People are adapting to online learning and training. It has become an essential part of our life for upskilling and learning new skills.
While consuming the content is easy, many people make 6-7 figure incomes by creating and selling online courses.
The eLearning industry is expected to cross $325 Billion by 2025, including both individual and corporate spending online for learning.
Now is the best time to join the ever-growing industry.
There will be many questions in your mind now.
- Do I have the knowledge to create a course?
- How can I create course content?
- How to Structure the course?
- Will I be able to make money?
- How can I market and sell the course?
This article will give you the right guidance and support to create and sell your first online course.
Before getting into the course creation process, let’s answer some of the questions running in your mind.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have the knowledge to create a course?
Yes, you do; each person has a unique value and knowledge that they can share with others and help people. You just need to identify which is your segment and how to monetize your knowledge with the online market.
How can I create course content?
There are many ways to create a course, it can be an email course or a PDF course or a video course or a live webinar course. It all depends on your topic and the value you provide to your audience in the course content.
How to structure the course?
Depending on your audience, you can structure your course. If you are targeting fresher and teaching them technical details, then your course content should start from scratch and slowly build up their knowledge to achieve the content. Don’t worry, we shall cover the concept further below.
Will I be able to make money?
Of course, there is a huge market for online courses. There are a lot of problems in the world to solve; if your course could solve a pain point, then people are ready to pay for it. You could understand all that from market analysis.
How can I market and sell the course?
If your target audience for the course is already on your social network, then you could start by posting about your course and how it can help on your social media account. If not, then you can leverage paid methods to reach your audience and promote your course.
How much will it cost for me to create the course?
Some instructors invest a lot of money in video creation and production. Some have just used their existing devices and created course content. For hosting and selling the course, you might need to invest in a learning management platform (roughly starting from 30$/month).
Now let’s start the first step of creating an online course
If you have already conducted offline classes or workshops, you might have an idea about how to keep your student engaged with the course content.
Don’t worry; even if you are completely fresh to this model and you can start working on launching your online course.
Your first step would be to find your ideal topic and target audience.
Identify Your Niche & Target Audience
Before creating your course, you have to identify what topic you are going to create and who your ideal target customer could benefit from your course.
The best way to identify your skill is by using IKIGAI. List down all the topics and niche ideas for each of the following questions.
- What you love
- What the world needs
- What can you be paid for
- What are you good at
Once you list down all the possible ideas and the ones which intersect with all four questions is your ideal niche.
Don’t worry; even if that is something general, just go with that for now; you can go deeper inside your niche idea later.
So now you have your niche idea, start working on a customer persona who would buy your product in that niche.
While creating a customer persona, consider details like:
- Age
- Location
- Language
- Spending patterns
- Interests
- Challenges
- Stage of life
The more details your customer persona is, it will be easier for you to target and market your product after creation.
Select the Type of Online Course
There are different types of online courses available; based on your topic and audience, you could select any type of course. More than the type or medium of the course, the value you provide and the way you nurture your relationship with your students is the only thing that matters.
- Email Course
- Text-Based Course
- eBook Course
- Video Course
- Audio Course
- Workshop Model
- X Day Challenge Course
- Assessment Course
- Conceptual Course
- Beginners/Intermediate/Advanced Level Course
Your course content could be full text or a hybrid of text, audio, video, or ebook. Depending on your comfort and what your audience would feel is valuable, think about that and create your course. If you are uncomfortable with video, you could create text and creative-based courses and launch them too. There is a market for every product type, and you need to identify the right audience and promote your course to them.
Market Analysis for your course
Before starting your course content, look at social media and the internet for all the existing products in the market. This might be overwhelming, and you might feel like there is too much competition, so don’t worry about it. You can position yourself to get your ideal customer.
While doing this, start noting all the other existing people who have already launched their course; you could follow them and build a relationship with them.
Don’t think of them as competitors; there is no competition in online business; everyone can share the market and earn enough when you properly position yourself.
These people are your future collaborator and partners, who you could invite for your YouTube or podcast shows. You could also be a guest on their show. These kinds of collaborations would give more exposure to you and your partner.
So don’t compete; just collaborate and grow together.
Mindset For Online Business
There will be a lot of confusion and questions in your mind, worry not, it’s normal; every instructor making six figures now has the same doubts and questions in their mind as when they started.
Common Question:
“I am not an expert.”
Self-Doubt
“I don’t have enough money to start online courses.”
“I don’t have the technical skills required.”
Consider and treat this as your business, so invest in your learning and the right tools to build systems and automation to run your business.
As mentioned earlier, every instructor has crossed the same path and had the same self-doubt, but by taking action and not procrastinating, they made it possible, earning 6-7 figures per month.
Most instructors make money even when they are sleeping, and it’s all possible with the right systems and tools.
So keep your mind clear and focused on creating and launching your first online business.
Think like a CEO and start taking action.
Create Your Online Course
Your few hours or days of work would make you 6 or 7 figures based on the value you provide.
Let’s create the actual content of the course
Step 1: Fix Your Course Topic/Title
Since you already have identified your niche and ideal customer, it is a walk in the park for you to identify your course title.
What problems could you solve for your audience?
You might already be helping your friend and peers on some topics that could be your ideal course topic.
The most common mistake made by beginners is they select a topic that is so generic and common.
If you recollect, we mentioned being more specific about your ideal customer and keeping it more detailed.
Based on your ideal customer persona, you could fix your course topic.
Step 2: Do Extensive Research on the topic
You might have done a bit of research while doing the market analysis, but start an extensive reach on your topic.
What is your course about?
What pain points are you going to solve?
What contents should be present in the course to help your students achieve the outcome?
Step 3: Create A Course Outline
Without a plan or sketch, you cannot build buildings. Likewise, you need to have a course outline and skeleton for your course.
Modules, Main Topic, Sub Topic, Assessments (If Any)
List out the number of modules, topics in each module, and sub-topics.
It will not be the final one, it is just a rough plan to get you started. You could rearrange the topics and sub-topics based on the right fit.
Step 4: Write Goals & Objective
To launch your course in 5 days, you need to start writing your goal and objective with a timeline. When you have a deadline for yourself, you will work hard and put more effort into completing the work.
This could be for yourself and your course content; while creating the content, you could have goals and objectives for each chapter or video. You could structure your content to achieve the outcome and deliver more value to your students.
Step 5: Create Course Materials
So you have an outline, research, and goals. You would need some presentations and resources for creating the content based on the course topic.
List out all the materials needed for you to start creating your content, work on it and keep everything ready before you start recording or creating your original course content.
Step 6: Record Your Content
People buy from people, so your students prefer to see your face in the video or content. Video courses are the best, and it has better engagement and completion rate than any other course type.
With internet speed increasing worldwide, most prefer to consume video content for learning.
Hit the record button and start creating your video course now.
P.S.: While recording and creating your course content, ensure you are building a relationship with the student by asking them to comment below the views or visit any page for reference. The more engaging your content is, the more the student will feel good and valuable about the course.
Step 7: Post-Production of your content
So all content is recorded; now it is time to edit your video and start uploading the content to your learning management platform.
You could use any video editor and finish the product or hire a freelancer online and ask them to edit and provide the output. Most freelancers would already have some effects and templates, which they could add to your video and deliver in good quality.
Platform to Host Your Course
Now that the course content and outline are ready, you need to get into a learning management system and start selling.
There are many marketplaces where you can register and upload your course. But you would have no control over your course and would not get your student data.
The best way to control your course, content, and pricing would be to invest in a learning management platform and configure the tool under your domain name.
This tool would allow you to create unlimited courses, unlimited students, and landing pages to sell your course, and you can fix your course pricing.
You must follow the step-by-step instructions, and your online course can be ready in a few minutes.
Course Pricing
Pricing will be tricky; it completely depends on your audience and how they feel about your content. If you could solve a million-dollar problem, you could also charge your course for 10K$ to 100K$.
If you are targeting freshers and the course is starter content, then you could charge less than 100$, else keep it above 100$.
Never define your price by keeping it lesser than existing players. Maybe in the initial days, you could give some discount, once you get enough social proof, then start charging more.
The more your charge, the more credibility you earn, depending on the value delivered in the content.
P.S: Don’t just record courses and sell, have a platform to stay in touch with the students, so they keep getting value from you.
Marketing Your Course
So you have launched your course, and it is ready to be sold.
Did you know most instructors pre-sell their course when planning the course outline like a waitlist? This is possible only for existing influence or experts in the market, and this may not be viable for new instructors with lesser experience.
You could run email campaigns or paid ads on Facebook or Google and generate sales. While running campaigns, your ideal customer persona will be very helpful.
Talk or reach out to your potential customer, don’t talk to sales directly; build a relationship and talk about how you could solve their problem.
Provide Free Coaching Calls, and this is one of the best ways to sell your course while you learn more about the problem of your ideal customer when trying to help them solve the problem and also subtly sell your course.
Apart from this, you could use all your digital assets to align with your message and funnel your audience to your course sales process.
Mistakes to avoid
Some of the most common mistakes made by first-time instructors; try to avoid these mistakes.
Video length
The user attention span is very low, with short videos and snackable content. Your course video should be less than 20 minutes unless it is something so technical and complicated that it cannot be explained within 20 minutes.
Don’t Try to be Perfect
Most people fall into this rabbit hole, trying hard to be perfect. Perfection is the more overrated thing in the world. You attain perfection only by trial and error. So stop worrying about being perfect, and get on with the flow. If you make a mistake, it’s okay, and you can correct it.
Test Everything
You have your outline and content, so you loaded your course and set up all tools for you. Many instructors forget to test the process from the view of the student.
By testing the sales process and content, you could avoid unwanted embarrassment and silly mistakes in your course content and sales process.
Great, you are now an online instructor
Are you ready for a challenge?
How to Build Your first online Course in 5 Days
Build a blueprint for your first online course in just five days!
With a tried-and-true approach in your back pocket, you’ll feel prepared to create a scalable digital product that spares you from days of preparation, teaching, writing, and answering the same questions repeatedly.
So… are you ready to rise to the challenge?
So start taking action and launch your first online course. Once you launch your course, please leave a comment and if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments below.
Click here to check the alternative platform to host your courses.
