Everyone believes that knowledge is power and it truly is, which is why the demand for knowledge is ever-growing. So, if you are a subject matter expert, then creating and selling an online course can be a lucrative income option for you.
Especially in this digital world, you can sell courses to anybody from anywhere. The world is your audience but only if you have good content which adds value to the learners. So, if you want to build and sell an online course successfully, follow these tips.
1. Pick The Topic Wisely
The most basic and important step in creating an online course is choosing the topic of your course. Pick a subject where you have complete expertise. If you have real and authentic knowledge on the subject you’re picking, it will enhance the knowledge of your course learners.
You should make the content relevant to the current market trend. See how you can add value to your customers by offering something different and valuable. If you are offering content that is more or less similar to your competitors’, you cannot stand apart in the market.
2. Engage The Learners
Having written content or few videos is not just enough to succeed in this highly competitive industry. You need to engage your learners with your content. You can incorporate real-life examples and scenarios and connect them with the content, in this way you can engage the learners. These activities can range from examining case studies which can help students to research the problem and give practical exposure.
You can also involve inquiry-based learning(IBL), which allows students to come up with questions they have regarding the content. There are different levels in inquiry learning. Each level helps the student to explore and research more about the question.
3. Pick The Right Platform To Present Your Course
Once you have finished preparing the course content, you should focus on how to manage it. You can leverage tech tools like learning management systems which help you create, deliver and monitor your course. For example, Thinkific is an LMS that makes it easy to share your knowledge and grow your audience. There are many amazing features like self-enrollment, certificate management, and blended learning which make it convenient for you to present your course to the learners. Tools like these can help automate a lot of your processes. You just have to choose the right platform for your course.
4. Gamification
Of Late, gamification became the trending feature in the eLearning industry. It implements game-based mechanics to engage the learners. Elements like points, leveling and leaderboards motivate and train the learners at the same time. With these features, employees can compete with themselves or others which creates a healthy competition. Also, gamification simplifies the content for students to give a better understanding of the concepts.
5. Check The Feedback Regularly
After launching your course, you should track the audience interaction and engagement levels. This will help in revisiting the strategies and changing the content if needed. From low-tech paper surveys to data-driven investigations, there are a number of tools to help you check the audience feedback. You should focus on the most effective and least effective aspect of your course along with average time spent and course completion rate etc. All these parameters give you a better understanding of your content and areas of improvement.
Conclusion:
All you need to build an effective course is in-depth subject knowledge and marketing strategy to sell it to your target audience. Hope this article helps you in building the course that your learners find valuable.