Online courses are better than offline courses. It’s overall better for teachers, students, and businesses.
There are different platforms you can use to put your online course. The important part is getting it in front of people.
If you have an audience, you can look at platforms with a lot of features. If you are in the beginning stages, you can look at less expensive options.
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How Online Courses are Better Than Offline Courses for Teachers and Entrepreneurs
Online courses are best suited for teachers. You can leverage the internet to create really great online courses.
Read: How to Develop an Online Course
Fulfillment : Value of Time
As teachers, you need to value your time. As you build out your business, you can’t look at selling your online course and then worry about teaching it live.
If you want to scale your business, you will need to think about your time as important. You can sell your online course and the lessons will all be hosted.
Online Quizzes
Quizzes can be a way to increase engagement. It also helps people think about the content more.
Scalable: Business Can Get Larger
It’s important that you think about how to make your business bigger. Having an online course is sustainable. You create the online course once, and you sell it over and over again.
Bundling Options
A great option to market your course is to bundle it with other stuff. Increase the value of your package whenever you want to sell something. This way, you can get paid for more of your products and services.
When is it best to offer an Offline Course or Live Event?
It’s best to offer an offline course or live event, when you are selling it as a high priced ticket. There are costs to renting out a place, logistics, timing, and travel.
How Online Courses are Better for Students
Mobile: Portability
Online courses are inherently portable. People can watch their courses on their computers, tablets, or phone. They can watch it in different places.
Choose the most important topics
When a course is offline or live, you aren’t able to choose what you want to learn. With online courses, you can skip around to the most important topics. In general, an online course makes it’s much easier to pick and choose what you want to learn.
Revisit Content
Once a live class is over, it’s over. You can’t revisit the content. An online course is helpful because you can use it as a reference guide.
As you move to different parts of the content, you will want to apply the information. There may be times that you need to check the content. You will be able to revisit content in an online course.
Building an Online Course for Your Business
Decide On A Platform to Sell Your Online Course
Deciding on a platform isn’t as important as the content itself. You can look at hosting on YouTube or Google Drive.
If you want one with a lot of features, you can look at Teachable or Thinkific. There are other marketing software that have a place to put content.
Look At Selling Your Online Course
Marketing vs Sales
It’s important to be able to sell your online course. Consider how you will be selling your course.
Marketing is doing things that will bring people to your website and ultimately purchase your course.
Sales is the process of talking to and convincing potential clients about their need for your product.
How To Use Both to Sell Your Online Course
It’s important to have a marketing plan and sales process for your business. Consider advertising and publishing content to get followers.
You will want to think about how you are relaying information. It can be through a webinar or a phone call.
Market Your Online Course
Facebook Advertising
Facebook advertising has become increasingly popular. You are able to target specific interests, location, gender, age, and more.
You can target the type of people you want to see your advertisements. You’ll need to look at optimizing your ads and conversion pages.
Read: Facebook Advertising For Small Businesses
Google Advertising
Google advertising may be an option if your online course is searched. You can look at the keywords related to your course.
Free Traffic
Free traffic is definitely possible. Some of the easiest places to find free traffic is on social media. You can go intro groups or directly message people.
The best way to get free traffic is to start consistently publishing. You can look at YouTube, WordPress, Medium, and Podcasts. These platforms allow your different ways to share your content.
Build a Sales Process for Your Online Course
What is a Sales Process?
A sales process has a consistent way of making sales. You will need to think about where your traffic is coming from. This can be through paid traffic or free traffic. It will be a matter of your time and money.
Once you have your traffic, you will need to explain your product and get the sale. You can put them through a website, a phone call, a webinar, a video, an email series, a Facebook Group, and more.
Our Sales Process Involves a lead magnet: Free Land Give-away Contest.
We get their email and introduce them to check out our Free Webinar Training. It walks them through how my wife was able to quit her job by investing in land.
Outsourcing: Increasingly Looking to Make Things More Efficient
You will want people to start doing some of your work. Increasingly, you want to be working on your business and not in it.
There are different places to find help. You can look at freelancers, local people, and people from overseas.
Build a Following of People
Building a Tribe of People
Increasingly, it’s important to have a tribe of people. You want people to follow you. They are interested in the products and services that you have for sale. As your build out your tribe of people, you can better sell online courses.
Read: The Goal: How To Get to $10,000 per Month
Membership or Group
Whenever you create your sales process, it helps if you have a membership or group that people can join. This allows you to engage with them and increase rapport. This can be an easy way to make sales in the future.
Publishing and Engaging Your Followers
One of things you should start doing is publishing on some platform. Followers want to see your name and picture on different platforms. They want to see what you have to say. It’s important to respond back and engage with your followers.
Creating Products and Services Related to Your Group
Serving Your Group
Think with the mindset of serving your group. What are the products and services that they might need? If you are able to provide these benefits you can be a lot of help to your group.
Thinking about other Digital Products
Digital products are a great to create. You create them once and you can sell them over and over again. This is why online courses are better than offline courses.
Thinking About Physical Products
If you have a niche that connects well with physical products, this can be a good niche. For example, if you are in the health and fitness niche, you can provide supplements, mats, and equipment. Whatever niche you are a part of, you can help people by providing physical products.
Live Events
Selling an offline or live course has benefits. There will be some costs in terms of renting out a space. If you have an online course, it can be a good way to also offer a future live event.
Frequently Asked Questions:
When is it better to have Offline Courses?
It’s best when you are planning to sell it as a high ticket offering. It’s a good way to get coaching and more personal attention.
How much does it cost to have an Online Course?
It can cost nothing at all or be costly depending on the features you want. You can expect to pay $30-$300 depending on the number of followers and features.
What platforms are good for Online Courses?
It can be free if you host it on YouTube or on Google Drive. If you want a place with traffic already, you can host it on Udemy. As you get bigger, you will want to put it on some platform that you host. Good examples are Teachable and Thinkific.
