The Rise of Online Courses
- For online course creators. 8 minutes read
Online learning has been soaring over the past few years. Technology has made access to knowledge widespread. Independent teachers for specific industries or traditional colleges are offering more online-based solutions to education
We have seen this over the last year with in-person restrictions being placed globally. Access to technology is becoming widespread, and more people are starting to shift from traditional learning to online learning. This shift is expected to be very large, worldwide e-learning market is projected to hit $325 Billion in 2025.
Forbe article pulished by TJ McCue
Large corporations are turning to courses to teach company training, and people are learning via online courses (from home) now more than ever.
As course creators, you have a chance to get into this market for yourself and take advantage of this ever-increasing demand. The demand for these courses comes from the benefits that essentially all courses have. Convenience is a massive change for e-learning. Courses can be pre-recorded and accessible whenever the student needs, rather than a fixed schedule.
The possibilities are endless, but what sets apart the wildly successful courses from the rest? To answer that, let’s go over the foundations for a good course and then what sets a course out from the rest.
Digital Learning Opportunities
We have been slowly shifting to digital solutions to solve old problems. Learning in-person comes with a lot of inconveniences that you can eliminate by transitioning to the new developments in the digital space. The last year certainly has proven that digital learning can work well, and many have turned their eyes to the opportunity that learning online can be.
Online Courses
Home page of Harvard Online Course website
Universities and other established academics have been forced to shift to online-based courses, but these courses aren’t a new idea. In marketing, financial markets, fitness, and several other industries, online courses have been a popular way to learn new information. Many can start their own businesses, or achieve some other big change due to their openness to learning online.
The opportunity for course creators here is getting into an emerging industry early. With more people being exposed to online learning, they are going to be more open to the shift. We already have industries that several people are getting into from what they’ve learned through courses. This has made for the rise of coaches and mentors for several industries. Trading and online marketing are two that stand out with numerous examples of successful, and unsuccessful courses.
They aren’t the only two industries that can do well. With the rise in interest, people are seeking out more unique and specialized information too. Teaching valuable, specific skills to students that gets them results is one way to make a lasting brand in the course industry. Almost any industry has skills that can be taught in the course format.
If you are wondering why people turn to courses, there are several reasons for this. A massive benefit of online courses is the ability to access almost anywhere, and the possibility for flexible scheduling. When it is made easy for you to learn a subject you are more likely to complete it. By giving people the option to learn from their own home, whenever works the best for them that is a massive benefit traditional education doesn’t provide.
Lauch of Lucy Gought Online course
Developing Practical Skills
Often, college can give you a great fundamental knowledge of a field but lacks in the real application of this knowledge. Courses can be massive vaults of knowledge too, but they are commonly designed to teach you the skills and theories needed to accomplish real-world results. They can be tailored towards teaching what is needed for success, rather than total theoretical mastery of a field. There is a benefit in having this university knowledge, but some courses have made their students more successful in income or career direction because of this focus on practical skills.
Courses are very versatile. You wouldn’t go to a university just to learn yoga, but you would be fine with going through an online course to learn yoga. The diversity in subjects people are interested in creates a huge market that provides course creators the opportunity to teach highly specific, but valuable skills to that specific audience. Platforms have been developed to support a wide variety of needs and teaching styles. Some things may be explained better over text with a video demonstration, while another may require a full video with a presentation. The options aren’t limiting you to any certain format, allowing you to teach how you need for the best student results.
Becoming a Successful Course Creator
They can also be very profitable. Some courses are hitting 7, 8 figures of profit. Now, it does take a lot of work to do that, but several course creators are able to make a living off teaching.
Iman Gadzhi is a perfect success story with online course creation. He had started by offering marketing services and transitioned into teaching others how to do what he did. Now he has thousands of students, and great reviews of the program for the value he offers students.
Iman Gadzhi YouTube channel
By staying focused on growing his course and helping others he was able to elevate himself too. When you offer students value and great service the opportunity that exists with course creation can be huge.
How to Reach Your Audience
Now we’ve seen courses that can reach large audiences and gather students, but how do they do it?
Marketing is one of the biggest factors in success or failure when it comes to online courses. Without marketing, you are going to struggle to reach students and gain sales. To fully cover marketing we will be going over that in detail in future articles. What we can do quickly is explain the basic structure behind successful campaigns.
Organic vs Paid is often a heated argument. Organic is free or low cost but takes a bit of time to get built up where it is generating tons of sales. Paid traffic funnels have a higher upfront cost, but put you in front of people looking to buy. This can lead to huge surges of purchases when you have the marketing tuned to the audience.
Organic strategy and direct outreach strategy for course marketing is a great way to build a following, share information with people in your audience, and build social proof. When people see a page with engagement and followers, it builds trust in the brand. Providing value to your audience is a great way to build their confidence in your course.
Paid traffic has a lot of power to it. Organic marketing is less sales-oriented. With paid traffic, you can test endless possible ads and find exactly what makes people want to buy your course.
Queen Clairie First Paid Trafic Campaign
With that said, organic shouldn’t be ignored entirely, it can become an extra 20-40% increase in sales once you build a following.
Advertising Your Online Courses
With ads, you want to test different creatives. See if your competitors are using video ads, or picture ads. If they are only running video ads, and if it is working well it could be a sign that you should look into trying some video ads that fit your brand. With advertising, you are trying to dial in on what resonates with the audience. Different images and videos that express a different message, different advertising copies, all can influence if an ad is going to generate sales, or not perform at all. It is super important to try different messages until you find what the audience likes the most.
Ryan Kult Winning Creatives set
Once you have one profitable ad generating sales you know what approach to take and expand the test towards that until you have built up a strong marketing campaign. When you build 5 winning ads, you are in the perfect spot to start scaling and making these campaigns bigger. Your ads start getting seen by more of the same types of people who bought during testing. Here is a tip on how to build compelling copies for your ads.
WIth a wide variety of platforms, you can try paid advertising almost anywhere your potential students are found. Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest are just a few of many options.
Marketing really changes the barrier to entry for course creators. With the right marketing they can get their course to potential students, and start building their teaching career for themselves.
Becoming a Course Creator
The opportunity is here, and is ready for new creators to get into the industry and build their brands. We know why people are switching to this style of learning, and have seen it develop on large scales over the past year. With marketing and offering great value you can connect with people who want to learn. We are going to be going over marketing in more detail so watch out for the next posts.
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