If you use your blog to make money, you may be relying on affiliate marketing and advertising as your primary revenue streams, but you might find that’s not enough. You can make a substantial income from these strategies, but many of the top blogging professionals recommend that either instead of or in addition to affiliate marketing and advertising, you boost your blog’s money-making abilities by adding a product for sale.
One of the best products to create? An online course.
According to a Forbes report, the market for online courses totaled $57 billion in 2014 and grew even more in 2015.
Online courses are an excellent product to offer on your website or blog because they create value for the participant, and give you the opportunity to share your knowledge in a way that no one else can. This is a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Below are some of the top tips you can follow to create excellent courses that will sell.
Base Your Course Around a Problem
The first thing to do before you start planning anything else for your online course is to determine what problem you’d like to solve for your blog visitors. Neil Patel is a great example of someone who creates courses driven by the concept of solving a problem. In order to identify a problem that’s going to resonate and apply to your blog audience, go straight to the source. Listen to what your audience is talking about, join the conversations, and ask them what they’re interested in.
It’s Okay To Do a Course That’s Been Done
If you think you’ve created an idea for an online course that’s never been done before, there’s probably a good reason for that. It’s likely because it’s a topic that’s too obscure or that no one is interested in. It’s okay to cover a topic that’s been covered before, as long as you’re adding your own unique perspective and take on the subject matter.
Make It Interactive
Interactivity is one of the best things you can offer in your course to get your audience interested. Simplilearn is a company that provides corporate training and professional certifications, and with all of their courses, there is a high level of interactivity. In fact, reviews for courses like their Scrum Master Certification program, say that one of the things participants enjoyed most was the element of teamwork and collaboration.
Keep It Short
As a final note, if you’re a blogger, and you’re just starting to think about offering online courses as a product to your audience, you may have trouble keeping it short and to-the-point. The reason? You may feel like you want to give your customers the most bang for their buck and ensure they’re getting value from the course, so you might go with a “more is more” concept. According to ProBlogger.net, this isn’t necessarily a good idea. Instead, you want your audience to feel like they’re making progress, so keep videos, chapters and all content brief, and completely to-the-point. Focus on delivering actionable information and your audience will appreciate it