Can YOU create and sell a course?
Love the idea of making money from an online course… but have no idea what that course could be? Or even whether you HAVE a course in you?
If so, we get it! It’s a big leap to create your first course, and it takes a lot of confidence to invest the time in learning and creating it. And yes you can join a course like Create and Sell Your First Course and get guidance through the process, but how do you know you can come up with a sellable idea?
That’s why we’re running Create Your Course Idea, two half-day online workshops on 10 and 17 March. In these live workshops Talented Ladies Club founder Hannah Martin will personally guide you through three exercises to help you come up with a brilliant course idea that is perfect for you.
At the end of the workshop you’ll know whether creating an online course is right for you – and if it is you’ll have a list of next steps and (free) technology to move to the next exciting stage.
If you’re wondering whether YOU can create and sell a course, here are some frequent questions we get asked, with our answers.
What makes a great course idea?
There’s a misconception that it’s hard to come up with a course idea. Or that it’s reserved for a very small group of experts. But this is not the case at all.
The truth is that anyone can come up with a course idea that will sell. You just need to be able to know how to solve a problem other people are struggling with. This knowledge can come from professional experience or qualifications, or simply from solving the problem yourself.
On Create Your Course Idea I take you through my proven ‘Magic Three’ process to unlock your hidden skills and knowledge, and identify the right problem you can solve.
How do I know if I have a course in me?
There’s no great mystery to creating a course. When I created (and sold) my first online course I had no prior experience in training at all. But I knew how to solve a problem other people struggled with. So I built a course that guided them through the process I went through in solving the problem… and it worked!
If you are passionate about delivering value and genuinely helping people, and have a great course idea, then with help you can absolutely create a course.
How difficult is it to create a course?
It’s much easier than you may think when you have a framework to follow and know what technology to use. I’ve helped dozens of people create their first course from scratch. All you need is:
- An idea, a name and a price for your course
- A framework for planning your lessons
- The right technology and tools to sell and deliver your course
- A solid marketing plan to reach the right people
With guidance more people than you probably think can successfully create and sell a course.
How much can you make from a course?
The answer to this depends on a few things, including how big your audience is, how much your course is, and how much effort you put into your marketing.
Courses don’t sell themselves – you need to guide people through a marketing journey in order to provide them with the information they need to make a decision about whether or not it’s right for them.
The very first online course I sold made me nearly £3,000 (I sold places on it for £65). People who have taken Create and Sell Your First Course price their first courses for between £150-199, on average. So if you sell your course to just five people at these prices you’d make between £750 and £995. Sell to 10 and you’d make between £1,500 and £1,999.
One student made over £20,000 on her first course launch, with a list of around 500 people. And while she’s the exception (her course was priced at almost £2,000) the good news is that once you create your course you can sell it as many times as you like with minimal effort. And the more you launch your course, the better you get at marketing it.
How long does it take to create a course?
If you’re worried you don’t have time to create a course I have good news for you: it doesn’t need to take weeks to build. When you know how to structure a course and how much needs to go in it, you can do it fairly quickly.
When I realised, during the first lockdown, that people were looking for a way to sell their services online I wanted to help them build courses. But I didn’t have the time to build the course and come back to them, so I sketched out the structure of the course, and sold it before creating a single module.
Once I had the first cohort in place, I created each module over the weekend the week before it launched. It was the first time I had created a course this way and I really enjoyed it.
My latest course, Marketing The Easy Way was mapped out and written (including workbooks) over a few days when I was isolating with Covid last year. I then spent one day designing and recording the video classes that accompanied the lessons and exercises.
Other courses and classes are much quicker to create. My masterclasses generally take a day to prepare. This includes writing the script, designing the class slides and creating all marketing.
How big an audience do you need to sell a course?
There used to be a consensus that you needed a huge audience to sell. But then the world woke up to micro-influencers. The truth is that you don’t need millions of people to make money from online courses – you just need enough people who believe you can solve their problem.
I didn’t have a huge audience when I started creating and selling online courses. And most people who have completed Create and Sell Your First Course haven’t had thousands of followers. What they DID have though was a marketing plan to follow that helped them sell.
It was this marketing plan than enabled people like Sally Smy to make the cost of the course back 10 times over with her first course launch. That helped copywriter Emma Rundle to fill her first cohort easily. And meant Caroline Would sold course places while she slept.
None of them had large lists or huge followings. What they had was a great course idea, that solved a genuine problem, and a marketing strategy to follow that showed them how to find and connect with people who needed help, and demonstrate how they could help.
Love no-risk way to see if you have a course in you?
I understand it’s a big leap trying to create your first course, or investing in a course like Create and Sell Your First Course to help you. That’s why I have created Create Your Course Idea. This is a live online morning workshop in which I will personally guide you through exercises to come up with a brilliant course idea, and name and price your course.
We provide everything you need for the workshop. Before it starts we will email you worksheets to complete during the exercises and we have a spreadsheet live during the workshop for you to add ideas and get feedback. You can also ask questions during the workshop on the Zoom chat function and at the end during a 30-minute Q&A session.
By the end of the morning, if you complete the exercises, you will have:
- A course idea
- A name for your course
- A price for your course
- The beginnings of your course marketing copy
It’s a no-risk way to find out if you really do have a course idea in you. If you come to the end of the workshop and decide you don’t wish to create a course, you’ll have lost nothing – you’ll have spent a fun morning learning how to come up with an idea, and can put any yearning or FOMO to bed once and for all.
And if you leave the workshop excited about the course idea you came up with, you’ll have opened the door to an exciting new opportunity that could lead to the fulfilment of creating something that changes lives – and gives you a powerful new income stream.
The only way to know how you will feel – and to discover if online courses could be your exciting new future – is to join us on one of the two workshops. Click here to book your place now. The workshop costs just £49, and includes all workbooks and resources.
