In this post the question of how to make money selling online courses will be answered.
We’ll go through:
- finding and validating a profitable idea
- Creating the content
- Getting the course online
- Getting students
- Setting a price
- Launching your product
- retargeting your clients
Why an online course?
There are many ways to make money online so why make an online course?
It’s a proven path
It’s an already proven way to make money. A lot of people have already done it.
It’s easy to find information and support when it comes to making courses because
of that.
Passive income possibilities
When you’re offering a course you’re not trading hours in for dollars and is highly scalable.
In theory, it could serve as a passive income stream for a very long time.
Building your brand
It can help with building your brand. The more people see your face the more it opens up doors for
other opportunities to make money.
Now that we know what’s possible the first step is to…
Find a profitable idea
It all starts with an idea.
You basically have two options:
1. You can use a skill set or knowledge you already have.
2. You take something you’re interested in learning about and make the course
while you’re learning about it.
You’ll also need to know:
If there’s a need for your idea
To find this out you can do
Search engine research:
A handy site that u can use for this is quora.com.
You can type in your idea and see what kind of questions come up.
If they bother to ask about it there’s typically an interest for it.
You can type it into google. The suggested results show you what people type in the most.
If people are looking for your solution than you probably have a winner.
Forums:
You can also go to forums and see if people are in need of what you offer.
Validating your idea
Knowing if people are in need of your solution is one thing. If they’re willing to pay
for it is a whole different thing.
A lot of people say they’re willing to pay, but when
push comes to shove their action sometimes say different things than their words.
This is why it’s better to validate you idea before you invest all your energy into
making a course.
Start with…
Building a MVP
A MVP is a product with just enough features to satisfy early adapters, and give
feedback for future product development.
You can gage peoples reactions and see if a full product is worth making.
Examples of mvp’s
Ebook
Sell a 10 page PDF regarding the subject for a very small amount. It doesn’t matter
how much if they’re willing to spend $5,- for it they will be prepared to spend more for
a deluxe version.
YouTube series connected to a patreon account
Create a video series and put a part of it on patreon so they have to pay for
that footage.
A small email course
Create a small email course and treat is like the ebook mvp
Paid webinar
Create a webinar and see how many people are willing to pay for that.
Some mvp’s of famous companies:
Here’s a video with some examples you’re probably familiair with.
Now let’s get into the fun part!
====> Check out this post for more information about MVP’s
Creating content
The first thing you do is create a…
content outline.
ask yourself these questions.
What’s the course going to be about?
How many subjects are you planning on covering?
Start giving every subject you’re going to cover a title.
Then start creating the content.
Some handy software you can use while building the course
is screen-o-matic. Recording time on the free version is limited, but there’s
a lot possible.
Worksheets
Create worksheets so the courses can be interactive and help create a clear overview
for your customers.
Get your course online
From what I know there are two ways to get your course online.
You can use online content platforms
pro:
– They already have a huge customer base.
cons
– No access to the list of buyers so you can’t retarget them.
– They take a very big share of the money.
Examples: Udemy, Lynda etc.
Put it online yourself
pro:
All the money you earn is yours.
Cons:
– You have to find the clients yourself.
Example: teachable
Teachable is a excellent program with which it even is possible
to set up your own affiliate program to attract more students.
======> Want to earn money online through making online courses click here.
Get students
You can have the greatest course in the world, but if nobody knows it exists you might aswell
have never made it. You need traffic to go to your site and buy the course.
There are all these programs about driving traffic to your site and it seems very complicated, but
in reality it’s very simple.
There are two main ways to get traffic effectively:
– By paying money
– Paying with time
Money
We’re talking about:
Paid advertising through social media ( Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc.)
Paid advertising through PPC ( google, Bing etc.)
Time
You do this by building trust with your audience through providing value and then
offer your course.
The value offered most of the time is in the form of Content marketing ( video’s, podcasts,
blogs, live stream seminars).
You put them on your email list and now you have an audience you can offer your course.
There’s actually also a third way
Network
Create an affiliate program and let JV’s with email lists drive traffic to your course.
Set a price
This is in my opinion one of the hardest things to do, because it’s hard to gage the actual worth of your
course from your own point of view.
To you it might be this random little thing you’ve been able to do
since you were 8 years old, but to others it could be the key to upgrading their entire lifestyle.
Never underestimate that!
So since I know this I don’t base the value of my products on what I’m teaching, but I base the value
on how I’m teaching it and the possibilities my ideal target audience can get out of it.
What I base my price of
There are three ways to teach Telling, showing en guiding depending on
which of these ways I’m using.
Telling
The lowest level in my opinion is telling. It’s the one method that involves
the least investment so most of the time I put those courses in
the $0- $100 range.
Showing
When you actually show someone how they can achieve their goal you’re lowering the chance they
can interpreted your teachings wrong. You’re raising there chances of success considerably so I put
courses that use this method in the $100- $800 range.
Guiding
The highest level is guiding them. You can think of something as 1 -on 1 mentoring or training.
In this case your audience always has somebody by their side that gives them feedback.
It can cut a clients learning curve by a lot.
It does take a lot of work so most of the time I put this in the > $800,- range or I would
consider a continuity payment system like a monthly subscription and then lower the price.
Launching your product
You have your product, you know the price, you have a plan to get traffic to your course now
it’s time to launch your course.
You’ll need a landing page. A landing page is a specific page with the goal of turning potential
prospects into clients. It showcases the features, the benefits and everything else that might get
a visitor to sign up for your course.
You can create a simple fully functional landing page with blue host within a few hours.
It’s essential to know a little about direct-response copywriting when making a landing page.
We al think we know how to spur someone to take action, but when money is involved people
often think twice.
Here are some…
Tips for writing copy
Headline
Make sure your headline is benefit driven. The first thing they need to see when they land on your page
is what’s in it for them. Just putting the name of your product isn’t going to do anything.
Features vs. Benefits
Put your focus into showcasing the benefits of your course. People care more about
what they can get out of it then all the components of the course.
Benefits > Features
Social proof
Boost your credibility through placing some testimonials on your website.
In case you don’t have any testimonials find some other source like a video with
someone credible talking about why your concept works.
Example.
You might have a course about content marketing.
If you have a video of Gary vaynerchuk or Seth Godin talking about the importance
of content marketing people are more inclined to look at your product.
Call to action
Don’t ASK! TELL website readers to purchase your course.
Additional possibilities
You’ve finally put your course online people are buying it and you’re making money. You’ve achieved your goal.
It’s the end of the journey right?
Wrong!
This is where it all begins. When other people are happy with their successful courses and settling you’re
going to make three, four maybe even five times as much money.
We’ll do this by retargeting the clients that already bought your course and offer them even more value.
Find ways to put your services over the top. Think of every little thing that could improve their lives even more
and offer them that.
This could be weekly Skype support, a Facebook mastermind group etc.
Make sure you deliver when doing this.
It could be the difference between a client spending $50,- for a course or spending $3000,- for
the full package.
I hope you got some value out of this article.
This is probably a lot of information to digest and there are all kinds of details that
I couldn’t get into without this becoming a course in itself.
As a suggestion I would recommend you take a look at teachable.
Almost everything you need to make a course is available on that platform.
Want to take a look click here.
