• Who: Alex Trevatt
• Website: medibuddy.co.uk and medistudents.com
• Course Topic: Medical School
• Interesting Stats: Team of four

Who are you and what course have you created?

Over the past six years, I have been a qualified doctor. I have built an online medical education business where I provide courses for medical students, doctors, and those applying for medical school.

What market does your online course serve?

My courses serve the online medical education market. This is made up primarily of medical students and junior doctors preparing for exams and interviews. Our users are highly motivated individuals who demand the highest quality educational resources. We, therefore, put a lot of effort into ensuring our content is written by senior medical professionals and sourced from reputable medical journals.

What’s the biggest benefit of taking your course?

The primary benefit students get from taking our course is having all their revision material in one place. Medical exams have huge syllabuses, typically requiring the student to purchase multiple textbooks. Our courses provide all the content required for the exam in one place, which is much more convenient for the student.

How did you get into the market?

I came up with the idea while studying for my medical exams. Buying multiple textbooks was expensive and inefficient. I looked online for comprehensive courses but couldn’t find any. I asked a few of my colleagues what they thought of the idea, and they were all positive, so I started writing!

Why did you decide to create an online course in the first place?

Medical education has been moving online for years, so an online course felt like the most natural fit. I also preferred that sales would be automated, meaning I wouldn’t need to continually post textbooks.

Did you have any moments of doubt before you created/launched it?

I began to doubt myself almost as soon as I started writing when I realized how mammoth the task was! However, I persevered, and it was well worth it. I set a writing schedule and was disciplined with it. This ensured I made consistent progress each week until I eventually completed the course.

What’s your online course like?

My courses are mainly text-based, with images added to help with explanations. I don’t currently use videos in any of my courses, but I plan to use them for future courses.

How long did it take you to create your course?

The first course took me six months to create. I followed a schedule where I spent two hours each evening writing it. I used a combination of notes I had made while revising, textbooks, and online sources.

Tell us a little about the process of launching your course and getting your first sale(s).

While creating my first course, I spent some time building a mailing list. This ensured I had an audience to launch to. However, our launch day was quite anti-climactic. We only made one sale, and they asked for a refund! The issue was the sales page for the course, which wasn’t clear enough about what the course contained. Once I fixed this, the sales started to come in steadily.

Do you have a lead magnet?

I don’t use a lead magnet. Instead, I have detailed sales pages that show precisely what is in each course. I am considering testing a free trial to see if it improves sales.

What’s the traffic strategy that works best for you?

The bulk of our traffic comes from content marketing. I produce high-quality blog posts which rank well on Google. This was a slow burner; it took about a year before the blogs started ranking consistently. We also use google ads for courses that have competition.

What online course platform are you using?

We built our platform, as when we started, none of the available platforms could do what we needed. They’ve improved significantly, so if I were starting again, I would probably use a ready-made one.

What made you decide to use your chosen platform over others?

We built our own as it gave us complete control of the features and, in the long run, worked out cheaper.

What other tools do you use to run your online course business?

We use Stripe for payments, Sendinblue for the mailing list, and Ahrefs for our SEO.

What books or training programs have you found useful on your journey to a successful business owner that others might find valuable too?

I found the Authority Hacker blog particularly useful for learning how to do content marketing and SEO. The guides on Course Method are also beneficial.

Do you have any big mistakes you’ve made along the way that you’d be willing to share?

The biggest mistake we made early on was not thinking big enough. We chose a niche-specific domain name that was a .co.uk. Now that we’ve grown, this has become quite limiting, and we’ve had to build new websites to accommodate courses targeting other countries or niches.

If I were starting again, I would have gone for a non-specific domain name on a .com that would have allowed me to go in any direction. - Alex Trevatt Click To Tweet

Please share some idea of revenue.

I can’t make our annual revenue public, but I can tell you it’s six figures.

Please tell us a little about what the money you’ve earned from your course has done for you.

Almost all the money we’ve earned has been re-invested into the business. We are now a team of 4 and spend most of the money building new courses to grow the business.

In addition to revenue are there any numbers you would like to share?

We got our first 1000 mailing list subscribers by building a free tool that was useful to people in our niche. - Alex Trevatt Click To Tweet

I posted the tool on relevant Facebook groups and grew from there.

This was before we ranked consistently on google, so to begin with, it was our only traffic source. It took us about a month to reach 1000 subscribers. This tool is still used today and gets us 1000s of subscribers each year.

What has creating your course done for you personally?

It’s been extremely satisfying to build something others have found helpful. We’ve had so much positive feedback and plenty of people thanking us for building the courses that it motivates me to keep making more. I feel confident that I can create a product that people in my niche will like.

Do you have a story of a transformation from any of your clients?

My favorite story is from one of our users who emailed us after her exam to say she had finally passed it on the third attempt and felt our course made the difference. This demonstrated how much value our courses were adding.

What advice do you have for people just starting out?

Don’t be afraid of competition. When I was trying to develop a course to build, I disregarded several ideas because there were already courses for them on the market. However, I now realize that competition is an excellent sign that people are willing to buy courses on that subject.

Some of our most successful courses have been released into competitive markets, where we’ve worked hard to ensure ours was the best. - Alex Trevatt Click To Tweet

Learn more about Alex Trevatt of medistudents.com:

• Website: medistudents.com and medibuddy.co.uk