When you’re trying to build a business that works for you, it’s important to make sure that you’re creating the right types of offers that will get you to your revenue goals in a way that actually works for you.
So it’s important to understand the difference between high-ticket and low-ticket offers.
Because if you want to In the online business world, sometimes you hear people talking about how creating a course means easy passive income and making money in your sleep.
But the thing is, most of the people talking about courses that way are trying to sell you on their course about making courses…
The thing is, even though selling an online course is technically passive income, it’s really not that passive.
Creating an online course, especially for the first time, is a lot of work.
But as long as you go into it knowing that, it can be a great addition to your business’s suite of offers!
Keep reading for the process I walk my clients through to decide whether or not to create a course, and an in-depth walk through the course creation process when you’re creating an online course for the first time.
Why You Might Want to Create a Course
There are lots of reasons you might decide to create a course as part of your business.
A couple of motivations that I super don’t think you should create a course based on are:
- you feel obligated or pressured to by the online business space around you
- you feel guilty that you don’t have any “accessible” offers (i.e. lower cost, which is not the same thing as accessible)
Not being “more affordable” out of guilt is a rant for another day (one I already had, actually!)...
But there are also lots of fantastic reasons to create a course!
1. Courses are a great way to offer a portion of your knowledge and skill at a lower price than someone would have to pay to hire you one-to-one.
… as long as it’s not motivated by guilt.
Here’s a great example of this: I have a client who is a Disney travel planner. She typically offers really high-touch, personalized services. But she also gets a lot of questions and requests from families that are great members of her audience and community but can’t afford her premium services.
She wanted to be able to impact these other members of her community, and she knew she could help them DIY their trip planning with a course. She wasn’t doing it out of guilt - it just helped her impact more people.
2. Before someone hires you for your high-touch service, they might need to figure some stuff out on their own.
Let’s say you're a branding expert, and you have an in-depth questionnaire your clients fill out before you start working together.
If they are nowhere close to being able to answer these questions you have before you start creating their brand, you could create a short course that helps them answer those questions.
Then, they have the tools and knowledge they need and feel empowered when they hire you.
And when they do, you can get right into it and do what you’re excellent at, because you have all of that information.
3. You’re booked out, or you’re moving away from one-to-one work.
You should create a course if you have all the clients you can handle, and you’re not comfortable increasing your rates by a lot.
A course is a great way to continue growing your revenue and help more people in your audience, without having to take on more one-to-one clients!
Courses: A Magic Bullet?
While it is super enticing to think about making money while you sleep, a lot of work goes into creating, marketing, and delivering a course.
So please, before you get sucked into the magical hypnotic orb that is “passive income”, know that while it is amazing, it doesn't mean that you can create something in an afternoon, throw up a sales page, and then you’ll be sitting on the beach sipping mojitos.
There's a lot more that goes into it.
But if you have decided that creating a course is the right next step for you, then you can start thinking about what is going to be in your course…
What Will Your Course Be About?
Before you can create your course, it’s a good idea to spend some time thinking about what should go into it.
And I don’t just mean that you should outline the content (though you should definitely do that).
I mean, spend some time thinking about different parts of how you work with clients one-to-one, different parts of your process, and also how this course could fit into your larger suite of offers.
Here are some questions to help you think about this:
- Is there some basic level info that your clients need to know before they work with you one-to-one?
- Is there something you're constantly teaching your clients over and over again?
- Is there (part of) something you do for your clients that you could teach someone to do by themselves?
Here are a few examples to illustrate how each of these questions could play out as a course:
Example 1: Info they need to know before they work with you
Let’s say you’re a web designer.
There are so many questions you have to ask the client before you begin the visual aspect of designing a website, like: “Who's your competition?” and “Which of these adjectives best describe your brand?”
So instead of doing all of that work with the client, you can create a course for them to do it on their own prior to working with you. They get clarity on their brand, and then when they hire you to do the visuals, it’s a lot more straightforward.
Example 2: Something that comes up all the time with your clients
Or let’s say you’re a social media expert.
You have limited capacity to actually run people’s social media accounts for them, but maybe there is something that comes up with your clients over and over again that you could teach.
For example, how to use a specific platform, like Instagram or LinkedIn. Or how to run a successful Facebook group.
Since it’s something that keeps coming up with your clients, the topic is clearly something that lots of people in your audience need help with. So it’s a great option as a course idea!
Example 3: A part of your process that they can do by themselves
Your course could even be for after they work with you! For example, I once spoke to a personal organizer. They go in once or twice a year to do seriously deep organization for their clients, but what about after they leave?
Since they don’t help clients with maintaining organization, that’s a part of their process that they could put into a course instead. They could create a course or guide to help their clients DIY maintain their organized homes between visits.
What Type of Course Will It Be?
Once you’ve decided on the primary aim of the course and what’s going to go into it, you need to decide what type of course it will be.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Is what you’re teaching is purely tactical? Does it deliver a transformation? Or is it a combination of both?
- What does the course need to include? And what must people learn in order to be successful?
An Example of A Transformational Course
The first course I created was Sell It Sister.
While this course has worksheets and does include tools to use in your business, its primary aim is to teach the fundamentals of creating a strong personal brand that speaks directly to the people you want to serve and to help you close more sales with those ideal clients.
I saw so many women selling products or services who hadn't really considered these foundational principles that helped set them apart from their competition and stand out in a crowded digital marketplace.
The course helps you do that deep work, and the overall result is transformational.
An Example of a Tactical Course
The second course I created was Conversations that Convert.
It’s a lot shorter than Sell It Sister, and a lot more tactical.
It’s for people who may not be ready for a deep transformation, but just want to be more confident having sales conversations.
It doesn’t require any journaling or introspection. Instead, it’s a template that you can use in your sales conversations, whether you sell a product or a service.
Start with a Minimum Viable Product (and maybe a Beta Round)
When you’re making the course for the first time, I recommend two things.
One, keep in mind that at the outset with any new course, it’s a good idea to focus on the Minimum Viable Product (or MVP).
A Minimum Viable Product is the absolute minimum of what you need to create in order to serve your clients or customers and deliver your high-quality transformation.
So before you go nuts making everything shiny and beautiful, and including all sorts of bonus features and content, ask yourself:
What do your students actually truly need right now to get the results that they want (and that you are advertising)?
Because you can always add those bonus things in later, and raise the price along with it.
For your first crack at it, you might also consider doing a beta round, where you offer the course at a lower price point and record modules as you go.
This is a great way to sell to fast actors and early adopter types. They can jump in now with the understanding that in this first round, while they’re going to get amazing results, the course won’t be pretty and polished.
Once you have your basic level training, you can add bonuses, and the early adopters will get access to those pieces as well.
How Will You Structure Your Course?
Now that you’ve got an idea of the content and what type, of course, it will be, it’s time to think about how you’ll structure it and what it will actually look like for students to experience it.
For example, how are you going to be teaching it? In pre-recorded lessons, or in live training sessions with access to recordings after?
What extra things will you include? Will there be a Facebook Group that gives them additional access to you? Or maybe a Slack channel?
Are there going to be videos/audio? Will you include transcripts of those? Will there be worksheets?
If you’re running the course for the first time and building it as you go, a simple way to structure things could be to do it live, with a Facebook group, and a call a week.
In between launches, you could leave the group active, and just pop in from time to time to answer questions.
Then, the next time you run the course, the older students have access to you and the network you’re building.
And if you don't like Facebook, there are other platforms you can use, like Slack, Circle, or even the Community feature of Podia.
And while it might sound daunting to create transcripts and worksheets, it’s not as hard as you might think. There are services that allow you to simply upload the video or the audio, and they give you the transcription. And there are VAs who you can hire for projects, so it’s not an added ongoing expense.
Where Are You Going to Host Your Course?
Now that you know all the things that your course is going to include, you can figure out where you’re going to host your course.
Right now, all of my courses and digital downloads are on Podia, which is a stand-alone platform that hosts courses. I especially like it because there is a membership feature.
Kajabi is also a popular choice. There are lots of online course platforms these days. You’ll need to look at the options and consider the tech and the fees associated with each.
But know that you don’t need to pay for a course platform right out of the gate.
It’s a nice option that's a little bit more secure and allows you to do more, like create coupon codes. But you can absolutely do what I did the first time I launched Sell It Sister.
When I first created it, I actually just had it listed on password-protected pages on my website, clients would get an email with the link to where those pages were, and the password to access it. Easy and budget-friendly!
Depending on the website builder you use, the plugins will be more or less robust.
So there you have it! How to build a course the first time, and if you even should.
Courses may not be the magic bullet they’re often marketed as, but they are a fantastic way for you to impact other segments of your audience and increase your revenue without taking on more clients.
Hopefully, now you feel a little more prepared and confident in the process of creating your first (or next!) online course.
Just remember, focus on mapping it out, and make sure you’re not wasting a ton of time trying to create 8000 modules when you can keep it really simple.