Back in December, I saw John Bejakovic run an auction inside a relatively tiny group of a couple of hundred members that won him a whopping $31,000 (yes, three zeroes) in just 24 hours.
Since then, I’ve seen a few other auctions and have run a couple of my own.
Why, just before I started typing this intro, I watched Nick Bandy (the very person who won John B’s auction with a whopping $31k, and my own auction with a double-whopping $1,569) run his very first auction inside his Skool community, and sell his Upwork proposal template (not even a license to resell… just the template for personal use 😯)… for $350!!!
And it was a penny auction… imagine a penny auction winning $350….
It was nuts inside his community, lemme tell you.
Anyway.
Their stories aren’t mine to tell, but I can share my own auction case studies.
So, presenting:
→ Case study #1: My first auction that made me $1,029
→ Case study #2: My second auction that made me $1,569
The report below will include:
- How I planned for them
- Why I auctioned off what I auctioned off
- The prep work
- What I did right and what I did wrong
- The posts and emails before and during the auctions
- Crucial takeaways if you wanna run your own auction someday
Let’s go!
“Course License” Auction
The first rule of auction: People gotta want it! And it’s gotta be somewhat scarce.
I can’t just auction off a $199 course that most people can just… buy for $199.
When I decided to run my first auction, I had a couple of “case studies” myself to study and learn from: a couple of auctions I’ve seen Travis Sago run in his Skool communities, and another one run by John Bejakovic, which, honestly, was what convinced me to run my own. Primarily because I had a lot of fun during his auction.
Now, you may or may not know this about me, but I try to have as much fun as I possibly can in my business.
Otherwise, what was the point of quitting my cushy 9-5 or firing all my clients???
Anyway.
So, going back to the first rule… I had been thinking about running an auction for close to a couple of months before I actually ran it. Because I had no idea what I could auction off among all my “assets” that 1) my audience would want, and 2) felt rare enough to justify auctioning off.
Then, on February 1, 2026, sometime in the middle of the night (my sleep schedule is notoriously nonexistent, especially if I’m not in a relationship… why’s that, tho…?), I got this idea… like a light bulb went off out of nowhere… and my brain threw me this:
Why don’t I sell the license to my Canva course? The one that single-handedly made me into a six-figure entrepreneur?
These days, I mostly talk about content and email marketing, so Canva has taken a backseat. No reason to let it stay there when I can sell the license, right?
So, I fired up my computer, wrote the first email, and sent it out.
Let’s now see how things unfolded.
First, some deets:
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- Up for auction was my Side Income With Canva Templates course with resale license + ALL of my Canva templates in the shop, again, with resale license
- From concept to execution, the auction took less than 12 hours
- The actual auction lasted 2 hours
- It happened inside my Skool group: Anthill Club
- At the time I sent the first auction email, I had fewer than 50 members in the group
- By the time the auction started, I had 65 members
- By the time the auction ended, I had 90+ members
- 16 people actually placed a bid (even if just the minimum $1)
- The winner was Aor Thitaram for $1,029 (an old-timey subscriber and buyer of many things, including the very course license she won! I couldn’t be happier to have Aor win this thing 😁)
- I sent a total of 6 emails in a matter of hours during the auction
- I lost 50+ subscribers that day because of how much I was emailing 😅
- But it was worth it because those who stayed are real fans, after all, and those who joined the group to witness or take part in the auction had truly enjoyed themselves, by the look of the comments in the auction post
Now, on to the nitty-gritty:
The Plan, The Email, And The Poll
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