In this article I want to share with you how much revenue I was able to create with my online courses, books and templates over the last 7 months.

I'll share with you a few graphs, some interesting numbers and a few learnings. Okay. Let's start. So how much money did I make?

The short answer: not much

During these 7 months. my courses, books and templates created about 3202 dollars in revenue.

That's basically the same amount of money than two and half days of freelancing work where I would prepare and run a small workshop 😅

Fortunately, I don't run the Swiss Innovation Academy in order to get a salary. I do it for the passion of sharing, and the money helps cover a part of the backstage costs.

Graphs! we want graphs

So I've crunched the numbers and played with a few graphs. So here is what I  was able to learn.

Which platforms works better?

I sell my books both on this website, using. Podia, and on Amazon. On Amazon I have only two books listed, and on Podia I have everything (courses, books, templates, etc).

It's basically a fifty-fifty situation. I nearly make as much money with only two books on Amazon than with all the stuff you can find on the Swiss Innovation Academy website.

Which "products" sell better?

Let's look now a bit more in the details. If we look the paid products that I sell on the Swiss Innovation Academy (without Amazon) here is how each product performs.

Interestingly, I make nearly as much money with the video course than with the book on the Service Design Principles. Even if I sold less than 10 video courses 🧐

So, highly priced products work quite well not in popularity but in revenue.

The new contents I've created which didn't have a fan audience (the workshop stuff for example), is still quite young and therefore doesn't make much money.

Numbers! We want numbers!

Okay, so that gives a bit of an overview. Now, what can we learn from the precise numbers?

Does upselling work?

With Podia you have the possibility to offer a deal to someone who is about to buy something. After crushing the numbers here what I learned:

About 10% of the revenue on Podia in the last 7 months comes from upselling.

So definitely, upselling works pretty well for me. I usually offer a 50% discount on a related product, so it's a pretty sweat deal 😎

Do coupons work?

Over the last 7 month I gave coupons out in blog articles, at the end of each course and on social media. Did that work out? Here what I learned from the numbers:

Less than 1% of the revenue on Podia in the last 7 months comes from coupons.

So in short: coupons don't work for me.

How much did I work for that?

I worked 491 hours over the last 7 months for the Academy.

So if the revenue was my salary I would be paid 6,5$ per hour. But about 50% would go for taxes. So, I worked for about 3,25$ an hour 😂 Thank god, this is a passion 🤓

What does this all mean?

Here a few personal reflexions of what these numbers and graphs mean for me.

I should work more on marketing

At this stage of the project my goal is simple: produce as much content as possible. I'm giving myself about 6 more months in order to create a big database of content on innovation and service design.

But during that time, I'm basically not doing much marketing work outside of sharing news on Linkedin and Twitter.

So the numbers are low, but I think the fact that I'm not really investing in marketing surely doesn't help.

I'm not a well-know guy, so people don't come to me. I have to come to them. But this part of the job is planned basically for next year and I'll need to get help from someone on that.

Amazon works without much work

I don't invest any time on making my Amazon Profile look great or improving the product listings, and still it makes about half of the total revenue. So next year, when I'll be focusing more on marketing, I'll have to work hard on Amazon to see if this can be made even better.

Highly priced products make money

Even with just a few sales, highly priced. products like the video course really make good money. Also they take a shit load of time to create.

The video course took me about a month of work (and I already had the raw content)! When a book on the history of Service Design, took me about a week of work. And made only half as much money. So three times less work, and only half the money.

Don't go all-in directly

I find it particularly interesting as it shows that if you had to live only as an educational content creator things would be though! That's why I'm so happy to be able to have a part time job as an innovation coach at the Salvation Army (which is obviously paid pretty badly) and be able to do freelance work (that pays better but doesn't happen often).

So starting slowly with the Academy, was really a good decision. I can focus on creating content without being stressed by the numbers. 

That's it

I hope this level of transparency was interesting for you 😉 If you want more information or have any question, just leave me a message on Linkedin.

— Written on July 18, 2019