Do You Need a Big Audience to Sell Courses? How to Sell No Matter Your Audience Size

I’m sure you’re no stranger to small excuses when it comes to your business. 

I can’t hire someone, my standards are too high! I can’t fire that troublesome client, I need the revenue! I can’t sell courses or digital products, my audience is too small!

That last one is especially common for coaches and consultants dipping their toes into the water of selling online courses to generate passive income. 

Audience size is one of the top reasons coaches don’t decide to go for it and sell a course (time is the other excuse). Do you really need a big audience to sell courses? And how big does it have to be to make meaningful sales? I’ll answer these questions and more in this guide.

Why Your Audience Matters

For a coach or consultant, your audience (no matter its size) is the key to your success. When you’re starting out, building an audience should be your top priority for the following reasons:

While your audience is the heart of your business, having a large audience isn’t everything.

A tight-knit band of devoted followers could actually perform better and drive more sales than a larger audience filled with disinterested subscribers. This is why understanding how to maximize the value of smaller audiences and strategic audience growth are such important topics for your article.

Can You Sell Courses With a Small Audience?

Big audiences make it easier to sell digital products, but it’s absolutely possible to sell courses successfully to a small audience. 

In fact, small audiences give you a few advantages (at least early on):

While it’s hard to deny that an audience of 1,000 can lead to more sales than 100, a small audience is not a good excuse to delay selling digital products. A small but engaged audience can provide quicker, more direct feedback from your prospective customers, which can lead to better engagement and stronger sales. 

The key is understanding that audience QUALITY matters more than quantity—so don’t build a big audience just for the sake of it. Start off with 10 raving fans and scale it up to 100, and so on. If you have the right people on your list and if your message is clear, you will make sales.

How to Grow Your Audience

While it’s possible to sell courses and other digital products to a small audience, the bigger your audience grows, the easier it will be to build a profitable business on top of it. 

But don’t let any so-called marketing gurus fool you. Growing your audience can be time-consuming and tricky to accomplish. If your email list is stuck in the double digits, make growing it a top priority (with the caveat that your growth should be highly targeted). 

When it comes to building an audience, subscribers are a function of two things:

Read on as I detail how to improve both sides of this equation to unlock new growth for your audience.

How to Get More Traffic

Your first step is to get traffic to your website so you can get in front of potential customers. Traffic comes in two forms: earned and paid. Both will require an investment from you: either time or money, and sometimes both. 

The top four channels you can try are:

Earning traffic can be a lengthy process, but if your budget is tight or you want to DIY things, it’s probably the best way to go. If you have a healthy budget and are comfortable buying ads, then that will be your quickest way to grow traffic to your website. 

Check out my guide to 20 channels to build your audience and promote an online course for a deeper dive into these channels and more.

How to Convert More Leads

There’s really just one straightforward way to turn visitors into leads: lead magnets. 

Lead magnets are freebies, downloadables, or gated content you give access to in exchange for an email address. They can take many forms, but popular (and effective) formats include:

People may not immediately buy from you (an estimated 3% are ready to purchase at any given moment), but a much larger percentage will be willing to download a lead magnet. The lead magnet must be enticing enough to attract your customer and convey sufficient value for them to hand over their email address. As you build this audience, you can nurture them to make a sale further down the line. 

Check out my guide to growing your audience with lead magnets here for a full walkthrough on this.

Ready to Sell Courses That Scale Your Business? Download the Free Online Course Checklist

You have the keys to success in building an audience to sell your online course to, but we’re just scratching the surface. When launching an online course, you'll need to tick an almost maddening set of boxes to succeed. 

Fortunately, you do not need to tick them on your own. We compiled the ultimate course launch checklist that you can review to ensure your course is profitable right out of the gate and builds your business a steady stream of passive income.

Enjoy!