Revenue and expenses for a world class independent online course

Tiago Forte, an expert in personal productivity and the creator of the ‘Building a second brain‘ online course, released his revenue and expenses for the first two years of his course on his blog in Febuary 2019. Over the first two years, he had 712 enrollments, each paying between $400 to $1200. The course included a standard edition with the core materials and live sessions and a premium edition that provides for additional content and personalisation. An Executive edition was recently added that includes a coaching session and private Q&As with Tiago himself.

According to the post, Building a second brain has brought in $256,839 from seven cohorts and cost $45,920 to set up and run, giving a profit of $210,919. The costs and income are laid out in detail in the post and include the $9,853 (4.16%) of refunds to students. The expenses include a part-time course manager, IT support, a marketing agency and Facebook ads, coaches, a videographer, Discourse as an online forum tool, graphic design from 99designs, Teachable for the course platform, Unbounce for the landing page, and Zoom for video conferencing.

Forte ideas are important. His productivity methods are highly effective, and his views on building a portfolio life are well thought through, he believes everyone should create an online course to share their unique ideas after building an extensive email list (6000+) through blogs and social media. He has exciting ideas that he is testing in his three courses, on how online education will evolve over the next ten years to be more focused on social learning and use emerging technologies in interesting ways. 

Read the blog post on the Forte labs website. Find me on Twitter if you want to talk about online learning.