Ok . So, you might have been reading posts from the Twitter Gurus on “How to build passive income in 24 hours”. Pun intended. You probably have noticed that one of them is common among all: selling an online course.
While, for sure, you can sell an online course, the Gurus usually forget to talk about how to create an online course in the first place.
However, it can help you become successful, especially if you find a reliable company to teach you how to sell an online course effectively.
To write this article, we have taken the help of experts who have emptied their shelves selling their courses online. The steps that we’ll be outlining shortly, will help you create an online course starting from scratch.
So, join us and let us simplify the steps that you should take to create a successful online course in 2024.
Find and Seize the Opportunity
Imagine this, you created a course by putting blood & sweat into it, spending nights & days editing it only to get the feedback that it wasn’t even needed. This exactly happened with one of our courses.
The reason for this failure? We didn’t do the market research effectively and thought that it was an opportunity but in reality, it was an already saturated market.
How to distinguish between a real and a not-so-real opportunity? Hang out where your prospects hang out: the internet.
The internet has made it easy to acquire knowledge about anything whether it is the problem you are looking to monetize or you need to find a solution for a known problem. Having said that, you may need an internet service provider that offers stability and supreme customer service enabling you to look for the right opportunity without the fuss of outages. For such needs, we tried Mediacom and since then we haven’t switched from it. The plans it offers can fit any budget and Mediacom Customer Service 24/7 can resolve your issues professionally and quickly.
Anyways, a strategy we use to look for the right set of opportunities is observation and curiosity. Sometimes the opportunity is right in front of us but we can’t seem to identify it. You can read subreddits about the topics of your interest, scroll and stop to read comments under a viral post, and overall just be curious about things and you’ll likely find a problem as an opportunity.
Validate your course with a smoke test
Initially, it might feel like people are interested in solving the problem they have been having for quite a while. In your case, a course that will boost their skillset and likely have a significant impact on your life. But are people gonna pay for the course? This is what the smoke test will answer.
How to do a smoke test?
- So, what you have to do is fake that your course is ready to be purchased (even though you don’t even have the outline for it) and then market it to the full. Create a landing page and reach out to the forums, comment sections of relevant social media pages, and reach the prospects. This will help you get data about whether people are willing to pay for the course.
Once the people keep coming to your landing page, set a realistic CTR (click-through rate). If the expected CTR is achieved then you can hop on to the next step.
Design the outline of your course
You might have people who are ready to swipe their credit cards at this point. But before going all out to sell something that is of no value, create an outline of your course that describes in chunks what you’ll be teaching as a whole. Those chunks are aka modules.
Remember this, you have to make a difference in the lives of the people. This is what they’ll be spending their hard-earned money on.
Not to forget, you have to hold down some of the knowledge to create a win-win situation. You can sell that information in your masterclass and also keep things simple for the viewers.
The modules that you’ll create are to give out the idea to the learners about what they’re about to grasp in that module. So, don’t go too deep into them and just create a basic structure.
Film, edit, and market your course
The next step after you are done with the outline is to add content to the modules whether it’s in video format, audio, or text. Just make sure to keep it interesting and let your students interact with your course through their participation in quizzes and more.
Before you post the content, make sure to check it for any sort of errors. Once it is flawless then is time to select a platform you’ll be using to post your content on.
There are multiple options like SkillShare, Udemy, LearnDash, and Teachable among others, that you can use to host and market your course.
Choose it wisely keeping in view that it works best for your audience.
Summing Up
For sure, creating an online course is an uphill battle. It is not a walk in the park but once you have climbed up to the top of the hill it’s going to be fruitful if done the right way. Make sure to adapt when needed after your course is successful to keep it running successfully.
