Case Study: Free Course Generates $200K a Month

The motto to this might be, “Why sell a product when you can make so much more money giving it away?”

The idea itself is nothing new. In the late 90’s marketers were giving away PDF’s chock full of affiliate links.

Then came articles and blogposts that did the same thing.

What’s interesting about this case study is both the size of the free course – a whopping 18 hours – and also how fast this is working.

Jordan Brown created an extensive drop shipping course and uploaded it to YouTube two months ago as of this writing. In those 2 months he has garnered 2 million views and a monthly income of $200K.

Did you catch that??

2 Months – 2 Million Views – $200K Monthly Income

Jordan’s goal was to create the #1 free course on the topic, covering everything from the basics of drop shipping to case studies to niches, products, suppliers, legalities and more.

He says it took him a year to make the course along with a plethora of short form content he uses to drive traffic to the course.

He and his team run multiple Instagram accounts along with TikTok and YouTube shorts.

Making the course free overcomes several hurdles:

1: He only needs to sell people on checking out the course, not on buying it. It’s vastly easier to get someone to click a link and start watching, versus shelling out money to get access.

2: He doesn’t need to prove his course is good. People can simply dive in and start watching it for themselves. There are a lot of shady courses out there charging big bucks for little or no benefit, making people leery of paid courses.

3: Customers have a much higher expectation for a paid course. Making the course free means it’s easier to make.

4: He gets a ton of free exposure because he’s giving away huge value for free, leading to increased brand awareness.

5: The course acts as a powerful lead magnet. Jordan collects email addresses and heavily promotes his paid community.

How does he make money?

Under his video there are affiliate links to the many tools a person needs to successfully run a drop shipping business.

In fact, as of this writing he has 17 different links, with Shopify being the main earner.

He also makes money with YouTube ads.

And most of all, he’s promoting his own $97 a month membership, called ‘Jordan’s Library Private Community.’

Keep in mind that Jordan hired 4 people to help him do this and he spent $50,000 to get it done.

More importantly, he also already had vast experience in the topic before he created the course.

Now then for the most important part…

How Can You Use This Strategy?

It comes down to this:

Either have expertise in the chosen niche or partner with someone who does.

Find tools with affiliate programs that are needed to get the results your students seek. If there are no affiliate programs you can promote, then find another niche.

Create a free course and/or other content that shares your expertise and promotes the affiliate programs.

Get traffic through social media, paid search, affiliates and JV’s. If your course is truly awesome, hit the podcast circuit and tell the world about it.

Create a paid membership for those who are serious about their success, offering benefits such as discounted or included software, products, forums, help, coaching or whatever works. Don’t be afraid to charge $97 a month for it, either.