Taylor Gordon — May 9, 2019 — May 9, 2019
Creating a course is one way to diversify your income. If you’re making money from a business, there’s a good chance you have something to teach that people want to learn. I like making and taking courses from other people because they’re often a smaller ticket product that gives me an introductory into what the person is about. From there, I can decide if I want to invest with them again in. Let’s talk about the steps you need to take to create a course:
Choose the Right Idea
You can’t create a course on something you’re interested in without knowing whether or not it will sell. The right course topic is one that you know people are interested in buying. Do a bit of research beforehand and make sure to ask the right questions. Sometimes courses that people say they’re interested in aren’t actually courses that they will dig into their wallets to purchase. You can’t ask friends and relatives who aren’t your ideal customer if they’ll buy. They will say yes just to be nice.
Outline the Course
Outlining the contents of a course is probably my favorite part. Organize your thoughts into a fully fleshed out lesson plan. You don’t need to throw in every single detail. I’ve created courses on different personal finance topics over the last five years. What I’ve learned while creating these courses taken by thousands of people is that students like brevity. They want you to concisely lead them through the steps they need to get to the final result.
Test the Market
After getting an idea of what you want the course to be about, try to actually sell it. This could be through a presale or beta version of the course. The purpose of this is to gauge actual interest before you waste time creating something from scratch that nobody wants. Trust me, this isn’t fun. Courses can take weeks and months to build out. You don’t want to spend this amount of time on a project only to realize that nobody wants it.
Choose a Course Platform
There are many ways you can deliver a course. The simplest and cheapest way is probably delivering your course through daily emails. Alternatives are using a more involved site like Udemy, Teachable, Thinkific, or Zippy Courses.
Instead of using a robust course platform, you could go with a straightforward payment and digital delivery service like SendOwl or Gumroad. Compare the price and capabilities of platforms to choose the right one for you.
Promote Like It’s Your Job
This is the part where people sometimes fall off. Marketing needs to happen to make people aware of your course. Create an optin, make an email marketing series, experiment with ads, do a webinar, or hop on a podcast. People need to know your product exists in order to buy it.
Final Word
Creating courses is one of many ways you can add some passive income into your business. The research element of choosing your topic and positioning is key. There are many online courses that have been created and fizzled out because there wasn’t an audience of paying customers. Listen to what people want and then execute.
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