If you consider yourself an expert on anything, there’s a good chance you can supplement your income by sharing your expertise with others. Design and sell a course online on your chosen subject and start earning money while you sleep.
Producing your own course and selling it online is an excellent way to create a truly passive income stream. Imagine you spend 10 hours creating a great course on potty training, for example.
Once you have done the initial work, you can put the course for sale and sell it for years to come. The 10 hours you work now can provide income for many months, without you doing any additional work other than yearly updates.
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Design And Sell A Course Online
People are turning to online learning more and more. Other than the current Worldwide situation, online learning is popular because it is “on demand” meaning you can access your material whenever you want instead of committing to a certain time and day.
Online learning is popular with mature students, stay at home moms, busy professionals who want something to do on their commute etc.
Choosing Your Subject Matter
What’s popular right now?
A course on snow skiing might be a big hit in December. But you might struggle in May.
Think about what’s popular in What non-fiction books are selling well on Amazon?
What are the most popular searches on Google and Yahoo? Phone apps? A new computer language?
What are your areas of expertise?
Consider the things you know more about than the average person.
Remember that you don’t have to be a professional mechanic to know more about rebuilding an old carburetor than 95% of the population.
Make a long list of the topics you know well.
What do you love to do and learn about? It will be much more exciting to create a course around the things you’re passionate about.
Ideally, you’ll be able to find a subject that’s popular, fills you with excitement, and is within your realm of expertise!
Spend some time brainstorming and make a list of potential ideas. You only need one good idea to significantly boost your income.
Creating Your Course
Once you have your course topic, you’ll need to put your course together.
This can be the most daunting part of the process, but there are many shortcuts to developing an effective course quickly.
In fact, there are many internet platforms built specifically to host video courses.
The amount of information available has never been greater.
But the means of delivering that information has always been cumbersome.
Luckily, technology now makes it easy to share your knowledge and earn some extra money in the process!
First, decide whether your course lends itself to the written word or to videos.
Videos are the most popular way of delivering online learning materials nowadays but you might find an ebook is the way to go.
Ebook
If you want to create an ebook, you can do it yourself using basic office software.
Photoshop, Microsoft Word or Powerpoint are all good options, as is Canva which is a free image editor.
If you need some help to get started with your ebook, consider purchasing a cheap ebook template from Creative Market. It will give you all the design elements so you can just fill in the gaps.
YouTube
YouTube is a free way to provide your video course to your students.
It’s easy to limit access to your videos to specific people (your paying customers) via the tools available within the YouTube dashboard.
A Dedicated Online Course Platform
Use one of the many internet course platforms.
A few include: Udemy, Thinkific and Teachable.
Since your presence isn’t required, you have the option of making money 24/7!
You could teach a student from Nepal at 3:00 a.m. on Christmas morning while you’re asleep.
Things To Know About The Different Platforms
One thing to bear in mind is that ebooks normally sell for a lot less than full video courses.
Ebooks typically go for $5-$20 depending on the subject while in-depth video courses can sell for up to $1000.
The other advantage of creating a video course is that you can make quick updates by replacing individual videos whereas an ebook update normally requires a full overhaul of the book which can take longer.
Developing Your Course
Do Your Research
See what else is out there.
There’s so much information available today that you can probably find several books, courses, and videos that cover material directly related to your topic.
Pay particular attention to summaries and the table of contents in related books and courses.
Create an outline for your course
Start with the general framework.
What topics do you wish to cover? What information is most useful?
Realize that many of the people that take your course are looking to solve a problem of some sort.
Consider the pain your potential students are trying to resolve and create a course around solving the common challenges related to your topic.
Keep the timeframe in mind. How long will your course be? Ensure you have the proper amount of material in mind for the desired length of the course.
Creating The Content
A simple camcorder or Smartphone can make excellent videos.
Good lighting and sound are two of the most important factors for making a professional looking video.
Find a video on You Tube that describes the equipment and techniques necessary for making high-quality, inexpensive videos.
You’ve created your content and you’re ready to go. The next task involves finding your students! Your income will be boosted more significantly if you can find and entice a large number of paying students.
Finding Students For Your Online Course
Many people who are considering how to design and sell a course online focus heavily on the creation of the course and forget about the marketing.
Without a solid marketing plan, you won’t make sales and all your hard work will be for nothing.
Social media
This is perhaps the fastest and least expensive way to find students.
Facebook: Make a post about your course. Be sure to include a link. You can even create a page just for your course. Join Facebook groups that are related to your topic.
Twitter: A Twitter account is easy and free to create. Getting followers requires little more than following others. Follow others interested in your course topic. Twenty minutes each day will result in thousands of followers within a month. Let them know about your course.
You Tube: Create a video and address the content of your course.
Ensure that you provide links to all your social media accounts and to any web pages you might have.
Create a website
Create a quick WordPress website with all the relevant information for your course. Be sure to include a quick video about the course. Here is a step by step tutorial.
Friends and family
Tell everyone in your social sphere that you’ve created a course and are looking for students.
Craigslist or Kijiji
Craigslist can be invaluable in getting started. Run a free ad for your course.
Online Forums
There’s a forum on the internet for every topic under the sun. Create an account and make some useful posts before trying to sell your course. Make an announcement and add a link to your signature.
Find affiliates
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to promote your online course.
Essentially, you are asking your affiliates to market your course for you and paying them a commission for any sales they make.
Find the experts in your field with an online presence.
Introduce yourself and your course and see if they would be interested in joining your affiliate program.
You might suggest that you’ll give them a 50% commission for anyone that signs up from their list.
List owners also appreciate when their folks get a discount so you could even offer exclusive discount codes for their readers.
Give your marketing plan the time it deserves.
There will always be a need for education. You can leverage the need for education and boost your income.
Spend your time sharing a topic that excites you and get paid in the process.
If you design and sell a course online that becomes popular, you can start making money in your sleep for just a few hours or work.
Help others by sharing your expertise and enjoy the extra income!
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