Are you a therapist and wondering how to create an online course to sell?
I get a lot of questions about how to start an online business from fellow therapists. And I totally get why.
Since I launched my first course two and a half years ago, I’ve generated nearly $65,000 just in course sales alone. And I have done zero live launches, so these sales have the potential to be much higher if I gave energy to marketing those courses.
How sweet! Who wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning to see they sold courses literally in their sleep?
So, clearly, I’m into this idea myself.
BUT. I also have seen so many folks dive head first into trying to create an online course to sell, only to feel let down by few or no sales.
Or, I’ve noticed folks get caught up on day one in the tech and admin of course creation. They get stuck asking: what platform should I use to sell courses? What format should my course lectures be in? Should I include a course workbook? Etc.
But these are not the questions to ask on day one.
If you are excited at the idea of building a course, even if it makes just a few sales here or there, you should totally go for it. That is still an absolutely valid reason to do it.
But what I’ve found is that a lot of folks are hoping to generate a more reliable, sizable income from course sales. Then they are disappointed to find out how few sales they wind up getting after all their hard work.
Tip: Find And Build Your Audience First
If you are a therapist looking to create an online course to sell, and hoping that it that creates a sizeable income for you, here’s what I propose:
See your online course as the “cherry on top” of your business.
- For most people, you won’t make any or many sales without an existing business or audience.
- Take the idea of first creating a course and then selling it to people and flip it backwards. Instead, build trust with an audience first, and then create a course that is tailored to their needs.
- Your course can act as the solution to your audience’s biggest problems.
Learn From My Experience
I’ll use Private Practice Skills as an example.
Before I ever made a YouTube video or anything else, my intent was to sell a course with Private Practice Skills. Initially, like most folks, I thought I would put most of my energy into making a fabulous course. While I put just a bit of energy into building an audience through weekly videos.
The course was supposed to be a one-stop shop for folks to start a successful private practice.
In fact, I actually created most of this course. I thought it was going to be amazing. But something in my gut knew something wasn’t right.
I Needed To Listen To My Audience
As I was growing an audience on YouTube, no one was really asking for this kind of course. In fact, I’d already made a free checklist summary for getting a private practice off the ground that people found plenty useful.
But what my audience DID tell me was that they were getting stuck on one step: how to market their practice. Over and over again, this snag kept coming up.
So my audience was telling me they didn’t need a fully detailed guide to start a practice. But they did really need a deep dive on marketing their practice.
So I ditched my first course idea and thought I failed in my business plan.
I finally started to realize that I could start over and make a killer course to help people market their practice through their website. Knowing how to do that was so second-nature to me that I didn’t even realize how valuable my knowledge was in that arena until my audience said they needed it.
And that’s what I did. My main course teaches therapists how to build a website that fills their practice. And then later I supplemented with courses on finding the right marketing strategy for you as well as marketing via Google Business Profile. Marketing, marketing, marketing.
And guess what? My first course didn’t launch until 2 years after I started Private Practice Skills.
Grow That Audience!
So, if you’re interested in creating an online course to sell, your first step is to build an audience.
You don’t have to do it on YouTube or have to have 40,000 people subscribed to your channel. You don’t have to be on social media or create podcasts.
There are so many ways to go about growing an audience.
One way is to start an email list and create useful, free content for folks.
Then, if you can get your list up to 100 or even a few hundred folks, you have an audience! Even 50 hardcore fans might be enough to start building a course for.
Let Audience Feedback Inspire Your Online Course
If you keep nurturing your audience, whether you have an audience of 5 people or a thousand, they will build trust with you. You can then ask them for direct feedback about what they need.
Once you start getting that feedback, you can build a course that directly solves a problem for them. If you can directly meet the need they’re asking about through a course and then clearly communicate to your audience how your course solves that problem for them, they will purchase from you.
Looking back now, rather than wasting hundreds of hours building a course that I wound up completely throwing out, I would just focus on building an audience and serving them with free content.
If you’re interested in creating an online course to sell, I hope this tip helps you!
Tools To Build Your Audience
I do suggest everyone who wishes to pursue growing their audience builds an email list. Your email list is your greatest asset in an online business. Watch my video on how to go about building your email list for help getting started.
Another way to market your business, as well as grow trust with a growing audience is to start a blog. I have an article where I explore why blogging can be an effective tool.
Until next time, from one therapist to another: I wish you well.
-Marie
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Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash
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