10 Signs You’re Ready to Create an Online Course

Welcome to episode 38 of the show where we’ll talk about taking the decision to enter the online course industry. If you’re wondering whether creating a course is the right next step, this one’s for you.

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Mentioned:

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Show Notes:

How to productize your service
The 1 thing you need to create a unique online course
How becoming a course creator can simplify your business
The role of intuition in business
The driving factor for my decision to start creating courses
A risk-free way to enter the online course business
What taking courses has to do with releasing your own
The sign that guarantees you a successful first launch

Transcript

I don’t want you to make the mistake of investing weeks or months into learning all you can about being a course creator and releasing a program only to realize that you aren’t passionate about this business model. That no one actually wants or needs the product you just created, or that you want to move onto the next business idea.

Even if that happens, I believe that you’ll learn valuable skills and they will contribute to your next digital business one way or another. But you might be in a situation where you are finally ready to have a regular income online a few months from now and quit your day job. Or create multiple income streams and want to add online courses as yet another passive one.

In that case, there’s no need to waste time on a project you aren’t serious about. Now is the time to decide whether becoming a course creator is your next step or not.

Here are some signs that you’re ready to create your first program, which by the way, can be your only one. No one said you need to create multiple products.

You can keep updating your signature offer and get better at selling and launching it, until it becomes the foundation of your whole business. So many business owners are doing just that and it’s one of the main reasons why they love online courses.

Okay, here’s the first sign that you’re ready to create a bigger digital product such as a course:

1. You’re tired of teaching the same thing over and over again.

If you’re a service provider, blogger, freelancer, coach, or else, you just keep talking about your subject. Maybe you’ve created a ton of free content around it, you’ve had clients, you offer packages that teach this, and you’re starting to get tired of it. It doesn’t excite you anymore. You’re ready for something different.

That’s when packaging your knowledge and turning it into an online course can change the game for you. This is what we call productizing your services.

An online program can be the one thing you offer to all clients and anyone who wants to learn all you have to teach and dive deeper than what your free content offers.

This makes your whole business less complicated. You have 1 main offer and anything else you do online basically builds your brand and gets your product in front of more people. Anyone who stays around for longer, is on your email list or follows you on socials, will know that this is the best way to learn from you – by investing in your course.

You can still offer 1:1 services but maybe you will increase your rate for that and only have a high-ticket offer. For the client who has taken your course and has implemented what you teach there, but is ready for more support and a more personalized approach to what you teach.

The biggest benefit is that your business can finally become scalable. You stop exchanging time for money. After all, there are only so many hours in the day and there’s only so much you can charge for one hour or a package.

Add to that the fact that a course gives you a passive income stream. You can automate your sales funnel, create systems, lean back and receive payments at any moment of the day.

2. You have your own framework.

The best courses are the ones that teach something in a unique way. They might help you do something faster, better, save money or time somehow. And regardless of what the topic and niche are, you walk out of the program knowing it paid off.

This works best when the course creator shared a unique system of achieving the goal, something that you can’t find anywhere else. That’s because they figured it out through trial and error and they know exactly where you’re coming from, what your struggles are and what you want.

Do you have a framework like that? If so, it’s worth teaching that not in your free content but in a paid program.

That framework itself can become your biggest selling point, the one detail about the course that will magnetize people the most.

3. You want to simplify your business.

When I was a full-time blogger and I earned in 4 different ways, there were many metrics to track and often I was all over the place.

There was ad revenue which depended on traffic so I had to keep that going. Then there’s affiliate marketing, sponsored content and digital products.

I decided to become a course creator for many reasons but one of them was that I had tested this by creating my first course years ago and even though it wasn’t a huge success, I knew I wanted to keep doing this. I knew I wanted to one day replace all my other income streams with the revenue from selling digital products, and courses in particular.

Even though there was more selling I had to do and a whole bunch of new skills I had to master, it was worth it. It simplified things. I stopped working on everything else and focused solely on the online course business.

4. Your intuition is telling you that’s the next logical step.

Sometimes we don’t need any more signs other than the inner knowing that this is the right thing for us.

Your intuition can be telling you that you’re meant to be a course creator. Maybe the program you’re about to create will transform many people’s lives, maybe it will be the stepping stone in your business journey, the thing that gets you to 6 or 7 figures over time.

You’ll never know until you try. And even until you fail one or two times and keep trying.

I’m all about following your intuition in business. But just make sure it’s not a whim. Make sure the feeling continues for some time and that you’re just drawn to this business model.

5. You don’t want to work with clients.

That’s another driving factor for me. Client work is just not my thing. I don’t want to depend on others in any way in my business. I don’t want to have fixed hours or video calls or anyone to answer to.

The thing about online courses is that you control every aspect. It’s a self-paced program and even if you have coaching calls as a bonus or some live trainings, you can still do it in a way that fits your needs and schedule.

There are many elements you can add to your course to make it more interactive. You can turn it into a create your own adventure type of experience where every student makes the most of it. Then they have the freedom to complete each lesson and do the homework whenever they have the time and feel ready.

If you want to teach online and love passive income but don’t want any client work, courses are the way to go.

6. You want to hit 6 figures but don’t know how.

Whatever your current business model is, if you have no idea how to scale it but have the goal of reaching 6 figures, then you might want to launch a course.

The good thing about it is that you can monetize it before you make it, you can validate the idea if you have an audience already, and you can close the doors, upgrade some things about the offer and release it again. You don’t need to risk creating a course on a topic with no demand. You can literally get paid for it before any content is ready.

That’s what I will be teaching inside my program for course creators Bold Business School, which is coming soon. Make sure you