How to Create an Online Course that Actually Makes Money

9 min readNov 12, 2021

5 Simple Steps to Launch Your Own Online Course

No matter who you are, you know something that someone wants to learn. Here are 5 powerful steps to take that one thing you know, and turn it into a life-changing online course.

Here’s the thing… You know stuff.

In fact, you know some stuff better than other people do.

Chances are good that those people are out searching the web or asking on Facebook how to do what you already know. Online course creation allows you to package up what you know in a format that these people can easily pay you money for your expertise.

And then… an amazing thing happens. When people pay to learn something, they value it more than if they get it for free. They’re much more likely to internalize it and act on it.

And, it’s much more likely to change their lives.

At the same time, when they pay you for that information, now you are in a position to be able to create more online courses, which can change more people’s lives.

It’s a wonderful, powerful synergy for good.

So, how do you figure out what you know that people are willing to pay for? And how do you take that knowledge and create an online course that people are willing to buy? Here are 5 steps that will help you create an online course that you can be proud of.

As always, links in this article may be affiliate links that may pay me a small commission — which allows me to keep writing for you.

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1. Identify Your Area Of Expertise

The first step in online course creation is to take a step back and think about what you know. What do you enjoy doing? How do you choose to spend your time when you aren’t “working”?

I read a powerful statement by Russell Brunson that I want to share here:

“You’ve been blessed with talents, ideas, and unique abilities that have gotten you to where you are in life, and those gifts were given to you so you could share them with others. There are people today who need what you have. And they are just waiting for you to find your voice, so you can help them change their lives.”

The tricky part is that we often don’t recognize our own areas of expertise. We don’t realize that we’re an “expert” in an area, because these are things that just come easy to us.

What Do You Enjoy?

The simplest place to start is to think about the things that you enjoy doing. Most of the time we enjoy doing things because we are good at them. Since they come so easy to us, we automatically assume that they will come easy to everyone else.

For example, suppose you love to garden. You might say, “But there are already so many gardening books out there.”

That’s true, but consider these two things:

First, people start gardening for the first time every day. You can easily become their expert.

Second, you have some aspect of gardening where you have a unique perspective. You can focus in on that area, rather than trying to be an expert in gardening as a whole.

Online Course Examples

To jog your thinking, here are some examples of how real people took something they were good at and created an online course about it.

How to help women with food addiction lose weight.
How to start a profitable hot dog cart business.
How to sell drop-ship products online.
How to buy and flip houses.
How to feel better through energy cleansing.
How to make hair extensions look like natural hair.
How to be a great husband and father.
How personal fitness trainers can take their business online.
How to help children with dyslexia read better.
How to help teens develop success habits.
How to lose weight after having a baby.
How to help chiropractors and dentists double their practice.
How to biohack your body to overcome chronic fatigue.
How to vertical jump higher.

Here’s the thing. These are just a few examples. There is literally no limit to what you may know that can dramatically change people’s lives.

Start by thinking about your passion and think about you know that other people would love to learn.

2. Carve Out Your Niche

Second, you need to identify your target audience.

I often ask people who their target audience is, and they say, “everyone”. Well, there’s a marketing rule that says, “if your audience is everyone, then it’s really no one”. You need to narrow it down.

You need to create a specific niche of potential customers who are looking for a very specific aspect of what you can teach them. It’s true, for example, that there actually are thousands of books about gardening. You won’t be able to compete with that.

But if you find a very specific area where there are only a small number of experts already, you can stand out. For instance, you may decide on a niche like, “how absolute newbie gardeners can grow midget fruit trees on apartment balconies”.

The key is to take general topic, like gardening, and add qualifiers to it. Add something like “beginning gardeners” to it. Is that specific enough? Are there only a few experts? Or is it still too general?

If you need to, keep adding qualifiers until you find that sweet spot. This sweet spot will have enough people looking for information, but very few experts providing that info.

3. Grow Your Audience

Third, before you even create your online course, you need to begin growing your audience.

This is important for one key reason… Before you launch your online course, you need to have an audience of people who know you, like you, and trust you. Stephen Covey once said, “Business is done at the speed of trust“. Before your audience will ever buy from you, they need to know your name, see your face, and possibly hear your voice.

A decade ago, this was done in online forums. Right now, the best place is generally on social media. (In another decade, it may be somewhere else.) You pick a social media platform and begin growing your followers. You provide value to your followers. You engage with your followers by joining in the conversation and providing answers to questions.

Nurturing Your Audience

In the process, you listen and learn what questions and obstacles your target audience has. These questions and obstacles will form the outline of your online course. The course itself will provide the answers and solutions.

The most important audience you will build is your email list. Your email list is your most valuable asset online. It is the only means you will ever have to reach out and place a message directly and reliably in the hands of your audience.

It’s important to remember this: people don’t come to social media to buy. They come to socialize. So, if you try to sell directly to your social media audience, you will turn them off and likely even repel them from you.

But you can invite them to subscribe to your email newsletter. An email newsletter is a permission-based audience. And by virtue of subscribing, your audience gives you permission to send them promotional messages from time to time.

4. Build Your New Opportunity

Fourth, you build your new opportunity.

It’s been said that people don’t buy products. They buy change. So, online course creation is really all about creating an altogether new opportunity.

But what is the new opportunity that people want? Down deep, it isn’t really about gardening from their balcony. The change that people buy always comes down to a change in status.

As a result of buying your online course, people should perceive that their status will increase. And, growing those beautiful, fragrant midget fruit trees on their apartment balcony should represent a powerful increase in status… Especially when people come over and eat the absolutely delicious fruit!

By the same token, their biggest concern will be about a decrease in their status if they try and fail. So, you need to address that concern as well.

The Mechanics Of Online Course Creation

Now, it stands to reason that, if you create an online course, then you need to have a place to host it online. Here are some options you can consider.

Teachable, Kajabi, and ClickFunnels all are great options for hosting your course. Recently, I’ve started using Gumroad. The single, biggest benefit of Gumroad, is that (as of this writing) there isn’t a monthly fee. You simply pay a small percentage of each sale that you make.

5. Tell Your Epiphany Story

Although people buy change instead of products, the best way to sell that change is through stories. And, the most powerful story you can tell your target audience is your epiphany story.

You see, despite what anyone of us may say, we do NOT buy based on logical decisions. We buy based on emotional decisions. Then we back into the logic that justifies our decision.

It’s An Emotional Journey

When you tell your epiphany story, you take your target audience on an emotional journey. But this is your own journey about how you first got excited about the subject of your course. You had experiences that made you say, “wow, this is cool!”, and that built your passion. In essence, you had an epiphany that led you to creating your new opportunity. You describe those experiences in an autobiographical story.

When you tell your own autobiographical story well, your audience will begin to feel the emotions that you felt. And, they will develop the same passion that you developed. In the end, they will sell themselves, rather than you selling them.

But, remember, they then need to justify their decision with logic. So, as you conclude your epiphany story, you provide logical reasons why your new opportunity will increase their status. And, you also provide logical answers to the concerns that their status will decrease if they try your online course and fail.

Use Your Epiphany Story Everywhere

Once you’ve created your basic epiphany story, you use it everywhere.

You hint at the epiphany as you provide valuable content to your social media audience. You talk about a small aspect of that epiphany in your lead magnets. You tell your epiphany story in your sales funnels and in your sales letters to your email list.

The Payoff Of Creating An Online Course

When you become good at something, it’s because you invested in yourself. You put in the time, effort, and practice you needed to, in order to make it second-nature to you. And, most likely, you invested money in learning your area of expertise.

When you create your online course, you create a means to change lives. Someone once said that getting people to pay money is one of the best ways to make them accountable to their own goals. By creating your own course and charging people money for it, you contribute to other people in one of the most powerful ways possible.

Getting paid for what you know is great. It lets you provide for your means and create new and better courses. But the real benefit is when someone sends you an email or a messenger message and thanks you for making a difference.

Now, this blog post was meaty, but really only scratched the surface. If you want to take a deeper dive and become an expert at creating an online course, I recommend that you read the book, Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson. Russell will guide you in taking a deeper dive in each of the steps I described.

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