Have you considered the idea of starting an online course but have no idea where to start?
Online courses are the perfect way to answer common questions asked by your audience and serve more people at once without having to sacrifice all of your time.
Over the past few years as a Marketing Strategist and Business Coach, I have helped dozens of my clients publish online courses and scale their business to freedom.
Now I’m helping many more through my exclusive course creator, Freedom Course Creator.
When I first started creating online courses, I ran into so many obstacles. However, I managed to navigate around them so that I can now provide you with the tools you need to create a profitable online course.
1. Do you have a profitable course idea?
So first things first, do you have a profitable idea?
Before you do any kind of research into creating your online course or researching which platforms to host your online course on, you need to know if you actually have a good idea and whether or not it will be profitable.
As business owners, we always like to believe that our ideas will be wildly successful. However, we need to approach creating online courses with a practical mind.
You can start this process by making a list of possible lesson ideas.
A great place to start would be to often think of problems that you solve for your ideal client.
If you are a Coach, these could appear in 1:1 sessions with multiple clients. For example, I decided to create Freedom Course Creator because I had helped many one-on-one coaching clients create an online course.
I knew this was a service in demand and I could influence more business owners if I offered it as a service to many.
If you’re a service provider like a virtual assistant or a social media manager, you may find that you get asked the same questions over and over. Whether it’s building your own service-based business or the role you play.
People drop entire courses on how to create high converting reels or how to grow on Instagram. Your specialty could be email marketing and you could create a course on funnels.
As you build your list, listen to your audience and find out what they’re constantly asking for… you might as well ask them what they need right now.
2. Are there similar courses out there?
Before launching any new offer or service, I always recommend doing market research, and creating online courses is no different.
And while we’re not here to compare ourselves to other business owners, you should do a competitor analysis to see what else is out there.
By seeing what your competitors are doing, you will be able to:
- Validate your course offering – if someone has previously created a course on this topic, it shows there was/is some level of demand for it
- I appreciate how competitive market is for the course you’re considering – you need to strike a balance between creating a course that’s not on an oversaturated topic, but still attracts enough interest to make sales consistently
- See what the average price is for the course – You don’t want to oblige or overcharge for your course. Pricing strategy is important.
3. Do you have the knowledge and experience to deliver the course?
This may seem like a no-brainer, especially if creating courses is the right “next step” for you in business, or if you’ve gotten your ideas for your courses from things you’ve helped your clients with in the past.
But it is important to know the depth of knowledge you need to have to create an online course.
The best online courses are robust, have a solid framework, and build on your experience and expertise in your field.
You can check out the freedom course creator box to see the kind of depth I go into this course.
4. Consider starting small
Just because the course needs to have depth, that doesn’t mean it has to include everything and the kitchen sink.
Because there is a fine balance between offering value and crushing your audience.
If this is your first time starting an online course, it might be smart to start with something simple, like a beginner’s course in your area of expertise.
Before I started Freedom Course Creator, I had a lot of experience supporting clients creating online courses, but I had also started smaller courses. my biz clarity mini course is a great example of testing the waters with something smaller and low ticket.
Before that I also had a mid-ticket online course, Content to Cash, which taught you how to use your content to land dream clients.
Am I saying you should start a low or mid ticket course the first time you create a course? Not at all. But what I’m saying is that starting with a smaller class might be easier to manage.
You can always build on the course over time or create larger courses as you become a more established course creator.
5. Think about your program promise and describe your curriculum
Last but not least, you need to think about the outcome of your course.
What is the promise of the program? What will your ideal customer gain from it?
Will they become Pinterest Pros? Will they learn how to create five figures with ease? Will they learn how to start their own business from scratch?
Whatever you choose, make it strong, powerful and use your ideal customer’s language to speak to them.
Once you have your promise, you can start outlining the curriculum and course units so you can think of everything they need to do to get to that end result.
So, think you’re ready to start building your online course?
Be sure to download my completely free course creator checklist to help you through every step of the course creation process.
Claudia xx
