How I Made $68,000 Teaching E-Classes (Or, What I Learned From Wanting A Z3)

One day I pulled up beside a truck delivering new cars. One of the cars on his flatbed made my heart leap and my blood dance. I had never had a piece of machinery turn me on before. This one did. I fell in love. It was a BMW Z3. A Roadster. A hot-rod. One of the sexiest cars ever known to man and made by gods. Okay, maybe I'm overplaying it. But the point is, this car spoke to me. I wanted it. And wanted it bad. I also knew BMW's are pricey. So the first thing I did was try to win one. I entered two contests where Z3's were the big prizes. I knew I would win. I was destined to have that car. But I didn't win. Alas. So much for the laws of chance. It was time to create my future. So I decided I would just buy the car, and that I would pay cash for it. I had just completed a book on how to create miracles, called "Spiritual Marketing," and I figured I would prove to myself that I could create a Z3. So I used my own five-step method to get the sexiest car of my hottest dreams. I began by setting an intention for getting that car. Oprah once said that "Intention rules the Earth." I know it. My car's license plate holder says, "I am the power of intention." Once you declare that something will be so, you send a signal into the universe that begins to move that something to you, and you to it. Call it Real Magic. I call it one of the most powerful steps in the Spiritual Marketing process. From that step alone, miracles can happen. After I set my intention to have that car, I then acted on the hunches that bubbled up within me and the opportunities that came my way. To be more exact, here's what happened: One day it occurred to me to offer a seminar on the subject of my new book. I could rent a hotel. Write a sales letter. Invite everyone I knew on my online and off-line list to it. I could make a killing in a weekend. That's the ticket! But then it occurred to me that I don't like to market seminars, that I didn't know if it would sell, that postage and printing to promote it would cost a fortune, and that I'm not such a big fan of speaking in public, anyway. And here's where the shift occurred: I began to play with the idea that I could hold the seminar online. I would simply announce the "Spiritual Marketing" e-class to my email list. It would cost me zip. If no one signed up, so what? But---BUT!---if they *did* sign-up, I could teach the entire class by email. Every week I would send out a lesson. I would give assignments. They would complete them and email them back. I would then comment on their homework. It would all be nice and neat, easy and convenient. Sounded good to me. I decided to teach five weeks of classes, mainly because there were five chapters in the "Spiritual Marketing" book. I would send out one chapter a week as a lesson. I would add assignments to each one to make it more of a legit course. Then I wondered, "What do I charge?" I spent a lot of time on this question. Most people give away their e-classes, if they teach them at all. A few charge low fees. But I wanted a BMW Z3. They cost $30-$40,000 each. Yikes! Well, I decided I wanted 15 people in my class. That was an arbitrary number. I just figured if 15 people actually did their homework over a 5 week period, I would have my hands full reviewing it. So, like everything else in the developing of this first e-class, I simply "made up" the class size. I then divided 15 by how much I wanted to raise for my Z3. If 15 people paid me $2,000 each, I'd have enough to pay for the car in cash. But two grand a person seemed a bit high. So I settled for $1,500 a person. I then issued a sales pitch/invitation to sign-up for the class to my email list. I have about 800 good names on my list. Sixteen of them immediately signed-up for the class. Talk about easy money! The class was easy to do, too. The students loved the lessons, my assignments, and my feedback. Only one person immediately asked to bow out, saying the class wasn't for him. So I ended up with 15 people after all. I made $22,500. I was happy. But I didn't stop there. A few weeks later I announced another e-class. This one on how to write, publish and promote your own e-book. I just followed the same model that already worked: I issued an invite to my email list, I went after 15 people, I charged $1,500 per person for a 5-week class. I got 12 paying customers. I made $18,000. Boy, am I loving this! At this point I had been thinking about writing a sequel to my best-selling e-book, "Hypnotic Writing." But I didn't want to write it and hope it would sell. I wanted *paid* to write it. So I created yet another e-class. This one would be on "Advanced Hypnotic Writing." It would be three weeks long, rather than five, because I wanted to take it easy this time around. (I was getting lazy.) I still charged $1,500 and I still went after 15 people. I then announced the class to my email list. Here's where something wild happened: Almost 18 people immediately signed-up for the class. But when I asked them to pay the $1,500 fee, every single one of them said they thought the class was free! I was stunned. I re-read my invite. It clearly said there was a hefty fee. All I can figure is that people skimmed the letter, got excited, and just shot back emails to enroll in the class. Or maybe they read the word "fee" as "free." Go figure. But that's not the only odd thing that happened with this class: I had trouble filling it from my own elist. So I went and asked a person with a giant email list if he would promote my class to his people. He would---for fifty percent of the pie. Yowsa! That was a lot, but I wanted to get paid to write my sequel to "Hypnotic Writing," and I'd still end up with good money, anyway. So I agreed. Well, twenty people signed up. And the really oddly wonderful thing is that no one---no one!---did their assignments. So I got their money (half of it, anyway: $15,000), I got paid to write my "Advanced Hypnotic Writing" ebook, and I had no homework to review or grade. What a cool business! Most recently, I announced yet another e-class. I was about to buy a large country estate and wanted more money fast. This new class is on my new proprietary marketing formula, called "Guaranteed Outcome Marketing." I raised the price on this 5-week e-class to signal its value. I asked for $2,500 a person. Since I normally charge $25,000 to create a Guaranteed Outcome Marketing strategy for someone, asking for only $2,500 to teach someone how to do it seemed very fair. I lowered the class size because I wanted to be sure to give each student personal attention. I promoted this class to only my own email list. I got five students. Which meant I raised $12,500. Not bad for a month's "work." And yes, I bought the country estate. I'm writing this article from it. The moral here? There are several: 1. Intention rules: You can float with the circumstances life brings you or you can create you own direction and your own circumstances. It begins with a decision. What do you want? Decide. Choose. Declare. 2. Break the model: Just because others are selling their services for a song doesn't mean you have to, as well. Respect yourself. What are you worth? 3. Go for something other than money: Wanting my Z3 caused my mind to stretch in new ways to raise the money needed to get the car. If I were just going after money for money's sake, I might not think so boldly in my ideas or my pricing. What do you REALLY want? 4. You can do this, too. Just look at what you know that others would pay you to learn. Then turn it into an e-class, complete with lessons and assignments. After the class is over, you might even compile the material into a book. Or a tapeset. Or--? Think big! What would you teach if you had no fears? 5. The spiritual is not separate from the material. Since I've focused on money in this article, it may be easy to declare my focus was only on the dollar. Not so. I used spiritual principles---as outlined in my new book---to create wealth. Once you realize that the spiritual and material are two sides of the same coin, you are free to have happiness as well as cash. As it says on the dollar bill in your pocket, "In God we trust." Do you trust? Finally, yes, I got my Z3. It's a 1999 Montreal Blue stunning piece of rolling beauty. I've never had so much fun in my life driving. In fact, I think I'll aim it up and down some Texas country roads right now...