How to Make Money by Creating and Selling Course Online

Online Learning Technologies

What are you an expert in? Is there something you are passionate about? With online learning technologies, you can easily turn your expertise and passion into income.

The Internet has changed how we do pretty much everything, and one of the biggest changes has come in education. Online learning and mobile technologies have turned everyone into a student and the whole world into a classroom. People all over the world are signing up at an astonishing rate for everything from academic courses and job skills trainings to personal development classes.

This huge growth in demand for learning has opened up new opportunities for income generation. Now, anyone with expertise in a specific area can teach a course online. For entrepreneurs, online courses are also great ways to advertise their other products and services.

To create and sell a course online, there are only three basic requirements:

1. Content
2. Platform
3. Promotion

We’ll look at each of these components separately.

Content         

The content consists of all of the course materials, which can include readings, videos, podcasts, interactive simulations, surveys and polls, quizzes, tests, and more. You have two main choices when it comes to content:

• You can create the content yourself.
• You can use freely available open educational resources.

With the technology available today, it is easy to create course content using online applications and e-learning authoring tools. Video is currently the main delivery format used for online courses. You don’t need to have professional video equipment to create your own videos—you can do it with as little as the webcam and microphone on your computer. There are also many great applications that you can use to make screencasts, so you can narrate PowerPoint presentations and make your own online tutorials. Programs like Jing and CamStudio are free to use for videos up to a certain length (usually 5 minutes), and reasonably priced for longer recordings.

There are also many, many open educational resources online that are free to use. One of the best sources of course materials is YouTube, so before you start creating your own videos, see what is already available. You might find some excellent content that you can adapt for your course.

Once you have your videos recorded and your other materials assembled, it’s time to put it all together into a course format. You can do this using an online e-learning authoring tool, which is a cloud-based application for creating courses. With an e-learning authoring tool, you can upload your videos and other content, organize them into modules, create quizzes, tests, and more.

There are many online e-learning authoring tools available and you don’t need to know programming to be able to use them. For example, TalentLMS is an authoring tool specifically designed for developing workplace training courses, and ProProfs Training Maker is a flexible program that can be used to create almost any type of course. Most cloud-based e-learning authoring tools are free to try and are available on a low-cost monthly subscription basis.

Platform

Once your course is complete, you need a platform to host it. You have a couple of options for this. First, depending on the authoring tool you used, you might be able to export the course and host it directly on your own website. Alternatively, you can sell it through an e-learning marketplace. Some authoring tools are already incorporated with an e-learning marketplace, so once you create the course, you’re all set. There are also a variety of websites that serve as e-learning marketplaces, like Udemy, OpenSesame and ProProfs. Most e-learning marketplaces charge a commission in the range of 10%, but since they take care of the technical side and the billing, it is usually worth it.

Promotion

Your course is now ready to sell—you’ve created the content, used an authoring tool to put it together, and loaded it onto an e-learning platform. Now the only thing left is to promote it. If your course is hosted on an e-learning marketplace, then you will get some promotion through the site, but you still need to put in some legwork to help your course stand out from the rest.

Here is where you can really get creative. Promote your course via your website, your email marketing list, your blog, and your social media accounts. Make a promotional video on YouTube or make the first module of your course available for free as a “teaser.” Offer discounts to your Twitter followers and Facebook friends or run a contest for free enrollment. The more you get the word out, the better your sales numbers will be; it’s that simple.

With today’s high demand for learning content, creating and selling an online course is an excellent way to add to your online income stream. You can also use courses to promote your products, establish yourself as an expert, and enhance your online reputation. The many technologies available, from video screen capture to e-learning authoring tools and marketplaces, make it a cinch to design, create, and sell courses online. Get started today.