How to have a course creation business you're proud of

You're really looking to make money on the side of teaching, coaching, or consulting, aren't you?

And you've heard a lot of buzz around creating courses.

But you know it's not as simple as "create a course and they will come". If only, right?!!

Starting your own course creation business is both exciting and a bit of "Yikes!"

That's the reality.

And that's because, as with any business, it takes time and smart, purposeful effort to get it up and running and make it successful. But with the right planning and strategy, it's not nearly as much of the yikes as you may think.

In fact, it's much more exciting than you may have initially thought.

You're about to embark on an amazing journey that has the potential to change your life and the lives of your students. But before you get started, there are a few things you need to know in order to set yourself up for success.

In this blog post, I'll share with you ALL the steps you need to take in order to have an expert course creation business that is automated, set and forget, low overhead, and positioned for growth. And of course, these are the things you work on a little bit at a time... not all on day one.

So if you're ready to create a course & successful e-learning business that will make a difference, read on.

Identifying your niche and target market is essential to creating a successful course creation business. You want to make sure you actively select a niche neighborhood, which is a specific type of person or sector that you'll target with your course. In doing so, you'll be able to tap into a community that is already engaged and interested in the topic you're teaching. Similarly, knowing your target market will help you narrow down the topics for your courses, as well as give you an idea of how best to price your products.

Believe it or not, the more targeted you are with your niche the more you'll be able to stand out among the competition and establish yourself as an authority. It's important to carve out a space that you can own uniquely–a definite niche where you and your business can stand out from the crowd and present something valuable and irresistible for potential customers. Doing this will ensure that your course content not only sticks around for the long haul but also positions your business for future growth and success.

You may be thinking about the niche for your course, but it's important to think about your business, as a whole, at the same time, since these go hand in hand. It's a must to think about how your course will fit into the bigger picture of your business goals and objectives.

Once you've chosen a niche and identified your target audience, it's time to define the goal of your business. This could include things like how many students you want to enroll and how much revenue or profit you want to make each month or year. Additionally, think about what kind of impact or reach you want to have with your courses. All of these things will help you create the perfect course with your business in mind.

When you create courses you're often thinking about what's right in front of your to get your course up and running for your students, but it's important to take a step back and think about not only short, but medium and long-term goals as well. Doing this will ensure that you create the right course that fits within the overall goals of your business.

For example, if one of your short-term goals is to have a certain number of students enrolled in your course at any given time so you have steady sales, then a medium-term goal may be to keep those students engaged and learning through additional course offerings over a longer period of time so your business has dependable revenue. Whereas, a long-term goal may be to have your course(s) generate enough income that you can take on additional staff or hire freelancers to help with the day-to-day running of your business operations, which allows your business to run while you focus on specific activities that grow your business.

As a course creator, it's important to understand how the e-learning industry works and how different elements of your products & courses are connected with your business as a whole. The course gurus tend to only teach you about creating courses themselves, and not about the business that you're often inadvertently creating at the same time. It's VERY important to think about this business and the pieces that comprise it.

As you embark on creating your courses, you also need to know where and how to focus first in your business. This means identifying your course & business strategy up front. Together. Knowing this will help you identify which platforms and services could be useful for you when creating and launching your courses.

Some of the business areas you want to consider from the very beginning include: marketing & sales, technology, finance & accounting, management & strategy, and operations & automation.

While you don't need to tackle all of these in depth at once [in fact, we encourage you not to], it's important to know the parts of your course creation business and your business strategy for future growth. And the reason why is because how you set up and work in these business areas will change what tools you decide to incorporate at each stage of your growth.

For example, will you want to start your course creator business with stand-alone products and tools to serve up JUST your courses and marketing, or do you want an ALL-IN-ONE approach for your e-learning online course platform from the start... like payment processors, landing pages, product & sales pages, marketing tools, analytics and more? What you choose will be different based on your unique strategy.

Want to know How to Build & Grow Your Course Creator Business? Download our free Sidkik E-Learning Business Blueprint so you can get going with your e-learning business ecosystem.

Once you have identified your short, medium and long-term e-learning business goals & the strategy for your business in each key area, it's time to find the right platform that fits you and your business. There are many course platforms out there with varying features and capabilities – so it's important to take the time to do your research on which one works best for you.

Research which platform is best suited to ALL of your needs. A common mistake is to look for course hosting platforms with only your current course in mind and not your entire business. For example, it's pretty common to choose a course platform without realizing that it may not have the right integrations in place if you want to expand your business and create additional courses in the future. Or the platform may provide it's own marketing strategy that doesn't fit with your long-term goals.

You'll want to consider factors like the types of courses you want to create, how many students you want enrolled in each course, whether your students log into a separate platform to access your course or if you want everything served up from your own website, and any additional features that can help you reach your business goals, like sales pages and landing pages that are served up as part of your e-learning platform (vs. 3rd party products that you access separately).

Once you've selected a platform, it's important to properly set set it up. This means signing up for the right integrations and setting up the technical aspects of your e-learning business, like connecting to your marketing system (CRM or Customer Relationship Management products), email provider, and payment tool. All steps are necessary to ensure your course will be successful in reaching your goals.

Now that you've nailed down your business goals and have the right platform, it's time to start planning, creating and delivering high-quality course content.

This is the fun part! This where your creativity and expertise come into play. You'll want to determine how best to create a compelling course that meets all of your business objectives.

Creating a course is an iterative process, so be sure to take the time to plan each lesson and piece of content. "Plan" is the important concept here (not creating all of the modules ahead of your students). Again, tie these to your business goals. Consider how your content will be delivered to students. This usually involves creating a course syllabus, worksheets / downloads and other additional materials like challenges and quizzes. Consider the type of format you want for your course – videos? Text-based lessons? Live webinars? A combination of all three?

And, most importantly, adjust to your students' needs. This is why we recommend presenting your courses live with your students before ever making your course evergreen. It gives you the option to pivot your plan midstream and react to your students in real-time so they have the most success possible.

The possibilities are endless, so take the time to plan out how your course will be delivered and what types of content you need to create in order to give your students the best learning experience possible while also driving to your own business goals.

Once you've created your course, it's time to start promoting it. That means leveraging social media and email marketing tools to get the word out about your business and courses.

Depending on what course hosting platform you're using, there may be built-in options for promotion or integrations with social media that can help you reach more people.

Social media is a great way to connect with potential students and create an engaged community. You can use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. to share helpful content related to your course or business and engage with the people who interact with it.

Email marketing is another powerful tool for promoting courses and reaching out to potential students. These can include "warming" emails introducing yourself and your course, or more targeted messages to specific segments of people you know will be interested in what you have to offer.

A key point here is that email is still the #1 way to convert your audience into customers, so don't knock it.

You should also consider other channels such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, networking events, sponsorships, etc. Just pick one. Start simple. We mean, ultra simple. Like...

Since it's often lost in the shuffle of social media, you shouldn't forget the power of direct 1-on-1 human connection. Have direct email conversations, respond to individuals who post on social media, or pick up the phone and talk to people. These people are your future customers, and you won't really learn about them unless you talk to them directly.

Metrics are your holy grail for growing your business. I cannot stress the importance of putting these in place early on, since they provide a yellow brick road for where to focus next in your business so you can enjoy continued success.

Look at data points such as the number of people who visit your website, how many sign up for your course, where they come from and how long it takes them to complete your course. This data can help you determine if your content is resonating with potential students and also provide insight on how to improve in areas that may be lagging.

In addition to business data, you'll also want to consider course specific metrics such as what content is being accessed most often and the average time spent on each lesson. Having these numbers in hand will let you know which pieces of content are resonating with students and which need help. You may need to revamp a lesson or add more content in order to make the course even better.

Hint: look for an e-learning platform that can provide these metrics for you.

By analyzing your data, you'll be able to fine tune your business and courses so that they are performing optimally. This will in turn lead to more success for you and your students.

And what's best is that areas that are performing well are great indicators of places where you may want to automate (or streamline) your processes. Meaning... less work for you in the future.

Once you have identified areas of success, it's time to start automating them.

This may sound like a lot. But I assure you, it's not.

Small, baby steps, identifying what happens over and over again is exactly how Ray Krok revolutionized the fast-food industry with McDonald's.

Workflows and processes are key for scaling your business in a way that is sustainable. This could mean creating content libraries or building out templates to save time. It may also involve exploring integrations with third party services or implementing automation tools that can help you stay organized and efficient.

By automating processes, you will save yourself time so you can focus on creating content and engaging with your students instead of managing tedious tasks. And it also helps to ensure consistency in the experience for your students. This will help you create a smoother user experience and keep them coming back for more courses in the future. Plus, when it's time to grow, automation makes onboarding new team members easier since they can learn the system quickly and get up to speed faster.

Creating automated workflows may seem like a lot of work at first, but it doesn't have to be. You can start small by creating templates or automating one cluster of tasks at a time... like the exact process you go through to write an email, find the right attention-grabbing subject line, and get it set up in your email provider to send out at the same time each week.

Eventually, you'll have a streamlined system that is easier to maintain and can help your business grow in a sustainable way.

Once you have identified processes and workflows you want to automate, it's important to stay organized so everything runs smoothly. Use project management and workflow tools, or even just a spreadsheet, to document your systems, manage your tasks and automate notifications to keep you on track.

Finally, as your business grows and processes become more complex, be sure to invest in the right tools that fit your needs. This could mean having direct accounting integrations with your e-learning platform and customer relationship management tools.

By taking the time to identify processes, create automated workflows, and invest in the right tools, you'll be well on your way to scaling your business for continued success and return on investment (ROI). All of these steps are essential for ensuring that your business can handle the growth and still provide an exceptional learning experience for your students.

And our thought is to start automating where you can, when you can, as long as you know that the process you're automating works.

So start super-small with documenting your processes, like the above example of the steps you take to send an email. By doing so, you'll quickly create efficiencies that add up big time.

I've covered a lot here... but these are ALL of the steps.

Creating your course & your e-learning business together, hand in hand, ensures that you make the best future decisions possible. This means doing things right the first time, in the beginning, so you don't need to go back and shift gears after you're on your road to success. We know from experience that there's nothing more time consuming than having to retrace your steps and redo something that could have been done right from the get-go.

With thoughtful course & business planning and diligent automation, you'll be able to scale your business in an efficient and successful way.

When you're ready to learn more about building your course & e-learning business at the same time, you can begin by grabbing our free Sidkik E-Learning Business Blueprint that shows you How to Build & Grow Your Course Creator Business. You can grab your copy right here 👇

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. Please let us know if you have any questions or topics that you would like us to cover further (just use the chat in the bottom right of your screen and we'll be sure to get your message). We're here to support you on your course creator business journey, every step of the way.