My $700 night - How I did it

Introduction

A while back I reported on a $150 night, and now I'd like to share about my $700 night.
Here's how I did it.
1. I taught a free 8 week LIVE ZOOM course. It was one hour per week for eight straight weeks. The topic was one in which I had expertise.

2. I sent an email to a list of 350 subscribers inviting them to the event. 120 registered, and 50 showed up.

3. During the eight week event, I sent 2-3 informative emails per week highlighting important lessons from the previous week or upcoming week. This kept interest high as 40-50 people showed up for the training every week, without fail.
4. On the final night, I made an appeal for donations for the course and for the work that I do teaching others the same material they had just learned. I setup a donation page using Paypal buttons and also offered some bonuses for the donations. I had two options: $20 and $50 donations.
5. I sent 6 emails that same week. Two announcing the final class, and four follow ups with more lessons but the same appeal for donations. On the final day, Friday, I sent two emails, one a regular lesson + appeal and another at 10:00 PM making one final appeal and adding one final bonus PDF.

Here are the results:

1. 120 new email subscribers + 120 registered students + 45 regular attendees to the course
2. $700 in donations / sales not counting affiliate sales or other ebook sales
3. Several Amazon affiliate sales on the side as I recommended different books during the training
4. Several purchases of my ebook ($7.99) which I never promoted but people wanted the class in written form so they purchased on their own
5. A ton of goodwill and testimonials
6. Incredible bonding with the right audience
7. 8 hours of quality recordings to create another course or additional products

A few final comments

This traction is only the result of embracing a few key principles:

1. The importance of building and serving an audience FIRST

We all hear about the know, like and trust factor. When an audience trusts you, and they know that you have their best interest in mind, selling becomes effortless.

2. I took all the risk

What I offered my audience was essentially me taking on all the risk. I could have charged up front, but I wanted to build a bigger audience of people and students and give them something of incredible value up front.

2. Going with my expertise and passion

When you love and know what you teach, there is a certain invisible influence which comes across. Again, it simply makes selling almost superfluous.