Do you have expertise in a particular topic and want to share that knowledge while earning money? Then you should consider creating and selling a course.
But before you start creating your online course, it’s important that you put yourself in your students’ shoes. Would they find your course valuable? Would they learn something new and useful from you?
Do you care about their learning success, or are you just out to line your pockets with their money?
Always remember that you must provide as much value as possible to your audience to make everlasting profits online. If you don’t do that and only think of yourself, your business won’t last.
Helping people should be your top priority when creating a video course, a text-based course, an audio course, or any other type of course.
After all, if your course is helpful, people will be happy to recommend it to friends and family.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you create your first course:
1. Choose a profitable, enduring topic
While you can create a course on any topic you want, you need to ensure enough people care about your topic.
Helping people is important, but since you’re building a business, you should also want to make a return and generate a healthy profit.
There are several ways to find a profitable topic:
- Check to see if there are already courses on the topic you want to cover. If they are and they sell, that’s a good sign. It simply means there is demand for that topic, and you can create a much better course than your competitors.
- Do keyword research to determine how many people are searching for your topic. If the number of monthly searches is high and there aren’t enough resources on the topic, you might have a good idea!
- Search for forums in the niche you want to cover and see people’s problems. Forums are a goldmine, so look at all the threads on your topic. List the problems you want to address, then create a course.
- Look around the supermarket for magazines on the topic. If there are magazines on the topic, it’s a good sign that there is a demand for them.
I mentioned “consistent” because you want to create a passive income stream. If you choose a non-consistent niche like technology, your course will become obsolete as soon as the technology becomes obsolete.
With persistent niches, you won’t have to worry about that. Your course could still be selling decades after launch!
2. Test and verify that your topic is actually profitable
This step is very important to avoid wasting your time and money creating a course that no one will buy. You can ask your family and friends for their opinion, but they would probably be biased and tell you what you want to hear—that your course is great and will sell like a cool lemonade on a hot day.
If you want real feedback from the people you’ll be selling your course to, you can create a survey and have your target audience respond.
How is this possible?
If you have an email list, you can simply ask them to answer your short survey. You’ll need to get creative if you don’t have a list.
You might be able to create a mini-course on the topic you want to sell and use it as an email opt-in. Then, direct visitors to your mini-course.
Track the number of visitors to your page and compare it to the number of people who actually signed up.
If your conversion rate is good, it means that your course can be profitable. However, if you get very low sign-up rates, your idea may not be very saleable.
Try split testing so you can make an informed decision about whether to proceed with your course or abandon it altogether.
3. Create a course concept and write your content
At this point, you should already know that your course has an audience waiting to be sold to. Next, you need to plan how you’ll structure it.
It’s very important to create a detailed outline to know exactly what areas you need to cover. Address the main points of your course—you don’t have to get bogged down in the details.
The most important thing is that you need to solve your audience’s problem and that your course solves that problem thoroughly and understandably.
Break your course down into small, bite-sized sections. Your audience will appreciate that you’re taking the time to make things simple enough for them to understand.
Once you have completed the outline, take a moment to review it. Ask yourself if you have left anything out and if it includes all the details that will help your target audience. Only then should you start working on the content.
Don’t get too hung up on the perfect eBook cover, lighting for your videos, or how you should sound on your audio recordings.
Some successful entrepreneurs have recorded their first courses using their smartphone or laptop’s webcam! No matter what type of content you choose, your students will pay you for your content and knowledge, not the perfect camera angle.
4. Upload your course to your website or another learning platform
Now that you’ve successfully created an awesome course, it’s time to upload it online so you can sell it.
There are generally three types of places you can sell your course:
1. Your own website
Selling your course on your website gives you the most control over your product. You can choose your design and set your price. You don’t have to give anyone a cut of your profits; you get to keep it all!
If you use WordPress, you can simply use a plugin to manage your course and payments, and you can be up and running in a matter of hours! If you use WordPress, I can recommend ClickFunnels to you, as you can easily integrate your sales funnel into WordPress. (See my review here)
Hosted third-party platforms
If you don’t have your website or want to set it up yourself, you can simply host your course on a third-party platform.
These platforms make uploading and managing your course easy, but they come at a price. Some charge a monthly or annual subscription; others charge a percentage of your sales.
Online learning marketplaces
Websites like this have become very popular in recent years. If you want to make your course accessible to an audience of millions, this is the best place for your course. The disadvantage is that you have very little control over your course once you upload it.
Most platforms also limit course prices and even take a cut of your earnings, so keep that in mind. An example of an online learning marketplace is Udemy, which offers all the tools you need to upload your course.
Udemy is a highly trusted source that can help you generate sales.
5. Promote your course to your target audience
Since you identified your target audience before creating your course, it’s time to tell them about it and how it can solve their problems!
If you have an email list, as I described in step 2, you need to contact them now. Let them know how they can benefit from your course and show them where they can buy it.
Make them feel special and offer them something nice as an existing subscriber – maybe a discount code or a free preview.
You can also use free and paid methods to attract visitors to your course. There are many ways to generate traffic, but ensure you target the right audience to get good conversion rates.
Use proven marketing strategies to persuade your target audience to buy your course. You need to know how funnels work so that you can guide your leads or potential customers to becoming paying customers.
If you have no idea what funnels are and how they can help your business, I recommend the book DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson. (Read my review here) I also recommend Russell Brunson’s second book, Expert Secrets, to help you define your message and sell your course (read my review here).
Remember to ask them to sign up for your email list so you can contact them again later.
Are you ready to sell your course?
A course is one of the best ways to generate passive income. While you must put in a lot of work to design your course, remember that you only have to do the hard work once.
You can create a course in less than a week and generate revenue from it for many years. Imagine selling multiple courses – you can live the life you’ve always dreamed of and spend your time doing what you love most!
Have you had any experience selling a course online? Let me know by leaving a comment below!