I’ve been building my course business since 2014. These days, it brings in $86,215 a month!

But trust me, it took me years to figure out what actually works.

Everyone loves to say, “Just do Instagram or TikTok!” But honestly? That’s not where my sales come from.

I wasted a lot of time chasing platforms that never moved the needle.

So now, I’m going to share how I built this business, including the unprofitable years, the platforms that were a waste of time, and the three things that actually helped me get to over $80k per month! 

Getting Started and Early Struggles

I thought starting a second business would be easy. 

After all, I already had a successful jewelry business with tens of thousands of followers, so why wouldn’t selling courses be just as easy?

But here’s the thing nobody really tells you about launching a second business, it’s a completely different ball game.

When I first started teaching, I was anything but a natural. I’ve always been more of a listener than a talker.

I don’t think fast on my feet. I’ve got anxiety especially back then, when I was just getting my course business off the ground.

Plus, I’m pretty shy on top of all that.

Basically, I felt like I had a checklist of all the things working against me.

I saw that course creators seemed naturally charismatic and outspoken, and they always knew the right things to say.

When I first started, I had zero experience with teaching. So I had to figure it out.

I think a lot of people selling courses never actually learn how to teach properly and you can see it in their students’ results and the overall quality of their courses.

That’s why I decided to start by learning. That’s where Craftsy came in.

Craftsy is this amazing platform for creative makers with over 2,000 classes across more than 20 categories such as knitting, cooking, sewing, painting, you name it.

Before I ever launched a course, I took a Craftsy class called How To Teach It by the incredible Gwen Bortner.

Honestly, that class shifted everything for me.

It taught me about instructional design, the psychology of how people actually learn, and how to structure classes in a way that really works.

That course is what kickstarted my entire career as an educator.

Since then, I’ve even taken crochet classes on Craftsy from my friend Stacey Trock and every single time, the classes are super high quality.

That’s because Craftsy works closely with their teachers to create the best possible learning experience.

I can’t recommend them enough.

And here’s the cool part, Craftsy has an offer running right now that you’ll want to grab.

If you’re one of the first 1,000 readers to click this link: https://go.craftsy.com/creativehiveco/, you can get a full year of Premium membership for just $1.49.

Yep, less than the price of your coffee.

For me, this was huge because I actually struggled with school and studying when I was younger.

So now, I totally geek out on learning experiences.

At this point, my philosophy is pretty simple: support people, lift them up, and give them tools they can actually use, not just theories that sound good but don’t go anywhere.

It sounds simple, but when I first started, I thought my success with Tiny Hands, my very first business would give me a head start with my course business.

But it didn’t. I still had to start from scratch.

I tried selling my knowledge and experience to my Tiny Hands audience but no one was interested.

Nobody bought it. That’s when I realized the truth, my Tiny Hands followers just weren’t there for business advice.

They wanted jewelry, not marketing tips. So I literally had to start building my name as a course creator and coach from zero.

Two completely different audiences with completely different needs.

Here’s the hard lesson, you can’t assume your audience from one business will automatically transfer to another even if you’re the same person behind both.

You’ve got to build trust and credibility all over again in your new space.

And that takes time.

But the good news? You can shorten that time depending on how you approach your marketing and I’ll be walking you through exactly how, so keep reading. 

The Platforms That Didn’t Work

When it comes to business, everyone loves to say “find your platform and go all in.”

But what they don’t tell you is how much time you can waste on platforms that just don’t work for your business model.

And trust me, I tried them all.

When I was first starting out, I jumped on Twitter because that’s where all the coaches were sharing their thought-leadership ideas.

The problem was, I’m not witty. I’m not great at squeezing big thoughts into clever one-liners, and I struggled.

So then I moved on to blogging. I wrote about everything happening in my jewelry business, what worked, what flopped, income reports, experiments, reviews, you name it.

And people loved it! Some posts even went viral on Pinterest and started ranking on Google.

I was getting traffic but not sales. I was still stuck.

So then I gave podcasting a shot. Listeners enjoyed the episodes, but wow, they were a lot of work. And once again, the sales just didn’t follow.

I also realized something about myself: I do way better with guests than talking into a mic alone.

But if you’ve ever tried podcasting, you know lining up guests is a whole job in itself.

Even Instagram, the platform everyone swears by while I do post there, it’s not my main source of sales.

So here’s the truth, it’s tough to build real trust on platforms that are all about quick, short attention spans.

I can never fully say what I want in a 60–90 second reel or a single carousel post.

Most of my sales don’t actually come from social media. Instagram and TikTok take up a ton of time and energy to maintain.

And honestly, those algorithms seem to only reward consistent posting, which is a lot of work.

Instead, I focus on what actually moves the needle: paid ads, my email list, word of mouth, and YouTube. The real key? Finding what actually converts for your business, not just what everyone else says works.

The YouTube Breakthrough

I spent years stuck at the same $10,000 per month level.

Which, don’t get me wrong, is amazing but after expenses, it’s not enough to really live on.

It was one platform that changed everything for my business. And that platform is YouTube! 

I have so much fun with it, it’s super rewarding creatively and gives me a platform to share my voice, which feels amazing. But the best part? I started seeing actual sales from my content.

YouTube, being primarily long-form video, gives people the time and space to really experience my teaching style and way of thinking.

Unlike a 60-second reel, they can watch a video and figure out if we’re aligned and if they want to buy.

So many of my course students tell me they watched my YouTube videos before deciding to purchase.

Getting to six figures in my first year with courses was awesome, but it took YEARS to reach the next level.

I was stuck at $10k per month for years, then stuck at $30k per month for even more years.

There were also months where I was completely in the red from overspending, which took time to fix. Once I broke through those plateaus, things moved fast.

I went from $50k per month, to $60k per month, and now I’m at $86k per month.

YouTube has been the best platform for building credibility and trust, which directly translates to sales.

Nothing beats YouTube for conversions in my experience.

So, if you’re thinking about getting into YouTube for your business, I’ve learned there are two major ways to approach it.

There’s the hard way and I did that for several years because that’s what I learned from other courses and coaches on how to do YouTube.

I posted weekly videos for an entire year, then two videos a month for another year. That’s how I hit my first 100,000 subscribers, which is a lot of work.

Some videos totally flopped, even though I spent hours on them and some videos did really well.

But now? I do YouTube the easy way!

I post about once a month, it’s way more sustainable, and I’m actually seeing better results. I even developed a whole system around YouTube that teaches this “easy way.”

It’s a business-owner-first approach, assuming you’re not a full-time content creator with endless time and resources for each video.

As a business owner on YouTube, you need every video you invest time in to really count and make an impact.

Because let’s be real, it’s frustrating to spend hours on a video only to get 12 views.

I go deeper into this in my free YouTube masterclass and if you want to join just click this link: https://tinyurl.com/3fxbjjfc 

Addressing the Biggest Objection

I know what some of you are thinking: if I’m doing so well with my physical product stores, why am I selling courses?

Some people even think that’s kind of scammy. I get it, that’s probably the most common objection I hear. Yes, there are definitely scammy courses out there.

But that doesn’t mean all courses are scams.

So, here’s my take. Diversification is everything when you’re self-employed. If one business hits a rough patch, I have others keeping things afloat.

I never want to be relying on just one income stream and let’s be real, who ever said no to more money?

Some businesses have natural ceilings. Take my jewelry business, I can get it to about $160–180k a year in revenue without much day-to-day effort.

Sounds decent, right? But once you factor in California living costs, it’s not enough.

If I wanted to grow it bigger, I’d have to grind harder, put in way more work, and I’ve tried that.

Some businesses just hit their limit. My jewelry brand serves a very specific niche, and that niche can only stretch so far.

Then there’s our print-on-demand wall art business. We found a sweet spot, several hundred thousand in sales per year, without working full time.

Sure, it could make even more if we pushed, but that takes a ton of effort and it’s not what’s fun for us.

Right now, I’m way more passionate about teaching, the market for education is massive and teaching lets me reach way more people than I ever could with just my physical products.

Having multiple income streams isn’t a sign that one business is failing.

It’s a smart strategy.

I started thinking this way years ago because I knew I couldn’t rely on just one thing and now I see so many people realizing the same truth: putting all your eggs in one basket is a recipe for disaster.

Different businesses grow at different speeds, need different levels of involvement, and hit different ceilings.

The goal is figuring out the right mix that gives you both financial security and personal fulfillment.

The Real Truth About Course Businesses

Now that we’ve addressed the elephant in the room, let me tell you what creating a course business really takes.

It’s definitely not what most people think. Selling a digital course is way harder than selling a physical product.

Why? Because it’s intangible and building trust is way trickier. With my jewelry, you can see the product and know exactly what you’re getting.

With courses, there are a million moving parts just to get a funnel that actually sells. You can’t just throw up a product page and expect sales unless it’s a super low-ticket offer.

You have to create an entire experience with funnels. And trust me, there are dozens of ways a funnel can flop and become unprofitable.

I was stuck in that stage for years, slowly optimizing different parts to get where I am now.

It’s not passive income, it’s more like leveraged income.

I spend most of my week on my course business making content, supporting students, developing new offers, marketing, managing my team.

There were plenty of unprofitable months. My course business was slower to take off compared to others who started at the same time.

Part of that was me not wanting to make claims I didn’t feel comfortable with about what my course could do.

I built my course by pre-selling it and creating it as we went along for an entire year.

Sure, I can work faster now, but making a comprehensive course that actually gets results takes time.

I also had to work hard on being comfortable with myself and my flaws, so I could show my version of charisma without trying to be someone else.

That took years of practice, therapy, self-improvement, and working through anxiety and overthinking.

And here’s the reality of the numbers: that $86k is revenue, not pure profit. About 40% is actual profit.

30% goes to marketing and ads, 10% to my team, 10% to continuing education like investing in courses and coaching for myself and 10% to software.

So take-home? Roughly $34k per month.

If you want a long-term course business, it takes attention, optimization, and delivering real value. You have to make a good course, or word will spread that it’s not, and people will stop buying.

The idea that courses are “passive income” is a total myth.

It sets unrealistic expectations, leads to disappointment, and makes people give up too early.

It’s competitive, and putting in half the effort just isn’t enough. If you want to be successful, you do have to put in serious time and effort.

What Actually Works

If you sell a course, you might have heard that people are saying webinars are dead.

Well, not for me. In fact, I’m having more success with webinars now than I did in the past six years combined.

Webinars are where most of my sales come from. What didn’t work was following those big cookie-cutter templates like Russell Brunson’s.

I tried them all, every expert had their own “perfect” style, and I gave most of them a shot. But I struggled to turn a profit that way.

So I made MY OWN webinar basically methodically creating my own version of the best bits of everyone’s styles, inserting my own teachings and also removing the bad parts that just don’t work.

That’s when conversion rates and sales increased dramatically.

I just love sharing what I know but getting there took work, especially learning to be comfortable on camera.

Once I leaned into that authentic approach and stopped trying to be someone I’m not, everything changed.

So, a lot of my success came when I stopped trying to fit into other people’s formulas and created my own approach based on my strengths and my audience’s needs.

Getting to over $80k per month with my course business came down to three things:

1. Testing what actually works for MY audience
2. Staying authentic to my style of teaching and marketing instead of copying other people
3. Focusing on the platforms that actually convert rather than chasing trends.

The biggest breakthrough was YouTube. It became my #1 source for organic traffic and sales.

But more importantly, it’s where I built trust with my audience and that’s what actually sells courses.

So now you’re probably wondering: what should you focus on to build a successful online biz?

That’s exactly what I break down in the next blog. 

After building multiple six- and seven-figure businesses, I’ve realized something important.

There are really just 4 core skills that separate successful business owners from those still stuck spinning their wheels.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re selling handmade stuff, digital courses, or pretty much anything else online, these skills are what move the needle.

So if you’re ready to find out what those 4 skills are and how to actually build them, go read it here: https://tinyurl.com/y4s6bx3r

And if you want to learn the specific YouTube strategy that helped me build this business, I also have a free class, join here: https://tinyurl.com/3fxbjjfc 

Building an $86K/month course business didn’t happen overnight and it definitely didn’t happen by following someone else’s playbook.

It took years of trial and error, facing plateaus, starting from scratch, and learning to trust my own voice.

I had to let go of what “should” work and focus on what actually works, for me, my audience, and my business.

You don’t need to be the loudest, the most polished, or the trendiest to win in this space.

So if you’re ready to build something real, sustainable, and profitable, stop chasing trends and start getting strategic.Your business doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s.