Selling online courses can be one of the best ways to create a passive income with minimal effort, budget and time consumption.
We’ve created a high level guide on how to design, create and sell your online course.
If you would like more specific support from Purple Yak, please reach out through our contact us page.
Before creating or recording anything you’ll need to decide what skill or skills you have that you’re going to focus on and coach someone on. Consider what skills or experience you have that you could pass on to group of people.
Next, ask yourself, is it a topic that will sell? To find out start by searching Google and YouTube for your topic and its demand. You need to make sure it will sell before moving any further forward, you don’t want to waste time creating content that no one wants.
Once you have your topic, you’ll need to decide on the outcome you’re delivering. For example, if you’re expertise is digital marketing then you could run a course on social media marketing with a commitment to deliver an increase of 30% more traffic from social platforms. This promise/guarantee/commitment need to be placed within the first minute of your course, this will ensure you grab your customers attention from start to finish.
Next on your to-do list is to start creating a guideline of what fundamentals you’re going to teach them and then how your customers can put this into practice.
Put your outcome or result on what you’re going to teach right at the start of your course. Whilst explaining what the result or outcome is going to be today, make sure you emphasise that you have either had the results yourself through doing it or that you have coached others get this result or outcome.
Now you need to create the right name, the right price and the best positioning statement for your course. Again, use google (or any other search engine) to see what others are charging and the quality of their work and adjust your cost compared to the quality of your content and delivery.
Now it’s launch time, start with a VIP launch for the first 10–20 customers. Give them a that “royal” treatment, make sure they’re happy, that they understood the value and that they have got what they expected from your course. This VIP customer list could be people you have on your mailing list, friends, family, past clients, respondents to an advertisement, etc. These customers are your test base, you’ll be able to gauge customer satisfaction of the course, do they perceive it as value of money and identify who your target audience is or will likely be.
Once you’ve tweaked your course, price, target audience or all the above, you’re now ready to move into a long term sales model to sell the course with minimal effort. You can use membership sites to host, signup customers or give them membership access to your course or courses. A great example of one of these sites is Podia, they’re an all-in-one digital storefront giving you an easy way to sell online courses, memberships and downloads, no technical skills required.