Creating online courses for your business can be massively beneficial in adding new income streams that need little management. The thing is, you need to get it right and fully understand the benefits of creating a course (both to you and your customers) but also the process itself.
Here’s my guide for you on the course creation process.
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What are the Benefits of Courses for Business?
One of the greatest benefits in creating your own online course is establishing you and your business as an industry and thought leader in your field. It allows you to building authority and really demonstrate your knowledge, which is nothing but good for your brand. Plus, it gives you the ability to expand your product range with educational and informative products that serve your customers without requiring your constant attention. If done right, courses should sell and deliver themselves without any interference from you, making them an excellent source of passive/semi-passive income.
You can also gain new customers from introducing courses to your audience, as you may have warm leads on the periphery of your business who aren’t buying (perhaps your one to one service is out of budget for them?) By creating a course to deliver the same knowledge without the direct exchange of time for money, you can sell it at a more accessible price point, meaning those warm leads soon convert into paying customers. Additionally, you can satisfy the needs of your existing customers who simply want even more of the good stuff you put out into the world!
Building your own online course can educate your customers on specialised topics, providing massive value without that direct exchange of time for money. Those courses can also give you the opportunity to incorporate the promotion of existing or affiliated products and services, which is the epitome of merging income streams and maximising your returns.
What is the Course Creation Process?
When creating a course you are aiming to:
- Identify a topic, niche or process that your customers want – going off on a tangent and creating something random or something you ‘think’ they want, is not the best idea here. Do your research!
- Pre-sell the course – pre-selling a course is the best way to test the market without doing a shed-load of work upfront. There is nothing more upsetting than going full pelt and creating a beautiful course and content, for it not to sell. It’s absolutely devastating. So please, pre-sell your idea and test that market before you put too much work into the creation side.
- Create informative course materials that are relevant – you’re aiming to deliver massive value to your customers, because those customers will become raving fans and recommend your course to others (it’s human nature). So give those customers a reason to yell about you from the rooftops and provide relevant, informative and transformative content.
- Stick to one specific topic per course – It’s so easy to want to give everything you know to your students (trust me, I know!) but you’re actually being counter productive and may very well confuse them with too much information. Make sure to stick to your topic and go into real detail without going off on a tangent.
- Educating your customers about a specific topic or process – As I mentioned before, educate around one topic or process, don’t go willy nilly into that good night or you’ll lose your customers ability to follow you!
- Creating content that has purpose – ensure everything you’re teaching within your course has purpose and will move your students forward to their next logical step. If you add things in just for the sake of it, then you’ll probably confuse your students.
- Incorporating an upsell, down-sell or additional income streams – think about how you can maximise the revenue from your course. How will you sell it? How will you promote it? Consider including affiliate links and links to your existing products or services. Then think about your marketing; include upsells, downsells, sales funnels and Pinterest marketing in your plans to promote your course sales.
- Pick a platform that suits you and your course – read this post to help!
Above all, you’re aiming to make your course once, and sell it time and time again. Keep this in the back of your mind all the time and you’ll be set!
