If you've been trying to sell a course in 2026 and not getting the sales you expected, something bigger is going on. The market has structurally shifted. Courses are declining, and I've been watching it happen. Last week, the Fly on the Wall podcast series confirmed it with 19 established coaches and online business experts saying the same thing. Today, I'm breaking down why courses are struggling, what's actually working instead, and what buyers in 2026 need from you before they'll open their wallet. I want to start with something I've been watching happen in real time. Over the past year, my own course sales have been slowly dropping. Not a crash, just a steady decline that you can't ignore after a while. And my partner is a book coach, and she said the same thing to me. Her asynchronous at-your-own pace courses just stops selling. Turns out we're not the only ones seeing this. Tad Hargrave has been running marketing for hippie since 2001. He told the Fly on the Wall series that most of his colleagues are reporting sales are down, particularly for online courses. In his words, the heyday seems to be gone. Dallas Travers, a business coach for coaches, who runs the Hive membership, put it even more directly. People are hesitant to purchase a traditional self-led course at older prices. And there's a structural reason for that hesitation. The statistics on course completion for adults sit around 15%. That means 85% of people who buy a course never finish it. Buyers know this about themselves. They've bought courses they never completed. They're not going to make that mistake again at the same price point. And now AI has entered the picture and made it worse. Andrea Jones, a marketing coach who did nearly a million dollars in revenue in 2022, said she personally rarely purchases courses anymore because she can just YouTube it or ask ChatGPT. If your course's primary value is delivering information, you are now competing with a free tool that is available 24 hours a day. This isn't a rough patch, this is a structural shift. The information delivery model that made courses so profitable for so long has been undercut by AI and eroded due to buyer burnout. The market didn't disappear. The old model has stopped working. So if courses are struggling, what is working? Here's what I know from 17 years of teaching college courses and my own online course experience. The students who get the best outcomes are not the ones who sit in the back and never ask questions. They're the ones who come to office hours, who reach out when they're stuck, who actually interact with me and with each other. And I saw that over and over again. The other thing I noticed group projects. Now, nobody loves being assigned a group project, but the outcomes are almost always better. Because now you've got accountability. You've got other people counting on you. You're not just letting yourself down if you don't show up, you're letting your group down. Now, I will say that's not 100% of the case because there is always that one person. Doesn't matter if they're on their own or in a group, they just don't do anything. It's like the old joke, I want my group project partners to carry the casket at my funeral so they can let me down one last time. But the point is, for everyone else, the group makes them better. Dallas said it directly. Saxbugler, a Facebook and Instagram ads expert, framed his entire marketing shift around this and said, People don't come to us for the how-to anymore. They come for backup. They want someone in their corner. They want to be able to ask a real person, can you look at this? and get a human response. When someone joins a group program, they get access to the coach or facilitator. But they also get a group of compatriots going through the same process. And here's the thing about that. When you go through something hard with a group of people, nobody else in the world understands it like that group does. They become your people. I have a group of running friends who crewed me through my first 100 mile race. I am not running 100 miles again, let me be very clear about that. But I've got another race coming up and I am genuinely excited about it. Not just because of the race, but because I get to see all of them again, all my friends. That bond exists because we went through something together that most people never do. That's what a well-run group program creates between your clients. I saw this firsthand when I ran a group program for makers who want to sell what they make. Those people who showed up every week, not just for me, but for each other. They were brainstorming together, holding each other accountable, pushing each other forward. And the outcomes from that program were unlike anything I'd seen from solo learners. Angel increased their sales by 500%. Joseph had never done sales before in his life, went to his first craft show about a month into the program, and walked away with $400. Ryan finished the program and became a full-time woodworker. That's what happens when solid curriculum meets real accountability. I gave them the framework, they gave each other the push to actually use it. Here's an example of that same principle playing out at scale. Gemma Gilbert has been running a single group program for over eight years. It's her only offer. She recently raised her price from 4,000 to 5,000 pounds, and not only did it sell, she said the quality of clients coming in actually improved. Group programs are working because they deliver the one thing AI cannot replicate. Human connection with structure and accountability built in. When your clients are implementing, they're getting results. When they're getting results, they become your best case studies and your most enthusiastic testimonials. That social proof builds your credibility and it makes selling your next cohort easier than the last one. So that's why group programs are holding while courses are struggling. But I don't want you to walk away thinking that the buyers have disappeared, because they haven't. They've just changed. Here's the thing I don't want you to miss in all this. The buyer isn't gone. They didn't stop spending money, they stopped spending money carelessly. And honestly, I think that's actually good news if we're willing to show up differently. Tanya Geisler is an executive and speaking coach, and she put it as cleanly as anyone in the Fly on the Wall series. What has changed isn't a willingness to invest. What has shifted is a tolerance for vagueness. Lacey Seites, another business coach on the series, noticed the pattern shift in real time. What used to be flagged as an exception, that is someone taking months to decide, is now the norm. The sales cycle is longer. What you are building right now with your messaging and marketing will have an impact on your business in six to twelve months. That's not a red flag, it's just a new reality. Picture the client you're trying to reach right now. They've probably purchased something in the past that didn't deliver. Maybe a course they never finished, maybe a program that overpromised. They're not closed off, but they're careful. They're researching longer, watching more closely, waiting to see if you're still saying the same thing six months from now. What moves them isn't a better sales page, it's consistency, clarity, and evidence that you're in this for the long haul. Greg Faxen has done over a million dollars in course sales before age 30. And here's what he's seeing now. Buyers aren't spending less on coaching. We're in a credibility crisis. And this is where a group program has a built-in advantage. When your clients get real results and you can point to those outcomes, you become one of the few people in this market that a discerning buyer actually trusts. Those testimonials and case studies do the work that a sales page alone never could. Each successful cohort makes the next one easier to fill. That is the opportunity sitting in front of you right now. The market has shifted because the information delivery model is under pressure. But buyers are still out there looking for a human being they can trust to help them get results. That's not a problem, that's your opening. If you're listening to this and wondering whether a group program might be the right next move for your business, I'd love to talk it through with you. I'm offering free program roadmap calls right now where we can look at your current situation and figure out whether a group program makes sense and what that could look like. Go click the link in the show notes to book a call. You've been listening to Program Design for Coaches. I'm Dr. Curtis Satterfield, and if nobody's told you lately, you've got what it takes to build your program. I'll talk to you in the next one.