What I Wish I Knew Before Launching My First Online Offer 

Ingrid: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Inspired Brew, a podcast for small businesses crafted with intention for coaches and creatives alike. I’m Ingrid, your host and resident brand and web designer. In each episode, I’ll bring you insights, tips, and tricks to help you grow your business and achieve your goals. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re looking into taking your business to the next level.

I got you covered, so grab your favorite brew Sit back, and let’s get inspired. 

You ever look back at your first launch and think, what was I doing? Because same if I could time travel, there are so many things that I do differently, but at the same time, I know that every single mistake has led me to where I am right now. It’s hard, but today I am actually gonna get very vulnerable and I’m gonna be spilling some lessons.

The good, the bad, and the, what the heck was I thinking kind of moments so that you can launch smarter and not harder.

Hey friend. Welcome back to the Inspire Brew. If you [00:01:00] are dreaming of launching an online offer, whether it’s a course templates, a membership, something digital, this is the episode for you.

I’m sharing the things I wish someone had told me before I hit publish on my first offer, so you can avoid my mistakes and fast track your success. 

I am going to start with what I will wanna call the perfect offer trap because this is literally my first offer and. I actually spent too long tweaking my first offer instead of just launching it.

And what was this? A super simple, brand photography guide for your website. As it sounds, it’s literally a guide, which to this day I still sell it by the way. But eon ago when that was my first digital offer aside from my services. I took just so long to create it because it started as a simple guide.

And [00:02:00] I honestly tweaked it to no end. I ended up removing pages, adding more pages eventually, and then retaking them out and just making it easier to follow with actionable steps versus just the pure theory, because I was almost like trying to teach someone the why and the this and the that instead of making it actionable for them.

So originally, that monstrous of a guide actually sold for $47, and it was a huge workbook. Like I’m talking pages and pages, and if you’ve ever tried to send someone A PDF that is too heavy. You know how hard it is to just. Send it over email. So I had to host it on my Dropbox, and then I wasn’t even sure, like at that time, obviously, I was just like, is this the right way of doing things?

Yes, Ingrid, it was, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And then I decided, you know what? I am not comfortable with the way [00:03:00] that this is happening. I was just drowning in that little perfectionism area and one of the like. Best things that I did for it was actually take out more pages. I made it more actionable.

I made it extremely pinpointed and I upped the price to $67 and it actually sold way more copies. So it was just not fair for my own brain to try to put something together that. I wasn’t even sure my audience needed at that moment or how they needed that. So I think that if someone had told me, you can launch before you feel it’s ready, your audience will tell you what they actually need.

I would have done this with less stress. I’m not saying that it would have been a [00:04:00] lot much better, but definitely without that much stress. I almost scrapped it because even though it was my first offer, I was used to selling services, it just felt too ambiguous. Like I as a web designer was getting asked about what images go into, what spots on the website, what I recommended for certain pages.

And then I also own a brand photography business, where right now I do product photography, but at the time. I was traveling to do the product photography, to do the brand photography, and I was meeting my clients and it was like the same idea I was shooting for their websites. We were shooting very strategically to make sure that we had those brand images.

So honestly, I was doing things in and out and I knew how to do things. I knew the strategy behind it, and. Because I was so immersed in it, because I was doing it for clients. [00:05:00] When it came the moment to teach it and to actually put it into just a simple guide, it was letting imposter syndrome win.

So I think that if I had not put that guide together, I would have never really gotten over the fear of actually offering something that was not a service. So it had to be done. Yeah, but it was definitely a stressful kind of product and I’m glad that I’m still offering it and that it still sells. But I could have just moved on from that initial super perfectionist moment and make more profit with it and actually get it to the point where it is right now.

Super simple, super actionable, and it is targeted to a very specific, customer journey state for some of my people, and it is something that allows me to tap into the different [00:06:00] areas of my own audience. And most of you are going to have the same. You’re gonna have offers that are actually. Good for different areas of your audience or different segments.

Some people are gonna be more advanced, some people are gonna be a little bit earlier in their career stage if you’re working business to business. So depending on where they are in the problem that you’re solving. Your offers are going to fit within that. And I teach all about that instead of my offer synergy, because I always hammer on the pre, during and the after for how you position your offers and how are you giving that experience.

But obviously Ingrid at the time, didn’t know what she didn’t know. So now I know better and I look back to it and it just feels. It feels weird that I didn’t see it. It was right in front of me, but I guess that we all have to just go through it, and if you think that the story of my first offer is just cringe worthy, I have also, because of course I have [00:07:00] gone through the whole pricing regret and undercharging for it because

I let myself look into the market and think if I price it lower, I’m pretty sure that it’s gonna sell more. Uhhuh? Sure. That backfired beautifully. I created a big funnel bundle for Showit. These were just like Showit templates, right? And I thought, I could price it this way or this way, but honestly, if I just go low and I’m talking that this product had over seven pages with multiple variations of each ones, and it was $150, that was the downfall because I am known for my premium services and I was not positioning the offer, in this case, the bundle of templates as a premium thing because of the price. So the branding was on point. Everything was aligned with my own business, but the price wasn’t. I [00:08:00] used to always laugh and joke about how I could sell $10,000 service, but not a simple $150 template.

Honestly, low pricing doesn’t always mean more sales, and it can actually hurt your conversions. Ingrid now knows that because positioning takes many different parts of the puzzle. But Ingrid back then didn’t, and she made the mistake of letting her imposter syndrome talk to her into doing a lower price to increase volume of sales, and that’s not how it works.

Price based on value is what sells. We cannot price based on fear. So let me repeat that for you. Price based on value for any of your offers. Never out of fear. And of course, test your pricing early. Your audience will always be the key point that tells you how to move forward. What are you going to be offering?

How do you [00:09:00] need to position this? How do you need to even deliver it? And about deliveries. I had a little deep dive into the unnecessary, fancy platforms because of course, I could have just launched faster with what I had already had in my deck of cards. But I was following suit. I was just looking at what everybody else was doing.

I even bought Thrive Cart. I got into this and that platform. I got all things set and then I even got into Thinkifik to host my lessons because every single one of my offers, whether they are like templates or courses, obviously on courses you expected, but even for smaller things sometimes I had just videos to show you, this is how you use this is how to do that.

And it actually turned into like mini courses. So think if it was my product of choice at that moment I should have just questioned myself. Why am I doing this? And the answer would’ve been so clear. [00:10:00] Oh, because so and so is doing it, Uhhuh. And just because everybody else was doing it I had to. I understand that we need to look into the competition.

We need to look into what the market is doing and seeing the success of others can guide you into making a good decision on certain tech tools and whatnot. But I wasn’t doing it for the right reasons. It was just because, oh, so and so have that. I should too. No, I should not. I was so overwhelmed with all of the tech that I had to manage just to deliver a couple of my offers.

It was not worth it. It was just not worth it. I am glad that I have a simpler system right now, and that when I work with my clients, part of the most important piece that I do is making sure that we have a tech stack research phase because it needs to work in the way that they work. It needs to work in the way that their team works.

So [00:11:00] the SOPs, the standard procedures that they put into the creation, into the delivery, it has to just flow with the way that their brand is working. To me, the takeaway of looking back into that mistake is starting with the simplest tool that gets the job done. You can always expand later. I hear this time and time again, especially for shops or for courses and memberships.

Some people want to start off the bat with communities and with forums, and they want this to feel like social media. Guys, you are competing against something like a Facebook platform. Why? Why are you competing with something like that? This is not your realm. You are here to serve your audience in this way, and your brand is positioned in this particular way.

Now, why are you making this extra complicated? Because the more that you complicate it for yourself, the more that you are also complicating the delivery for your audience. And this is not to say [00:12:00] that. Shops and memberships and all of that can’t get complex. By all means, they do get very complex. Some of my clients can tell you that, but it doesn’t mean that your first iteration, your phase one has to be all that bells and whistles and also all the expenses that come with it.

You can always expand and grow and upgrade later. I will say the part about having your tech stack research is that you’re looking into the future so that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel later and I don’t even have to move my systems away from what I’m doing right now. You knowing that you want to do X, Y, and Z, for example, super simple.

If I wanna have a shop. On my Showit site and I want to have affiliates and I want to have a tool that allows my customers to create bundles on my site. Okay. It’s really good to know because I will be able to then [00:13:00] say for when that is happening, I don’t want to have to move, so I wouldn’t.

Start my shop with Shopify Light or Shopify Starter, where I’m just gonna embed buttons and not have the ability to have my affiliates run in there, or not have the ability to bundle things or to have Bump offers because I have no control over the checkout when I’m on Shopify starter. But if I say, my goal with this shop is to just sell this things direct download, all good, then that is perfect.

But if we know the end goal. We don’t have to start there. We don’t have to compare ourselves with our competitors that are in their level 100 and we are just starting. But that’s where we wanna be. So that’s what we want to have, because believe me, I have clients that come in and tell me that they compare themselves to some peers or even some big box companies, and they want what the big box company is doing.

But that is a different budget. [00:14:00] That is a different system, that is a different audience, whatever they’re doing. How does this apply to you? How is this going to help you serve better your own audience? So I’m very passionate about this if you can’t tell, but it’s just because. I’ve lived through it and I’ve seen my clients live through it.

They come in and sometimes they already have built something that is just so convoluted and not helping them, that then we have to reinvent the whole thing, rehash it, and reshape it into something completely new. And that shouldn’t be the case because now you just wasted more time, more energy, and more money into having it rebuilt.

So learn from my mistakes. Don’t overcomplicate things. Do it simple and get it launched. Get your profits rolling so that you can then [00:15:00] invest into growing it, into upgrading it, into making it more than what it is. It can be the magic behind it. And honestly, I think that another magical thing that you can do when you’re thinking about launching your offers, especially for those that are on the first time kind deal, getting it tested.

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So the first time that I actually tested an offer before launching it, and how it just changed everything for me is when I did it for my WooCommerce. Showit course. So I have a course which is my signature course called WooCommerce Unleash. At the time it was called Showit WooCommerce 1 0 1, because that is what it was.

I was already teaching that exact course on a one-on-one format, and I did that with multiple people that were either designers and non-designers. Like I did that many times, one-on-one. I knew exactly the steps that I needed to go through. I knew at that moment exactly how I needed to share the information for those that were designers because they understood things a little bit differently and they were already doing things differently inside of Showit.

And then how did I have to explain that to those that were not that tech savvy, that they are not designers, they don’t know the ins and outs of Showit, how it works with the blog area. [00:17:00] But I just knew both sides and eventually that got put into video format and I did it as a course. If you have ever taken a course from me or seen any of my master classes, you know that I am extra.

Very extra and I put everything into video. There is a transcript you can have watch speeds. I like to host my videos on either Descript or looms so that you can watch at a fast speed because I myself actually watch most of my courses and YouTube videos when I’m just watching for learning at two times speed.

That is how my brain reacts and loves it. But then again, if this is something. Super technical you do need to be watching the screen to see what I’m doing, but honestly, you could just listen to the video and I’m just giving my students multiple different formats to learn in the way that they learn the best.

I wanna make sure that they make the most out of their investment with me. So that movement from a one-to-one [00:18:00] format to a course, I knew I needed something different, and of course, I beta tested it. On a paid beta test. So that moved my confidence up. It moved my revenue up from the get go. I love making sure that my big offers or those that involve more strategy when on a done self-paced, because I’m not gonna be there, that they can stand a test of time and being used with different professionals, not just designers like myself, because even though some of my courses have community access to me.

Some don’t. And I wanna make sure that people don’t need me per se. Like I wanna be there to answer their questions, to guide them through more advanced things. And it always happens. The community posts that I get on, like for example, the Showit course, they’re more advanced, some are more code based.

Some of them are in need of X, Y, and Z specific features. So nothing that will be like relevant to every single person that [00:19:00] is going to be applying that course. But they have a specific need, and if they have access to me, then it’s easier for me to just either check the link and give them some pointers.

Or if they are asking a question about something that they want to create and they need some extra features, maybe I have heard of a plugin that they could try. So it is helpful, but I wanna make sure that the core of it has the impact and the value without needing me for them, because that’s the whole point of making a self-paced course, in my opinion.

Better at testing it to me. Was the perfect way to validating my offer. And so I believe that it is still to this day a great way to validate your offer and be paid to create your offer because sometimes you can actually beta test as you’re building, so you just drip the modules or the lessons, and you got your beta testers lined up.

They’re excited. You keep that communication with them, you are dripping that course to them, and they are happy and they’re gonna give you [00:20:00] testimonials to make the course better. Because obviously if something needs a little rearrangement or it needs to be explained in a different way, you have that from the beta testers.

And so now when you make the big launch. Your audience is primed because you have announced the beta already, so that was already in their circles. You have seeded that idea. It has been planted and it will continue to grow. And then also for the launch, the whole lessons are so much better because if there was any tweaking to be done, it has already been done with the paid beta group.

So honestly, if you’re thinking about an offer that could benefit from a beta launch like this. Invite them.

Invite a small test group, refine based on their feedback, and then you can launch way stronger. So if you take nothing else from this episode, remember this, please launch before you’re ready. Learn from my mistakes. I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I don’t want [00:21:00] you to be in the same position where you are so good at your one-on-one service offers that you can easily sit down with someone, have a consultation call and sell a $20,000 package.

But you freeze at the idea of putting out an offer because you’re just not ready. There’s just too much tech overwhelm, and you want to tweak it to no end because of course, perfectionism can win. So launch before you’re ready, charge for the value that you bring. Keep it simple and don’t expect instant sales.

Test it. Test it before you go big. If you prime your audience, if you have a great connection, nurturing communication with your email list or with your social media, your sales are going to flow a little bit more naturally, but you don’t have to have it all figured out. Every failed launch teaches you something.

For the next one, and I, you didn’t see me, but I’m doing air quotes for the [00:22:00] fail part. I believe that a fail is. Such a learning moment, and it sucks. It hurts. I hate the rejection that I feel when I know that an offer didn’t really perform the way that I wanted it to because I feel like it’s personal and I know that it’s not I’m looking at the data and the data is a logical piece and how can we use this data to make it a puzzle piece to tell me how to make this better for the next round.

It’s a little bit of a division between the human side of me that is very sensitive, and then my brain logical driven side that just wants to apply that data and remind my other part of the brain like nothing broke. You’re not the failure. We just didn’t put this in the way that it should have to give us the.

Results that we were looking for. So every fail launch, it’s gonna teach you something for your next launch and you can make it better. The key is just start. [00:23:00] And hey, if this episode help you in any way, shape, or form, take a second to follow the podcast. Leave me a review. It helps more amazing business owners like you find the show.

I hope that my personal stories give you a little bit of an insight into my own business, what I’ve been doing this 10 years, how I have failed, and I continue to just move forward. I want to make sure that. I can help as many people as possible and at the same time grow a business that is going to allow me to have the time for my family, my life, and just make me happy doing so.

I love and adore teaching others, as you can tell, and I want to continue to do but I look into the past. And learn from those lessons so that I can make a better format and a better delivery for everything that I put forward. I know that it’s always easier to show all the wins, [00:24:00] but I think that there’s power in

sharing what has gone wrong before so that it can serve as a little bit of a warning sign for others, and so that you don’t make my mistakes. So hopefully it was helpful for you, and I’ll see you in the next one.