What is an Evergreen Course? How Coaches Can Launch One

Looking to add a second income stream to your coaching or consulting business?

There is no better way to scale your revenue than by selling a course. For coaches and consultants who are wary of the fits and starts that come with course launches, I have the solution for you: sell an evergreen course.

In this guide, I’ll show you what an evergreen course is, how to launch one that can scale your business and add a new stream of passive income, and give you a step-by-step plan to follow. 

What is an Evergreen Course?

Unlike your typical course launch that follows a timed launch sequence, with a specific start and end date, an evergreen course can be bought at any time. 

While course launches are certainly never short on excitement, an evergreen course can be attractive to coaches and service business owners who want to make a little passive income without preparing their list for a massive launch every few months. 

Once your course is live on your website, you can drive traffic to it from your email list or through SEO/ads and watch those sales come in. You can always update your course as information needs to be updated and share updates with previous customers as a value-add and guarantee for new customers worried that information could be outdated. 

How an Evergreen Course is Different From a Traditional Launch

How an Evergreen Course is Different From a Traditional Launch

You probably get the gist, but let’s break down the differences between an evergreen course and a traditional launch to compare the two:

  • Availability: Evergreen courses are always open for enrollment while launches are available only during specific time periods.
  • Relevancy: Unlike course launches which run in short bursts and may not run again, an Evergreen course should always be relevant (or need minor tweaks to stay relevant). Trendy or time-sensitive topics are not usually good options for an evergreen course.
  • Marketing strategy: An evergreen course requires a continuous, steady marketing plan. Launches require intense, concentrated marketing campaigns in a shorter stretch of time. 
  • Revenue: Evergreen courses can generate steady, consistent income. Launches tend to lead to spikes of high income during launch periods. This makes evergreen courses a more passive source of income than launches.
  • Scalability: Evergreen courses are highly scalable with minimal additional effort. Launches can be repeatable but since each course is different they may require more resources for each launch.
  • Time invested: Evergreen courses front-load the effort with ongoing maintenance.  Launches tend to lead to cyclical, intense periods of work.

Who Are Evergreen Courses For?

Evergreen courses offer some clear benefits to coaches looking for more passive income, but they’re not for everyone.

An evergreen course is especially good if you:

  • Have experience selling courses. You’ll learn a lot through course launches that can then help make your evergreen course more successful.
  • Have a growing email list and good inbound traffic to your site. A consistent audience makes it easier to sell your course repeatedly over the long haul.
  • Are looking for steady and sustainable growth rather than big spikes in revenue.

Even though an evergreen course technically does not follow the same pattern and schedule that a course launch would, my course launch guide and course launch checklist will be helpful in promoting your evergreen course (check out the download below to snag my launch checklist).

The Ultimate Online Course Launch Checklist

The Ultimate Online Course Launch Checklist

Use this checklist to take action with your online course today! 

Pros and Cons of Evergreen Courses vs. Launches

It’s not always a clear-cut answer as to whether an evergreen course or a launch is better. For instance, I launch new courses in my shop every month and keep them there as an evergreen source of revenue.

Let’s review the pros and cons of evergreen courses vs course launches.

Pros and Cons of an Evergreen Course

Pros and Cons of Evergreen Courses vs. Launches

Here’s a quick rundown of the pros and cons of selling an evergreen course.

Pros of an evergreen course

The advantages of selling an evergreen course are:

  • It can generate a consistent income stream. This assumes you have good traffic to your website and an email list to sell to (granted, that’s the case for a course launch too).
  • An automated sales process - you don’t have to prep any launch sequences. Simply allow people to come to your website and purchase the course whenever they want.
  • Flexibility for students. They can take it at any time and not feel the pressure to rush a buying decision or put it off until the next launch.
  • Scalability for you and your business. An evergreen course is truly passive once it’s live on your site, though you’ll still want to run promos periodically. 

Cons of an evergreen course

An evergreen course has its downsides to be aware of. These cons include:

  • With less of a time pressure on enrolling during the launch, it will be easier for students to justify purchasing later.
  • You will need to continuously market the course. This means ensuring your website gets a steady stream of traffic, your email list continues to grow, and your landing page converts at a high rate. It’s not a concentrated marketing campaign like a launch, but it will be spread out over a longer period. 
  • If your course is a success and you sell to hundreds of students, it will be much harder to provide personalized support at scale than a launch with a finite number of students.

How to Create an Evergreen Course (The Easy Way)

How to Create an Evergreen Course (The Easy Way)

While an evergreen course is a fantastic way to add some passive income to your business, there’s no way around it: creating a course can be time-consuming and expensive. 

By our estimates, it can cost up to $5,000 to create a course from scratch! Fortunately, I’ve got a solution for you: PLR. 

PLR (private label rights) allows you to purchase a course that you can tweak and brand in minutes and then sell on your website. PLR is the single best way to launch an evergreen course because it does all the hard work for you! Some PLR courses (like the ones in my shop) come with marketing materials and a sales funnel to speed up your sales process too.

If you want to create an evergreen course that can help scale your coaching or service business past six figures, I’ve got five easy steps for you to follow:

  • Choose a course topic
  • Purchase a PLR course
  • Edit to match your brand
  • Set up your funnel
  • Launch

Choose a Course Topic

Start things off by choosing the right course topic and you'll set your course up for success from the get-go. I’ve got a few quick tips for you to pick the right course topic:

  • Start with your audience - what do they care about or have trouble with?
  • What gaps are there in the market that you can fill?
  • What topic aligns with your main offering?

Pick something that solves a problem and aligns with your business and it’s hard to go wrong. 

Remember that a good topic for an evergreen course will stay relevant longer than a course launch. Avoid trendy or time-sensitive topics in favor of courses your audience will crave for many months (or years) to come. 

Purchase a PLR Course

Next up, purchase a PLR course that matches your topic. 

I’ve got tons of PLR courses available in my shop across a variety of topics. From small business skills to sales tactics and marketing, check out my shop to find a course (and snag a 30% discount at the end of this post!). 

The Ultimate Online Course Launch Checklist

The Ultimate Online Course Launch Checklist

Use this checklist to take action with your online course today! 

Edit to Match Your Brand

While PLR courses get you 90% of the way there, you still need to customize them a bit to match your tone and brand. 

Follow these steps to quickly customize your course and prep it for launch:

  • Read through it and note your edits for tone/style
  • Give it a new title
  • Make your edits and add your branding
  • Break up content as needed for a unique flow
  • Convert to PDF or other media

Check out my guide to customizing PLR content for a deeper dive.

Set up Your Course Funnel

Now that your course is ready to sell, let’s set up a sales funnel on your website to drive traffic to your new evergreen course.

For an evergreen course, you’ll need a basic sales funnel that includes:

  • A landing page for your course
  • Automated payments from your websites
  • A series of emails to send to your list periodically to promote your course
  • The ability to automatically deliver your course after payment. 

Check out my guide to creating a course sales funnel for a deeper dive into this with examples! I’ve also written up a guide to writing a course landing page that converts like crazy, so check that one out too as you write yours.

Launch

Now you have all the pieces and place, so it’s time to launch!

A traditional course launch will include a presell sequence and sales sequence, but an evergreen course won’t need those. All you need to do is take your course live and drive traffic to it from your site. 

You can jumpstart sales a bit though by trying out the following:

  • Soft launch to a small group for feedback
  • Create a marketing plan for ongoing promotion
  • Leverage your existing network and platforms to spread the word
  • Consider using paid advertising to reach a wider audience
  • Promote our course to your email list periodically

Thanks to the magic of PLR, you could purchase and prepare a course for launch in a weekend. Not a bad exchange of time if it adds a new passive revenue stream to your business.

Tips for Success in Launching Your Evergreen Course

Before you skip to the end to download your free checklist (and get a 30% discount on my shop), here are a few final tips for success that I’ve seen work well on our website and my customers. 

  • Choose a topic that will stay relevant: Trendy topics like AI or the latest feature on Facebook may quickly become yesterday’s news for your audience. I recommend choosing topics that will stay relevant so you can confidently feature your course on your site.
  • Monitor the news and update your course quickly: If you still want to sell a course on a trendy topic, you’ll need to put in the work to stay up to date on your industry and edit your course as needed.
  • Break your course up: A “hack” for easily updating your course is to break it into bite-sized chunks. That way you don’t have to re-shoot lengthy videos or re-write entire modules. Break the course up and edit chunks to keep the information fresh. The bonus here is this creates a much better learning experience for your students!

Ready to Launch Your Evergreen Course? Download My Course Launch Checklist and Get a 30% Discount on Any PLR Course

Eager to launch your new evergreen course?

Now that you know what’s involved in launching your online course, it’s time to take action and start transforming lives as you generate new income for yourself.  Your next step is to download my free online course launch checklist!

Click the button below to request your free guide and watch those sales roll in.

Click here to subscribe

Enjoy!

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