The Hidden Cost of Selling More Online Courses

Selling online courses was supposed to be the creator’s dream.

Launch once. Sit back. Print cash while watching Notion dashboards populate themselves.

But I’ve been lurking deep in the belly of the beast lately—working behind the scenes with course creators, high-ticket educators, newsletter nerds, and burned-out digital therapists. And here’s what I found:

Selling more courses won’t save you.
At least not in the traditional plug-and-play “info product” way.

The 2025 Thinkific Expert Economy Insider Report drops a stat that should make your stripe notifications shiver:

Only 40.7% of high-earning education businesses ($100k+) even rely on online course platforms anymore.

What do they use instead?
Not what you’d expect. Top 5 tools include:

• Private communities
• Calendar booking
• Social media mgmt
• Email/newsletter platforms
• Membership software

Courses? Background noise.

And yeah—I fell for the course-first trap too. Made one. Burned out. Thought more launches = more money.
Turns out, more launches = more chaos. Especially when the market sees info as a commodity, not a product.

We’re not in the course economy anymore. We’re in the Interpretation Economy now.

And the winners? They’re not selling info.
They’re selling integration. transformation. Identity.  (And they’ve quietly pivoted behind the scenes.)

That’s what we’re going to crack open.

Buckle up, its about to get weird. 

🧃 The $3M Success vs. the $0 Course Cliff selling online courses 

On September 20, 2023, Justin Welsh published a newsletter titled “How to Sell Online Courses (What I’ve Learned from $3,394,480 in Course Sales)”.

It opens like a dream:
📘 The LinkedIn Playbook made $11,781 in its first month.
🛠️ Later, his course The Operating System? Pulled in $94,651 in one go.

Amazing, right?

And yet—if that’s where you stop reading, you’ve fallen headfirst into the Survivorship Bias Swamp.
(Which is what I’m here to drag you out of before you light more money on fire.)

Because on the less-quoted side of the internet, Dr. Alana Rister launched her first course, the Scientific Dissertation Academy.

It started strong—70+ signups for the webinar. But by the end of the week?

Only 15 attended live.
Only 2 purchased.
And then… both requested refunds.
 

(Oof. Twice the transaction fees. Twice the existential dread.)

🚨 This Happens Way More Than You Think

I’ve seen this play out while coaching creators, lurking in Slack channels, buying 20+ info products “for research,” and face-planting my way through failed launches during my own sabbatical.

You start thinking:

“Maybe I just need to sell more courses.”
“Maybe the next one will hit.”
“Maybe it’s the niche. Or the price. Or Mercury retrograde.”

But the truth is: you’re not lacking courses.
You’re lacking a working creator business model.
And that—not your course design skills—is what’s leading to the creator burnout loop and the great course sales plateau.

Here’s the kicker:

“There’s little difference in the technical skill between the successful and failed creators.
The real variable? Their ecosystem.”
(Yes, you can quote me on that.)

And that brings us to the million-dollar question (and what I’ve been obsessively mapping out):

Why do some creators get stuck in this endless launch-loop of burnout and low ROI…
while others build leverage and stop selling their time?

I think I’ve cracked 5 core reasons behind the plateau no one warns you about.

Let’s go full detective-mode.

5 reasons for The Plateau That No One Warns You About Selling Online Courses

This is where the graph stops going up — and you realize your “launch more” strategy might actually be the thing breaking your business.

So there I was, neck-deep in Notion dashboards and launch recaps, trying to figure out why so many creators were burning out despite shipping more courses, experimenting with funnels, and yelling “LEARN FROM ME!” louder than ever.

I started mapping creator journeys like a deranged economist mid-breakdown and what I found wasn’t just one thing.

It was five slippery traps that sneak in and turn your beautiful course dreams into a sad plateau.

And the worst part?
Nobody warns you.

1. Sales Flatten — Even If You Market More

Let’s start with the big slap: more marketing doesn’t guarantee more sales.

Remember the Lighthouse Trap I mentioned earlier?
It’s when you over-educate your audience so well for free that they don’t feel the need to pay.

You’re basically running a free MBA while hoping someone buys the diploma.

“You created a knowledge buffet, but forgot to sell the entrée.”

This is a huge mistake in creator business models — confusing content saturation for conversion. It’s like pouring more gas into a car that has no wheels.

Related Read → Why Giving Too Much Value Hurts Your Sales

2. The Problem Doesn’t Need a Course (It Needs a Solution)

Here’s the awkward truth I learned while unofficially coaching creators during my sabbatical:

Some problems don’t want another course.

They want tools, templates, coaching, done-for-you help — or just a damn shortcut.

According to my own analysis of 17 failed launches (yes, I went full nerd), many of them were trying to educate someone who just wanted the problem solved — not explained.

“Selling a course on how to swim while they’re drowning? Might be the wrong move.”

It relates directly to the Law #5: The Info Product Fallacy

Its just one of the TEN, You can read it in this free guide I’ve written: The Hidden Curriculum of Creator Economy

This is where info product strategy must bow down to buyer psychology.

3. Back-to-Back Launches = No Validation, No Soul

Launching like a factory worker on Red Bull is a trap.I get it. SaaS taught us that momentum = recurring growth. 

But guess what?

Courses are not software. They’re belief systems.

You don’t need velocity. You need validation.
If you’re not doing pre-launch surveys, waitlists, and actual conversations, you’re basically guessing.

And guessing is expensive.
Just ask the creators who built 6-week intensives nobody asked for.

4. Campaigns vs Evergreen: You’re Probably Doing It Wrong

Evergreen sounds sexy, right? Passive income. Sales in your sleep.
But here’s the nuance:

“Most creators go evergreen too soon. It kills urgency and dilutes positioning.”

Evergreen works only when you’re solving a repeatable, low-stakes problem.

 Think: “How to write a newsletter” or “Set up your Notion dashboard”.

But for flagship transformations (like building a business or rewriting your identity)?
That needs a campaign.

Scarcity & urgency aren’t a hack — it’s a positioning tool.
Your launch strategy must align with your product psychology.

5. You’re Launching at the Wrong Time in the Buyer’s Journey

This one hit me late — like a refund request after Stripe fees.

Timing is not just “early” or “late.”
It’s about where your audience is in their mental funnel.

If you launch before they even realize the problem exists, you’re educating into the void.
If you launch after they’ve moved on, they’ve already bought from someone else.

Creators forget that selling online courses isn’t just about curriculum — it’s choreography.

“Your product is the dance. The timing is the music. Miss a beat, lose the sale.”

Knowing when to launch is a meta-skill most creators never build — and it’s costing them real income.

What If the Plateau Isn’t a Failure?

Here’s the twist in the story I didn’t expect:
Maybe the plateau isn’t punishment.

Maybe it’s the checkpoint you hit right before you’re forced to evolve.

Because the truth is, I wasn’t just seeing this in other people.
I saw it in myself — back when I burned out from over-launching, over-building, and under-earning.

And while helping other creators through their chaos, I realized something strange…
The creators who broke past this plateau?

They didn’t scale products.
They scaled Intellectual Assets.

But that…is what we’re getting into next.

Before that consider subscribing

(Writing this piece has taken me upwards of 22+ hours, from all the research to making sense of things and putting it up in a slightly easy-to-digest format.
So for some reason, if you decide to share this piece of content with others on social, it’ll be appreciated (and won’t go unnoticed, so thank you).

The Pivot You Didn’t Expect about Selling Online Courses

I’ve already done an entire Thomas Frank creator blueprint breakdown on him but In 2020, Thomas Frank did something you’re not supposed to do when you’re winning.

He walked away.

Not from failure.
Not from frustration.
But from a 2.9M subscriber YouTube channel—and a thriving creator brand 

Why? Curiosity. 🧠
(Pause for dramatic effect, and let that sink in).

He launched a quiet experiment:
A stripped-down, tutorial-style channel called Thomas Frank Explains. No fluff. No jokes. Just clean, useful instruction—mostly about Notion. 

No one expected it to outperform his flagship channel.

But two years later, here’s what happened:

• 🎥 66 videos
• 📈 245K subscribers
• 💰 More revenue than his main channel ever made
• 🔁 A scalable info product ecosystem—powered by templates, mini-courses, and membership models

Not a course. Not a launch. A system.

One that grew while he slept. Because instead of launching new offers every quarter, he engineered evergreen knowledge assets people kept using—a real info product strategy.

“It’s not about selling online courses. It’s about selling repeatable results.”
— Literally every successful creator you know but didn’t listen to

This is where it clicked for me.

The burnout epiphany I didn’t plan about selling online courses

During my own two-year sabbatical (read: crash), I realized I wasn’t running a business.

I was running a content calendar with a checkout page.

It wasn’t until I accidentally helped other creators with their knowledge business pivots—during my so-called “break”—that I understood the problem:

I wasn’t building a scalable system.
I was building a launch treadmill in disguise.

The problem wasn’t my product. It was the creator business model itself.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Courses don’t scale. Intellectual Assets do.
(We’ll unpack that later.)

This shift—from being a Product Factory to an IA Business—is what saved me from insanity (and a bunch of unofficial clients). Not a launch strategy. Not a funnel. Not a fancy sales page.

The irony? I had to stop selling to figure out how to sell sustainably.

And this pivot? It leads directly to a much bigger realization…

Why the Real Problem Isn’t What You’re Selling… It’s How You’re Operating

You don’t need another launch. You need an operating system.

There. I said it.

And it took me two years of creator burnout, creator therapy (aka Notion), and accidentally coaching others to realize it.

The real problem?
You’re not running a business.
You’re stuck running a glorified launch machine—a creator instead of an Operator.

Here’s the emotional math no one tells you about:

• New offer? Cool. That’s 100+ new decisions to make.
• Launch fatigue? Comes free with every new product.
• Revenue? Spikes like a sugar high—then crashes by Tuesday.

We’ve built creator businesses that simulate success with dopamine dashboards and Stripe screenshots.
But under the hood? 

Broken ops. Leaky funnels. Disconnected assets. A creator business model duct-taped together with Canva graphics.

“Selling online courses won’t save your business if the backend is chaos and your brain is fried.”

What you really need is an Operator mindset—to stop scaling content and start scaling systems.
That’s the business design shift no one warns you about… until you crash.

But once you see it?

You can’t unsee it.

TL;DR – 7 Truths to Tattoo On Your Creator Soul

1. More courses ≠ more income.
2. You’re not scaling. You’re spinning.
3. Course sales don’t plateau. Models do.
4. Creator burnout isn’t a personal flaw—it’s a design flaw.
5. Your info product strategy needs systems, not steroids.
6. Stop launching. Start compounding.
7. The Creator Economy rewards Operators more.
   

Conclusion: Stop Selling More. Start Building Right.

I used to think success was just one course away.
But after hitting burnout twice, helping dozens of creators on sabbatical, and obsessing over their backends (not like that), here’s what I’ve learned:

Selling online courses isn’t the problem.
Operating without a system is.

This isn’t a business—it’s a high-speed dopamine casino.
And when you’re stuck in the “launch-everything” loop, every offer becomes a slot machine.
Every course sales plateau starts to feel personal.
Every dip in revenue whispers: maybe I’m just not good enough.

No.
You’re just not structured enough.

The real leverage comes not from content—but from coordination.
A proper creator business model makes fewer moves, but extracts more from each one.

So stop building course after course.
Start building an ecosystem. A system that thinks. That compounds.

“When you work like a Creator, you burn out. When you think like an Operator, you build wealth.” — Someone who learned the hard way (me).

(Writing this piece has taken me upwards of 22+ hours, from all the research to making sense of things and putting it up in a slightly easy-to-digest format.
So for some reason, if you decide to share this piece of content with others on social, it’ll be appreciated (and won’t go unnoticed, so thank you).

Sudhanshu Pai

Sudhanshu Pai is the writer of THE INFO CREATOR DEPT. He spends his days researching knowledge business, creators economy, why & how 7 fig info business scale (or flop) and generally figuring out how top creator educators to help others get higher return on their expertise.

The deep dives and other content take more than 100 hours to put together, so sharing this content with others on social media will be much appreciated (and won’t go unnoticed.)

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