A Case Against Pre-Selling Your Course — Before You Create It

If you've been thinking about creating an online course, chances are you've come across the advice that you should pre-sell it first. In other words, sell it before you build it.

The thinking behind this is that you need proof that people want and will buy your course, before investing your time in creating it. On the surface this seems like logical advice, and perhaps it is for people who are not actively working with clients.

But if you're already running a coaching, consulting or therapy practice, this approach creates a lot of unnecessary pressure. You already have validation of your course idea, you are simply turning your proven client work into a course that can serve one-to-many.

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You Already Have Your Validation

The pre-sell model assumes you don't yet know whether anyone wants what you're offering. But if you've been working with clients for any length of time, you already have that answer.

The outcomes you help people with, the questions that come up again and again, the process you've been guiding people through without ever formalising it — that's your validation. You don't need to go through the tension of pre-selling your course to confirm people will buy.

Selling Before Creating Is Stressful

There's a nervous system piece to pre-selling that I don’t see anyone addressing. Committing to a deadline before the work is done means people are waiting, the clock is ticking, unexpected delays can appear, and now you’re feeling rushed and stressed.

For anyone who already under a lot of pressure in their business or home life, the pre-selling experience can quickly become deregulating to the nervous system. If you keep putting off your course creation, this could be there real reason why.

Let Your Existing Work Lead the Way

A calmer approach is to look at what outcomes you are already supporting people with in your work. You’re not inventing something new here, you’re translating something you already do well one-to-one, into a one-to-many offering. 

One of my first courses came from years of doing messaging work with clients. I realised I could turn my methodology into a framework that people could move through on their own. 

Later, when I started talking about how most of my clients discover me via the marketing ecosystem I’ve created outside of social media, the strong interest in this topic signalled that I had another course to create. Both of these courses were grounded in outcomes I already had proof people wanted.

Course Refinement Tends To Continue After Selling 

Most courses are never set in stone from the first sale. Lessons can be revised and the structure can evolve. Something with around six focused, implementation-led lessons gives you enough to publish and enough flexibility to refine as you learn how people move through it.

Creating beautiful, useful, digestible courses is deeply satisfying for me on multiple levels. I enjoy the creative expression of words and images, the way my teaching create new results for people, and how tiny courses allow me to support more people without adding more screen time.

The goal is creating something digestible and useful that supports the outcome people are seeking, not a masterpiece to be perfected before anyone sees it.

This way of working is the foundation of how I teach course creation inside Create a Tiny Course. It’s designed to help you shape a course from outcomes you’re already creating, without pre-selling pressure, without rushing, and without needing everything to be decided upfront.

Have a question or a takeaway from what I’ve shared here? Let’s chat in the comments ⤵

Danielle Gardner
The Quiet Marketer
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