You’ve been working with 1:1 clients for years and now are ready to turn all your experience and skills into an online course. Now what?! Let’s explore 5 actionable steps to turn experience into online course!
Is it possible to turn any experience into a profitable online course? YES.
Whether you have been in 1:1 business for years or you’ve had any other experience you now want to monetize, creating a digital program is one of the most profitable paths to take.
It’s your chance to:
- Reach a bigger audience
- Set up evergreen offers
- Get paid on repeat
If you’re ready to turn experience into online course, read on!
Disclaimer: This blog post includes affiliate links! If you make a purchase using one of the provided links, I’ll receive a commission from the purchase. If you do – THANK YOU. Your support keeps this blog going!
Why create an online course?
Let’s say you’ve been running your own business for years. You have tons of knowledge and expertise. You are skilled in what you do, your clients love you. You know there’s A LOT of potential.
But, in reality, you’d also love to have a chance to take a step back. Start living slower, take more vacations, spend more time with your family.
How to monetize your skills, earn passive income and have more free time?
Creating an online program really is the KEY. If several years ago this trend was just beginning to rise, now it’s here to stay, for sure.
Online courses are created by high-class professionals, as well as your neighbors. People use various online platforms to share their skills and reach an even bigger audience with what they know.
While in real-time you could help 3 people a day, online those can be thousands per week and more. The sky is the limit!
Here are just some of the benefits of creating an online course:
- You can share all your skills and knowledge
- You can earn consistent passive income, no matter where you’re at
- Your business can keep on going but you don’t have to focus on it so much
- You can reach a way bigger audience than you ever could without such courses
- It’s an efficient way to monetize your dream business and assure online income
Stories from long-term entrepreneurs
Here are just some of the stories from my recent clients who have turned their skills and experience into an online course (or several), creating a successful passive income business.
- Revi is a job-hunting expert with more than 18-year experience who turned her recruitment experience into an online course on How to Find a Job Like a Pro;
- Monica is a holistic health and lifestyle coach who has made the transition from her live presentations to online courses and live masterclasses;
- Erika is an NLP practitioner and helps women to heal after narcissistic or emotionally abusive relationships.
As you see, all of these stories are different, yet they all have found a way to turn their skills into an online course and help even more people with what they know.
It’s definitely an encouragement for you to not give up and see how you can also turn experience into online course, step by step.
Related read: Explore some of the most profitable online course ideas
5 Steps to turn experience into online course
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STEP #1: Decide WHAT you want to help with
The first step is to make the decision about the final goal of the course: what do you want to help people with?
It’s especially hard if you have a lot of knowledge and your ideal audience covers many different people.
I always suggest focusing on where your heart lies.
For example, recently my client Wendi was creating a new course. She’s a spiritual entrepreneur and her focus is inspiring others. But “inspiration” is such a wide topic to cover. And how could one even make a course about that, really…
So after some consideration, she came up with 4 more specific and actionable topics she’d love to start with. One of which is Positive Habits 101 that, obviously, help people to create more positive habits.
When making this kind of decision, start with brainstorming and considering various paths.
STEP #2: Create the content outline
What will be the exact steps and tips you’ll offer in this course?
One of the most asked questions is “How long a lesson should be?” or “How many lessons will be ok?” so here’s my answer to that.
The length of the lesson doesn’t matter, as long as you’re providing value. I’ve seen successful courses with 2-3 paragraphs per lesson. But these paragraphs answered the exact questions students were seeking answers for. Normally, it’s a video of up to 5-10 mins and/or readable material of around 2-3 pages. Once again, it’s just the average, not the only way to do things.
When it comes to the number of lessons, there’s a fine line between “enough” and “too much”. Usually, I suggest creating several Modules, focusing on each specific feature of the topic. For example, 3-5 Modules, with 3-5 lessons within each.
When you realize that you might need tons more to cover all you want to share, it’s worth considering creating more courses instead of one.
A person’s attention span is rather short and stats show that courses with more than 10 different Modules + many lessons within them rarely get finished.
You should focus on clear action, clear information. So your audience can actually get what they came for.
You can also check out what my audience has voted as the best course setup!
STEP #3: Write the content
Content really is the most important part of your course and if you have decided to turn your 9 to 5 into an online course – you better start writing!
Although the final outlet of your content can be any kind of media you’d prefer, for example, video or audio with presentations, as well as simple text, it’s important, in any case, to write it down.
For writing, I suggest using anything you prefer. I personally like Google Docs but you can use Word, Notepad or do it in Grammarly or Evernote.
Just make sure to always have a copy of the written content so in case any files get lost, you have a backup to use!
STEP #4: Design your course
The design is the most dreaded part for most online course creators, especially, starters.
If you have no knowledge of the design whatsoever, don’t get scared off.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you can always keep it extremely simple and use only the most basic design features.
When it comes to design, you should consider:
- What will be the main color scheme used?
- What kind of design elements will you use for your text material, for example, PDFs?
- Will you have presentations? And if so, how will you design them?
The less is more! Therefore, if you are in doubt, use black and white, and one other color of your preference. Don’t overthink it.
The best part: you can always come back to your course later on and redesign it. Or hire someone to do it for you.
At the end of the day, the design rarely matters. What really matters is the content! But the design should be visually appealing anyway.
STEP #5: Publish & start selling
The last but not least part is to actually publish the course and start selling it.
Course platforms like Thinkific make the publishing part easy: you can upload all of your content into Lessons that are separated into Modules, and you have a great course structure ready for you.
Besides these, there are also platforms like Payhip that will let you host other digital products, along with your courses as well AND get started for free.
Whether you’ve created readable material or videos, you have a chance to upload it all.
Such platforms also provide you with a Payment getaway. Meaning, all of your payments are secured and you can get the payout from Teachable instead of dealing with each of your students.
To learn more about various platforms, make sure to get this free guide!
The marketing is a whole another story though.
There are many different ways to successfully market and sell your online course and it’s a matter of you to decide which one will be the best fit.
Here are just some of the ideas:
- Sell through ads on Facebook
- Use platforms like Pinterest to promote
- Write a blog, grow your audience and sell through content marketing
- Do guest posts and share your course there
Marketing and the best launch strategies definitely is a whole other topic to cover.
Online course creation really is a great way how to step out of your daily routine and create an effective online income source. But you can also consider other products if online courses do not feel like the best fit for you.
If you’re ready to turn experience into online course, make sure to join us in Savvy Offer Hub!
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