Online courses are exceptionally popular nowadays, but should you create one from your blog? It is believed the online learning industry will be worth over $370 billion by 2026. Why shouldn’t you grab a slice of that pie?
Offering a course is but one of many ways you can monetize your blog. Realistically, you could earn revenue through ads, affiliate links, and courses all at the same time.
However, there is quite a bit of work involved in setting up courses from your blog. If you want it to be successful, you need to provide something people want to pay to learn.
What’s Involved in Creating Courses from Your Blog?
Virtually anyone can create a course from their blog with the right tools even without having the right knowledge. But if you want them to be successful, it’ll take quite a bit of work.
You can’t just slap things up that you think people might want to know and charge a bunch of money. The more detailed and in-depth you are for the topic, the more valuable the course. The more valuable the course, the more money it’ll generate.
Let’s take a look at some of the important elements of setting up courses from your blog.
Having a General Interest or Audience
First, any educational materials would need an audience. Without someone to take the course, the time and monetary investment are wasted, right?
So, how do you put your thumb on the pulse of an audience to determine what kind of courses they want? You could:
- Query visitors from your blog using a survey form.
- Use social media surveys with hashtags and common terms.
- Take a look at Udemy to see what courses are the most popular.
- Use Google Trends to identify current interest in certain topics.
- Just build a course related to your industry or niche.
Knowledge of the Topic
Next, you’ll need to have knowledge of the topic of which you’re teaching – obviously. However, you don’t necessarily need a college degree to provide value to a student. In fact, I know a lot of experts in their fields who became successful without formal education.
Don’t get me wrong, a college degree can vastly improve the quality of the courses you provide. Nonetheless, it’s not a requirement, especially if you have a firm grasp of your industry.
For example, I could easily teach courses related to WordPress despite not having formal training. What I do have is an ocean of experience using the platform since 2010.
Setting Up a Logical Syllabus
One of the most time-consuming aspects of creating courses from your blog is setting up the syllabus. What information are you going to provide? What kind of resources are you going to give students? How long will the course take to finish?
If you plan on using video elements, you’ll also want to make sure the quality is excellent. And that can take more time or money to hire a video professional to help.
Of course, the time it takes to create a syllabus will depend on how detailed you’re going to get with the course. Some things are short and sweet while others could have several months’ worth of educational materials.
Good Value to Price Ratio
How much do you plan on charging for the courses on your blog? This is determined by the amount of value you plan to offer. It’s not a bad idea to check out online educational sites like Udemy and others to compare pricing to content.
The trick is that you don’t want to charge too much to scare away potential students, but not so little that you undercut yourself. And that is something I see a lot of creators implement regardless of niche: undercharging for services.
Never shortchange yourself for the sake of a sale. You devalue your knowledge and skills when you do. This is true whether you’re a freelance writer or creating courses on your blog.
Accessibility to Your Instructor
Now, there is nothing wrong with setting up courses that are essentially passive income generators on your site. People pay, take the course, and that’s it. However, having access to the instructor can have a profound impact on value.
I say “your instructor” because you can always just hire someone to run the educational element from your blog. You don’t have to be the figurehead.
In any case, live video and chat can go a long way to engage your students as well as provide a highlight in the syllabus.
Time to Create and Manage the Courses
Even if you’re creating a course that you can set and forget, it’ll still take time to create it. And the deeper you dive into the topic, the longer it’ll take. The other side of that coin is that you’ll also be able to justify a higher price tag.
Because you want to provide the utmost quality courses from your blog, you’ll need to get all of the materials together to form a comprehensive class.
Then, there’s the aspect of management if you plan to be more hands-on with your students.
Marketing Your Courses
Aside from the syllabus, the part that will help you make the most money possible is marketing. People won’t take the course if they don’t know it exists. This is true with just about any service or product on the Internet.
I’ll go over a few methods for marketing online courses in a moment. But the bottom line is that you need to get it in front of as many people as possible. The more who see your course, the greater the odds of attracting students.
Coincidentally, marketing is probably also the most expensive aspect of creating online classes. Although some methods are free, the most effective are usually the ones that cost a bit of money upfront.
Customizable Course Platform
There are a lot of ways you can promote and manage courses from your blog. You can use learning management systems such as Adobe Learning Manager, which usually includes everything you’ll ever need or want for teaching courses.
You can also use a variety of plugins for WordPress, such as LearnDash. Of course, there are also free WordPress plugins that offer course management that don’t have all the bells and whistles of premium tools.
At the end of the day, you want a platform that delivers the tools and customizations you want for your course. It will probably take a bit of time to find the one that works best for your needs, but it’s better than settling on one that you don’t necessarily like.
So, spend some time exploring your options before committing to a learning platform.
Regularly Updating the Syllabus
Some industries change rapidly. You want to make sure you’re offering the most up-to-date information possible. Otherwise, people will view your materials as obsolete.
For example, teaching a course on the SEO practices of 2012 would be absolutely pointless today. That’s because Google has set the bar much higher to succeed than it was more than a decade ago.
Keep your eye on the topic you’re teaching and make changes to your courses as necessary.
9 Easy Ways to Market Your Courses
As I mentioned earlier, marketing will play one of the biggest roles in the success of your courses. There are a lot of different ways you can go about marketing both free and paid.
What are some ways to market online courses from your blog?
- Build a dedicated landing page. You can use a landing page to share on social media, linked from a PPC campaign, linked in emails and newsletters, and more.
Use email marketing. Email marketing is still one of the most cost-effective methods for advertising just about anything. A list of email subscribers can yield some interest in your course. - Share your courses on social media. It doesn’t cost much to share your courses outside of time on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Your followers may want to jump in as soon as it’s posted.
- Have guest appearances on podcasts and videos. If you’re an expert or an influencer of some kind, you can join podcasts and videos of other creators. Then, you can promote your courses to their audiences.
- Use pay-per-click campaigns. Pay-per-click means you don’t technically pay anything until someone clicks your advertisement. With the right keywords, you can reach a very large audience on Google or Facebook.
- Create affiliate marketing campaigns. With affiliate marketing, you reward others for helping you acquire new students. Usually, it’s a percentage of the sale.
- Use the power of YouTube. Video content is prominent on the Internet, and it doesn’t take much to promote your course. This is especially true if you give viewers a “taste” of what you offer.
- Offer mini-courses to promote the bigger one. There’s nothing wrong with giving a teaser of what you can offer a student. A small course that can lead to a larger one may pique someone’s interest.
- Utilize webinars to spark engagement. A webinar can be informative while giving you a chance to promote courses from your blog during the video. In fact, I know a lot of companies that do this very thing.
Are Online Courses Really That Lucrative?
The success of any online education depends on a few primary factors. First, you need to develop one that people want to learn. Second, you need to provide a good value ratio. And third, you need a strong marketing campaign.
If you deliver all three of these elements, you could easily find yourself making quite a bit of money. Even set-it-and-forget-it courses on your blog could generate a great deal of income if done correctly.
The key to any form of online success is traffic. Blogs that focus on ad revenue and affiliate links make money because of visitors. To make a lot of money, it takes a lot of people visiting the site.
For example, a website that brings in 100 people per day has a far better chance of selling online courses than one that has 10 visitors per day. It’s just a numbers game, at that point.
This is why a lot of experts push SEO as a method for marketing your classes. Search engine optimization is where you’ll get the bulk of your visitors. Produce a lot of great (and relevant) content, you’ll increase the odds of gaining a student or two.
How Much Money Can You Make with Online Courses?
A lot of creators claim you can make anywhere from $1000 to $10,000 per month selling online courses. The problem is that most of these “experts” can’t cite sources of where they get those numbers.
Then, you have people who claim to have made more than $1 million from a course over the span of two and a half years. That averages out to about $33,333 per month.
The truth is that there is no guarantee you’ll make anything. Remember what I said earlier – it’s a numbers game.
If you want to generate $1,000 per month and you offer a small $10 course, you would need 100 students. That means tempting 100 people to take the course, which boils down to your marketing prowess and the course materials.
While it’s true that the sky’s the limit when it comes to promoting courses from your blog, the realization is that you might not sell a single seat.
All you can really do is create the best course you can, promote as much as possible, and hope you tempt a few students.
Do I Plan on Having Courses on This Blog?
I’ve been asked a few times if I would be interested in creating courses for WordPress, blogging in general, freelance writing, and self-publishing. It’s something I’ve seriously considered, especially as of late.
The only thing that is truly stopping me from setting up a few is time.
On any given week, I try to manage five blogs, three YouTube channels, a Twitch stream, two podcasts, my next novel, and clients. As you can see, I don’t have a lot of available time to put into course creation.
However, I’ve been seriously considering doing so while sacrificing one of my extra projects until I have the course completed. And if it can give me just a slight financial boost to my month, I could do so much more overall.
So, I’m not going to say definitively that there are courses coming in the future. But I will say that they’re definitely on my radar.
If you think that it is something worthwhile, feel free to comment. Perhaps if I get enough votes, I’ll start making them.
What Kind of Courses Are You Considering?
Online courses are abundant, but you can still use them as a way to generate revenue from your blog. As long as you’re providing information people are willing to pay for, you can do quite well for yourself.
Just remember that your success will depend on marketing, value, and interest.
Like everything else on the Internet, the competition is plentiful. Create something unique or deliver it in a way that is memorable and the courses will do well on your blog.
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