Many online courses platforms host your courses for a significant percentage of the sale that you make. However, Red Cappi Team pushes you to be your own boss and share your factual knowledge and experience that nobody else can claim by creating your own school and courses on Teachable.
Why now?
Online learning has never been so accessible. You can literally become a certified expert in so many subjects without enrolling in any university. Online courses have become both – innovation that transforms society and a business model.
For example, AI pioneer the former AI chief of Baidu and founder of Google Brain- Andrew Ng has recently said (August 2017) his new online course will help build ‘an AI-powered society.’ The syllabus will follow his famous machine learning course, which has attracted some 2 million enrollments since its launch in 2011.
Trends in online learning are developing and becoming more meaningful to the overall life quality and decisions that we make about our future. Educational organizations and governments view digital learning and training as a tool to achieve institutional goals and implement changes.
So….You might have a fantastic idea , but you still need to take the following steps in order to earn money from your course.
Evaluating demand for the course
Firstly in order make money – the course as any product in the market needs to have demand. To understand popular courses go the online learning platform such as Udemy and analyze categories. Do search for the topic that you have in mind and see how many results you get. Also, check how successful are those courses in attracting students.
Quora is also a fantastic place to include in your research because you can see the questions that people actually care about and how many followers each subject and topic receives.
Google keywords tool can similarly provide you with interest and demand statistics about subjects.
Advice is to always focus on niche audiences to create your courses. The niche audience is a very targeted demographic audience with particular interests and needs.
When you identify your niche audience from the beginning you kill two birds with one stone – it is much easier to create a better product for well-defined students, and it is much smarter to advertise your course to a targeted audience on Facebook.
Creation
There are many creative techniques of the online course. But it all starts with structure and modules. Do not write, create, record 1st module until you have a clear outline of your overall curriculum.
Teachable is our favorite tool because it gives you full control of your business. You CAN gather all the information about your students. The length of the course can vary. Some course creators suggest 5 pieces each 1000 word if it’s an email course, others suggest to mix media and add videos.
Pricing models
Pricing is always a sensitive issue. Your pricing depends on both – competition and your value proposition on the landing page. If you provide real value and put effort into your course, you can always evaluate it for $299-$499, but if it’s a course that you are planning to use as a lead magnet, you might offer it for FREE.
Here you can see a very technical course built on the Teachable platform, which as you can see provides technical knowledge. It is also well structured and presented.
More technical course that helps with qualifications are always pricier, as they require niche knowledge. However, if you see that there is a demand, then it’s worth investing time and effort in creating such type of course.
Marketing and generating demand
Facebook ads are an excellent tool if applied strategically. How to get your potential students on the list? A lead magnet is an answer. You need to have a perfect lead magnet that your client’s wants and fears. It might be a template, checklist, ebook or webinar depending on how much effort you are willing to put into your business to generate initial interest.
Testing lead magnets can take you 1 step further and help you decide on the course version that would sell better. How do you test lead magnets? By testing Facebook ads with Adespresso tool that contributes to identifying the winner ad and winner lead magnet.
After that Red Cappi, email marketing platform takes you to the next level.
You use your generated email list to build a relationship with the interested potential customers.
Red Cappi lists make it easy for you to personalize offers depending on the lead magnets your clients chose. Both Teachable and Red Cappi can be found on Zapier, so it takes just a few seconds to relate Teachable students to Red Cappi list!
Some of the best advice about online course creation and managing all the tasks can be found on the Teachable blog itself. For example, coupons are nothing new in any business, but you must now that almost every school (93.5%) in Teachable uses coupons to sell its online courses.
Business requires both passion and patience. A recent study on teachable schools demonstrates how long it takes to become a school that earns up to 25$k. It is 14 months. While if you want to start making 75$k – it is 17 months.
Therefore, online course business is not an overnight success miracle business formula. It will require strategic decisions and growth-hacking. If your goal is to make money when selling courses, then define a monthly goal for example- reach $2,000 in monthly revenue, or enroll 50 new students per month and then determine which activities you should focus that helps you most with your set goals.
We hope that your course will quickly build traction and you will benefit from easy tools. So easy that baby can use it!