Black Friday is eight weeks away, and if you're like most creators, you're thinking about your offer. But the creators who have their best Black Friday don't start there. They start with their buyers: who has already bought from them, what those people bought, and where in the world they live.

Here's what to do before you build anything, and how each step should shape your offer.

Step 1: Look at who's already bought from you

Your best Black Friday audience are the people who have already trusted you with their money. Pull your sales from the last 12 months in Teachable and look for three things:

What they bought most. Your bestsellers are your strongest anchor for a Black Friday bundle or headline offer.
What they bought together. If students who buy Course A often come back for Course B, that pairing is a ready-made bundle.
Who bought once and never came back. These are your repurchase opportunities: people who already like your work and might just need the right offer to buy again.

These insights are where your offer should come from. Bundles, early access for past buyers, or a "complete the set" deal for students who already own one course give people a reason to buy beyond a discount, and that's exactly what top-performing Teachable creators lean on.

Step 2: Find out where your audience actually lives

Now look at the same buyers, plus your site traffic, email list, and social followers, by country. Many creators are surprised by what they find: a meaningful share of their audience is outside their home country, often people who have followed for years but never bought.

It’s not for lack of interest, either. If you ask creators why they don't actively sell internationally, many will mention a conversation with an accountant or advisor who warned them that selling abroad could trigger tax registration or filing obligations. That warning has some merit. Many countries require sellers of digital products to collect and remit tax on sales to their residents, and in places like the EU and the UK, that can start with the very first sale. So international buyers quietly get left out of the plan, whether or not anyone decided they should be.

During Black Friday, that decision becomes more costly than any other time of the year. It's when your entire audience, wherever they live, is looking for a reason to buy. If a slice of your list is international and your plan ignores them, your biggest sales weekend is capped before it sta

"Teachable was easy and intuitive from the start. I could upload my digital products without having to build a website, set up payments, or figure out currency conversion for my international audience."

— Anjali Viramgama, Tech & AI creator

‍Step 3: Build your plan for every buyer, not just local ones

Once you know who your buyers are and where they are, plan for them deliberately:

Time your emails to their evening. Last year on Teachable, evening hours drove the largest share of Black Friday sales. If a big share of your list is in Europe or Australia, a 10 PM send in your time zone could hit them at breakfast. Consider a second send, or segment by region, for a more accurate message.
Write deadlines in a time zone they'll understand. "Ends Monday at midnight ET" is clear. "Ends Monday" is not, to someone eight hours ahead.
Set expectations about tax at checkout. International buyers sometimes see taxes added at checkout and message you asking why they paid more. A single line on your sales page, such as "Prices shown before applicable local taxes, which are calculated at checkout," answers that before it lands in your inbox mid-sale.

Step 4: Make sure your checkout is ready for them

The last step takes 10 minutes and protects everything you already planned. Before Black Friday, check that:

You're selling through Teachable Payments. It calculates and remits sales tax and VAT in 45+ countries for you, so the part your accountant warned you about is handled without separate registrations or per-country filings.
Your checkout offers the ways people prefer to pay. Options like Apple Pay, Google Pay, buy now pay later (BNPL), and local payment methods help keep buyers from dropping off when traffic is at its highest.
Your order bumps and upsells are set up. If Step 1 showed you which products sell well together, an order bump at checkout or an upsell right after is the easiest way to turn one Black Friday sale into two.

“Before Teachable, handling payments manually through PayPal was not working for me. Now everything is integrated and easy to use, so I can focus on creating the curriculum and finding new ways to serve my students.”

— Wendy Ramirez, Founder & CEO of Spanish Sin Pena

Your to-do list for this week

Log in to Teachable and pull your last 12 months of sales. Note your top products, your most common pairings, and where your buyers are. That's your Black Friday map, and it should take less than an hour. Once you have it, you’ll know what to offer and who to offer it to.