Master The Inbox

How to sell your course more often without launches or discounts

• Monica Badiu • Season 3 • Episode 3

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If most of your course revenue comes from just a few moments a year — launches and Black Friday — you’re not alone.

For a lot of course creators, selling outside those windows feels awkward, uncomfortable, or like something you should avoid… because the only selling models you’ve ever seen are built around novelty, urgency, or discounts.

In this episode of Master the Inbox, I introduce one of the most essential parts of my customer-centric framework: problem-based promotions — a way to sell more often without burning out your list or relying on “doors are open” and “last chance” energy.

You’ll learn why launch-only and discount-only selling quietly trains your audience to wait… and how to shift into promotions that feel relevant, timely, and genuinely helpful.


In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why relying on launches + Black Friday teaches your audience when your course “matters”
  • How meaning is shaped by when you sell — not just what you say
  • Why most courses aren’t overpriced — they’re undersold
  • What “problem-based promotion” actually means (and what it’s not)
  • How to anchor the same course in different contexts throughout the year so it stays relevant

If you’ve ever wondered, “How do I sell more often without feeling pushy?” this episode will give you a clearer, calmer way forward — one that treats selling as an ongoing conversation, not a high-pressure event.

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients. 

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[00:00:00] If you've been selling courses for a while, there's a good chance most of your revenue comes from just a few moments a year. Launches and Black Friday. Outside of those windows selling kind of maybe feels uncomfortable, awkward, or like something you should avoid altogether. And this isn't because you don't believe in the value of your work.

It's usually because the only selling models you've ever seen are built around urgency, novelty, or discount. In today's episode of Master the Inbox, we are going to talk about what that pattern is teaching your audience about your brand, when your course matters, help people decide to buy, and why so many courses end up being undersold rather than overpriced.

Welcome to season three of Master the Inbox. This is the podcast for course creators, [00:01:00] coaches and consultants who want to know how to use email marketing to nurture and convert their audience in a nons, spammy, non bullshit, but data-driven approach. This is Monica. I'm your host. I'm a conversion copywriter, entrepreneur and marketing consultant, and I've been doing this for many, many years. And this season is about reframing selling as a conversation, not a monologue. This episode explores how you should actually be selling more often to your audience instead of relying solely on Black Friday discounts and new course launches. I'll introduce you to one of the most essential parts of my customer-centric framework for selling courses, and that's the problem-based promotion.

But let's start from the beginning. In 2021, I was faced with an impossible task. Sell the same course to mostly the same email list for about 13 times in the span of, 14 months or so. The first [00:02:00] time I wrote the campaign, I used the regular flash sale discount, heavy urgency focused emails. The second time I had to write the campaign for the same course to the same audience, and it was coming very, very close to the first one.

I started to feel anxious about what I was gonna do. It just didn't feel right to use the same persuasion tactics. We had just sold that product a month before and this creator's audience was already sensitive to promotional messages, and they also took issue with the fact that suddenly they were asked to pay for content when the creator had already created an expectation that her content will be free.

My task was to write the campaign to sell that course, but the how? The big idea of that campaign was all on me. So I put myself in the shoes of the audience. How would I receive a promo campaign for the same offer, and what would make me pay attention to a promo without getting annoyed or unsubscribing?

That led me to [00:03:00] do customer research on that creator's channels, and I started to see a pattern. The product was a collection of meditations, and I looked at what the buyers were saying, what the social media comments were indicating, what were the false beliefs that were being called out, expectations, and basically what everybody else was teaching on the subject. So I researched and identified multiple insights to tap into for future campaigns, but what really changed things was anchoring that product into a relevant context for the audience. The good part was that the context always changed, which means my job was to find an insight that would help position the product

in a relevant way every single time. And those three things, insight, context, and relevancy, became the foundation for my customer centric approach to sales copywriting. And it's this core principle that has generated millions of dollars for creators all over the world. I call these the problem based [00:04:00] promotions, and I'll explain more in a bit.

Now, if you've listened so far, I want you to know this, it's okay to be afraid of selling. That fear usually comes from a good place. You're not the first and you won't be the last creator to worry their audience will start unsubscribing, complaining and overall hating the sales pitch. In this episode, I'm going to tell you that it's okay to sell more often, and I know you probably won't believe me, but please keep an open mind and continue to listen. I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm only trying to show you that it's possible to do things differently. I've seen this work many, many times and we didn't burn out the list. We didn't alienate subscribers, but I understand how right now this seems almost impossible. If the only selling models you've ever seen are launches and discounts this makes complete sense, but it's based on a very narrow definition of what selling [00:05:00] can look like. So first, let me tell you this. I know even the occasional launch and Black Friday campaigns can be hard for most people. It feels like going for the sale can go against your values, and maybe you've said, I'll do these two things and be done with it.

But here's the thing. When selling only happens during launches and heavy discount campaigns. Something important starts to happen in the mind of your customers. Your promotions begin to teach people how and when your product matters. So launches are built around novelty. There is anticipation, buildup, and a sense of exclusivity.

Something new is opening, something is happening, and psychologically launches activate curiosity, social proof, identity, and even fomo. Black Friday works differently. We're not talking about novelty, we're talking about price. We are leaning heavily on urgency loss aversion. We're doing a lot of price [00:06:00] anchoring. The message isn't, this will change your life, but this is the cheapest it will ever be. So the decision becomes less about investment and more about not missing a deal. Both approaches work. They reduce friction. They shortcut the decision making process, and they give people a reason to act. Now instead of sitting with a question, do I really need this? But when these are the only moments you invite people to buy, you also teaching them that your course is only worth considering when there's an event attached to it. So either something new has to happen, or the price has to drop significantly for your offer to deserve attention from a meaning making perspective or. From a semiotics perspective, this matters more than you might think. Meaning isn't created only by what you say, but by when you say it and under what conditions.

So when a brand only appears in someone's inbox [00:07:00] with doors are open or last chance to save, the brand slowly becomes associated with something conditional, the value of the product becomes tied to timing and a discount and not that much around usefulness and the actual problem it solves.

So instead of buying feeling like a thoughtful decision, it becomes a reactive action. So you're either jumping in because everyone else is, or you're grabbing the deal before it disappears. And at some point we're just gonna be basically training people to wait for the next launch, to wait for the next discount.

And I know, I know you don't want that. You've been telling me that for so many years. Now this decision making process means that they're looking at features and prices, and they're basically comparing you with other people that are selling the same thing, and they're not [00:08:00] looking at the value of the transformation of that course or how that course is solving a specific problem. It's really about the value of what I'm getting here compared to what I'm getting in another place. This is why I believe that most courses are not overpriced. They're in fact undersold.

And that's because in many cases, creators explain what the course teaches, but not why that actually matters in the context of someone's real life. So let me give you an example. Let's take something like a Lightroom course for photographers On the surface, the value proposition is simple. You'll learn how to edit photos better.

But editing photos isn't the real problem. The real problem is time. So for wedding photographers especially, time is their most limited resource. During the season they're shooting constantly juggling clients, managing expectations, and trying to keep up with post-production. This is where editing [00:09:00] becomes a bottleneck, and that's why so many photographers outsource it but that creates a new set of problems, like lower margins, less quality control, and dependence on someone else's schedule. So suddenly, if you look at it from this perspective, the course isn't about light room anymore. It's about delivering photos faster, maintaining a consistent style, protecting profit margins, reducing stress, and standing out in a competitive market.

Now that's a completely different conversation.

And it's basically what I mean when I talk about problem-based promotions that focus on one big insight, context, and relevancy. So this is not about the flash sale, and I'm not talking about constant urgency, and I'm definitely not talking about manufacturing problems just to solve something. I'm talking about grounding your market again.

I am talking about grounding your marketing in what entrepreneurship is supposed to be about in the first place. Solving a real problem for a real audience [00:10:00] in a real context. So the problem based promotion doesn't start with your product. It starts with your audience's reality. It asks, what are they struggling with right now?

What is difficult? What keeps coming up? What are they compensating for? What are they tolerating that they shouldn't have to? Only after you have those insights, you introduce your course, and even then you are not putting it out there as like, here's the thing I sell, but as a tool that exists to solve a specific problem. Now once you figure out what the real problems are, timing becomes the next thing to solve. So when does this problem show up most clearly or most urgently?

So going back to the wedding photographer example, there are predictable moments in the year when certain pains become more visible. For instance, before the season starts, they're planning, they're looking at the packed calendar, thinking about systems and [00:11:00] workflows. During the season, the pain becomes immediate. They're behind on edits, they're exhausted, and they're under pressure from clients to deliver faster.

The Lightroom course I was talking about earlier is relevant in both moments, but for different reasons, which means you can sell that course both before and during the wedding season. Before, you talk about the way to help them sign more clients for a higher profit margin, because the Lightroom course allows them to deliver photos faster without outsourcing to a third party. This makes the photographer more appealing because clients want their photos fast, and if we can do it faster than the other two photographers they've talked to, you will one, be able to set the higher price because you deliver faster. And two, be able to stand out in a very crowded market.

Now, let's look at the second occasion to promote that lightroom course. During the middle of the season, a lot of photographers are running out of fuel. Oftentimes [00:12:00] things don't go as planned, and the initial timeline they might have had to deliver photos is skewed. This is your moment to step in and save the day.

In this context, you'd be solving the problem of overwhelm and delivery delays by introducing Lightroom as a way to one, save time, and two, get beautiful, consistent quality in their desired aesthetics.

So problem-based promotions allow you to meet your audience in different contexts without just making it look like you're selling a course again, and you're not repeating the same message. Instead, you're responding to relevant demand. And when you do this consistently, I can promise you that something important is going to shift in how people experience your brand.

Your promo emails will stop feeling like interruptions, and instead they will start to feel relevant. Buying will become less about reacting to urgency and more about responding to need. So this is where [00:13:00] your promo emails can be educational first instead of just like heavy on the sales element and discounts that are expiring.

What I'm trying to say is this. When you're selling like this, you're basically acting like a coach, helping your audience overcome the biggest bottleneck in their business or life right now. So many of them, when you do that, they won't wait for Black Friday to enroll because the problem you're now tackling feels relevant and urgent simply because you're meeting them where they're at.

Now, I hope you can see how this approach changes what selling means and when promotions are anchored in real problems, real timing and real understanding selling becomes part of the mental conversation your audience is already having and it works because it allows people to feel good about buying something that has clear value and a clear role in their life.

So I think that's what ethical, effective selling looks like when you treat it as a [00:14:00] conversation, not a monologue.

So this is it for today. I hope you found this episode of Master the Inbox inspiring, and if you did find it helpful, you can subscribe, leave a review, or share the episode with someone who's navigating this right now. It really helps more people find the show. In the next episodes, we'll continue this conversation about selling, how it actually works, why it feels uncomfortable for so many people, and how to do it in a way that respects both the buyer and yourself.

So thanks again for being here, and I'll see you in the next episode.