Three Easy Ways to Leverage Your Online Course to Earn More Revenue
Earn more revenue in your business with an online course. It is possible to create valuable assets in your business one time and use them over and over again. But, you might not be leveraging your online course to its maximum potential if you’re focusing on selling it to your email list or social media followers. There’s a big, bright, eager-for-more world out there and your online course might be just what they need.
In this article, we’re exploring three easy ways to leverage your online course to earn more revenue. And we’re keeping it simple. If you don’t have an online course in the world yet and you’re thinking about creating one, feel free to reach out and book a call with me. I help entrepreneurs like you create online courses by doing the heavy lifting for you.
Sell Your Online Course to Multiple Audiences
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first: every marketing professional is going to tell you to create your products (in this case, your online course) for one audience only. Narrow down, niche down, and be pinhole specific about what you teach and why. And they’re not wrong. But they’re marketers.
When you speak to an instructional designer or education expert, you’ll hear a very different perspective. That’s because educators need to account for all voices in the room. Marketers, I’m sorry to say, get to play in a narrow field. And I don’t want to knock marketers. If you’re a business owner, you’re a marketer. I’m a marketer. But the narrow thinking surrounding marketing chokes off educational opportunities and I’m here to tell you to think bigger. You can earn more revenue in your business by lifting the marketing veil and considering all sides of the story.
Create it Once. Sell it Many Times to Earn More Revenue.
Yes, create your course for one audience. But instead of focusing on the demographics of those people, focus on the problem your course solves. If you’ve been in business for any length of time you know that nearly all business owners have the same problems. Our problems wear different clothes and have different attitudes but at the heart of things, our problems are the same. So then, if we agree that is true, why can’t we agree that lots of other people (non-entrepreneurs) have the same problems? No, I’m not saying everyone is your customer. Certainly not. But don’t limit your thinking and profitability by servicing just one customer either.
If you create a course on how to create 5 hours of free time in your calendar each week and market it with busy entrepreneurs in mind, you’ll make a few bucks, to be sure. Every entrepreneur needs more time in their days. But what about busy moms? What about busy corporate executives? What about executive directors of non-profit organizations? I’ve never met a busier group of people than non-profit directors and yet I almost never hear of any service geared toward them.
When clients work with me to create online courses, we don’t just focus on the who of it all. We focus on the problems that are being solved and what opportunities exist for that one course to live many lives. Solving problems help you earn more revenue in your business. Sure, this is where you need marketing to come in, to speak to a variety of customers, but in your search for clarity, don’t miss out on the opportunities that are literally right in front of you.
License Your Online Course to Organizations
I live, work and play in the entrepreneurial world. I work with a lot of solopreneurs and small business owners with fewer than 10 employees. Entrepreneurs are dreamers, but sometimes, no matter how ambitious we are, not knowing how to do something can be a showstopper. So if you’ve ever thought about licensing your digital assets, such as an online course, then you’re not alone. But what if you actually did it? So many people get big ideas like taking their products to a larger market, but few rarely do it. Knowing how to license out your online course could mean the difference between you having to sell it over and over again and having others sell it for you.
Where to Find Licensing Opportunities
Working with organizations that support economic development, small businesses, corporate learning, universities, private educational institutes, and companies in other countries are all options for you to license your online course. What might start out as a simple proposal or phone call to discuss the licensing of your digital products could turn into an entire income stream for you. Whether your online course is fully on-demand, meaning you record it once and it runs without you, or you deliver a hybrid model (half on-demand, half live), you open yourself up to many other opportunities.
When entrepreneurs and organizations think about creating online courses, or even training sessions for internal use, they rarely see past the front door. We (yes, me too) tend to think in terms of our own circles of influence and we can imagine the people we’re trying to sell to when we create digital assets. But when you think about scaling your business, licensing your products is one way that doesn’t require more human intervention or systems. It’s a real set-it-and-forget-it revenue stream. And when you want to earn more revenue, something you can turn on once and service once in a while is a valuable asset.
You may wish to create a revenue model that allows 3, 6, or 12 months of access for one value-based price, or you could offer a pay-per-student model. This can all be worked out during negotiations with the organization but having one or two options for them to choose from helps to get the conversation moving.
Develop a Train-the-Trainer Package for Your Online Course
Every now and then a client that hires me to create an online course for them wants to have someone else deliver the training. When that happens, we need to create a train-the-trainer package. A train-the-trainer package is an extra step in the course creation process that involves mapping out the teaching steps related to the course content. Typically, a train-the-trainer package is requested when an online course is going to have a live delivery component, or when a course is being taught by someone other than the person who requested it.
How Does Train-the-Trainer Help You Earn More Revenue?
Let me give you an example: a non-profit organization might hire me to write a curriculum package about inclusive recruitment strategies. But I’m not an inclusive recruitment expert. And neither are they. So two things need to happen to make this project a success: I need to work with a subject matter expert and I need to conduct secondary research related to the topic. When the course is finished and approved, one final step to create the train-the-trainer package is required. I sit down and map out what it looks like to teach this course from start to finish and then anyone can pick it up and teach the course, no questions asked.
How can this example help you earn more revenue? For starters, many entrepreneurs imagine scaling their service-based businesses online, but few think about scaling it in real-time, and in person. Creating a train-the-trainer package means you can not only duplicate yourself to get your course out into the world, but you can have an entire entourage of people who are selling your course for you. This model is especially effective for corporate training companies, safety companies, and non-profits who have a national reach. But solopreneurs can do it too: instead of selling courses on financial management to individuals, create a train-the-trainer program and teach other financial management experts how to deliver your content. It’s a completely different business model than selling 1:1 or 1:many and it’s often overlooked.
What to Do First to Generate More Revenue in Your Business
Let’s recap. There are three easy ways you can leverage your online course to generate more revenue in your business:
- sell your course to more than one audience (focus on who has the same problems)
- license your course to multiple organizations (service a lot of people at once)
- develop a train-the-trainer model (train others to deliver your course)
The first step to being able to sell your course to more than one group of people, license it or develop trainer programs is to actually build it. If you’ve been on this fence for a while, it’s likely you’ll keep putting it off, wondering what to include. When you work with an instructional designer like me, you walk away with the finished product without all the headaches of trying to figure out how to become a course creator.
The number one complaint I hear from my clients is they don’t have time to create a course, but they want one. That’s where I come in. We’ll explore all of your options for getting your new online course into the world as we work together to draw out your best advice and put it into an online course.
If you’re interested in chatting about how to have a course in the world without having to build it, book a call with me now.
