Why you should consider Creating and Selling Online Courses
In this day and age, a lot of people have taken to making online courses that address an unlimited number of topics under the sun. And while there are often other reasons why some embrace digital course content production, the underlying motivating factor is always as a source of income. In this article, we are going to explore some reasons why you should consider creating and selling online courses, and how you should go about it.
Creating and Selling Online Courses
There are other motivations behind creating and selling online video courses or tutorials.
For instance, if you have niche knowledge to share to others, it’s safe to say creating courses online is the surest way to get your knowledge put out there while you make a lot of money selling course online, even in Nigeria.
Below are few reasons why you should consider online courses.
Read also: The Most popular Forms of Online Courses.
1. As A Source Of Steady Income
In considering whether to develop and start selling online courses, you first of all need to define what the goal would be from the word go.
Are you going to create course content just to make money or are you simply providing a service to help others without necessarily caring about the financial bottom line?
Once you are clear about your goals, it’s much easier to create a strategy and a game plan.
For starters, a lot of us have so much knowledge in particular areas of interest that the only way to get those ideas out there and make the most out of it financially is to design and create online courses that people can buy and use to solve their problems.
There are a lot of people who make a decent living simply through course sales. However, there are other benefits to creating an online course.
As a digital asset, online courses don’t take much to create, and what’s more?
They are cheap to distribute since there are no shipping costs when distributing them.
Often, it takes the form of eBooks, and cane be shared as PDF files, MS Word documents and even as Slideshare.
Read also: Make money selling online courses in Nigeria
2. To Acquire And Retain Customers
If you own a business, it is often necessary that you create online course content around your product and services, with the idea that over you will build enough reading audience that will ultimately transform into buying customers.
Hootsuite, a social media management software, has been successful in this regard, offering free social media marketing courses on Hootsuite Academy.
At the last count, more than 250,000 people have taken these courses, with a large chunk of them now becoming paying customers of their software.
Thus, if you already have a product you wish to attract customers with, the key would be to create online courses that will draw those potential customers in and then sell your products or services to them in the long run.
Read also: Why Onboarding Programmes are so Important for your Organisation
3. Online Courses For Customer Success And Retention
If you already have a successful product or service with a large patronage, it is safe to say that creating a free online course is the surest way to keep your customers and not lose them to competition.
This is more popular with companies whose product demand a certain level of learning and tutorial to understand.
The underlying logic is this:
If you help your customers with after-sales customer support services by way of extra explanation about how to use their product or services, you are often rewarded with a lifetime of customer retention, plus a higher referral rate from already satisfied customers.
Read: Video Lessons Online | The New Better Way to Learn
3 Basic Steps in Creating an Online Course
In this next section, we are going to try to explain how you can go about creating an online course.
Read first: How to Create a Standard e-Learning Course
1. Pick An Online Course Topic
The first step is to select and pick an online course topic that you have in-depth knowledge about and are willing to invest time to write about.
If you already have an audience, you could start by just asking what they wish to know about your line of services, then you create an online course around that topic.
You can also ask your social media followers. Facebook and Instagram both have features that allow for online polls where you can get a response on what people’s views are on a particular topic.
If there’s a clear winner from the response, then that should be a good topic to start with.
If you do not have a large audience or followership on social media, but already create content in the form of blog, YouTube videos, podcasts, or any other medium, then that is a good place to start, as your online course content will equally revolve around what you already talk about.
Learn how to teach using social media.
2. Validate Your Online Course
You do not want to create an online course that nobody ends up buying. That is why it is always important you validate your online course content before delving into it.
What this does is that it shows if there is an actual demand for it. Also, if you pre-sell, it’s a proof that there is indeed a market for it. Another benefit is that by validating, you get to build a list of potential customers once you are done with your writing.
There are a number of ways to validate the necessity of your online course, and one such ways is just by asking.
Create a survey in which you ask your audience what topics on issues they are interested in. If you already have a topic in mind, simply ask them if its information they are willing to pay money for.
You can also pre-sell your online course. This is a sure way to identify potential buyers and also to test if the idea is a bankable one. To make it enticing, you can offer the course at an early bird price, and quickly change it later once sales gains traction.
You could also launch a pilot course in which you promise early customers mouth-watering offers if they are the first buyers. The idea is to get people’s interest in what you are doing and generate an early buying frenzy among your audience even before the course is ready.
Even if you were a professional teacher, or content creator, you still need to validate all your video content before launching.
3. Create Your Course Content
Once you have validated your topic and are sure there is a market for it out there, the next big step is to get to work and start writing immediately.
Depending on the area of interest you are writing on, it is best you explore different multimedia formats in order to fully capture the full range of what you want to sell to your audience; via sequence of videos, images, sound bites, and PDFs all add up to enrich and make an online course very interesting.
If you teach yoga for example, you should have video recording of yourself in yoga position. If you are teaching people how to use Excel, you need to share your screen for your audience to follow and don’t get lost.
Conclusion
Online courses can be a veritable means of making money if you are good at what you do. Thus, if you think you have a sell-able idea or are very knowledgeable in a certain area of interest, go ahead and create an online course content for such product.
In a world where the majority of people now acquire much of their learning online, you will be surprised the amount of interest your online course content generates.
Who knows, that idea you are thinking of selling in the next online course could be the best selling product that you have been waiting for.
Thinkific has more to say about creating and selling online courses. Thank you for you time. Please do not forget to share this post. I leave you with this: Benefits of taking Online Classes.
