How To Create An Online Course That You Love & People Want

Welcome to Episode 53 of the Online Course Creator Show.

Are you unsure how to turn your existing service or what you do as a freelancer into an online course that you love and does your work justice, but also is in high demand and will deliver the results for your business?

Look no more, because I'm diving into this on this episode. I believe it's very important to have a combination of the two.

In this episode, I share: 

• Why I believe that you loving your course is just as important as there being demand for your course, and how you can gut check the offer first before you create it.
• The things you need to know about your audience BEFORE you start creating your online course offer
• Bringing it all together so that you can create the right course that will generate sales, get results for your customers and also has longevity in your business

Other episodes mentioned:
Episode 4: How I Knew It Was Time To Retire My First Online Course

Other resources mentioned:
Create Your Dream Offer mini course

Enjoy the episode!
Lou xx

Subscribe to The Lou Blakely Show on Apple Podcasts
Subscribe to The Lou Blakely Show on Spotify
Listen to The Lou Blakely Show on Stitcher
Listen to The Lou Blakely Show on iHeart Radio

---

View full transcript here: 

Welcome to the Online Course Creator Show. This is episode 53, and in this episode, I'm talking all about how to create an online course that you love and people want.

So today's topic is twofold. It's natural to consider what people will buy when it comes to creating your online course and choosing the right topic, and this is really, really important.

But ultimately, as the person that's going to be marketing this course and delivering this course, you really need to love your offer and you need to believe in your offer too. This is equally as important and something that isn't talked about often.

And we need to address it! Because if you don't believe in your offer, how do you think that will play out when it comes time to sell it?

You have to believe in your offer first, before any of your customers do, in order for anyone else to see the value.

So it's really important that you really love what you're teaching. You know that what you're teaching helps people achieve their goals, and you're prepared to shout it from the rooftops. There's no doubt that that type of conviction, that type of faith in your online course offer, is really going to help you see success with your online coursere. People will naturally also share that same belief in it too, if you lead from the front.

So this blog today is going to cover it from both viewpoints of loving your online course and creating an online course that people want, and then meeting in the middle to create something truly epic.

Do you love your online course offer?

It's vital that you love what you've created when it comes to an online course to get the results over the long term. There is absolutely no point in spending all that time and effort to create an online course that you don't have true passion for, because it's highly likely you will give up before you see the true benefits.

So we're looking at it with a longer term view rather than just creating an online course for the heck of it, just to see if it sells…and then give up in a couple of months because it feels too hard.

So I want you to look at your offer and decide if it's really the right offer for you.

Do you love it?

Is this something you're truly passionate about or you just know how to do it?

I think it's really important to make that distinction. If you are teaching a program just because you know how to do it but you don't love it, I would really question whether that is the right topic for you.

Now, the reason that I point this out is because this is actually my experience. My first online course did really well, but the passion behind it just wasn't there. And when I looked back to when I created it, I did so because there was a demand for it and I knew how to do it, but I didn't love the topic. It wasn't what I wanted to be known for. This was a huge realisation and a big reason why I was often holding myself back from promoting it, because I really didn't want it to grow because it wasn't my life's work, and it wasn't what I wanted to be known for.

I recorded an entire episode on this experience. It's all about How I Knew It Was Time To Retire My First Online Course.

So, when it comes to creating an online course, it's definitely going to help you if you have achieved the result that you're teaching either for yourself in your own life or in your business, or you help your clients achieve that in your current services. If that is not the case and you're planning on teaching a course where you actually have to go and learn anything new in order to then deliver that course, I recommend you go back to the drawing board.

You don't need to be super advanced, but you definitely need to have achieved the outcome that you're promising in your course.

Now, why is this important?

It's important because you're going to feel out of alignment, which is going to stop you showing up and sharing your online course with the world.

Disclaimer: Not everyone is going to feel out of alignment, but I think if you are a person who wants to be in integrity, then I think you would feel out of alignment, right? So this is a really important consideration.

So just do that little check – have you produced these results for yourself, or do you produce them for your current customers or clients?

And if you do, then there's going to be absolutely nothing that's going to stop you from showing up and sharing your online course with the world, which is absolutely essential if you want to make good money from it.

Choosing the right type of digital product for you

The next thing to consider is if the digital product format you've chosen is the right one for you, how you want to structure your business, and also what will get the results for your customer.

I talk a lot about online courses on this podcast, but really you can be creating a mini course, a bigger signature online course, a group coaching program or a membership.

So what format have you chosen?

What's included in terms of the offer?

Is there a community.

Are there calls like regular coaching calls, or it could be Q&A calls or office hours?

We can craft the offer any way we like, and creating an offer is a key part of the process – it's something I teach in the Create Your Dream Offer mini course.

An important part of all of this is that you need to be in alignment and be happy to deliver what you've created.

It's all well and good to put all the good stuff into an offer to make it really irresistible and amazing, but if you then don't want to deliver it, we've got a problem.

For example, if it's a group coaching program, are you prepared to jump on calls and coach people through the problems that they're experiencing and help them find a solution. Group coaching is deep work, it's focused, and it's hands on.

Maybe you prefer a more hands-off approach, in which case a group coaching program is not right for you. You can find out by listening to this episode on group coaching programs.

So that would mean that you're better off creating a signature online course where it's self-study and you don't have to offer as much hands on support (or any at all!).

However, you may do the occasional Q&A call where people can ask you questions – there's so many ways that you can structure it here. You can learn more about a signature online course here.

Another thing to consider is if you have the capacity to actually deliver what you've committed to? If you've got a full time job and this is a side hustle, you're not going to have much time, energy or capacity to deliver a group coaching program, and you would be better off choosing an online course or a mini course, that is fully self-study.

Ask yourself this question – if you had any option in the world, how do you want to deliver it? What would feel amazing and make you want to keep delivering it in the long run?

Because that's what we're after, and it's totally okay if you're one of those people that actually doesn't want to be hands-on. That is the huge attraction about this kind of business model!

So don't feel like you've got to add in all the extra calls, and be available all the time – you don't, and there's plenty of options.

You just need to know that and actually create the right offer to suit you, because if you create the offer with only sales in mind, and you add all these extra add-ons that you don't actually want to deliver, you're going to start resenting it and then you're actually not going to want to sell it.

How to price your online course

I know it's tempting to put like a lower price on your online course is the hope of getting more sales. I've noticed that there's a tendency to price courses really low, even under $100, yet they're really a signature program level, which is a comprehensive course.

I really feel for the people that do that, because they're just never going to see the return that justifies all the time and energy that's gone into it.

A lower price does not mean you'll get more sales – in fact, I've found that it's just as challenging to sell a lower priced course than a higher priced course, both require the same amount of marketing. So you may as well price it according to the value provided instead.

So if you have created an online online course and you've got it on your website and it's really cheap, I invite you to revisit that strategy.

Even if you've had sales but it's been at that lower price, quite often what this does is it leads to a feeling of resentment, which means that you're not in alignment with it.

You're not going to want to put the effort in to launch your online course, if the payback for you just isn't worth it. If you have to sell 10 courses to make $1000, it's not going to feel rewarding for you. So instead, create a signature online course that sits between $500 – $1000, you only need 1 or 2 sales to beat your previous results! Now imagine if you're doing launches and getting 20 people signed up.

Suddenly this becomes a much more compelling business story.

I talk more about pricing your online course offer correctly in this episode.

Online course success comes down to these key factors

So when your offer, the format you choose, and the price align and are strategically created to get results, you have an online course that you're super proud to stand behind. That is vital.

The energy you bring comes from the passion you have for it, and you must have that in order to sell it successfully.

But your audience must love it too!

It's easy to assume that because people already pay you to work with you one on one, that there's going to be a whole bunch of people that will simply buy your course because it's a cheaper option and it's more accessible because of that lower price point.

While this may be true for a small segment of your audience, it's really not going to be the thing that creates an in-demand course.

It could be that the work that you're doing in your services and your one-on-one work may be suited really well to that mode of delivery where it's hands on, it's one-on-one, but it's not necessarily going to translate that well into a course.

It could be either too much for people to get through, too overwhelming, or actually sometimes people simply don't want that thing that you do in your services delivered in a more hands off way. They may not want that in the mode of delivery of an online course.

How to find out what your ideal customer needs in your online course

It could also be that your ideal customer for your services is not the type of person who is going to buy your course, and this trips a lot of people up. If you've built an audience online and your followers are people who are the type of people who just want to invest to get the job done by someone else, or require a lot of hand holding, and then you market your course to them, it may not convert that well.

So a good example of that is for example, you're a beauty therapist and you specialise in facials. You are well known for giving amazing facials. You're in high demand and you are considered an expert when it comes to facials. You also realise that you'd like to remove yourself from the delivery side of your business at some point, or that you can't do what you're doing now, forever just booking up your calendar all day long full of facials in order to make money.

Or it could be that you want to add an extra income stream to your business.

So creating an online course could solve these business problems for you. But you can't teach skills on how to become a great facialist to people you're already providing services for because they don't want it. They actually just want to turn up to the beauty therapy clinic and be pampered, right? So instead, you're going to have to offer this to other aspiring facialists and beauty therapists, because that is actually the market that wants this course.

So this is an entirely new target market for you, and you are going to actually need to go out to this market, and find out specifically what these people want – we do not want to make assumptions here.

You will need to find out what problems they are experiencing, what challenges they are facing, what they want to achieve and how soon do they want to achieve this?

What do they consider to be a roadblock or roadblocks to getting to where they want to be, and where do they actually want to be six months from now, one year from now, five years from now?

Now it's up to you to find out that information and then craft an online course offer specific to that.

It could be that people actually want help with something different than what you thought. It could just be a subset of what you offer in your service. They also want that result in six weeks.

Armed with this information, you can then go and craft an online course offer around it.

It's vital to really narrow down who your online course is going to be serving, rather than assuming it's the same people that currently pay top dollar for your private services.

I believe in most cases it's not the same person. So find out exactly what they need and provide that for them.

It's important to get this directly from them so that you can hear their words and then meet them where they're at, rather than putting something in front of them that they don't want.

So with a combination of creating an online course that lights you up and gives you joy, with a course that meets your new ideal customer where they're at and delivers the outcomes that they actually want, you can create an online course that is in high demand, that delivers on the promises that you love to deliver and that makes you a ton of money.

This means, in turn, that you can have an online course that is able to be scaled because you love it, you get results, you get testimonials and you're proud to put it out there again and again.

This is how you become an online course success story.