Hidden Benefits of Online Courses
Hidden benefits of online courses don’t have to stay hidden for long.
Are you thinking about creating an online course? You’re not alone. There are millions of online courses out there and even more, are being built right now. Besides the obvious financial benefits of creating an online course, why would you want to make the investment of time, money, and energy to create one of your own?
In this article, we’re talking about some of the hidden benefits of creating online courses. It’s a process. And with every process comes an opportunity to learn. So let’s get to it.
Hidden Benefits of Online Courses #1: You Understand Your Experience
As a business owner, you have a particular set of skills you’ve developed over a long period of time. And now, it’s time to think about putting those skills to use in the form of an online course. But you’re probably already wondering how you’ll market and sell the course instead of thinking about what goes into the course. One of the hidden benefits of online courses is that the process you go through to actually put words on the page allows you to take a closer look at your experience.
A common mistake many first-time course creators make is giving too much information. There’s an impulse to overcompensate for teaching or facilitation experience in the form of information. But when you create a course with me, we work together to streamline your subject matter expertise to create learning experiences.
When you create learning experiences, you are essentially categorizing your knowledge into action steps that people can follow. Now your students will have what they need to succeed and you’ll be all the more familiar with your secret sauce.
Hidden Benefit of Online Courses #2: You See the Cracks
As you go through the process of creating an online course, you’ll come to find cracks in your armor. Don’t panic. It’s normal to find out you don’t know everything you think you know about your subject. In fact, creating a course is a great opportunity to revisit some of that expertise and make sure it’s still relevant.
It’s not uncommon for first-time course creators to assume that they can stand on the laurels of their expertise, but expertise becomes defunct over time. Therefore, it’s important to make sure what you’re offering is still relevant. This is also a great opportunity to ensure that you’re creating your course for the right people. There’s nothing worse than having a course on the shelf that you can’t sell because your course is for administrators and your current audience is managers.
Hidden Benefit of Online Courses #3: You Get to Re-imagine Your Products and Services
Potential clients often balk at me when I tell them that they don’t need to create an online course. And it happens more than you might think. Just because you can create a course doesn’t mean you should. It simply might not be necessary, depending on your industry, audience and what your business needs. One-size-fits-all doesn’t apply when it comes to creating online courses.
A hidden benefit of online courses, of going down the path to explore them, is that you might not need them. I’ve often told a potential client to create a group program instead of creating an on-demand online course. The efforts and cost don’t always warrant the results.
When someone tells me they want to stop offering 1:1 services, it’s usually because they’ve been told it’s time to scale their business. And creating online courses is an easy way to do that. But it’s an entirely different business model. One that demands different actions, thoughts, and processes. So you won’t be out of the woods just yet when you create an online course.
What Do You Need?
There’s an industry-wide knee-jerk reaction taking place right now as people continue to push toward online learning. And it’s fantastic. When it’s done correctly. So instead of assuming the next right step for your organization is to double down on creating online courses, consider why you want to create one in the first place.
Understanding your experience is important. Exploring opportunities and improvements is vital. And developing new ways of seeing your business model can be helpful. And yes, you can sell it. But you have to build it first.
If you want to chat about creating online courses and wonder how I can help, book a call now. Or, if you need someone to tell you all the reasons you shouldn’t do this, I’m here for that too.
