Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show MBA2604 How to Sell Online Courses With No Audience in 2025 About this episode Thinking about creating an online course but feeling stuck because you don’t have an audience? Think you need thousands of followers to make it work? Well, think again, because Omar’s breaking it all down in today’s episode. He shares creative ways to sell online courses in 2025—even if you’re starting from absolute zero. Omar gives […] The post MBA2604 How to Sell Online Courses With No Audience in 2025 appeared first on The $100 MBA.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For example, I really wanted to love the show Mad Men. I really tried to watch it and love it, but it just didn't do anything for me. As a marketer and business person, the show was a little bit of a disappointment.
0:45 Speaker 00 Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, like impressions. But then we don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that: bullspend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn Ads. Cut the bullspend, advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBAShow. Terms apply. Want to sell an online course but don't have an audience? You're not alone. Most people think they need thousands of followers to sell a course, but that's not true. The truth is, most successful course creators I know start with zero audience members. And in 2025, there are smarter, faster ways to get your first sales without a big following.
1:30 Speaker 00 Today, I'll break it all down, the exact steps to sell your course with no audience and start making money sooner than you think. Let's get into it.
1:43 Speaker 00 Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.
1:56 Speaker 00 The biggest mistake people make? Spending months creating a course before knowing if anyone will buy it. Instead, get paid before you build it. Find out what people are already paying for. Presell your course to early buyers and make sure there's demand before you spend time making lessons. So, how do you validate a course? Ask your network, friends, ex-colleagues, LinkedIn connections, whoever you think would need this course. And that's really an important part. Don't ask your friends that wouldn't need this course. Ask people that would be potential customers. Number two, join niche communities. There's a lot of communities online that can be a goldmine when it comes to understanding what to build.
2:41 Speaker 00 Facebook groups, Reddit, Discord, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it. These are great places to find information about what to build. Number three, sell a beta version first. Offer early access to a live cohort, or you can offer a pre-recorded version at a discount. Back when I was running my software company, Webinar Ninja, before I sold it, I created a course on webinars called "The Automated Webinar Challenge." It was all about how to create an automated webinar. And that course actually started as a webinar. It was just one webinar that I ran that was really popular. It kind of validated my idea. Then I sold the recording to that webinar to see if anybody's willing to buy this content.
3:23 Speaker 00 I simply emailed the attendees to that webinar, and five of them bought. That was enough proof for me to move forward and create a full-length program on how to create automated webinars. Let me summarize this for you. Don't create a course. Sell a course, then create it. Step two, get in front of other people's audiences. Since you don't have an audience yet, borrow one. I'm a big believer in these methods because they work. Here's the first one I want to pass on to you. Number one, be a guest on a podcast. Podcast hosts are always looking for valuable insights and guests. Most podcasts don't function without guests on the show. Offer something valuable that you can teach on the podcast, like something from the course you're about to build.
4:05 Speaker 00 And then you can have a call to action on the podcast when they say, "Hey, is there any way we can learn more about you?" You can offer the listeners a checklist or a summary of what you just taught. That way, they get on your email list, and guess what? Now they're your audience. Number three, partner with newsletters. There are newsletters with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that send newsletters every single day, or at least once a week. Find a niche newsletter in your space and offer them something of value in exchange of being featured on their newsletter, because they're going to send it out to their people and they're going to learn about you and they're going to go to your website and opt in for your lead magnet and get on your email list. Now, I said something of value. One of the things that I have found that really works with a lot of creators
4:47 Speaker 00 is that they create a cornerstone or really valuable piece of content. Something like a 60-minute masterclass. It's a video that goes deep on a topic. And then they offer it to the newsletter owner and say, hey, this is a great piece of content. You can use it and bundle it with your offers. So the next time you do a launch, you can have an extra bonus to your launch. Talk about valuable. Do Instagram and LinkedIn collabs. One of the easiest ways to do this is to create the content, whether it's a post or a reel, and ask that person to publish it for you in front of their audience. If it's great content, often they will say, great, this is good stuff. They're curating content for their audience all the time.
5:30 Speaker 00 And don't sleep on blog posts. Write a guest blog post if you can. If someone already has traffic on a blog, blogs still get tons of traffic, you can get in front of that audience and in front of that traffic easily. There are blog posts I wrote over a decade ago that still drive traffic to my website and it's incredible because it converts into customers. Because I wrote a very valuable blog post on a very popular blog and they're coming to my website hungry for more. When I first started in the content game, one of the first things I committed to is guesting on other podcasts. I got on five to 10 podcasts a month and it allowed me to generate my own audience
6:14 Speaker 00 and I eventually had a larger audience in the podcasts I was guesting on. Listen, why build an audience from scratch when you can tap into someone else's? Step 3: You can always use paid ads to get leads. Sometimes, you can just throw money at the problem. No, seriously, ads can help generate leads fast. Even with a small budget, you can get email subscribers today, and you could start selling your product. When I got started with ads, I only spent about $500 a month, and it was enough for me to get enough leads to get sales. What you want to do here is when you run ads, start with low-hanging fruit that will get you a conversion. For example, run a meta ad, like Facebook or Instagram, to a free lead magnet.
6:58 Speaker 00 This is a guide, a checklist, a mini-course. Why? Because it's going to give them instant gratification, and you're going to get the email immediately. You want conversions here. You don't want to spend too much money. So the easiest way to get a conversion for a low cost of money is to make sure it's something easy for somebody to consume. They don't have to pay for it. They just give their name and email address, and they get it. Number 2: Nurture those new leads via email. Send them 3 to 5 valuable emails over a week. Give them even more value. Give them great videos or podcast episodes, or even curate a bunch of interesting things that are going on in your niche, in your industry, and send it to them. Number 3: I encourage you to invite them to a webinar. On a webinar, you can teach, you can provide value, and then, of course, you can make an offer.
7:42 Speaker 00 But it allows you to build trust, answer questions, and get people, the answers they're looking for, to make a decision to buy. Again, you don't have to start with a lot of ads. You can use the funnel I just talked about, where you run an ad, maybe spend $5, $10 a day, nurture them via email, and then send them to a webinar where you offer great value. This is not going to cost an arm and a leg. Once you've refined the system, you can then improve it. Again, I first spent $500 on ads. I got about 1,000 emails at the time. I made $5,000 on my course launch. Awesome return on investment. I 5X'd my money. If you have no audience, ads can help you buy one. Today's episode is supported by Rosetta Stone.
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10:49 Speaker 00 Step four, offer a mini product before the full course. I mentioned this before in an example with my webinar and then selling the replay. But you can start off small. You don't have to start selling a $500 course to strangers. Selling a $19 or $49 digital product or course is much easier because it gives you momentum. And most of all, it gives you customers, a customer base that you can rely on to buy other products, larger courses and programs in the future. This, by the way, is called self-liquidating offers. It helps you build a customer base fast, cover your ad costs because you're making some money with these smaller offers, and it makes it easier to sell your full course later to customers that already are sold on you.
11:33 Speaker 00 They don't need any convincing because they got all the value from your smaller product. Some examples of mini products are a paid workshop, like a 90-minute live training or Q and A, a webinar, basically, right? Where you charge for it. Another example is a workbook or templates, something actionable that helps people get results, or a mini course, three to five lessons on one specific part of your topic. So say, for example, your expertise is social media marketing. You can get really niche and create a small course, a mini course for $10, $19, just on how to boost a post on X to get you more followers. For example, I run a three-day live event.
12:14 Speaker 00 This is a free training called Own Your Job, by the way, OwnYourJob.net if you want to check it out. But when you register, there's the option to upgrade to VIP, and VIP is $19. $19 gives you lifetime access to the replays of the event. By doing this, I make money on the front end and I break even on my ads for the event. I then sell my full-fledged flagship program to those buyers because they're already convinced that I'm a value that they're willing to pay for it. So basically, I get to market my event, get all these leads for free because of that front-end offer, that mini little thing where I give them access to the replay for the three-day live event. When you're just getting started and you're trying to get some traction,
12:59 Speaker 00 it's easier to sell a small product first than go for that big sale. So if you have no audience, here's your plan. Validate and pre-sale your course first. Number two, tap into other people's audiences. Leverage that. Number three, use paid ads to get leads fast. If you want to throw some money at the problem, right? Number four, sell a small product before your full course. This works. I've done it. My students have done it and you can do it too. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I know putting yourself out there without an audience can feel intimidating, but remember, every successful course creator, business owner, influencer you see out there,
13:43 Speaker 00 they all start at zero. Zero followers, zero email subscribers, zero people visiting their website. You don't need a huge audience. You just need the right people to see the value in what you offer. One student turns into two students and then 10 and then 100. The momentum will come. Stay consistent. Stay focused on helping the people you're meant to serve and trust the process. You've got this. Hey, if you're serious about building a business, join my three things newsletter. Every week I send you three things. One, something to think about, something to shift your mindset. Number two, something to do, an actionable step to grow your business.
14:25 Speaker 00 And number three, something to learn, a valuable resource to keep you ahead. It's completely free and it's my way to coach you from afar. Just go to 100mba.net and sign up for any of our free guides and you'll automatically be added. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business.
15:08 Speaker 00 And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.
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Previous MBA2603 Q&A Wednesday: I'm dead broke! What do I sell? Next MBA2605 How to Turn a Business Failure Into a Major Success Page updated November 7, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
