The e-learning industry is literally generating revenues in billions at the moment.
And the numbers are only going up as we advance into a deeply technological future. Edupreneurs have literally made millions of dollars selling online courses.
I mean let’s be honest. Who doesn’t want a lifestyle that generates money while they sleep?
- It’s a one time hustle and then there’s no stock limitation.
- It can be automated to be sold to millions of people without you ever raising a finger again.
- It’s educational, so it is extremely brag-worthy! You get to be one of the smarties around.
- It gives you official authority and credibility in your subject area.
- And of course, the money aspect that frees you from the shackles of 9 to 5, allowing you to spend time travelling around the world or spending time playing with your kids.
No one can argue that online courses isn’t one of the best ways to make money online in this day and age.
But not everyone is making a lot of money doing so. In fact very few people are actually making enough to survive on it for a long time or to even pay their monthly bills.
One of the main reasons why that happens is because when people get to know how lucrative this business model is; they jump to creating courses without much thought.
Being an expert in something, liking something enough to the point where you can talk about it for years and having the same product loved by others is crucial.
When it comes to choosing the topic, many of us make mistakes. We can be expert in many things but honing down to something purchase worthy in this online world is a challenge.
When you chose a wrong topic, the impact on your online school can be disastrous. Here are 3 such disasters (and if you’re not making money selling courses online, this is a good time to reflect).
1- Money down the drain.
Even free isn’t free. Creating content, designing curriculums, purchasing software, online school platform fee etc, each step costs money.
If you’ve chosen the wrong topic and not making any money from it, the amount of investment you made in your course cannot be justified or recovered.
2- Time and energy down the dump.
Let’s say for some magical reason, you did not spend any money on your course creation. How about time and energy gone into writing lesson after lesson? Researching latest information? Creating selling pages or shooting videos? You read blog after blog, subscribed to 1000 free webinars, took free courses from others on it. Doing all this when you have another full time job can be such a pain in the butt. Investing so much time and energy into something that doesn’t pay back is extremely frustrating.
3- Motivation hitting rock bottom.
When you invest time and money into something and it doesn’t give you the expected results, the first instinct is to think “ may be it’s not for me, I can’t go through with this again”.
And of course it is a very natural reaction. When you hit rock bottom, the overwhelming feeling of failure can absolutely block you from thinking it is possible at all to make this work.
I made my first big ticket sales after 3 years of trying different things. One simple reason was because I had to figure out everything on my own as I had absolutely zero dollars to invest in a good resource and learn. But when I did make that money, I realized that I didn’t go wrong with the content, I didn’t lack in my hustle. The only problem was that my course was on a generic topic. It didn’t solve a burning problem. And apart from that, I also didn’t market it well. How could I? When I didn’t even know who my target audience is which is because my course didn’t solve a specific, generic problem.
This is one of the ways in which your topic could be wrong. There are many other ways.
The thing with online courses is that there’s hardly anyone doing window shopping here unlike the real world.
In the real physical world, you open a shop in the street and you expect people to come in, which they do.
The way online world works is no one knows you exist, first of all. Let’s say you start appearing in the feeds of some people and they do see your product or service, they won’t directly buy from you instantly.
Again, tried and tested from experience. I had placed a Facebook ad that did extremely well but brought zero sales. People don’t just buy from you online unless a few stages of the process have taken place. And even that happens only when you’ve done the rest of the things right.
Your course topic is the foundation of your business, over which you can build an empire. In the #Course Hacking Bootcamp, I talk about the entire process from start to finish that virtually guarantees success. But the most important part of the process is the IDEA HACKING TOOL.
This is a 6 step tool that I developed from my experrience and is one of the first things I give training on.
If your course idea isn’t something you can build an entire empire on, you may want to check this tool out. It’s regular price is £45 but currently available on discount just for an unbelievable £5 only!!!
Remember that a wrong idea can totally kill not just your business but also your mood and motivation. So, think long and hard before you come down to one topic and start building your process there onwards.
Let me know how long you took before deciding your topic and how did you monetize it to meet your income goals.
