Of the many ways to make a bit of extra money, teaching an online course could be one way to provide a steady secondary income about something that you are passionate about, or at least really, really good at. There are some things you should consider before diving into your first online course:
Set Up Is A Lot of Work
Once you’ve decided what you want to teach, you will need to create lessons, including videos of the subject matter and any supplemental resources like workbooks and assignments. In addition, you need to set up payment options and create a way for students to pay you online.
If you have video editing knowledge and are savvy enough to load original content to your own site, this could take many months to complete, but you would have your own online school. If this isn’t in your wheelhouse, then sites like Teachable and Udemy offer the option to host your courses on their site for a fee. The plus side is once you’ve completed your online course you can sell it over and over; that is, as long as you have students interested in learning what you are teaching.
Do the Market Research
Your students may not be who you expected. Before putting in all the work to set up a course, you need to do market research and testing. Rob Percival is a successful online teacher, but his first course was a flop. After putting 3 months of work into his course, no one was willing to buy it. It was only after giving the course away for free in order to gain positive testimonials that he was able to begin selling the course…. slowly. Only a handful of his target audience bought the course but those who did shares it with people they knew and so on and so forth.
Do your market research on social media before you start and test your idea before committing to a full course by putting together a general description of the subject you will teach and a rough price range for your services.
Focus on Marketing
You have to get the word out. Once you’ve created your online course outline, you need to start sharing it with the same people you were connecting with online. Start conversations with the people who gave you the inspiration to create the course and ask them if they would like a seat in your virtual classroom.
Create a short video with a sneak peak of some of the topics you will cover and post it on YouTube with a link where interested students can sign up. Once you’ve filled enough spots to make a profit, create your complete course.
Follow Through
Whether this is an individual course or a smaller part of a bigger business, you will need to keep up with it. Even though the course you created won’t need to be recreated every time you teach, you will need to make sure content is up-to-date, make improvements and continually market your online school.
Making an online course is a great way to make some extra money, but it’s not something you should jump into blind. However, with a little planning and time, you can see a steady income from your online course.