Don’t Make a Course! [TERMS & CONDITIONS APPLY!]
Don’t be confused… I’m still a fan of online courses and I still encourage people to make them. As a process, it is educational for you, and the resulting package will be beneficial for your audience.
However, if your very first offering is your online course, guess what — you are not going to get traffic.
Here are 3 major reasons you shouldn’t make your online course your very first offer.
❌ Selling to the wrong people
Look, it’s obvious that I’m a huge advocate for online learning. But I can also admit when there are glaring drawbacks to something. People say the online education industry is an oversaturated space, but that’s not the issue.
Yes, maybe there are too many people selling a course for $5, hoping it will get them the traction they need. The philosophy is “If price it low enough, everyone will want it.”
But when you price your product that low, you get customers who don’t value your product. This results in them not following through with completing your course, which reflects poorly on you as a creator and teacher. It may be a fantastic course… but it didn’t garner the right kind of attention.
Here’s the thing… you can either waste time and effort trying to sell a $5 to 100 people, or you can sell a $500 course to one person. Either way, you end up with $500.
So in that case, that one person has to be your ideal customer! However, you can’t find the profile of your ideal customer if you don’t already have a social media precense with followers engaging with your posts and videos. You learn about your audience when you talk to them, and it helps you create a highly custom course with details you know they need. If you just make a course and throw it at the public, you won’t get the reception you’re hoping for.
📇 No proven model
Have you tested your course out with anyone? Have you tried various modes of media (text, video, audio) to distribute your information? What I’m asking is, did you do your research?
If you haven’t even managed to help two people with your course and amended your content per their feedback, you have no hope of succeeding with selling a course to a mass audience.
It would help if you put out some testers. Start with a mini-course or tutorial on YouTube and see how people respond to your style and content. Put out a short e-book as a preview of the longer course. And most importantly, while developing your course, involve trusted friends and family to give you feedback along the way.
After creating the first draft, test your course out on a few “students.” This is a great way to learn if your content is too simple, too complex, or missing key information.
🗣️ No testimonials
When you make an online course your very first offer without establishing a precense, it’s only understandable that people will be sceptical of spending money to purchase your content. You don’t show any history of having solved a problem in your industry, so people won’t be willing to shell out the big bucks for a program they haven’t seen proven results of.
Hope this clears it up! If you have already started building your course, no sweat! There is still time to do some market research and build your online precense before launching. TikTok is one of the best places to grow your audience quickly, and it’s a proven method of educating and sharing information too.
To learn more about course building, go ahead and subscribe to the newsletter, contact me via my website to build your own!
