Five Micro Pilots for One Big Course: Ellen Finkelstein on Testing Before Building

Ellen started her career writing technical books for publishers like McGraw-Hill and Wiley. One of her books ran to 1,200 pages and retailed for $50 — earning her a 10 percent royalty on the wholesale price, or about $2.50 per copy. When she realized she could write an ebook, sell it for $20, and keep $19, the math became obvious. She built her audience through blogging and eventually transitioned to online courses. This illustrates a broader point: paying attention to the opportunities around you, even simple ones like the economics of self-publishing versus traditional publishing, can open up entirely new business models.

Ellen knew her full course would take about four months for students to complete. Building all that content before testing felt like too big a project. So she broke the curriculum into five separate mini-programs — each covering one stage of her roadmap — and sold them individually over five months. The first was a $47 workshop on creating a client-attracting message. The second was a $27 five-day challenge to create a one-page freebie. Others covered list building, subscriber relationships, and creating a short report product. Each micro pilot produced feedback, testimonials, and polished materials. By the end, assembling the full course was dramatically easier because all the components had been tested and refined with real participants.

Ellen found that the five-day challenge format was particularly effective for driving implementation. One participant said it was the best challenge she had ever taken because she could see that the skill — batch-creating emails and blog posts — was something she could use for years. The short timeframe created urgency and focus that longer programs struggle to maintain. Ellen also gave bonuses to anyone who actually posted a working opt-in page during the challenge, which pushed participants through the technical infrastructure that often becomes a sticking point. For her full course, she addresses the ongoing challenge of maintaining momentum over four months by coaching students on time management: structuring their day so that 9 AM is for list building, 10 AM for finding partners, and content creation fills the afternoon.

One of Ellen's most distinctive insights is about the environmental context of online learners. People working for themselves from home face constant competing demands. They respond to whatever pops up rather than following a structured schedule. The course they want to learn from sits at the bottom of their priority list. Ellen actively addresses this dynamic by coaching students on daily structure and, counterintuitively, telling them not to look at email or social media until 11 AM. This is the often-overlooked environmental design piece — understanding not just how to create compelling content but what the real-world context is in which someone will actually try to work through your course.