The popularity of ecourses has exploded in recent years, with more and more people turning to online learning to improve their skills and knowledge. Everywhere you look these days, regardless of the medium or content you follow, you’ll find some successful businessmen, self-improvement gurus, fitness coaches, etc., directing you to purchase their online program.
From personal development to professional growth, endless topics can be explored in an ecourse format, making them a valuable resource for learners and educators.
As a freelancer or solopreneur, you understand the importance of diversifying your income streams and creating passive income. And with your wealth of knowledge and expertise, creating and selling an e-course is a great way to monetize your skills and help others learn and grow.
This blog will walk you through creating and selling an e-course, from developing a course concept to marketing and selling it online.
By the end of this blog, as a first-time course creator, you will have all the information you need to successfully launch and sell your e-course that resonates with your audience and brings in revenue. Let’s get started!
In this blog on creating and selling an ecourse we’ll cover the following:
- What’s an ecourse
- Benefits of offering an e-course
- Ecourse success stories
- Steps involved in creating an e-course
- Conclusion
1. What’s an ecourse:
An ecourse is an online course, typically in video format, delivered entirely over the internet. Think of it like a regular class, but instead of attending the class in person, the student can take the class at any location or time as long as they have an internet connection.
As a freelancer/solopreneur, you can design and structure the course to fit your teaching style and preferences and have the flexibility to update and modify the course content as needed.
2. Benefits of offering an e-course:
- Showcase your expertise and knowledge: Ecourses are a great way to showcase your expertise and knowledge in a particular field or topic. You can demonstrate your skills and expertise to potential clients and customers by creating and sharing your course. This can help you establish yourself as an authority in your field and attract more business.
- Convenient and Flexible: e-courses are a convenient and flexible way to deliver your content and materials to your audience. With an e-course, you can reach a global audience and provide your content in a format that is easily accessible and convenient for your learners.
- Low Costs: When launching an online course, the biggest upfront investment is your time. There is little to no investment cost since you can create a course from anywhere with a laptop and an internet connection. The low barrier to entry is why launching an online course is such an enticing business venture for budding entrepreneurs and has become so popular within the last few years.
- Generates Passive Income: Once your course is created and launched, you can continue to sell it and earn income from it without investing much time and effort into marketing and promoting it. This can be a great source of income for freelancers and solopreneurs who want to earn money from their expertise and knowledge.
- Build a Loyal Following: By offering valuable content and engaging with your learners, you can create a loyal following of people interested in your work and field. This can help you develop relationships and connections that can lead to future business opportunities.
Offering an e-course as a freelancer or solopreneur can be a valuable way to showcase your expertise, reach a global audience, generate passive income, and build a loyal following.
Following are examples of online creators who successfully monetize their skills and knowledge by creating and selling courses to their audience.
3. Ecourse Success Stories:
A creator who earned over $1,100,000 by selling online courses is Michelle, the author of Making Sense of Cents blog, through her ecourse Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.
Another Solopreneur, Katie Kimball the founder of Kids Cook Real Food has taught more than 12000 families worldwide and made over $53000 in a week.
These are just everyday people like yourself who took the initiative to create a course highlighting their passions or expertise and found tremendous success along the way.
4. Steps involved in creating an e-course:
4.1. Identify your niche and target audience:
What kind of ecourse should you create? To answer that question, you must first identify your niche. To identify your niche, start by thinking about your area of expertise. What are you passionate about? What are you an expert in? What do you enjoy teaching others? Does the problem exist among your target audiences, and what is the addressable market for the course that you want to sell?
It’s important to stay true to yourself and take a long term view when considering your niche. Too often we see creators make the mistake of chasing short term trends without any consideration of the long term impact it may have on their brand. Just because cryptocurrency is all the rage, doesn’t mean that you should launch a course on cryptocurrency. Especially if that is not your area of expertise. Stay true to yourself and your interests when choosing your niche.
4.1.1. Finding your Niche:
To find your niche for an online course, you can use the 4p formula: proficiency, passion, problem, and profit. Here’s how you can put that into action:
- Proficiency: You should start by considering your own skills and expertise. Are you proficient in a particular subject or area? This could be something that you have studied or worked in professionally, or it could be a hobby or passion that you have a lot of knowledge about. It’s important to choose a niche that you are proficient in because you want to be able to provide value to your audience and teach them new things.
- Passion: In addition to proficiency, choosing a niche you are passionate about is also important. This will help keep you motivated and engaged in the process of creating your course. If you are not passionate about the subject matter, it’s likely that your lack of enthusiasm will be evident in your course and may not be as appealing to your audience.
- Problem: The next step is to consider the problems that your target audience is facing. What issues or challenges are they struggling with that you could help them solve through your course? By choosing a niche that addresses a specific problem or need, you can create a highly relevant and valuable course to your audience.
- Profit: Finally, you need to consider whether there is potential for profit in your chosen niche. While it’s important to be passionate about your subject matter, it’s also important to make sure that you can make a living from teaching it. Research your target audience to see if they are willing to pay for a course in your chosen niche, and consider whether there is competition in the market and how you can differentiate yourself from other course creators.
Example: Let’s say you are an experienced personal trainer passionate about helping people achieve their fitness goals. You notice that many of your clients struggle with sticking to a consistent workout routine and often give up on their goals after a few weeks.
You create an online course that helps people develop a sustainable workout routine and provides them with the motivation and accountability they need to stay on track. This course fits all four criteria of the 4p formula: you are proficient in fitness and personal training, you are passionate about helping people achieve their goals, your course addresses a specific problem that your target audience is facing, and there is potential for profit in the fitness industry.
In summary, to find your niche for an online course, you need to consider your proficiency, passion, the problem your target audience has, and the profit potential. This will help you create a valuable, relevant, and profitable online course.
4.1.2. Finding your Target Audience:
Once you’ve identified your niche, it’s time to consider your target audience.
- Who is your e-course for? Are you targeting beginners, intermediate learners, or advanced practitioners? Are you aiming for a specific demographic, such as young professionals, small business owners, or stay-at-home parents?
- Consider conducting market research to get a better idea of your target audience. This can include surveys, interviews, and focus groups with potential customers. Ask them about their interests, needs, and pain points. This will help you create an e-course that resonates with your audience and addresses their specific challenges.
- For example, if you’re creating an e-course on social media marketing, your target audience might be small business owners who want to learn how to use social media to grow their businesses effectively. In this case, your market research might reveal that these business owners are struggling with creating engaging content, building a following, and measuring the success of their social media efforts.
With this information, you can create an e-course that teaches these business owners how to create compelling content, grow their social media presence, and track performance. Your e-course should be tailored to their specific needs and challenges and provide practical, actionable advice they can implement in their business.
4.2. Develop Course Content:
Once you have decided on your niche and target audience, the next step is to outline your course content. To outline the course content consider the following steps.
4.2.1. Identify the objectives & goals of the ecourse:
This will lay the foundation for the course’s content and structure, providing a clear direction for its design and development. For example, an e-course on financial planning may have the following objectives and goals:
- To provide learners with a comprehensive understanding of personal finance and financial planning principles
- To help learners develop the skills and knowledge necessary to create and manage a budget
- To educate learners on the importance of saving and investing for their future
Based on these objectives and goals, the course’s content and structure would likely focus on topics such as budgeting, saving and investing, and the principles of personal finance. The course may also include activities and assessments that help learners apply these concepts to their financial situations.
For example, Consider Finance Creator SuezOrman’s ecourse on personal finance. Her objective is clearly stated: to “make money work for you.”
By identifying the objectives and goals of an e-course, you will create a focused and effective learning experience that helps learners achieve their learning goals.
4.2.2. Develop a lesson plan:
Develop a lesson plan that outlines the topics and subtopics to be covered in each section of the ecourse. This can be done by creating an outline or table of contents.
Once the learning objectives have been identified, the next step is to select the content that will help learners achieve those objectives. This may involve researching to find relevant articles, videos, and other resources that can be used to support the lesson. For example, SuezOrman’s ecourse on the personal finance lesson plan is broken down into the following.
4.2.3. Design the lesson structure:
After selecting the appropriate content, the next step is to design the lesson structure. This may involve breaking the lesson into smaller, more manageable sections and providing clear instructions for each section. In the above example, SuezOrma breaks down each lesson into further sub-sections.
Determine the format and length of each lesson. This can include videos, audio recordings, text-based lessons, quizzes, and other interactive elements.
Choose a delivery method for the ecourse. This can be through a learning management system, a web-based platform, or a combination. You can also use platforms like CheckYa to offer your ecourse. We will expand upon how you can do so in the following section.
4.3. Set the right price for your ecourse:
The most common factors to consider when pricing your ecourse is, the value it provides, the cost of creating the content, the prices of similar course offerings, your revenue goals, and the % of your audience who would be willing to pay for your course.
Here are some steps that you can follow to set the right price for your course content:
- Research the prices of similar course offerings: Before setting a price for your course, it can be helpful to research the prices of similar courses offered by other competitors. This will give you an idea of the general price range for courses in your field and help you determine whether your course is competitive.
- Consider the value that your course provides: Your course’s price should reflect its value to your learners. For example, if your course offers unique, in-depth content or hands-on learning experiences, you may be able to charge a premium. On the other hand, if your course is more basic or introductory, you may consider a lower price.
- Take into account the cost of creating your course: In addition to the value that your course provides to your learners, you should also consider the cost of creating the course content. This can include the cost of any materials, equipment, or software you used to create the course, as well as the time and effort you put into developing the content.
- Offer different pricing options: One way to make your course more accessible to a wider range of learners is to offer different pricing options. For example, you could offer a discounted price for learners who sign up for a multi-course package, or a higher price for learners who want one-on-one coaching or additional support.
Here’s an example of a course price plan that entrepreneur Melyssa Gryffin created for her profitable creator course.
4.4. Choose the right platform to host and sell your ecourse:
If you are unsure about the demand you will receive for your course, you may consider choosing an online course hosting platform that does not charge a fixed monthly fee for hosting your classes.
This is because most online courses take considerable time to get off the ground. if you do not receive a high number of initial enrollments, you may not be able to recoup your initial costs for a while, so you want to avoid placing additional financial burdens on your business.,.
For this very reason, CheckYa allows you to host your courses for free and only takes a small percentage when there is a course sale. This means you do not have to pay anything upfront and can spend more time optimizing your course launch without incurring additional fees.
Here’s how you can upload your course content on CheckYa:
1. Create your CheckYa account: If you don’t have an account already, creating an account on CheckYa is incredibly easy. You can go to https://checkya.com/ and get started.
2. Upload your Course Content: You can add as many course modules as you wish. Go to the “Sell digital goods and services” section on your dashboard and start adding your course details. Add course images along with a detailed course description. Next, add a preview of your course to give your potential customers a sneak peek of your course. When you’re done, select “save product,” and your course will now be added to your CheckYa profile.
3. Add your payment option: CheckYa processes payments through Stripe and Paypal and allows you to get paid in over 200+ different currencies.
4. Share your course: Once you are done creating your course, you can copy the link to your CheckYa profile and paste it on your social media channels, making it easy for your customers to buy your course.
4.5. Market your ecourse to potential buyers:
- Leveraging social media profiles:
Optimize your social media profiles. Make sure to include a link to your course in your bio, use relevant hashtags on your posts, and use visually appealing images to grab the attention of potential learners.
Here’s how video creator and educator Latasha James links to her courses in her instagram bio.
You can also create posts about your course on your social media accounts, share updates and relevant content related to the topic of your course. Be sure to also engage with your followers by asking for feedback and respond to their comments and questions.
Example: Latasha James on her instagram profile sharing info about her live course in a post.
You can also host live Q&A sessions on your instagram channel to answer any questions about your course.
These live Q&A sessions allow you to interact with your followers in real time and answer any questions they may have about the course. This can be a great way to build engagement and help potential learners feel more connected to the course and the instructor.
Eg: Youtube and Etsy coach Lauren Thurmond talks about her upcoming etsy course on instagram live.
- Promote your course on your blog: This is another way to reach potential learners. You can write blog posts about the topic of your course, share insights and tips related to the content of your course, and finish with a call to action inviting readers to enroll in your course.
- Contributing to other blogs and publications: If you do not have a personal blog you can approach a relevant blog to be a guest writer. This allows you to gain exposure for your course and helps establish yourself as an expert in your field. This is often a win-win since the blog gets free content and you get access to their audience.
- Include a link to your course in your email signature: Every time you send an email, your signature will include a link to your course, making it easy for recipients to learn more about it.
- Host a live webinar: This is a great way to engage with potential learners and provide them with valuable content related to your course.
- Share your course on relevant communities: You can join online groups or forums related to the topic of your course and share information about it with other members.
- Answer relevant questions on Quora: This is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field and promote your course. You can answer questions related to the topic of your course, and include a link to your course in your answer if it is relevant.
- Sharing infographics on Pinterest: Infographics are a great way to share information and tips related to your course in a visually appealing way.
- Participate in forum discussions: You can join forums related to the topic of your course and share insights and information about your course with other members.
Here’s an example of how Lauren shares on the YouTube community about her Mini Course.
5. Conclusion:
The opportunities are endless when it comes to marketing your ecourse online. Regardless of your budget or resources, there is a strategy for almost every tier. Get out there and be as creative as possible and you’ll see results in no time. If you enjoyed this article and would like to see more content like this, check out our other blogs or follow CheckYa on instagram. We post valuable business advice frequently and regularly. Cheers!
