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.
Tune in below:
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Mentioned:
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.
Read also: How to Create a Course Framework
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 sign up for the waitlist if you want to be the first one to know about it and get the lowest price.
7. You’re a content creator and love taking courses.
If you these 2 apply to you, you’re more than ready to create and release your first paid program.
I was there and I had already taken so many courses that I knew what makes a good a program. I saw amazing courses that helped me achieve the result I was looking for, and I was bad ones. I saw all kinds of formats, quality of the content, student experience, bonus material, and so much more. I was first a student of courses before I went ahead and created mine.
Just like first I was a reader before I became a writer and blogger and I was a podcast listener before I started my own show.
This works for me every time – to first consume the content, learn all about it, and then know for sure that this is what I want to create for my audience too.
The opposite is also true. I don’t really learn from videos so I don’t create them, I’m not on YouTube. I haven’t hired a coach and I don’t offer coaching myself. It just won’t be fair to do that and to be paid for it if I myself don’t believe I need it and have never tried it.
8. Your audience is asking for a course.
This is one of the best signs, right? This also guarantees you a successful first launch, allows you to survey your audience and work based on their feedback, and even create a beta program and work together with a small group of students.
After that, once the content is ready and you know exactly what works and what doesn’t because you were getting feedback the whole time, and you already have student results to brag about and testimonials for your sales page, you are ready to have your official launch and crush it.
So don’t let the technical part stop you. Or the fact that you’ll need to sell more, that you will feel imposter syndrome, that there’s a lot of competition. All this doesn’t matter.
Your audience wants to learn more from you and they want to invest in your online course. So do it for them because we are all here to serve our people in the best way we can.
9. You have the time and desire for a new project.
Maybe your business income is stable now, things are even a bit boring. You still love what you do and don’t want to change anything about your existing income streams, but you just want something new and exciting and challenging to work on.
If you don’t have a course yet but have been thinking of one, now is the time for it. This can become your biggest asset, your greatest legacy online as it can literally contain all that you’ve learned over the years in your niche.
It can transform people’s lives, not just solve one of their problems or help them with one topic. If you’re ready to commit to it, you can create a whole academy and sell it for multiple 4 figures.
10. You’re already selling to your audience.
There’s nothing scary about having a digital product. Most people avoid selling and don’t feel comfortable with it so they have mindset work to do first.
But if you’ve been doing that for some time already, whether that’s selling your services, yourself as a brand, your platform to sponsors or even physical products, then a course will be no different.
You can have a lot of fun with preselling too. When you nail the course topic and have the engaged audience, you can earn a lot from the pre-launch, which will get you super motivated and committed to doing your best job when creating the content for the program.
What do you think? Which of these apply to you? Are you ready to enter the billion dollar industry that are online courses?
If you want help with all this and are ready to create not just a course, but a dream offer and a digital product business set up for unlimited profit and freedom, join me in Bold Business School.