Have you ever considered creating online courses?
I love offering free content here on my blog, on YouTube with social media tutorials, and on my podcast. However, to make it easier for people to consume my content in an organized way, I decided to start creating online courses for getting organized on social media, and for optimizing your social media platforms.
Who can create online courses?
Anyone.
Yes, that’s super generic, but creating an online course is really only limited to your creativity.
Here are some examples of different online course options.
Company on boarding training course
Let’s say the owner of a company wants to streamline their on boarding process. They could easily set up a course with their company manual, important documents, videos about the company, and even include mini quizzes and an FAQ section. The best part of this is that business owner could track the progress of that employee, and continue adding relevant training material to that course.
Retail store owner
If you own a retail store and employee other people, you can use an online course to keep your employees learning about retail, about new trends, how to interact with customers, how to upset, etc. This could be a way to motivate staff and encourage them to try new things.
Real estate agent training
A real estate broker who does regular training with their agents could definitely take advantage of an online course. Like the business owner, they could upload any relevant documents, videos and quizzes that would be useful to the agent. They could also include reference material and links to other sites that might be useful.
Anyone who has knowledge of any subject could now easily set up an online course and potentially start making money from their knowledge.
- A successful business owner could start a ‘How to Start a Business’ course.
- An accountant could create a ‘How to Prepare for Tax Season’ course or even more specific to business owners ‘Learn What You Can and Can’t Write Off in Your Business’
- A successful author could create a ‘How to Write Your Book in 90 Days’ or mini courses about how to choose a title, how to create an outline, etc.
There are so many options for creating online courses!
What is the advantage of creating and selling online courses?
Creating an online course is one of the best ways to teach your audience, whether it’s teaching them about online marketing, cooking, parenting, knitting, real estate, etc.
Make learning easy for your audience
As I mentioned earlier, I love providing free content to my readers/ viewers/ listeners, but if someone is looking for a lot of content about a specific subject, it might take them a long time to go through all my content.
With an online course platform you can house all your content in one spot for your students, which makes it super easy for them, and saves them time.
With an online course platform like Thinkific it’s made even easier to create your course. So you don’t have to worry about setting up your own website, online storage, a way of creating quizzes, etc. you simply add your content and start offering your course. (FYI, I’m an affiliate for Thinkific, so when people sign up, I get a small kick back.)
Make additional revenue with online courses
Another advantage to creating an online course is that you can potentially make money for helping people with a specific problem, using the knowledge you already have, which is a nice bonus.
The Step-by-Step Process for creating an online course
STEP 1: Decide on your goal for your course. Is it an employee on boarding to save time training employees? Is it teaching people about a specific subject to help them solve a specific problem?
STEP 2: Decide on an online course platform. I use Thinkific which I love because it’s easy, affordable and have great support. You could also choose Kajabi, Teachable, or design on your own website.
STEP 3: Ask your audience. If this is a brand new idea, ask your audience on social media, your newsletter or website if they are interested in purchasing this course. You could also pre-sell your course, which is an option Thinkific offers.
STEP 4: Create an outline for your course. Break down each section and what you want everyone to learn once they complete the course.
STEP 5: Create the content for your course including videos, PDF’s and audio. Upload this content to your preferred course host.
STEP 6: Market your course. When I first started, I asked for 10 BETA testers, who went through the course for free and gave their feedback. This was a fantastic way of getting feedback, plus make sure that it flowed well and see what people thought about the content.
Are you considering creating online courses for your business? You can save 33% off three months of Thinkific Basic.
Let me know if you start creating a course and tell me how you’re doing.
