Just the Tip:
Ok, so first thing you need to know is that you don’t have to be an expert at anything to build an online course. You don’t have to be a guru or scam people out there either. But I will tell you one thing, there are people out there making MILLIONS on education courses because everyone wants a shortcut and have more more money than sense. People are easily duped into buying things because they are impatient and want things and they want it now. Now how can we profit off of that? Ok, for the record, you shouldn’t dupe people, just offer a real education that is worth buying.
I know most people will say they have nothing to teach people, and that may or may not be true. I think what many people go throughout their day and have skills that they take for granted. These skills sometimes would be great educational material for other people. What do you do for your job? That could be a skill to teach. It sounds silly but cleaning skills are something people would love to learn. While it’s not a course, there are tons of blogs or social media accounts out there teaching people cleaning hacks. The key is to find a way to monetize the effort. Thinking about it now, this blog post should be more about monetized education, not necessarily an educational course. But what is a course? A condensed place for education on a subject. Your mommy blog could become a “course” in my mind.
For the people that swear they have nothing to teach, try harder. Again, life skills are one thing. You could also take courses yourself and condense good parts of information from multiple sources into one. Find someone that has a skill and partner up with them to creating a course. My father in law is a cabinet maker for airplanes. He has 30 years of experience in fine carpentry. People want to learn about building cabinetry and different techniques to make their life easier. While I dont have the skills or the education, you can leverage other people and their skills. Bring them on for the ride. They handle the knowledge, you handle the rest.
Look at the online learning platforms out there to see what people offer. Just because one person offers a course doesn’t mean its not a good idea to do the same topic. The world is full of amazing things to learn. Ideas range form starting an Etsy shop, Amazon AWS server certifications, metal shaping, grammar lessons, search engine optimization..the list goes on. Its amazing what people will pay to learn. Sometimes the course price will be small $10-15 or sometimes it will be $1000. Heck, there are real estate people out there selling courses for $25,000.
Quick Thoughts:
Cost to get started: [$]This is a ONE $ ($,000) business to get started. Online education courses are usually going to be written and recorded by you, but it doesn’t have to be.
Ease of business: [2] – I really don’t feel this is that complicated. Having the knowledge to share would make life easier but you can learn all of the information you need.
How big can this grow: [2] So this isn’t a huge business but courses can easily make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. If you take off, you could be like Ali Abdaal who make $2 Million in a week on how to do Youtube.
Resource level: [2] It shouldn’t really take too much to get this up and going. You’ll need some equipment (camera, microphone, etc) to get started but our friend “distribution” will be the hardest part.
Can I pull it off: [5]: I think this is one that should be fairly easy to pull off, so I give it a 5. Easy. This will be tested in the future.
Why This and Where is it Going?
I think that education courses are great, simply because you record it once and sell it over and over. If you sold a $1000 course and did Black Friday sales that were 1/2 price, the course is already built and its 100% profit. The goal is to sell as many copies as you can because you already invested all of the work. If you have the knowledge that people would be willing to pay for, it is time to capitalize on it. Lots of people out there with college educations that are putting to waste. Use the paid for education and get paid.
I believe that the world is slowly waking up to the fact that when every kid is going to college to make life fair, we see suppression in the usefulness of a degree. We need less people to go to college and then the value of a college degree will be worth more. Now this idea is very controversial but something I believe whole heartedly. So what does that have to do with online education courses? I believe as society slowly opens their eyes, online education courses into different niches or trades will become more and more valuable. We need courses on entrepreneurship, money skills, investing, handyman skills, etc. While there is a lot of great information out there on places like Youtube, but a proper condensed, singular place to learn everything you need is what people want. We started an Amazon business and learned over hundreds of hours of many different people across Youtube. If you can condense that knowledge into a single place, people will pay for the convenience and no BS. Just don’t tell people they will get rich. This is where the scammy guru part comes into account.
Lets look at a couple of examples of money making courses:
- Microsoft Excel from Beginner to Advanced – 1,397,892 sold for an estimated $209,000,000 (priced at $15 because Udemy full prices are nonsense. Most courses sell for $15ish)
- Complete Guitar Lessons System – Beginner to Advanced 289,000 sold – $2.89M
- Start & Operate Your Own Successful Office Cleaning Business – 2,526 sold – $38k
- Aromatherapy Candle Making (Certified) – 6,244 sold $94k
- Simple Solutions for Common Dog Behavior & Training Problems – 20,626 sold $310k
- Art History Prehistory to the Renaissance – 7,166 sold $107k
- How to Start an Amazon FBA Store on a Tight Budget – 112,973 sold $1.7M (WTF WAS I THINKING WHEN IM OFFERING A FREE COURSE!!)
You can see the variety. Basic things you know or may take for granted may be something people are willing to pay for.
Lets Talk Financials
Financials for online courses are going to vary, and big time. You are going to find lots of people that make almost nothing, and you’ll find people making millions on courses. The financial success is so varied based upon niche, charge for the course, demand for the course, popularity of the educator, etc. I think if someone were to take this seriously and develop a worthwhile course, this could be a lifetime value play in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just don’t forget. If you build it now (and there aren’t crazy changes into that education) this information can be sold for decades. Its a residual income scenario. I took a Python course (programming if you dont know what Python is) on Udemy and there are 1,167,181 sales at $15-20 each. The lady used to be a medical doctor and probably made $10 million after paying Udemy on a single course on how to start programming in Python.
How to Get Started
Camera and a microphone. You could use your cell phone for recording the video but you really need to invest a little cash into a proper microphone. People want video courses these days, not textbooks. Watch lots of videos out there and find a format or style that you like and create the content. I’d write up an outline of all the steps from A to Z to learn the topic. As you write it all out, more things will come to mind, keep adding. Once you really feel like the outline is complete, run it by some people and see if they have questions. Those questions are more topics you need to talk about. Do this over and over until you feel confident, then its time to record.
So courses can be sold a few different ways. There are online learning platforms like Udemy.com and others that use their infrastructure to host and sell the course. They have a lot of fancy things like tracking on content to see how far you have progressed. They offer quizzes (though most of the quizzes I have ever seen were pointless). Then there is the DIY website to sell your course. Its a little harder to get traction but if you put in some time and effort and start giving away free tips on Twitter or other social media platforms, you can make 100% of the money its sold for.
Final Thoughts
Looking back at this post it doesn’t seem too convincing but I really feel this will be a huge opportunity. People need to learn more skills in their life whether they are personal education goals or professional education goals they want to accomplish. While I have a bachelors degree in nursing, if I knew what I know now back 15 years ago before going to college, I think my life would be in a completely different trajectory. There are fields out there that require no formal education (college) or certifications to make great money at. There are multi-million dollar agencies for social media marketing, Facebook marketing, Google ads, search engine optimization, etc run by 20 year olds that learned their trade online. Selling on Amazon has lead to huge businesses and there are lots of courses out there to learn from. I feel like the B2B industry would be a place I would rather focus on when trying to build a course. Lots of entrepreneurs out there that are missing knowledge and with that knowledge, they can grow their business exponentially. Businesses have larger budgets to pay for courses and willing to pay for the knowledge to help their business succeed. Its also a business write off.
I think if you have a little more money, to pay some other professionals for their time, you can really make a course worth buying. Spend an hour with a CPA and learn the basics of what a small business needs to be successful. Do the same with a lawyer, professor, tradesman, or whoever is out there that you can learn valuable information from and include that into your course. Learning tax secrets from all over the internet and talking with some tax professionals to confirm what works and what doesn’t could lead to an amazing course for business owners or individuals. Teaching small business owners how to market their business online and create more business is an essential service for business owners. Combine that with a guarantee that in 6 months if they don’t increase their revenues by following your education they get their money back. You have nothing to lose, the time and effort to build the course was already done. Follow the Alex Hormozi style and generate the $100 Million offer and make people feel they are crazy to not take you up on the training. In fact, you should read the book (or listen to it) and see how you can apply these fundamentals into selling an educational course.
While I think the B2B area is the place to be, there are a lot more consumers out there than there are businesses. The Python example above shows how consumers can really make that $ needle move. There are educational opportunities everywhere. When I was a kid, we used to buy video game magazines to learn how to beat games, cheat codes, etc. This is paid education. Its everywhere.
