It’s been just over 30 days since we opened our Collegewise store. I thought I’d share a status update of how sales have gone for our products, as we didn’t know what to expect when we opened it. I’m hoping this might encourage other counselors to find new ways to market their expertise to a wider audience.
Our top seller so far is, How to Make Your Common Application a Lot Less Common: The Collegewise Guide to the Common Application. We’ve sold 124 downloadable PDFs. 1 was a 30-copy license ($99), and the rest were single-copy licenses ($12.99).
Is There a Future Doctor in The House? A Guide to Choosing a College and Preparing for Life as a Premed has sold 22 downloadable PDFs at $9.95.
And our self-published book, Story Finders: How Counselors and Teachers Can Help Students Write Better College Essays (Without Helping Too Much), has sold 20 copies at $49.95 (which includes access to all of our essay workshop and brainstorming materials).
That brings our total revenue in 30 days to just over $2500. We're expecting those numbers, especially the sales of the Common App guide, to increase as we get deeper into application season.
We haven't paid for any traditional advertising or marketing for these products. We just told those people who were already coming to us for college information here on our blog and in our email newsletter, and shared the pieces with high school counselors we've gotten to know.
We’ve also been using these products internally by making the Common App and pre med guides available free to families in our Collegewise programs. And the feedback we’ve gotten from students, parents and counselors has been overwhelmingly positive. We’ll be collecting some testimonials and sharing them here in the future. If you’ve already purchased one of the products and would like to share some feedback, we’d love to hear from you. You can email me at kevinm(at)collegewise(dot)com.
So, that’s our 30-day update. We’re happy that people are buying and enjoying our products and are excited about our next releases. Later this month, we’ll be finishing the online videos of our college essay, college interview, and financial aid seminars. If you’d like us to let you know when they’re ready, you can sign up to be notified here.