Nowadays especially during covid-19 its very easy to start an online course that people will happily sign up for with less competition from the physical training institutes since people are more aware and convinced of the importance of online courses.

If you already made up your mind on the idea of starting giving courses online but you have so many ideas running through your head, it’s time to clear your mind and start going through each step at a time to actually start it without waiting. Here’s how:

Choose what field you want to teach

By now you already know what you’re good at so you’re willing to give out your knowledge but hey, be ing specific and solving a problem is the main door that welcomes your audience into registering to your online course.

So come up with plan for your course that will eventually solve a problem in the field you chose.

Decide on a topic

What do people come for you for an advice? Can it be profitable? if not then find a more focused subject that is related to what you’re good at and make it profitable!

Here are some examples: (Try to make a niche of your own)

• Resume writing
• Personal finance
• Dancing
• Cake decorating
• Sketching
• Farming
• Coding
• Game making
• Animal raising
• Baby/Toddler sleep training
• Language teaching
• Fashion design and clothes making
• Painting
• Photoshop training
• Mental wellbeing
• Workout & health
• Diet planning
• Homeschooling 
• Parenting
• Household 
• Music instrument lessons
• Music production 
• Social media marketing 
• PPC Marketing 

Research your industry competition 

You’ll benefit a lot from seeing what others are doing and making editing your material, enhancing it or changing topics. 

So make sure you search well to be able to know more about what your audience needs.

Create customer personas

Think about the audience you want to target. Who is your perfect attendee for the course you’re offering, focus more on the age group, gender and interests so you don’t target the wrong people. 

Know your students before you finalise your subjects, material and branding.

Your own brand

When you are offering online courses you need to let people feel like they know you before getting in touch. Build your own unique authentic brand with the suitable tone of voice and choose the colours, visuals, content you want to use and make it consistent.

Price your course right

Pricing online courses can be tricky because you can find super cheap ones and expensive ones in the same topic, so make sure you explain your outline and the importance of taking the course to people while you price it in a way that matches your effort, time , marketing expenses to make you profit.

Launch the course & share it

Decide on an outline, subjects, material and level of interaction with students. 

Either choose an online course platform to share it on or build your own website & social media pages.

Marketing your online course 

–Social Media Marketing 

Attract your audience using the platform they use daily, its a convenient way for a start. So create your online academy page on Facebook, instagram and Linkedin. You might focus on one social platform more than another with time, but at first test all and see the audience’s reaction. 

Share educational posts as well as selling your course. Give and take. 

-Email Marketing

You’ll need an email list for that, you can collect the interested people in your course and potential students from forms/ contests on social media or creating an online course and advertising it with an email address input as a call for action or if you have a website you can create a pop up wth a discount where they have to enter their email address as well. Another way to build that email list for your email marketing is linkedIn contacts. 

When you already have that list of potential customers try sending them useful catchy emails; advice, tips, partial info about that specific topic they might be interested in, news and seasonal offers.

Great free email marketing tools are: HubSpot , Sender, mailchimp and mailerLite.

-Partnerships

Reach out to influencers, other related businesses and professionals in your field to promote your online course. You can also be a part of podcasts, webinars and blog writing for other websites.