How to validate your email course idea

Have you decided to build an email course?

Great choice! It’s the most powerful asset you can build to grow your business on autopilot.

But just when you’re about to start building, a nagging thought appears.

It questions your decision on the specific course idea you chose. Is this the right topic? Will my audience care? Will they actually sign up?

Building in the dark is a huge risk

Not knowing if your course idea is worth pursuing is a common challenge.

And an expensive one.

You might spend 20+ hours crafting the perfect 5-day sequence only to launch to crickets. Or worse, your audience signs up but never engages or converts to your paid offer.

Without validation, your course is a gamble.

You risk building something they don’t want.

Why most creator-educators get validation wrong

It’s normal to get excited when you have a fresh course idea.

Most jump straight into building without validating it. We both know where that ends up.

Or in some cases, they make an effort to validate, but it’s not enough. They take the most obvious approach of asking a question like “If I were to build an email course about [INSERT TOPIC], would you be interested?” on social media.

This seems logical, but responses are unreliable. Without real commitment, it’s easy for them to say “yes” just to be nice.

But there’s a better way.

Top creator-educators don’t see validation as a one-time checkpoint before they start building.

They treat it as an ongoing process that evolves as they build by validating:

• Before building

• While building

• After the first version is ready

That’s the pattern I’ve observed from their journey, which I’ve then tested with my approach and distilled into a simple framework.

Let me share how you can use it to make sure your email course is something your audience actually wants.

The 3-step Progressive Validation framework

1. Start an email waitlist from day one

Your first step in building a successful email course isn’t to structure your course or draft your emails.

Like I said earlier, most go wrong by jumping straight into building the content side.

Instead, start building a waitlist for your email course first so you have access to people who are genuinely excited to learn from it before you even start.

This can be as simple as creating a coming soon landing page with a compelling headline and opt-in form to collect new emails or using link triggers in your emails to tag interested subscribers.

While most top creator-educators use this strategy for paid courses, it works just as well for free email courses.

Kieran Drew built a waitlist for his first ever course, High Impact Writing, three months before launch. And after five emails promoting it, 373 people have already joined. If that’s not a clear enough signal of demand, I don’t know what is.

Starting with a waitlist helps you gauge initial interest through the number of signups. And the earlier you start, the more potential students you can gather feedback from later on.

2. Build your course in public

Once you start building, share your progress publicly.

This isn’t just about posting random screenshots like what many think of building in public.

It’s about sharing a preview of the different elements you’re planning for your course to see if they resonate with your audience or not:

• Course title you’ll use

• Key topics you’ll cover

• Email format you’ll stick with

• Approach/framework you’ll teach

• Examples you’ll include in each lesson

While building Clutter to Clarity in Notion Roadmap, Janice did exactly this. One of her posts shared about the potential course outline, and it brought in comments from those interested in her course. This showed her exactly which part resonated and which needed rethinking.

By regularly sharing behind-the-scenes content like this, you’ll get a decent amount of early feedback to validate the overall idea plus the different components that make up your course.

3. Organise a feedback round with beta students

After your first version is ready, invite potential students to test your course.

By asking them to go through the full experience of your course from start to finish, you’ll get clear feedback on whether your course could really solve their problem or not.

A few tips to consider when you do this:

• Be specific about what you want them to review

• Set a specific deadline for them to return their feedback

When I finished the first draft of Email Course Blueprint, I immediately invited my audience to become early learners for the course (alternatively, you can also invite from your waitlist). Eventually, eight people volunteered to join.

Not only will you get a decent amount of detailed feedback to validate and improve your course, but you’ll also get to collect testimonials for your launch.

Final words

Progressive Validation helps you continuously validate your course idea and make sure it’s something worth pursuing:

• Before building → Email waitlist

• While building → Building in public

• After the first version is ready → Feedback round

The principle is simple:

Get real evidence of interest before investing more time into building.

So try this framework next time you’re building an email course (or any digital product).

It’ll prevent your effort from going to waste and give you the confidence that you’re building an email course your audience actually wants.