Over the past few weeks, we’ve been getting so many questions from our community about mini-courses.
Questions about whether they’re right for you, how to get started, what a “mini-course” even means, and whether you actually need a big audience to make it work.
So I figured: why not dedicate an entire episode to answering your biggest questions all in one episode?
That’s exactly what we’re doing today.
Let’s dive in.
Question #1: “What exactly is a mini-course? Isn’t it just a regular course?”
A mini-course is not a traditional online course.
Traditional online courses are huge.
We’re talking 10, 15, 20+ hours of content, eight modules, dozens of videos, and twelve weeks of lessons.
They take months to build, they’re hard to sell, and most people who buy them never finish them.
A mini-course is the opposite of that.
It’s focused. It’s tight. It solves one specific problem, delivers one clear result, and it’s usually just one to three hours of video content.
Students can complete it in a weekend, which means they actually get results - and that changes everything.
Think of it this way…
Instead of teaching someone everything about productivity, you teach them how to stop procrastinating.
Instead of a complete dog training course, you teach how to stop leash pulling.
Instead of all of email marketing, you teach how to write a welcome sequence that converts.
One problem. One solution. One clear outcome.
That’s a mini-course.
Question #2: “Do I need to be a certified expert to create a mini-course?”
No. You don’t need a certificate, a degree, or a credential to create a mini-course.
What you need is to be 1-2 steps ahead of the people you’re teaching. That’s it.
You don’t need to be the world’s leading authority. You just need to have solved a problem that your audience is currently struggling with.
There’s a concept called the “Curse of Knowledge,” and it basically means that the more you know about something, the harder it is to see how valuable that knowledge is to someone who doesn’t know it yet.
What feels obvious to you after years of experience is something someone else would happily pay to learn.
So ask yourself:
What have you figured out that you wish someone had just told you earlier?
What did you spend years learning through trial and error that you could shortcut for someone else?
That’s your mini-course.
Question #3: “I don’t have a large Substack audience. Can I still sell a mini-course?”
This might be the number one objection I hear, so let me be very direct: you do NOT need a large audience to successfully sell a mini-course.
We’ve seen creators with small audiences generate thousands of dollars from their first mini-course launch.
That’s because it’s not about quantity, it’s about alignment.
A small, engaged audience that trusts you is infinitely more valuable than a massive, cold audience that doesn’t.
A hundred engaged Substack readers who open every issue and reply to your posts are more than enough to generate your first $1,000 in mini-course sales.
And, paradoxically, launching a mini-course actually accelerates your audience growth.
When you have a product, you have a reason to show up more consistently, create better content, and promote more frequently - which builds your audience at the same time you’re generating revenue.
You don’t need to wait until you hit some magic subscriber number. You can start now and grow while you earn.
Question #4: “How do I know if my mini-course topic will actually sell?”
The biggest mistake I see creators make is building a course nobody actually wants.
Here’s the framework I use…
Ask yourself whether your topic is a painkiller or a nice-to-have.
A nice-to-have is something people know is good for them, but they don’t urgently need it.
A painkiller is something people desperately want because they’re in pain right now.
Painkiller topics sell. Nice-to-haves struggle.
So, how do you find your painkiller topic?
Look at your data. What posts on Substack get the most replies, the most likes, the most DMs?
What questions does your audience ask you repeatedly?
Run a simple poll in your next issue and ask: “What’s your single biggest struggle with [your niche] right now?”
The answers will tell you exactly what to build.
💻 Want a profitable mini-course idea tailored specifically to you?
Answer a few quick questions, and I’ll personally suggest a mini-course idea based on your background, skills, and audience.
It’s free. Takes two minutes. And it might be the most valuable thing you do today.
→ [Get your personalized mini-course idea here]
Question #5: “How long will it take me to create a mini-course?”
I hear this one a lot, especially from Substack writers who are already publishing weekly, managing a full-time job, maybe raising kids.
Time feels like the scarcest resource.
A mini-course can realistically be created in 7 to 14 days, even if you can only carve out 1 to 2 hours a day.
Why so fast? Because of the focused nature of a mini-course.
You’re not trying to teach everything.
You’re teaching one thing, in one clear sequence, with a specific outcome in mind.
That constraint is actually a feature, not a bug. It forces you to cut the fluff and deliver only what matters.
Compare that to a traditional course, which might take six months and still feel incomplete.
A mini-course? Two weeks. You record your lessons, set up your platform, and launch.
And once it’s built, it keeps selling while you’re writing, sleeping, or on vacation.
The initial upfront time investment pays dividends for years.
Question #6: “What if I put in all this effort and nobody buys?”
Nobody wants to spend two weeks building something and then hear crickets.
The key is to validate before you build.
Before you record a single lesson, you can run what’s called a pre-order launch.
You create a simple page, describe your course idea, and open it up for early-bird buyers at a discounted price.
If people buy (even just a handful), you know the idea has potential.
Only then do you build it.
This does two things: it confirms demand before you invest significant time, and it literally pays you to create the course.
Imagine getting your first sales notification before you’ve recorded your first lesson.
That’s the pre-order strategy in action.
And even if your first launch doesn’t hit your goals, every launch teaches you something.
You learn what messaging resonated, what objections your audience had, what to tweak next time.
The creators who succeed aren’t the ones who get it perfect the first time. They’re the ones who ship fast, learn, and iterate.
Question #7: “What price should I charge for a mini-course?”
Most first-time creators drastically underprice. They think a short course means a cheap course, and that’s just not true.
Mini-courses typically sell best in what I call the “impulse-friendly” range.
Think $37 - $150.
These price points are high enough to signal real value, but low enough that your audience doesn’t need to overthink the purchase.
What you should absolutely avoid is pricing based on the length of the course.
A two-hour course that solves a $10,000 problem should not be priced at $29. Price based on the transformation your course delivers, not the number of videos.
One more thing: don’t be afraid to charge what your expertise is worth.
Underpricing communicates low value.
A confident price communicates confidence in your results.
Question #8: “Don’t I need fancy tech or a big production setup to create a course?”
Many of the best-performing mini-courses out there were recorded on a laptop webcam with a built-in mic.
Nothing fancy.
Remember, your students are buying your knowledge, your framework, your experience - not your lighting setup or your studio-quality microphone.
Yes, make sure to get the basic quality right - but it doesn’t have to be a Hollywood production.
Here’s my tech-stack:
Loom to record and edit the videos
Canva to create my slides
Notion to keep track of all my tasks
Teachable to host and sell the course
(Other tools you can use to host and sell your course are Thinkific, Kajabi, and Gumroad.)
Question #9: “Can my mini-course actually generate passive income, or is that just hype?”
Is it completely passive from day one?
No.
You still have to build the product and set up the systems first.
But once that’s done, a mini-course is about as close to a true passive income stream as I’ve seen in the online business world.
After you’ve created it, you can design simple systems to sell your course on autopilot (like automated email sequences, linking to it from your content, etc.).
For example, when I was training for my Ironman triathlon - which takes about 20 hours per week - my mini-courses kept generating revenue even though I couldn’t spend as much time on my business as usual.
That’s when I fully experienced the level of freedom that digital products provide.
Question #10: “This sounds great, but where do I even start?”
The starting point of creating a mini-course is to choose the right topic for it.
If you need my help with this, all you have to do is fill in the form below, answer a few quick questions, and I’ll personally suggest a mini-course idea based on your background, skills, and audience:
→ [Get your personalized mini-course idea here]
It’s completely, and it only takes you a few minutes.
