Learning is no longer restricted to offline instructions where one needs to learn in a physical environment controlled by an Instructor. The industry has been rapidly shifting towards providing the freedom of moving away from instructor-led training or learning methodologies. Learners prefer on-the-go learning and, more importantly, in the format that they feel most comfortable in.
This is why the time has never been better to share your knowledge with the world. One of the fastest and most unique ways to get your knowledge out to a global audience, make a tremendous impact and make more money is to convert that knowledge into a lead-generating, money-making, impact-creating online course. This article will show you how to build a profitable online course that sells like crazy!
The first step on this mission is to idea and make sure it’s profitable (even if you’re not an “expert”). Don’t worry – you don’t need to be an expert. Because as a course creator, you have two options:
Option #1: Be the Expert
If you already have a special skill, expertise, or knowledge about a certain domain, you can “be the expert” and share that knowledge. Teach what you already know and are good at.
But there’s another option.
Option #2: Be the Curious one
Being a curious person, you can teach as you LEARN yourself. Here’s what we mean.
Choose a topic you’re interested in. Do your research by reading the three top-selling books on this topic. Once you have gone through 3 of the selling books, you will have enough knowledge of the subject matter to create your own base. This would allow you to have enough knowledge to build an online course.
And as you LEARN more about the topic, you need to document your learning. This could be in the form of Videos, write-ups such as documents, PPTs, Pdfs and others. This way, as you create these documents, in the process of mastering your knowledge on the topic, you are also creating the course content needed for the online course. This way, you could build a course on almost anything you’re interested in.
Here are four key steps on how to build a profitable online course
In any case, there are five primary elements to building your profitable online course:
- Select and Gather your Course Content – This is a point where most of us are stuck, and the main reason we get stuck here is often because of the volume of information we have in our heads or all around us in books, on our notepads, and so on. Select and Gather your Course Content
Try to include content that answers your audience’s questions or answer questions that your competitors do not answer.
- Filming, Recording and Editing your course content –One of the biggest selling points for an online course are videos. Online courses that have videos sell more. You don’t need very expensive recording equipment. In fact, in today’s world, with the current tech in place, all you really need is a smartphone with a decent camera and a tripod or a Gimbal that helps you shoot high-quality close-up videos.
- Build a course plan – Gather all of your content and arrange them in the order you would deliver your online course content. As such, you would need video recording apps for your laptop or smartphone, Screen presentation software such as Free Cam 8, Screencast-O-Matic, or Adobe Premiere.
While choosing the right camera and other equipment, we suggest you start small and grow as your audience grows. Recording your first course with your cell phone camera and microphone could be enough, and as you start selling more, you could then consider upgrading to better production quality. Once you have the budget to spare, you can get yourself some professional equipment for the job, such as DSLR cameras, video editing staff and more.
- Set up a platform to launch your course– To launch and sell your online courses, you need three things – a website where your audience can learn more about the website, an online course builder, and a payment gateway to collect payments. You could look at building these three things yourself, or you could look at Knorish for it.
You see, when you sign up on Knorish, you don’t just get these three things; you also get features such as discount coupons, payment collection automation, blog post functionalities and a lot more. Knorish can actually help you do all this and much more.
As a one-stop DIY platform, it provides an amazing user-friendly interface and many features. You could launch your website with amazing customisable templates and build your course structure in less than a day. This would come pre-integrated with a payment gateway and will allow you to track student performance, conduct live training and webinars, and track your marketing efforts as well.
How to price a course?
We all want to earn enough money by selling online courses, but we should understand it can be a tricky job. You really have to understand your audience well. What is their paying capacity? Plus, you also have to understand one simple fact. Powered by digital marketing such as Facebook and google ads, you could gain a lot of traffic very quickly.
For example, let’s say you price your course at $30, and let’s assume that 50 students purchase your course in the first month. That’s $1500 made in the very first month. So really, the sky’s the limit.
If you are wondering how to build a profitable online course, you need to find that specific price point where your course price is beautiful to your learners and quickly builds a significant revenue stream. There is an immediate relation between how much you charge for your course and the engagement level of your students. Plus, you can always add discounts to earn from price-sensitive clients, but to beat the price competition, you should not offer a cheap course.
How to Market & Sell Online Courses
In this day and age, you should continue beyond just creating content for your audience. There is more to it. The most important aspect of how to build a profitable online course is marketing and selling it. That’s why targeting the right audience for your amazing video content is the way to do it. While there are different opinions, there are three very powerful platforms for digital marketing courses: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Quora. You must advertise your courses on these three platforms for maximum traction.
Your Journey Has Just Begun
Now that you have reached here, you’re on your journey to creating a successful online course. You have learned how to market your course to an appropriate audience and the best ways to create the right content strategy and appropriate platform to promote your course on, taking care of all your tech problems.
This step process gives you a good idea of what to expect from the journey of creating and marketing profitable online business courses.
