Guide on Creating a Profitable Online Course
Published: 2021-07-02 14:03:19

The eLearning industry is currently experiencing unprecedented growth, and now is the time to create your own online course, as the demand is very high. According to analysts, the eLearning market will reach [$325 Billion](https://techjury.net/blog/elearning-statistics/#gref) in 2025. This amount includes both individual and corporate spending on training, which means that the courses are sold and bring excellent profit to their creators. However, it is pretty challenging to create a profitable online course on the fly, so we have prepared the ultimate step-by-step guide on creating a profitable online course in 2021. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
## Step #1. Pick Your Topic and Niche
So, you want to create your own online course. Your first step will be to choose the topic of your course and the niche it will occupy. During your brainstorming session, always remember that your course should address a specific user problem. In this case, it has excellent chances to become popular and, accordingly, bring profit.

General courses such as “Introduction to Programming” do not solve a specific problem for the student and therefore can’t be profitable. Instead, your course should have a purpose. For example, "Develop and release your own little game in 3 months." In this way, you focus your course on a specific problem: developing your game from scratch and releasing it, and you promise a real result at the end of the course.

When you want to create your own online course, first think about what inspires you. This will give you some initial food for thought and an idea of ​​where to go next. For example, you are an excellent 3D artist and over the years of practice, you have accumulated many tips and tricks that you want to share. Using this idea as your basis, you can use **Google's Keyword Planner** for keyword search. You can start your search on a specific topic, for example, "character animation," and see the number of queries per month for this key. Ideally, a good course topic would be with over **1000 searches per month**.

The final step will be a research of the competition in the niche. For proper research, it is enough to use Google Search and a little of your time. You need to look for the availability of similar courses on your chosen topic and roughly understand what competitors offer. If the niche is empty, you have found a hidden gem, and you can safely act. If the competition is high, you should come up with a unique offer or change your niche.

Before you create your own online courses you should be aware of [15 most profitable niches](https://www.persuasion-nation.com/blog/15-best-niches-for-online-courses-in-2019-and-how-to-find-yours) (niches are not ranked in order of profitability):

* **Computers and technology** (website development, applications, AI, cybersecurity, etc.)
* **Business & entrepreneurship** (Amazon FBA, dropshipping, e-commerce, blogging, etc.)
* **Arts & crafts** (drawing, digital art, photography, UX, and so on)
* **Health** (diet and nutrition, meditation, massage, etc.)
* **Fitness** (home workouts, weight loss, self-defense, and more)
* **Education** (online course creation, instructional design, presentation skills, etc.)
* **Writing and content creation** (content marketing, storytelling, podcast creation, etc.)
* **Personal development** (anxiety management, Negotiation, Public speaking, and others)
* **Coming of age & career** (resume writing, job interviews, life coaching, etc.)
* **Entertainment** (live streaming, video marketing, Instagram marketing, etc.)
* **Politics** (global diplomacy, government, and more)
* **Social science** (social psychology, counseling, critical thinking)
* **Science** (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.)
* **Math** (statistics, algebra, probability, and more)
* **Lifestyle** (Skincare, gaming, gardening, etc.)

## Step #2. Set You Income Milestones

Urge to create your own online course with the simple hope that a good future won’t bring you far. You should have clear goals that you set for your course because this is how you will understand the result of your efforts. This is why you should have a targeted income for your course from the start. This figure is easy enough to calculate using the following formula:

**Revenue goal = (Email audience size x Conversion rate%) x Course price**

This formula may look a little complicated, but it's much more straightforward. For example, you set a goal to make **$10,000**, and your course price will be **$200**. To explain the formula, we will take a conversion rate of 2% (even though you can achieve higher conversion). So, to earn your target amount, 50 students must enroll in your course. So, to find out which email audience you need, you just need to divide **50** students by the conversion rate. As a result, you will get **2500** people - this is the exact audience size you need to reach to earn $10,000 with a conversion of 2%.

## Step #3. Grow Your Email Audience

You may have thought that many users do not like the email lists, but this is a misconception. The education industry has one of the highest open rates at [24%](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-benchmarks/). This means that your letters will be opened quite often and familiarized with their contents.

Before you create your own online course you need to gather an email audience. To start your email marketing campaign, you need to get hold of special email software. Some of the best on the market are **Constant Contact**, **SendinBlue**, and **ConvertKit**. This software is specifically designed to create sophisticated marketing email funnels.

To make your emails as helpful as possible and increase the opening rate, you can offer a free mini-course, webinar, or promotional code that will allow customers to get a discount on your next course. Thus, you can invite potential students through letters and provide them with a small gift to show you on the good side.

## Step #4. Price Your Online Course

When you create your own online course you need to set the right price for it. There are three options for the pricing policy of the course, depending on what problems it solves.

## Small Problems
If your course solves a small problem, explaining the solution in general terms, the highest amount you can charge for it is **$50**. However, if you add some more detailed step-by-step guide, you can raise the price to **$100**.

For example, your course aims to help your users type faster, and you are offering up to $100 a few step-by-step instructional videos of various exercises and a couple of PDF instruction files.

## Medium Problems
If you want to create your own online course with a more complex program that solves a medium-sized problem, you can request from **$200** to **$500**. An example of such a course is a full-fledged advertising guide on Facebook.
## Large Problems
Courses that solve complex problems are already moving into the premium sector and can be charged from **$500** to **$1000+**. However, such courses require severe preparation and high-quality material.

For example, a course on 3D modeling with a series of 10-15 videos, additional materials, homework assignments, constant support, and a high-quality 3D model that students can add to their portfolios).

## Step #5. Create a Sales Page With High Conversion Rate
Before you create your own online course you must think about its sales page. The sales page is the face of your course, so it should be created wisely. If you want to distribute your course on a third-party platform, you will be pretty limited in setting up such a page since the page structure is the same for everyone. However, you can efficiently work with the SEO part, develop a description, insert a promo video, and much more.

If you have a personal website, you can create a separate page for your course and have unlimited opportunities to promote your course. For example, you can add different testimonials, unique promo videos, videos with the results your students can achieve, various payment methods, and so on. However, it will take some time to rank it high in search engines.

Generally speaking, promoting a course on your website and on a third-party site has its pros and cons.

**Pros and Cons of Promoting Course on Your Own Website**

Pros
* You fully in control of customer relationships which significantly facilitates the building of a loyal customer base.
* Complete control over the platform (course delivery, promotion, design, and much more).
* Full control over pricing and no competitiveness


Cons
* To make your site visible, you will most likely have to pay for promotion on various websites (contextual advertising, press releases, etc.).
* Costly website creation.
* Building your own customer base and SEO marketing takes time and can require additional specialists to involve.

**Pros and Cons of Promoting Course on Third-Party Platform**

Pros
* Ready-made traffic and customer base.
* No hosting expenses
* Easy course setup and considerable time savings


Cons
* High competitiveness and commissions to the platform.
* No direct access to the customers
* Limited control over the platform and your course

## Step #6. Create Your Course
Now is the time to create your own online course. Course creation is a multi-step process for which you must be prepared. We’ve prepared a few tips to make your life easier and your content more professional:

* **Analysis of target audience and their needs**. You must clearly understand what your future students want, their background, and how they will absorb your learning material. This will help you conceptualize your future course.
* **Find SME for the main content research and creation**. Subject Matter Expert will help you create high-quality educational material by combining personal knowledge and in-depth research on the chosen topic. If you want to create your own online course based on your deep personal knowledge, hiring a specialist is unnecessary.
* **Create an intuitive structure**. After the research, you need to structure all your material so that the course has an introduction, central part, and completion. Divide your material into modules, and provide each module with its tasks and test checks. Also, when structuring, do not forget about a sense of pace. The load on the student should be uniform throughout the course.
* **Implement all possible learning styles**. Depending on your topic, you can combine different forms of presentation and training. Tutorial videos, dialogue simulations, eLearning games, and more. All this is at your disposal.

If you understand that you don’t have enough skills or time to create your own online course from scratch, the ideal solution would be to seek help from an [eLearning solutions team](https://raccoongang.com/).

## Step #7. Launch It
The launch of the course is a no less important event for which it is worth preparing. However, the entire launch process can take several days, during which time you need to strengthen your marketing campaign.

Day 1: Teaser email to your audience. In this letter, you briefly announce the imminent release of the course and tell the audience what awaits them.
Day 2: A letter with a detailed description of the course content. In this letter, you need to describe the entire program of the course in more detail, what problems it solves, and what results everyone will achieve.
Day 3: The course launch email. You must send a mandatory letter to your entire audience to notify them that the course is available to everyone.
Day 4: The FAQ email. Students may have questions before enrolling in a course, so the most frequently asked questions should be answered in this letter.
Day 5: "Thank you" letter with a small gift. In this letter, you thank everyone who bought your course. As a lovely gift, you can leave a discount coupon for the next course or additional valuable educational materials on the topic.
## Wrapping Up
It’s not an easy task to create your own online course. First, you have to gather an audience, think about your promotion strategy, course content, and turn your idea into a course that uses the latest instructional design methodologies and content solutions to ensure that your students get the best learning experience.