Online courses are here to stay. Online classes are the best and fastest way to make money online. Learning and knowing how to build and sell your online course is the best thing you could possibly do to scale your business.
Forbes released an article about the status of online learning and where they thought that industry was going to go. They estimated that the line course industry will be worth $325 billion by 2025. So this begs the question, how are you going to get a piece of that pie?
FREE guide
Learn how I got 300 leads in a day with referral partners.
This free guide details the 8 step process I used to build a network of referral partners that have sent me up to 300 leads in a day.
I’ve been getting a piece of that pie since 2017, but how are you going to get a part of that pie in 2021? Because online education is not going anywhere. Whether you are considering Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi or building your online course on a WordPress website, you want to get your hands on a piece of this profit.
Today, I’d like to share the benefits of using online courses as a business model in online coaching and online business spaces.
Two Big Reasons Why You Want to Build an Online Course for Your Business
Reason #1: the market is ready
We’re in the age of Aquarius, where technology will reign supreme, and those of us who had online courses ready to go in 2020 saw a considerable spike in buyers as people were stuck at home with nothing to do except learn. Even as a consumer, not just a business owner, I probably spent more money than ever on online courses in 2020 because I was stuck at home with nothing to do.
Reason #2: charge high ticket prices
Because I specialize in teaching, marketing and sales, I have a marketing and sales training company for women coaches and course creators. What does that mean? I solve a huge problem, particularly the sales portion of growing your company. I chose this vertical because I found that women, in particular, don’t have enough resources available to them on how to make high ticket sales. A large percentage of sales information is geared towards men. Because we have different sales styles than men, I offer what the “regular” sales courses don’t give women because they don’t consider the female sales force’s needs when building their product.
Beware of Starting a Dumpster Fire!
There are many coaches out there, and if you don’t figure out a way to make money in a scalable manner, you’re going to end up with what I call a dumpster fire business. A dumpster fire business is when you are so busy catering to all the people who are already paying you and so busy trading time for dollars that you don’t have time to get more money.
You’re so busy working in your business that you’re not working on your business, which means you don’t have time to strategize or find and train a team because your time is being taken up working. At this point, one big issue or problem, or a significant portion of your clients deciding not to renew, will leave you screwed. So you always want to make sure that you have something scalable in your business. I recommend creating a scalable business model so you can have the ability to spend most of your time bringing in new money.
How to Create An Online Course Step-By-Step
Let’s go into how to create an online course!
This is a general overview, with some tips to get started, but if you’re interested in more detail and a step-by-step guide in my Persuade to Profit program.
Step #1: Get Clear on the Problem You are Going to Solve for People
Get clear on what problems your market needs answers to by doing market research. This is an essential element when you start thinking about your course idea because you want to make sure that there is a need for your course. Also, you want to make sure that the market is not over-saturated, meaning there are thousands of courses out there already.
Why is market research so important? If you don’t have clarity about what kinds of problems your market is dealing with, you’ll have a hard time coming up with courses that people are looking for. If people aren’t looking for a particular course topic that you want to create, you won’t turn much of a profit. If you’re going to create something that’s going to sell like hotcakes, you need to know your market better than they know themselves.
Need help figuring out how to do market research for your idea? We’ve got you covered in module one of Persuade to Profit, and we’d love to have you there!
Step #2: Create Solutions for People’s Problems with Online Courses
Once you do the market research and find specific issues your market needs answers for, your next step is to create your online course answers.
Your course’s selling point is that you can help them solve their problem and take away their pain point. So you take the answers, and you put them into an organized, systematic process. Particularly if you want to charge high ticket prices, there needs to be some system because high ticket clients and high-quality clients love systems and frameworks.
Step #3: Pre-sell Your Course to a Beta Group
Take your first step and find a small group of people, about five to ten, to pre-sell your beta version. Let them know they are getting a special price in exchange for feedback on your product. Do your beta testing with a live group of people to get instant feedback. Use this feedback to improve your lessons for your online course. Now you’ve got proof of concept, launch your product and keep selling!
Know that your beta group will be asking you many questions, which you can add to your course content as you’re creating your online lesson. And if the first group is asking you all these questions, there is a high probability that many people in the groups after that will ask the same thing.
And if you haven’t done it yet, guys, remember to get your piece of that $325 billion potential!