An online course is a combination of videos, PDF files or written content, It could be audios or anything you wish to add with a goal of impacting knowledge on a particular topic.
There are many ways that you can make money online, one of them is creating and selling online course. If you are skilled in any relevant subject or aspect, you can create a course around it to help others out there. You sell the course to them and they buy to learn. This way you help people reach their goals while also making money.
Online courses have become very popular. With tens of millions of people online every month to learn. When people get stuck or look for ways to do things, the first point of call these days happen to be online course.
If someone is looking to learn coding, to build a business, to learn how to play a music instrument, to do almost anything, millions of them learn it through online course taught by professionals.
Almost everyone is an expert in one area or another. You can use your area of expertise to make money online while teaching others. It could be music, coding, business, blogging, making money, anything at all, there are people out there willing to learn. You just have to connect to the right audience.
Your location does no matter, you can stay in Nigeria, India, South Africa, Kenya, United States or anywhere at all and teach people from around the world.
How much can you make from online course?
For the purpose of this post, we will focus on Teachable. Teachable is one of the leading platforms to create and sell online course.
On average, instructors on teachable earn over $7000 from online courses. But that is just average. As a content manager at Teachable revealed, there are instructors who make up to $1 million every year from their courses. That is massive and there are a of people in that bracket.
While getting to that level will take time an dedication, it is very possible to start and earn a reasonable amount of money.
Derek Murphy, an instructor at Teachable revealed how the journey started for him. He was not an expert at the subject he as teaching but was well informed. He was initially skeptical if he will make any income from it. So because of this, he kept delaying and delaying. But when he finally created his first course, he made $18, 000 in one month from the course.
Teachable alone has over 15 million students learning on its platforms and instructors have made over $256 million! The online learning industry is valued at over $160 billion by GM insights.
How much you plan to make from a particular course is down to you. If you plan to make $20, 000 from a course then you have a lot of options. You can sell the course to 2000 students at $10 then you will make $20, 000. You can sell it to 200 students at $100 and you still make your target $20, 000. Or you can go high and sell to 20 students at $1000 and you make your target $20, 000.
That is just a format. It all depends on what course you are creating and how you value it!
What should you teach?
You can teach anything in this world. But the best thing to teach is to teach what your audience wants. Nothing beats that. If you do not have an audience yet, find them. Research and determine which audience you want to target.
Make sure to research and understand your topic very well. It is important. There are many ideas. I know a lot of people stall a this stage of wondering what to teach.
Imagine this post is about making money through online course. I could decide to make this a course and sell it. You can teach people how to use a particular product that is very much in use. Teach about anything. It is all about things people are interested in learning.
Once you have come up with your topic. Put up your ideas and test it out. Join a Facebook group or LinkedIn group that is related to your ideas. Share some tips from it and see how many people are interested. Collect emails. You will need their emails to sell the course.
Let’s say I want to teach about “Blogging and making money”. I will join a related Facebook or LinkedIn group and post this:
Hello,
I have some awesome ideas on how you can set up a blog and make good income in 6 months.
I will also show you how to do your SEO and get good rankings in no time
You will learn the secret ways most bloggers make money that they do not want to tell you.
If you are interested, comment with your email.
Best regards.
Now watched out how many people are interested. That should give you an idea. Collect the emails. You will eventually use it to market your course when it is ready. Every potential email, is a potential student.
How long will it take you to create a course?
It can take you an hour, it can take you days or months. This all depends on you. If you are teaching a topic that you are very good at, it will likely take you few hours to create your course.
For example, I am a blogger and I have been doing this for many years, it will take me maximum two hours to create a course about blogging.
If I am entering into an aspect am not used to, It will take time to research, understand the topic, find the audience and then create the course.
If you have written a book you want to turn into a course, it will not take you long.
Basically, it depends on you and the topic you are teaching.
How to create an online course
Creating online course is very easy when you use a platform like Teachable. They make everything easier for you. There are other platforms like Udemy, Coursera and others but Teachable stands out.
You can sign up for Teachable here. You can also sign up to a monthly webinar that shows you how to create a course that will spin you big money, the webinar is hosted by teachable, a platform that has paid out over $250 million to instructors on its platform. Click here to sign up for webinar.
Let’s look at steps you take to create an online course.
1. Research your ideas
Always research your ideas. widen your knowledge of it, to help you present it better and thereby impact your students. Let’s assume you want to teach on “how to find investors for your business easily.” You need to research the troubles upcoming entrepreneurs face in getting investors. Understand their fears and wants, since they will be your target audience.
Your course should be about them!
2. Pick a platform
You will need a to pick a platform that will host your course. It is very important. A good platform is one with lots of students and other instructors. We recommend teachable. With over 15 million students learning and over 65, 000 instructors, it is a very reliable platform to get started.
3. Making videos
To help your students understand better and make more impact, it is very advisable that you add videos to your courses. You will need a good camera. It is also okay if your laptop has a good camera quality and voice recording.
If you are camera shy, you can hire someone to do the videos for you.
4. A good work book
Give your work book a professional design. Everything should be well packaged and cool. Teachable has made a lot of things easy. You just have to give in your best.
5. Price your course
Set a price for your course. Like I mentioned earlier, you should have your income goals at heart. Calculate how many people you need to sell it to, at a particular price to meet your income goal. That is just a basic. You can sell many times above your income goals.
6. Sell your course
All should be set. Create your sales page and you online course is ready for the world!
Marketing your online course
After creating a good online course your next step will be selling the course. There are many ways that you can do this.
Your biggest asset is going to be an email list. Where you can save emails of potential students and send them emails about the course and how to sign up.
1. Social Media
Like I pointed out earlier, you can use Facebook groups and Linked groups to pitch your ideas. Then collect emails. With the emails you collect, you can send the course details and how to sign up.
2. Write guest posts
You can look for niche related websites and write guest posts. Write a post that is around your course and drop a link to sign up for it.
3. Ads
You can run Google ads or Facebook ads to reach target audience. The good thing is that you can target ads to your target audience and only pay a few cents when one of them clicks on it.
4. Share it with your followers
On your social media profiles, share it with your followers. The more people know about it, the more potential students.
5. Talk about it on YouTube
You can make YouTube Videos talking about the online course and what it has to offer
Keep learning
There are so many things that your experience will teach you and you can improve on over time. You may make $8000 from your first course but you will learn a lot from it, and what you learn can help you make $50, 000 from your next course.
It is about progress. Th good thing is, your course continues making you money. A course you made last year will still be making you money this year. A good place to start learning is from this webinar.
You can go here to check other ideas to make money online: Make money online
