Monetize Your Expertise Via Online Courses: Challenges & Best Practices

Have you ever thought about the possibility of making money while you sleep? How about creating an online business that gives you the freedom to do what you love while changing people’s lives? Are you tired of trading time for money?

If your answer is yes to the above questions, creating and teaching online courses might be a sustainable business model for you.

Recently, I had the great honor to interview Rob Balasbas from Thinkific to discuss online course creation tips and best practices. Thinkific is a popular online course creation platform.

Rob serves as Thinkific’s Social Media and Community Manager. During our hour-long interview, Rob offered many valuable insights. Click on the image below to watch the replay of our live interview. Also, read my blog recap here that captures the major takeaways from our interview.

What are some common misperceptions of creating online courses?

? Lack of time. The most prevalent misperception that people have is lack of time. Rob pointed out that it may seem like a lot to create a course. However, once you create an course, you don’t have to do much. The time investment is only at the beginning. In other words, creating an online course can actually give you more free time. You can see from several of the success cases listed below that creating online courses actually gave these business owners a lot more free time.

? Wanting things to be perfect. Many course or video producers want their videos to look perfect before they feel comfortable releasing them to the public. However, many people fail to see that they can still improve their courses after they release them. During the interview, Rob shared one Thinkific student’s success case.

The student is a successful consultant. He launched his first online course in 2015. Initially, the course was not perfect but the student launched it anyway. Since 2015, the student has reshot the course six times based on the feedback he received from his audience. He improved his course substantially. And the money he made via selling his course has allowed him to upgrade his equipment to produce better video and audio. In other words, creating on online course is an ongoing process. It doesn’t have to be perfect when you launch it.

? Technology. Many course creators worry that they don’t have expensive cameras or other equipment. However, as Rob shared, many people don’t know that the smart phones that we have are better than many cameras in the marketplace. In fact, one successful course creator, Deanne Love, who is quite well-known in the Hula Hoop world created her first online course on her smart phone in a park. You can read more about Deanne’s success story in the following section. Similarly, one audience member who joined the Facebook show live shared that her first online course was created on her smartphone.

So, don’t be intimidated by technology or lack of. In fact, I have been running my Facebook live show in this tiny laundry room for a year now. See the picture below and notice how I have to use a few objects to lift up my computer. The lack of fancy equipment has not stopped me from running my show.

Success Stories of Online Courses

? Mimi G Style (@mimigstyle on Instagram). Mimi is a fashion designer. She used to design clothes for clients and service people one at a time. However, she switched to creating videos and tutorials to teach people how to sew. She recently added courses on men’s fashion and kids’ fashion. Mimi has successfully leveraged technology to reach and service more people, to have more money and free time. Today, Mimi does full-time teaching and no longer does one-on-one clothes design for her clients. However, she is impacting and changing many more people’s lives.

? Deanne Love (@deannelovexo on Instagram). Deanne Love is well-known in the Hula Hoop world. She has almost 91K followers on her YouTube channel. If you go to Deanne’s website, you will see a wide selection of online courses, from teachers’ training to classes for beginners and advanced Hula users. And Deanne shot her very first online course using a mobile phone in a park. What an inspiring story.

? Chris Newman (@CineChopper on Instagram). Chris offers training and online courses on drones and how to start an aerial business.

? Sabina Hitchen (@sabinaknows on Instagram). Sabrina teaches entrepreneurs on getting media exposure and coverage. She has her own online PR school called, PRESS FOR SUCCESS, PR Prep School ?.

? XayLi Barclay (Xay Li Barclay). Xayli offers a number of courses that teach you how to create visually appealing videos on various social media channels.

Pre-Sell Courses to Validate Market Demand for Your Course & Topic

Pre-selling your course allows you to know if there is indeed a market for your course or topic. It is a cost-efficient way to test your ideas before you invest in lots of time, money, and resources in creating the course. Unfortunately, many course creators tend to create their courses and then spend months or even years improving them, only to find after launching that there is no market demand. This is probably the worst nightmare for any course creator.

Instead, launching a pilot course can help you understand your audience and market a lot better. You can use your pilot course to survey your audience’s pain points and then create courses tailoring to these pain points. Rob recommended starting your pre-launch two to three weeks prior to your actual launch.

For example, one person did a four-week Facebook live series that led to the launch of his online course. During the Facebook live show series, heoffered free tips regarding Instagram marketing and did tons of Q&A with his live audience to get to know them. By the end of the last week of his Facebook live show, he launched his course and encouraged people to enroll in the course. It was a success.

Here are two additional tips regarding pre-selling online courses.

?Survey your audience in terms of how much money they are willing to pay and if they are willing to recommend the course to others. This helps you build confidence in charging your course and understand how much you should charge.

? Another tip is to use multiple social media channels to document your journey and to share behind-the-scene stories as you get ready to launch your course. The goal is to bring your audience with you on your course creation journey so that they can be excited with you.

Read the guide from Thinkific below to learn more about pre-selling online courses.

Create Course Content

Once you know that there is a market demand for your course and topic, you can go ahead creating your course material.

First, you want to create a high-level outline. The outline is to map out your students’ learning journey. You want to identify your students’ starting point and desired outcomes.

In terms of creating the content for your course, you want to determine your primary method of teaching (video, live video, text, audio, voice-over-slides, etc). You also want to identify your supplementary course materials and resources such as quizzes, worksheets, check lists, discussions, private groups, etc.

Videos should be 3 to 7 minutes long. You want to break down your content into short videos for two reasons. One is that people’s attention span is short. The other is having short videos based on specific topics makes it easier for students to reference back to specific sections and revisit them if necessary. Therefore, you want to make sure that you discuss only one concept per lesson. Rob shared that at Thinkific, they found that online courses with short videos have a higher completion rate.

Relevantly, don’t pack too much information into your online courses. I learned from a Thinkific webinar that when it comes to creating online courses, more information does NOT necessarily mean adding more value to your audience. In other words, longer courses are not necessarily better. Instead, you want to move your students from where they are to where they want to be as quickly and efficiently as possible.

To learn more about the specific steps, please watch the replay of this course creation webinar from Thinkific that covers the five phases of creating online courses including the following:

1?? Choose a winning course topic

2?? Validate market demand

3?? Create your course content

4?? Sell your online course

5?? Optimize student success

Additional Bonus Resources

Join this FREE webinar to learn more about the blueprint on creating online courses

If are interested in using Thinkific as your online course creation platform, click here to purchase a plan and to claim your bonuses and join their free Facebook group.

Not sure if Thinkific is the right platform for you, click on this link to experiment with Thinkific for FREE.