You may have at one point had the thought pop into your head, “Should I create an online course?”Maybe you had begun thinking about how easy it would be to create a passive income stream that runs like machinery while you sleep and work at your day job.
But have you considered what it really takes to create a course?
As easy and straightforward as the whole process may seem, it is most definitely not for the light of heart or time-constrained. Creating a successful online course is not just about slapping together some content and calling it a product. Course design is a process that requires a mountain of effort and planning without any real guarantee of success.
For your course to be successful you need to have valuable content that people will actually want to pay for and a plan to sell your course.
Being able to come up with the idea and the general idea for your course content itself is the easy part of creating an online course. If you’re a skilled professional and you have experience in a valuable area of knowledge, then figuring out what to talk about is pretty easy and comfortable starting point.
Overall Thoughts:
- Creating a course is a ton of work. Much more work than you will ever imagine is possible. A 3-hour course will usually take 30+ hours to create. 10x the amount of recorded end product will be the minimum required for going through each step of the process.
- For every minute spent filming, there is at least a minute spent reviewing and editing. That assumes that you get the filming right on the first shot which you won’t.
- The field has become much more crowded in the last few years. What was once a gold rush has become a focus on niche markets and producing higher quality content.
- Creating an effective course isn’t just about sharing your knowledge. It’s about understanding human psychology, understanding how people learn, and understanding how to attract customers to your product. Having an idea and base of knowledge is easy; the process overall is much tougher and more complex than most people imagine.
The path of online course development is the following:
Not to scare you off but if you want to embark down this path, you need to be honest with yourself about whether you have the time, energy, or resources available to commit to finishing the project. The span of time between starting and finishing a course can vary greatly but expect at least a few weeks and weekends of time to be consumed.
Note that there are both positive and negative reasons for creating an ecourse and I will do my best to summarize those things in this article.
Getting started is about finding an idea that you are knowledgeable about that is also commercially viable. You could teach knitting but that isn’t a very marketable skill. The courses that I have observed do the best are courses that teach actionable information that is skills related. Examples would be learning how to use Excel better, program in a code language, or close more sales effectively. Soft skills don’t do so well. People want a quick ROI for their time spent.
By far, the biggest challenge with the whole process is just staying focused and committed. It’s easy to get excited and start organizing your ideas but then following through and creating a course that exceeds expectations is a bit daunting. I recommend putting a plan together, setting time aside, and forcing yourself to follow through on the project. Remove distractions and the internet from your path. Also, giving yourself a nice reward at the end of each work session is an effective motivator.
Why you should build an online course
- A knowledge showcase for your talent
- A personal branding exercise
- A profitable side venture
- Improve your speaking, presentation, or teaching skills
- Improve your Google SEO results for your name
- Demonstrate passion for a subject
- Demonstrate project management skills
- You have first-mover knowledge or skills
Creating a course is a smart way to differentiate your skills and knowledge in the marketplace. You can display your content on your LinkedIn page and highlight the project on your resume to draw attention to your passion for a particular subject. At the very least, completing an ecourse shows that you have the capability to take an idea from conception to execution which in itself is a very valuable job skills.
If you are able to make some money off of course, that is an added benefit but for me, the bigger impact has been to help build my brand. Creating a course will also lend to other employable skills such as building your confidence, improving your presentation skills, and sharpening your speaking ability. At the end of the day, you will have a product that is a timeless annuity of knowledge.
Creating a course can be a smart segway into other opportunities. If you wanted to teach in real life, this will be a showcase of your abilities. If you want to be known as an expert in your field or you want to do in-person consulting, a course will only serve to increase your credibility. You will also be able to repurpose the materials in different ways if you do plan to expand your entrepreneurial ventures. An ecourse is very easily an ebook, a webinar, or white paper.
Why You Shouldn’t Create an Online Course:
- Market saturation. Why would someone sign up for your new course when the most popular competing course has thousands of reviews?
- You don’t have an email listen or audience. Selling a course is a numbers game. You will only convert a very small % of total people who view your landing page.
- You want to get rich quick. The gold rush days of online education are behind us. We are now moving into a mature market where little untapped fields are open. There are now companies that are focused solely on creating high-quality products consistently that amateurs simply can’t match. Keep in mind that many of the top instructors teach/consult full time.
- You are not an expert in an area of knowledge.
My advice going into the course creation process is to plan to make no money. If the idea is still appealing to you with that in mind, then you will probably have the passion and drive to move forward with the project.
I would also caution to not create a course in a saturated market where you can not add a substantial amount of new information. If you marginally improve on an idea, it will be difficult to attract and convince people to sign up for your untested product. When there are several dominating courses with hundreds or thousands of students and reviews, don’t even try to compete.
Another reason that you shouldn’t create an online course is that you probably don’t have a captive audience for your content. Many course creators own their own website/blog where they collect email addresses. What that means is that when they do launch a course, they have a captive and willing audience who is more likely than not to purchase their product. If you don’t a list, your best bet is to blast social media a few times with little success. Part of the reason why I created a website and built a team was to specifically get over this hurdle.
I also want to caution you to not sign up for a course or to pay someone to take you through the process because many people are self-serving. For each person that a marketer pushes through a sales funnel, the more money than they make. If someone paints an overly bright picture of how easy the process is or how much money you will make, buyer beware.
My final point on why not to create a course is if you are not an expert in the field. With increasing competition, students want to see that the instructor is a bona fide master of knowledge in a domain. A few years ago, it was acceptable to launch a product offering a minimum viable product (MVP) which is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and to provide feedback for future product development. The market has matured too much for this to be effective. Stick to what you know best.
I’ve found this article to be a useful read, as well. It’s written by an early and very successful instructor on Udemy who has since migrated towards other efforts that provide a better ROI.
https://medium.com/@marklassoff/please-dont-make-an-online-course-151611cd092d
Originally published at https://www.the-numbers-guys.com on July 23, 2019.
