7 Tips for Online Coaches to Create an Effective Course Plan
Ready to sell your courses online? This guide will walk you through how to make money by selling your digital products with a digital badge maker. If you haven’t yet made your course plan, head over to our complete guide on creating online courses.
Why Should You Create And Sell Courses Online?
Because there are people who want your expertise. And there’s money to be made. Online courses and e-learning are massive opportunities:
- The e-learning market is expected to be worth $325 billion by 2025.
- Digital education and e-learning had more than $46 billion in sales in 2018 (the most recent year we have data for).
- Global e-learning and course consumption has increased dramatically during the pandemic and many experts expect that to continue.
Is selling online courses profitable? With those numbers and the right know-how, it is. Selling online courses can be a source of passive income once you have an established customer base.
Your online course can also serve as a marketing tool and strengthen connections with your clients. Use your online course to show people what your brand is about. Show them what makes you better than the competition. For example, create certificates with a digital badge maker to provide your customers a goal to achieve by motivating them at the same time. Build strong relationships and watch how loyalty and advocacy for your course grow.
The best news is that anybody can create and sell online courses. All you need is some knowledge and the ability to speak on a subject with a passion.
Choose a subject that sells
According to a recent study, 42% of entrepreneurs fail because there is no market for their products. To get a better idea of what types of online courses sell, take a look at some of the top reasons why people buy them:
- Wanting to gain knowledge for a career change or when first starting a career
- Getting certified in a subject to boost their career opportunities
- Continuing education
- Academic prep
- Simply wanting to learn a new skill or subject.
It should come as no surprise that the highest-selling courses are often career-related. Here is a shortlist of some of the most profitable online course subjects:
- Computers and technology
- Business and entrepreneurship
- Arts and crafts
- Health and fitness
- Education
- Writing
- Lifestyle/personal development
- Coming of age
- Entertainment
- Social science
- Science and math.
These are broad subjects. You should try to find a more niche topic within these subject matters.
Your online course needs to live somewhere online. You’ll want a hosting system that makes the course easy to access, lets you customize it with your branding, and looks professional.
There are three options when it comes to hosting and selling your online course:
- An online course platform designed to meet all the needs of a course creator, from video hosting to marketing (more on this below).
- Self-hosting. Set up your server with a hosting company to host and sell online courses from your website. While it can be expensive and a bit technical, self-hosting gives you complete freedom and power over your material.
- An online course marketplace. The final option for hosting is to use a learning marketplace such as Udemy or Masterclass. Marketplace platforms host your course and let you customize your branding. Note that these platforms tend to have restrictive rules and may charge for up to 50% of your revenue.
For example, in arts and crafts, you could create an online course on using social media to promote an Etsy store. Or in computers and technology, you could teach a beginner’s course on coding. More on choosing your niche in the next section.
To sum up, here is the shortlist of our tips to create an effective online course plan. Pick the Perfect Course Topic and ensure your course idea has high market demand. Create specific learning outcomes, select and gather your course content, put your modules and lessons in order, determine the most engaging and effective delivery methods for each lesson, create goals with digital badge makers, and of course, you should always get the perfect pricing models for your course.
