How To Teach What You Know Online
Many experts have created significant additional income by teaching online. To teach what you know online isn’t that difficult thanks to the multiple software options now available. You only have to check out the online course provider, Udemy to see a vast array of courses. Whether you are a graphic designer, home stager, yoga instructor, business coach or photographer, your expertise can easily be developed into a course or courses.
Step One – Who Is Your Audience?
Once your audience avatar is established it’s easy to create a course outline. A profile of your target audience will guide you on how to structure your course. It helps you to decide if your course is for beginners, intermediate or advanced students. You may even have material that can be adapted from blogs, ebooks, or full instructional books you have already written.
Step Two – Design And Price Your Course
To teach what you know, one way to create your course is to check out how other experts in your field deliver their course material. Platforms such as Udemy require that 60% of the course is in video format, whereas other platforms don’t have such restrictions. By checking out other experts, you can decide how you want to deliver your lessons.
Breaking down the course into lessons that naturally flow from start to finish is essential to teach what you know online in a logical sequence that does not confuse the students. Checklists, quizzes, and assignments are all ways to keep the learning going in the right direction and keep the students interested in your content.
Pricing your course might include a quick free introductory course or webinar to encourage signups for the paid courses or a landing page to sign up for a paid course and receive a free gift.
Step Three – Choose The Platform For Your Course
There are a variety of options for hosting your course. Some require more technical expertise than others. For a full list and comprehensive guide to all the options here is a link to the 15 Best Online Courses. If you are not a tech expert then maybe the Thinkific platform might be one to explore. Marketing expert and prof. Dorie Clark uses this platform to teach her online course and reached a 6-figure income in just 6 months.
If you already have a website, you may want to go a different route and host your own courses. One of the best website platforms for hosting online courses is WordPress. If you don’t know anything about WordPress, check out this article and infographic from Websitebuilder.org. There are several WordPress plugins that can host your course, some are free and others are premium plugins. Elegant Themes does a great job of evaluating the top 6 WordPress plugins. You can use these plugins with your existing theme. Some include membership and payment gateways and others include these in the plugin. There are so many options to teach what you know using these plugins. If you use this option 100% of the proceeds is yours to keep (minus the percentage kept by the payment gateway).
Many experts have found that private Facebook groups are a great way to keep the students engaged with you. They can ask any question in this type of forum and the personal interaction will create a bond that both helps the students move forward to complete your course and also be interested in any future courses you might design.
Step Four – Market Your Course
Once you have built your course the next step is to let the world know that you have a course. You can use your current mailing list to advertise your course by sending them to a landing page to sign up. In addition, you can use paid advertising on Facebook, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.
You can also post your course in Facebook Groups, Your Twitter page, LinkedIn or Instagram feeds. Using graphics or video are key to engagement. Another tip is to use a posting schedule to create the buzz on all the platforms and to give discounts for early signups with a countdown to when the discounted offer will end. The idea is to create a sense of urgency for the signup.
If you still aren’t sure about which platform to use, check out this 2020 review.
If you already have designed an online course, we would love to hear which tools you have found to be indispensable to teach what you know online.
XL Consulting Group is a marketing agency helping entrepreneurs through startup and rebranding phases of their business. Our services include business building, coaching for business growth, marketing strategy, website design, branding and social media strategies. Contact us for a free consultation.