There are a ton of different reasons for creating an online course, and some of them are quite unexpected. If you’re an aspiring course creator I’ll let you in on a secret, courses can be quite lucrative if you’re able to provide great content and reach your target market- it’s a proven way to make $100+ per day online from home.
Why an Online Course
The great thing about online courses nowadays is that they can be informal and focused on one skill or as formal as leading to a certification or degree. The topics covered are endless, so if you’re on the fence about what to teach, take time to think about what you are good at.
For example, you might have noticed that you’re friends and family always run to you for advice on love, money, computer skills, cooking, or home decorating. Perhaps you are super-organized, a meditation guru, or a fitness buff that is too updated on health and wellness.
Whatever it is, you know whenever they’re facing a problem you’re the person they would run to. Guess what? you’re that expert on something and you could consider building your course on that expertise. You don’t need a specific degree (although it would be more authoritative) to teach about hobbies and passions it’s more of experience, creativity, ingenuity, and making that course simple to understand, challenging, and fun.
Why Create An Online Course?
Online courses help establish you as a thought leader. It gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge to your target audience. and with existing modern platforms, you can launch your course and start making money immediately.
The great part about online business is that you have the opportunity to reach people from all over the world, and your business is open 24hrs due to the difference in time zones. More than that you can create unique online courses that target a specific market. All you need to do is upload it on a free platform that earns a percentage from your sale meaning there’s no upfront cost for you.
And your target audience? Anyone with internet access. Online courses can be taken by professionals, clients, students, and lifelong learners. The best part is you can teach from anywhere in the world or you can record it once and sell it online for passive income.
Here are 10 reasons why you should create an online course:
- Build your brand and become an authority in your industry
- Create freedom and live life on your own terms
- Opportunity to share your knowledge
- Leverage your existing content (and expertise)
- Opportunity to reach a global audience
- Stake your claim in a booming industry
- Earn praise from your students which make you want to better your craft
- Make passive income (while you sleep!)
- Partner with amazing like-minded people on new projects
- Putting yourself out there opens doors to new opportunities
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Ready? Here’s How To Do It
1. Choose a topic you can talk about for 30 minutes: Courses should be about transferring your knowledge to the student. TIP: If you can’t talk about a topic for 30 minutes, unprepared, you probably don’t know enough to sell a course. This is how you should think about your topic.
2. Identify your target audience based on the course you plan to create. Research your market, and its demographics, and know where to find them.
3. Define course benefits and outcomes:
What specific problem will you be solving?
- What are the benefits and outcome(s) a student can expect? – Create an outline for your product that helps solve #1 and delivers #2.
- Keep it short: consider helping them reach their outcome in less than 60 minutes.
4. Create a presale promotional plan: Try to presell at least 30 – 45 days ahead to build up momentum and interest.
- Decide what channels you’ll use to promote it: – Social media, email list, communities, and Ads if you are willing to spend.
- Draft an amazing promo content- Reminder: Make sure your promo content answers this question: Why should someone buy this course now, during presale? All of your content must highlight the answer to this question.
5. Build a landing page in ConvertKit. This is a marketing automation tool that will help you achieve your goals. It can help you grow your email lists, nurture contacts, and even sell more products or services.
6. When you’re ready to execute your presale promotion plan. Start by including the link to the landing page in your social media account profiles like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any social media accounts you use or communities you’ve been involved in and launch!
7. While you’re promoting it’s time to start building out your product:
I recommend Thinkific. Why Thinkific? Because it has all the features you need to build, sell and deliver the course. In Thinkific payment systems are already built in so all you have to do is set your price plus you can create powerful sales pages for your courses with their drag-and-drop builder.
8. Tips for Designing Effective Online Courses
- Know Your Audience
- Create Well-Organized Courses / Micro-Learning
- Make Your Lessons Interactive
- Incorporate Synchronous and Asynchronous e-Learning Styles
- Make Content Accessible
Other Online Businesses you might want to consider: THE SECRETS OF ENTREPRENEURS WHO ARE MAKING MONEY WHILE HIDING THEIR IDENTITIES
4 comments
Fransic
I’ve never made a course but I’m looking forward to it. It should be fun to make a good course and earn money from. Thank you for the tips!
Lani
Hi Fransic,
I always visit your blog and there are so many wonderful ideas on there that you write about. Why not consider creating an online course out of your specialty?
nia
Thanks so much for sharing these ideas! I really like the idea of creating more passive income streams and this seems like a great way to do so. Thanks for sharing!
Lani
Hi Nia
Thanks for your comment. I’m glad you got some ideas from this post.