Online courses have become a more popular option – both for course takers and for business owners – in recent years, and a variety of online course platforms have sprung up to accommodate this growing market. Business owners often ask me about the value a course can have in their business and if it is worth it to put the time and energy into creating a curriculum that you can monetize. Let’s unpack this today and talk about six reasons to create a course for your business.
- You want passive income. Of course, creating the course does take time up front, but once you have built your curriculum, this course can now be used and sold without additional work on the project. If you have expertise in an area of your business that would allow you to monetize the information you share with others, a course can be a great way to make money on the side even if coaching is not the primary offering of your business. Courses are a natural fit for coaches and consultants, but those are not the only types of businesses that can capitalize on a course. If you sell a service, you can create a course on “how to” tips. If you sell a product, your course can illustrate ways to use your product, tips for care, hacks for how to make the most of your purchase, and so forth. All of this is value added and can be sold independently in a course format.
Courses are a natural fit for coaches and consultants, but those are not the only types of businesses that can capitalize on a course. #onlinecourse #onlinecourses #course #business #entrepreneur #biztips #smallbusiness #smallbiz
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- You want to reach the Do-It-Yourself population. Many businesses are built on a framework of done-for-you offerings, but there may be people out there who want DIY solutions. Those people are a market you will struggle to tap into until you have an instructional offering such as this that promises to make the DIY approach easier. Many of my clients initially balk at the idea of this, thinking that they are making themselves obsolete by sharing how to do the work. However, it does not usually play out this way. The people who need you still need you. The people who want to try it on their own may start with your course and not need you after that – in which case the revenue from the course is more than you would have had if you did not have the course. Some of the people who start a course on a DIY solution learn along the way that they are in over their heads or do not have the time to follow through and will end up contacting you for extra support. In any case, because of your course, you now have an offering to pitch to this audience. If you are smart, your course can make your services and products more necessary – not obsolete!
If you are smart, your course can make your services and products more necessary - not obsolete! #onlinecourse #onlinecourses #course #business #smallbusiness #smallbiz #biztips #entrepreneur
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- You want to standardize a common part of your process. Is there is a system or process you end up having to teach to most of your clients? Perhaps every client needs certain onboarding information or there is an elaborate step in your work that many of your clients need to master. If you create a course for this part of your process, you will be more efficient in how you provide your offerings. By building a course, you will save all the time and resources spent educating clients one by one in the future, which is time and resources that can now be reallocated to serving more clients.
- You want to scale your business. If your business is like mine, you may find at some point that there will be a hard limit on your time, which will yield a hard limit on your revenue. By creating a passive income source, you remove the need for one person in the business to deliver the offering each time and instead make room for building out customer service and scaling your sales. So many business owners find themselves in a risky spot when they realize that the business cannot exist without them, and this can be a way to minimize that risk and then grow the business from there.
- You want to mobilize affiliates to help expand your reach. Course platforms often make it easy to set up affiliates who will help to sell your courses in exchange for a commission percentage. These platforms usually handle all the transaction details themselves so that you and your affiliate don’t get bogged down in administrative tasks. This means that you can more simply harness the power of people who have influence with your ideal course takers, and they are rewarded for their work. Do you know any small businesses that might want help with their marketing? You can become an affiliate for my online courses, earning 50% commission from any sale! Learn all about the courses here. And email me here if you want to learn more about becoming an affiliate.
- You want to package your offerings in new ways at different price points. As a speaker, I have been endlessly thankful to have courses that connect with most of my presentation topics. In some cases, this has allowed me to sell the courses to those who need more guidance following a talk. In other cases, it has allowed me to create speaker packages that fold in part or all of my course curriculum. Some clients have wanted more complex offerings or had budget that needed to be spent, and this allowed me to be more nimble in customizing a package for them.
Creating a course online is a project up front that can yield great rewards long-term in your business. #onlinecourse #onlinecourses #course #business #smallbusiness #smallbiz #entrepreneur #biztips
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Creating a course online is a project up front that can yield great rewards long-term in your business. If you know what you are trying to achieve, you can build a course that plugs in perfectly to your systems and opens up new paths for growth later in your business.
Want to learn more about how to maximize your course as you create it? Read here for this Marketing Tip of the Week on 4 Marketing Tips for Building an Online Course.
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