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"Creating an online course is so easy!"
"Online courses are your ticket to passive income!"
"You can earn millions working in your pajamas!"
That's what a lot of "gurus" would have you believe.
But if any business were actually passive, we'd all be doing it. Does that mean you shouldn't create an online course or e-learning program? No way.
The e-learning market size was more than $200 billion in 2022, and projections have it hitting over $800 billion by 2030.
Beyond the financial implications, there's nothing more rewarding than helping people transform their lives. Creating an online course is a way to exponentially increase your impact in a way that you can't with one-to-one services.
So, if you're going to dive into the e-learning industry, here's what you need to know.
Related: How to Build a Lasting Career in the Creator Economy
You can make money from selling courses...
… but it may take longer than you think to hit your financial goals.
One of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs make is thinking creating a course will be easy. But even if it's "easy," it's not fast.
So, if you're relying on your e-learning business for 100% of your income, consider building your course in your "off" hours if you have a traditional 9-to-5. Or, if you're offering one-to-one services, you may continue working with those clients while you build out your program.
You also don't have to wait to start selling your course until it's complete. For some entrepreneurs, selling a program that's incomplete (with the promise that the rest will come by a specific date!) is the motivation they need to finish it. You can even offer a "beta" version at a lower price.
Frankly, your course will never be "done." The first course I created and sold online, the Comprehensive Copywriting Academy, looks nothing like it did when I first started in 2012. That's because once students got into the course, they were the ones who provided me clear direction on what else I could add to the program to make it even more valuable. We continue to add to it today.
Selling the minimum viable offer version of your course not only allows you to start earning faster, it allows you to start impacting more lives faster, too.
Related: How to Make Consistent Passive Income With Your Online Course
AI can't create your course
There are AI programs my team and I use (and love!) to synthesize information, perform competitor research and any number of admin tasks. But these programs aren't capable of creating quality, valuable content. AI's strength is in its ability to synthesize information that already exists. If everyone used AI to build a course, everyone would have the same course.
But you should be creating a course—not regurgitating information that already exists. You're the expert, and you shouldn't be teaching a course if you don't know the content.
Ask, and answer these questions before you even begin:
- What makes my offer different from others in the space?
- What transformation am I offering consumers that other programs can't?
- What makes me the best person to lead my audience to this transformation?
The answers to these questions are the foundation of your offer—and they're answers AI could never dream up.
Related: 6 Ways AI Can Boost Your Course Creation Business
"Build it and they will come" is not a strategy
What you have to offer is valuable. It can transform lives, and you've likely seen this firsthand.
But having a handful of people — or even a few dozen people — purchase your offer doesn't translate into a sustainable business. You need a system to find your audience and convert them into customers. Not everyone is going to be the right fit for your offer. Even the people who are the perfect fit are human, meaning they resist taking action and making a change, even if that change benefits them. Effective messaging is crucial to ensuring they understand why they need your offer—and why they need it now.
Know your numbers
Running a business without understanding your numbers is like flying an airplane in the clouds without any of your instruments functioning.
No matter what revenue number you have in mind— six, seven, or eight figures and beyond — you need to know what goes into hitting that number.
These questions are just a handful of the ones to answer:
- What is the price of your offer?
- Where are your leads coming from, and how many do you get each month?
- What does it cost to acquire one lead?
- What percentage of people who get on your list make a purchase?
- What does it cost to turn a lead into a sale?
- What percentage of people are opening your emails?
If you're running ads, you really need to know your numbers. (In fact, I recommend making sure your course generates sales without ads first and then using ads as an accelerant. If you're unable to sell your course, ads aren't going to magically fix that.)
When I first started, gurus in the space said, "If you run ads for $10/day on Facebook, you can make sales."
Guess how that went.
You need to know your click through rate, landing page opt-in rate, and your cost per lead to start. Are those numbers adding up to a return on ad spend?
Make sure your mentor uses the tactics they teach
Many online entrepreneurs are making a living by teaching other course creators. But the dirty secret? They're not using the tactics they teach. You want to make sure the information you're consuming has been tested.
Of course, there's no guarantee that what works for one business will work for yours. But it's certainly worth questioning anyone who is teaching tactics that they're not using.
Above all, creating an online course is rewarding. The amount of lives you can positively impact increases as the time you need to spend on certain elements of your business decreases.
But, as I said… it's a business. There never has been, and never will be, anything passive about running a profitable, sustainable business — e-learning program or otherwise.
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