Question
- How do I set up my course to pre-sell?
- How do you use the pre-order publish status?
- How can I collect sales before launching my course?
Solution
Pre-selling is a great way to determine market demand, among many reasons to presell a course, and can be executed in different ways.
You can use the Preorder publish status in Thinkific, allowing the landing page to go live. This allows students to enroll in the course without the content being available. This publish status also means that your lessons are not accessible to enrolled students and they'll see a course card with a "Coming Soon" banner when logged in to their Student Dashboard. You can also enable a Course Welcome Email which could include information that says "You're On The Waiting List".
Full details here: How to Create a Pre-Order Course
You can also publish the course, and use a Drip Schedule or keep most lessons in Draft to restrict access to course content before the full launch. The first lesson in the course can be made available with more details such as a "Welcome Lesson". You can also include You could also include the syllabus.