My friends and family laugh at me whenever we’re out and about, because I can’t help but tell anybody I meet that they should make an online course. I’ve tried to convince my hairdresser, my podiatrist as he was scraping the hard skin off my heel, even the man who came round to fit my new windows. The reason I tell people they should make an online course is because I know how easily it can change your life. A couple of years ago, I created my first online course, and my life has never been the same.
Here are ten reasons you should create an online course today
1. It’s relatively easy
Making an online course isn’t difficult. If you can use your phone camera to make a video, you can make an online course.
You can make your course as simple or as fancy as you like, but I suggest you start off making a simple one. Just think of something you know quite a bit about, write a script and record yourself speaking it.
2. You don’t need any qualifications
Most people end up not making an online course because they feel like they’re not qualified to teach. That’s just silly. If you have learnt to do something, you can teach somebody else to do it.
In fact, the more recently you have learnt to do something, the better you will be at showing somebody else how to do it.
3. It’s free
You can make an online course with things you already have to hand. Nowadays, phones have such high-quality cameras that you don’t need to buy any expensive equipment.
Once you have made your videos, all you have to do is upload it to a course selling website. There are so many websites that will let you upload and sell your courses without spending a penny — it’s basically free money!
Here are just a few websites I use:
www.Udemy.com
www.SkillShare.com
www.Teachable.com
www.SkillSuccess.com
www.CyberU.com
4. You will learn so much
I suggest you make a really simple online course, to begin with, just so you can quickly get to grips with how to upload and sell onto one of the websites I suggested in the last point. However, you will soon find yourself wanting to make fancier courses.
Making online courses has been such a learning curve for me. I have learnt to create presentations, edit audio, edit videos, write scripts, market online, communicate better, speak more clearly, write more concisely, explain things better and much more. These are all very valuable skills.
5. You will make money
The main reason most people start an online course is to make money. There are two things I should tell you though. At first, you won’t make as much as you’d hoped. After a while, you will make more than you thought you would.
A lot of people give up after making one course and realizing it hasn’t sold any after a couple of weeks. My first three online courses didn’t make any money for 6 months. Then, I started to make tiny amounts. 18 cents from SkillShare was my first payments, but that gradually went up and up.
Once you have launched your first course, don’t expect to make any money immediately, but it will come with time. My first payment was 18 cents (after about six months), but then I got $2, $8, $37, $140, $460, $1200 and so on. It didn’t take long before my earnings from my online courses overtook my earnings from my real job.
6. You will have more free time
At first, making online courses is hard. You have to figure out what you’re going to teach, how you’re going to teach it and when you’re going to record it. Additionally, when you first start out, you will no doubt have your real job eating up most of your time. You’ll find it tiring and you’ll want to give up, but make sure you stick at it until you’ve finished your course.
The early stages are difficult, but once you get past those, the dream life is just around the corner. Once your courses are earning you money, you can quit your real job. The good thing about creating online courses for a living is that you can pick your own hours. You can work whenever you like and have much more free time to enjoy life.
7. You only need to do it once
Once you have made your course, that’s it. It exists and it will always exist, so you don’t need to make it again. Even if it takes you a month or two to create your online course, once it’s done, it’s done.
Online courses are different to training or teaching in person. You are effectively recording a lesson that you can then sell to people over and over. I think online courses are amazing value for money too.
If you want to learn to speak a foreign language, for example, you can get one of my courses for as little as $10. If you hire a tutor to teach you to speak French, it will cost you about $35 an hour, and you will usually spend half the lesson recapping things you have forgotten. You can watch an online course over and over again, and you only have to pay once. My longest online course is about eight hours long, and you can get it for $10. The same amount of time with a private tutor would cost upwards of $280.
8. You can turn it into a book
Once you have written a script for your course, you can easily turn that script into an ebook or even a printed book. If you go to kdp.amazon.com you can create your own ebook for free that you can sell on Amazon, and you can also create your own paperback book for free. You can then sell it on Amazon, who will print a copy and post it out for you every time somebody orders one. More free money!
9. You can turn it into a podcast
Podcasts are becoming more and more popular. You can think of them basically as radio shows on the internet. Once you have your script, all you have to do is record yourself speaking it and you have your own audio course.
There is free software called Audacity, which is brilliant! If you search Google for Audacity, you can find where to download it, but it’s a great piece of software for editing your audio. Once you’re happy with how it sounds, upload it to a website called www.TuneCore.com who will send it off to Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal and Google Play Music, and then every time somebody listens to your audio course, you get paid!
10. Everybody has something they can teach
You might not think you have anything that you can put into an online course, but you’re wrong. Absolutely anything can be turned into a course. Write down a list of everything you can do, and you’ll find something on there that you can teach to other people.
There are so many random courses already out there that earn their makers thousands every month. Some of the top-selling courses on Teachable include gardening courses, bread-making courses, and iron forging courses. You might have obvious skills like hairdressing, singing, painting, writing, public speaking, dancing, drawing, woodworking or computer coding. If you don’t have any of these skills, think about what you do in your job. Maybe you work in a shop, in which case, you will have a wealth of knowledge and experience on how to deal with customers. Just do a quick Google of business skills and I bet you have some of them. “How to deal with angry customers” is just one idea.
Don’t delay, start making today!
Whatever you decide to make your first course on, do it now. Write your script and start making your videos. Then upload it to all the websites I mentioned in point 3. Honestly, it’s the best decision I ever made and it has changed my life in so many ways. I now have the time and money to do whatever I want and really enjoy life. I think “online course creator” is the best job you can have; it’s stress-free, you’re your own boss and you can really live life in the slow lane and enjoy things without being overworked and tired.
Good luck 🙂