Launching an online business is the easy part. Growing it to 7 figures is rare. Most entrepreneurs know the score: around 50% of businesses fail within the first five years, and a fraction of those actually reach the seven-figure mark.
And yet, Chris Huntley managed to do that in just a year. He isn’t just beating those odds; he’s rewriting the playbook.
Long-time ThriveCart users might remember Chris as the former life insurance agent who pivoted to digital marketing, eventually buying The Rise to the Top – the very brand that taught him how to create courses in the first place.
Today, the story has evolved. Chris isn’t just selling courses; he’s running a digital empire. As the co-owner of Paths in Biblical Studies and The Rise to the Top, Chris just celebrated a massive milestone: $1 million in sales in a single year (2025) between his two companies.
With his total gross revenue approaching the $3 million mark, Chris’s journey offers a masterclass for creators on how to pivot from one-off sales to a sustainable, high-growth subscription model.
Here’s how he did it.
| By the numbers → $1 million revenue in a single year → Almost $3 million total revenue → 45,000 emails subscribers across both companies → 1,450 paid Academy subscribers → ~$48,000 MRR |
The power of partnership
The businesses’ explosion in revenue didn’t come from pursuing a trendy niche or a sector he’s not actively interested in. Instead, it came from aligning his marketing skills with subjects he loves. First, he purchased The Rise to the Top, whose flagship course, Create Awesome Online Courses, is the very course Chris once took to learn how to create courses.
Then, four years ago, Chris partnered with Bart Ehrman, a New York Times bestselling author and arguably the most visible biblical scholar in the world. Chris says he was already a “massive fan” of Bart’s work, which changed the dynamic of the business entirely.
“It doesn’t feel like work,” Chris says. “I’m putting out courses and marketing for courses that I’m truly passionate about. I want the world to experience the teachings from Bart and have the same kind of epiphanies I’ve had.” This partnership has added substantially to Chris’s business, accounting for the majority of its revenue.
The lesson? Find the right partner, then stick to what each of you does best. For Chris, that’s running the business operations and marketing, including email sends and creating sales pages, while Bart focuses on teaching and course content.
But getting to 7 figures a year required the business to pivot in a new direction.
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The shift from “feast or famine” to $48k monthly recurring revenue
For years, Chris operated on a standard launch model: create a product, market it, sell it, repeat. “Between the two businesses, we had about 20 products, and we were constantly selling the next thing,” Chris explains. “If we didn’t have a new product or if a product bombed, we would have very dry months.”
To stabilize the business and ensure a more predictable income stream, Paths in Biblical Studies launched the Biblical Studies Academy (BSA), a subscription-based community that’s managed and billed entirely through ThriveCart. The Academy, which contains hundreds of hours of content, was tested before launching by giving customers free access for three weeks to gauge response and demand.
“Our revenue subscription model is like Netflix where you get access to the courses – from Bart as well as other scholars – for as long as you’re still a member. I’m happy to say that we now have over 1,450 subscribers,” Chris explains.
The results were game-changing. With monthly subscription fees of between $34.95 and $49.95, the academy now generates roughly $48,000-$50,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). “I wake up on the first of the month and I know we’re going to make around five figures before we even sell anything else a la carte,” Chris says. “It’s been a tremendous help for cashflow as well as for our nerves as business owners.”
Early course access secures higher demand
While bolstering the subscription model is a key focus, for those who aren’t keen to pay for ongoing subscriptions, the option still exists to buy one-off courses. “We want to make it as easy as possible for people to get the knowledge they’re after. We actually use Circle to handle the community management, ThriveCart Learn+ for hosting individual courses, and ThriveCart for all checkouts,” Chris explains.
With course price points typically under $100, Chris and Bart have opted to shy away from flashy sets and expensive lighting, preferring to record content via Zoom with a live audience present. The courses are presold with the offer that anyone who buys prior to the recording will be able to attend the live recording and participate in the Q&A that takes place at the end of the session.
The footage is later edited into the polished course that can be purchased either standalone or as part of a subscription. “We tell everyone watching live: ‘You’re seeing how the sausage is made,’” Chris says.
Podcast & email marketing: volume equals revenue
While many creators worry that they’re “bothering” their list by sending too many emails, Chris takes the opposite approach. In 2025, he doubled the volume of email he sends to the 23,000+ Bart Ehrman subscribers, using a mix of value emails with sales emails – and revenue followed suit.
For the sales emails, Chris uses a storytelling approach advocated by mentor and fellow entrepreneur Ian Stanley, rather than just hard pitching. “The emails come from Bart as he’s the public face of the business but I introduce myself right away. I’ll start with a story, relate it to the course, and then transition into the pitch,” Chris notes. “We’ve seen higher open rates, fewer unsubscribes, and people telling me they feel like they know me better.”
The frequency looks like this:
- Sunday (value-driven): Newsletter with a focus on driving attention to new content (blog articles/podcast).
- Tuesday (value-driven): Short weekly podcast drop alert.
- Monday & Thursday (sales-focused): Story-based sales emails.
In addition to spotlighting Bart and the courses, emails also focus on Bart’s weekly podcast. “In the beginning, we’d get a few hundred views per podcast. But now that we’ve done it consistently for two and a half years, there’s a big audience. However, staying the course is easier said than done when you’ve built up the audience. The key is persistence and trusting in the process. We’re getting an average of 50,000 views per episode on YouTube. With podcasts, you have to commit,” he advises.
The popcorn pricing strategy
When it comes to one-off sales, Chris is a big fan of utilizing pricing psychology, in particular a tiered structure approach popularized by cinema popcorn pricing (also known as the decoy effect). Essentially, it involves offering the customer three options: a basic, lower price, a more expensive price with some adds-on, and a slightly more expensive third price with even more added value. Most people will either go for the cheaper or the most expensive option, avoiding the middle price as it appears less attractive when compared to the slightly more expensive option.
For their annual New Insights into the New Testament conference, a virtual two-day event that attracts thousands of attendees from all over the world, Chris set up three pricing tiers within ThriveCart:
- Tier 1: $99
- Tier 2: $179
- Tier 3: $199
“When you see that, you have to go large,” Chris explains. “Why would I get the medium for $179 when I can get everything for just $20 more?” The strategy worked – at the 2025 conference, 25% of customers opted for the top tier, significantly boosting the average cart value without any additional marketing spend.
Bump it up Before introducing the conference tiered pricing, Chris’s preferred sales tactic was with order bumps. The first year of the conference, tickets cost $59 with an optional $20 extra (the bump) for a post-event breakdown from Bart. “It worked really well. Around 50% of people added the bump to the cart, so it made this $60 product an $80 product just like that,” Chris says. |
How ThriveCart Helped Change the Game
Chris has been “in the game” since 2008 and recalls the “dark ages” of trying to stitch together WordPress, Memberium (a member management plugin), and payment gateways. Technology was more primitive back then. Even with the same hunger and drive, what takes Chris five minutes of work in ThriveCart used to take 10 hours over three days.
“I remember getting the payments to work was a total pain in the ass,” Chris recalls. “I was having to manually build all of the pages.There was no template to work off of… it was a disaster.”
Now, almost his entire operation runs through ThriveCart:
- Checkout & sales pages: For everything from ebooks to conference tickets.
- Learn+: Seamlessly grants access to courses immediately after purchase.
- Affiliates: They’ve paid out $119,000 in commissions to 42 affiliates (resulting in ~$500k in sales) with zero headaches.
- Subscriptions: The engine behind his $1M year.
“The ability to seamlessly go from the cart and sales page to have customers added directly to Learn+ and have them placed in the course is phenomenal. And it all happens automatically, without any integrations with any other software. That’s invaluable to us, as a business,” Chris says.
Chris also credits ThriveCart’s built-in dunning features for keeping the MRR stable. “If someone misses a payment, ThriveCart automatically sends emails to get them to update their card. It helps keep people from churning without me having to do anything,” he says.
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Big plans for the future
“With ThriveCart, it’s all incredibly fast and easy. I learned the hard way. And as soon as I moved over to ThriveCart, I’ve never needed to go back,” Chris says.
And what about his vision for the future?
Chris, who sold his first business – an insurance website – for $2.2 million, has big ambitions. “I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved and would like the company to get to $5-10 million per year. After that, I’d hopefully have a big exit and retire, but who knows… since I love this work so much, I may just keep doing this forever,” he says.
Getting there means doubling down on what works…
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Chris’ top 4 tips for course creators to scale
We asked Chris what six-figure creators need to do to break the seven-figure ceiling. He recommends:
1) Grow your list: “My number-one piece of advice is to drive everyone to get on your email list and then to send out regular emails,” Chris says.
2) Send more emails: “Your revenue is directly proportionate to how many emails you send. If they like you and the content is valuable, they won’t unsubscribe,” he says.
3) Raise your prices: “It forces you to up your game and improve your product. We sold a semester-long course for $395 (10x our usual price) and it did almost $100,000 in one month.”
4) Build recurring revenue: “Find a way to add a subscription. It makes your business attractive for valuation, stabilizes your revenue, and gives you the peace of mind to be creative.”
Ready to build your own recurring revenue engine? Join Chris Huntley and thousands of other successful creators who use ThriveCart to power their sales, subscriptions, and courses.
