(This post contains affiliate links, which means—at zero cost to you—I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Thank you for your support!)
If you want to start selling online courses, I am SUPER excited for you!
Why?
Because creating a digital course is THE BEST way to leverage and monetize your own unique set of:
- skills
- talents
- knowledge
If you get right, it can be INSANELY lucrative.
But if you get it wrong, it doesn’t matter how good your course is, you won’t make a dime.
I started selling my first digital course, Low Content Profits Academy, in 2019 and it’s generated over half a million dollars so far (mostly on autopilot). KA-CHING!
Stick around and I’ll share the 3 things you must get right for your own digital course to be a raging success. You can watch the video or read the main points below.
The 3 Secrets To Selling An Online Course
Any successful online course must have these 3 things to be a success.
1. Your course MUST solve a problem or satisfy a desire
People aren’t interested in buying online courses; they’re interested in solving problems or fulfilling their desires. They’re after a particular result. When promoting your course you need to focus on outcome; on the results that completing your course will provide. The more painful the problem, the more intensely your ideal customer will want the problem solved.
Your ideal customers must have a crystal-clear understanding of what the results of taking your course will be. For example, my course, Low-Content Profits Academy, teaches people how to generate passive income creating and selling low-content books on the Kindle Direct Publishing platform.
The course satisfies an intense desire to create a flexible, location-independent, limitless source of income. The results are clear: after completing my course, students will understand how to create and sell low-content books on KDP so they can begin to fulfill that desire.
Understanding the Problem
To understand the biggest problems and pain points your ideal customers have, you must spend time getting to know them so you can create a course that will meet them exactly where they are on their journey. For example, I’m currently working on my second digital course so I’ve been spending some time having one-on-one Zoom conversations with members of my target audience. I’ve also been asking a lot of questions in my Facebook group, Rachel’s Sandbox.
By asking questions of the ideal customers for my new course I’m finding out exactly where they are on their online business creation journey as well as exactly what they need help with. Without this direct intel, I’d be forced to make a lot of assumptions about what topics my course should cover and what the results of completing it should be. I don’t want to waste a ton of time creating a course from guesswork that may or may not actually serve my target audience.
Creating the Curriculum
Once you know the desired outcome for your customers you can work backward to create your curriculum. The first lesson should begin right where your ideal customer is starting their journey. By starting where they are, your course will help your students achieve a full transformation from where they are now to their desired result.
When your students achieve their desired outcome, you end up with a sales flywheel. This means that your satisfied customers will help your business grow by raving about your course which will, in turn, bring more customers to you.
2. Your ideal customers MUST trust you
Nobody wants to hand over a fistful of cash to a random stranger on the Internet, even if what they’re buying might very well change their lives. You must start by building trust and authority over time with your ideal customers before asking them to part with their hard-earned money. The best way to do this is to offer valuable free content to them before you present your course offering. This is known as content marketing.
Offering valuable free content that relates to your course shows people that you know what you’re talking about and it positions you as an authority in your space. It also introduces people to your teaching style. People who are already familiar with you and who enjoy your free content are much more likely to pay for your premium content—your course—once it’s offered.
Some examples of ways to deliver free content include:
- a blog
- a YouTube channel
- a podcast
- social media
In addition to building trust and authority, content marketing also allows you to build a base of ideal customers. These are the people you’ll sell to once your course is ready. Putting out course-related content primes your audience for what’s to come and can even create a base of fans who are literally waiting for your course to drop.
Before I even announced Low-Content Profits Academy I already had people emailing me and asking if I had a course and when it would be available to purchase. If this happens to you it’s a VERY good sign that your course will be a success!
You can also consider pre-selling your course to a small group of interested people, working with them through the process to get them their desired result, and then collecting testimonials that you can use when you launch to the rest of your audience. I’m going to experiment with this method with the new course I’m currently creating.
Another way to build trust is to create a community centered around your course topic and be an active participant in that community. Before I launched Low-Content Profits Academy, I created a Facebook group and interacted daily with group members, answering their low-content publishing questions and building relationships.
3. Make it easy to buy your course
As I mentioned, most people aren’t actively looking to take an online course. They want to solve a problem or achieve a desired result. This is why it’s really important that you take them by the hand, show them how you can solve their problem, and then make it easy for them to say yes to the solution—your course!
When I’ve purchased courses in the past, I wasn’t specifically looking for a course. I was looking to solve a problem. I sought out and followed content creators I felt were experts in the areas I needed help with.
Over a series of weeks (or months, in some cases), they slowly earned my trust through the valuable content they shared. By the time they asked for the sale I didn’t even have to think about it. I was ready, and all I had to do was press the “Buy” button.
For my own course, my ideal customers typically find me on my YouTube channel, which is where I consistently post most of my free valuable content.
In each video I invite viewers to download my free guide, 3 Steps to Publishing Your First Low-Content Book in Less Than a Day, which they can do in exchange for giving me their email address. Once on my email list, subscribers are then invited to attend my free masterclass, 3 Secrets to a Wildly Successful Low-Content Publishing Business. Finally, masterclass attendees are pitched my full program, Low-Content Profits Academy.
(Note: Keep in mind that webinars aren’t the only way to sell courses. They’ve worked really well for me because they can run in the background while I’m working on other things.)
By this point, anyone attending my masterclass has gotten to know me and my teaching style through my free content and they’re attending my webinar because they’re acutely interested in learning how to generate passive income selling low-content books through Kindle Direct Publishing.
When I present my course to someone who is currently sitting in on my masterclass, I’m making it easy for them to buy because I’m offering the exact solution that they’re looking for at that exact moment. All they have to do is press the button. This is why funnels are so effective.
This funnel can also be looked at as a flywheel, where:
Testimonials from happy customers can be fed straight back into your valuable content so that prospective customers can see the results that others are achieving through your course. This creates an even greater desire to achieve the same outcome.
People will buy a course even though, in most cases, all of the information contained inside can probably be found for free in various places online. But that takes time—valuable time that most people just can’t spare.
When I’ve invested in courses in the past, I just wanted someone I trusted to make it easy for me by creating a step-by-step system that I could follow. If I have a problem that I want solved badly enough and a person I trust offers me a solution, I’ll have no hesitation in pulling out my credit card. Most other people are like that, too.
Keep these three principles in mind when creating your own online course and you’ll see results that far exceed your wildest dreams.
If you’re considering creating an online course I’d like to invite you to attend a brand new masterclass taught by my business mentor, Amy Porterfield. Amy’s masterclass is called “How To Recession-Proof your Business with One Digital Course: 5 Strategies To Create & Launch a Profitable Digital Course From Scratch.”
Amy taught me everything I know about creating and selling a successful digital course. The information she shares is a BIG reason I had a $60K launch on my very first go around.
Be sure to check out my free Facebook group, Rachel’s Sandbox, to join other like-minded folks, all on their own online business journeys.
