How much money do you have to invest in your business before you will see a return on your investment? This is a question that most people will ask themselves when it comes to running any kind of paid advertising, and if this is you then this blog post is just what the doctor ordered! Let’s get into it …

I was asked this question on a Facebook Live interview that I was featured on in August of this year. If I remember rightly the guy who asked the question was an online course creator who taught people how to play the piano (or some musical instrument)

I can remember that he was charging $497 for the course which was a one-stop shop for learning the piano, and took the member from a very basic understanding of how to play chords and gave them enough skill to hold their own in front of a crowd of people. It was the basic online course setup. He had the modules with structured lessons and a few bonuses that helped the member achieve their goals a little quicker than normal.

Now I have been creating online courses for around 2 years and I happen to know a thing or two about structuring them. But this wasn’t the question. His question was in relation to a campaign he had just set up and he was trying to figure out how much money he would have to spend on Facebook Ads in order to get his first 10 or 20 members.

At this point, I asked him how much he had spent on advertising his course in the past, to which he proudly stated that he hadn’t had to spend a penny on ads. I then asked him how many students he had in his course and he replied with around 12. Lastly, I asked him how he had attracted these 12 people and what price he had charged, and he replied with something along the lines of giving away 6 places for free in order to get some testimonials and feedback on the training, and the rest had been either his current private education students and their friends and family.

I remember asking him how much he was currently spending on running his course and he was proud to say that it wasn’t costing him anything as he had set up the course within a closed Facebook group and used the social learning theme to upload all the course videos to the groups' units.

When I asked him how much he needed to make per month for him to be in a position where he could earn a full-time income from the course he replied with around $12,000. And here was his first mistake. 

Business Isn’t Free:

I would love to know when business became free and easy. When did the shift happen from having to work 20 hour days and 3 jobs just to keep your business afloat in the first 24 months? When did everything get so easy? When did the transition happen that took the hard graft out of developing an idea and believing in it when all others around you told you that you had lost your mind?

Now business is free and easy! I can take an idea and build it out without having to spend a penny of the software, platforms, or even ads that I once relied on, in order to get my project off the ground! Alas, we all know this is not the case!

Is it impossible to make $12,000 per month? Not in any way! You can make $12,000 per month, you can make $12,000 per day, you can even make $12,000 per hour if your organisation has the right ingredients. But let me tell you right now that these ingredients do not include finding the shortcuts needed in order to save the dollars wherever you can.

I started my very first business at the age of 8, buying and selling random crap out of a big, yellow, free newspaper. I made myself a list of my customers in an old, school textbook and I would call them up each time I thought a product had the potential to sell. 8 years old, no money, no resources, no internet or mobile phone, just a pen, paper, and a landline telephone belonging to my mum who would only let me make calls for 1 hour after I came home from School.

I managed to sell products for $10, $60, and