do a launch, sell a course and make some money. To do this they'll take a ready-made launch blueprint that has already proven itself. Result — do their own launch with a reliable blueprint

Experts and school owners are preparing a launch and want to learn more tricks and tools, see how others do it

Experts are planning to build a little funnel to sell an online course. Result — a working funnel.

Experts want to do the launch themselves in order to sell their online course

Instagram bloggers want to earn like the top bloggers, but Instagram doesn't pay them. They want their own subscription club, to give something there. They want stable income without dancing around in Stories — their own business project

Entrepreneurs in the digital sphere (marketing agencies, traffic guys, startup founders, etc.) — have experience in this niche, have their own team, but can't cover all the competencies. They see that online education is booming and want to grab their piece of the pie. Like if Adorat wanted to launch a traffic course for online schools and came for packaging and funnels. Think about exactly what to offer them. They're looking for course creators, to strengthen their product through them

Google Adwords

Most leads from the site come through this hypothesis. It makes sense to test it with traffic. Be sure to run branded traffic, since the lead-gen tool works, leads are coming through it

Most leads from the site come through this hypothesis. It makes sense to test it with traffic. Be sure to run branded traffic, since the lead-gen tool works, leads are coming through it

An expert with an entrepreneurial mindset and experience, tired of beginner producers and experiments, wants a systematic, deep, comprehensive approach, the work of a team that won't need to be controlled. Has been burned and seen all sorts of things

An entrepreneur who has an online product (school) with a team, they've hit a ceiling, can't scale on their own. There are sales, there's a result, but not much. They're looking for a new product or market. Working with a cold audience.

A beginner wants to create their own course and sell it, but for that they need to study a lot to understand what they're doing. There are producers who know exactly what to do and will guide you through a plan. Pain: don't want to study marketing / don't want to think

A person wants to create their own venture — their own business — so it can support them and let them do something enjoyable, so they no longer have to work a job, and so they can feel proud of their achievements. They're leaning toward an online school because the work format, income and type of employment suit them. Pain: find work for themselves that isn't hard

Entrepreneurs who have or had an offline business. The pandemic hit, there were losses, it's scary to open offline, online is more reliable and doesn't depend on lockdowns. They don't want to become employees, but they're afraid to open another business — big risks, losses, a high barrier to entry

Moving an offline club or school online. Entrepreneurs who have an educational project (business) and want to move it online. Online is cheaper, no need to pay rent, no restrictions by district. The product, teachers and curriculum designer are already in place

They understand they need online work, but aren't ready for their own business. The online professions everyone teaches are something technical or utilitarian. But the person has expertise in something that can't be sold through consultations. But it can through courses. They just want to run a course online and make money from it

Entering English-speaking markets

Entering English-speaking markets

Entering the market of Russians abroad

Entering the market of Russians abroad

A person wants to find work that will reveal their talents, bring benefit and money, and that they'll enjoy doing. It seems to them that an online school is exactly this kind of work, but they don't yet have a picture of how it will all look. They need to be shown how they can fulfill themselves through an online school. (most likely no niche and no product yet) Pain: find themselves, how to show everyone that I'm worth something

They burned through their ad budget and want to not repeat mistakes and grow — want reliability, want experienced producers

A person decided long ago that they need an online school, but is afraid to start, thinks they won't succeed, there are tons of difficulties. They need help to get started. Pain: overcome their fears

An expert entrepreneur already has a school and works with producers. But they're not happy with the contract terms and results (too little money, a high percentage, metrics, paying the sales department, etc.) — like a lawyer.

Entrepreneurs who already have a working business, but want another one online. They don't just want to invest blindly, they want to take part in building it, they're interested in partnership. The request is about the business (not about showcasing themselves like experts do)

They saw competitors and thought they could do better and teach better. Need to bring the online school idea to life, turn an ongoing business into teaching.

The expert needs marketing support

The expert needs marketing support

An income-earning method that can be turned into training / a profession

No entry from cold traffic, all sales are only to the warm base and subscribers

Trainers, coaches, want to stand up a platform for training clients

Experts who work in B2B want to increase their throughput — create a training product and scale it. Pain: they think scaling is impossible. They want more clients and less pointless work.

There's an audience I feed for free, how do I monetize it. Pain: sales and marketing, how to sell properly and exactly what (there may also be pain around creating a course — finding their expertise).

They want a launch. They've come up with the course. We'll run a webinar, gather an audience for it, package your course and sell it

Entrepreneurs who had or have an online educational project, with initial results, but they're not happy with them. They did it themselves. Chaotically, unpredictably, unsystematically. Like an ocean of art. They want a stable business with great analytics and a stable result.

People want an online school

Entrepreneurs, training center owners want to put their lessons on their own platform

There are experts who want to become DIY-ers: produce themselves on their own