In this 7-part blog series, I’m going to share some interesting ways you can develop ideas for creating new online courses.
Whether you’re teaching on Udemy or on a self-hosted platform, these 7 ideas will help you tremendously!
Some of these ideas require that you have some experience in the topic, while others do not.
Some of these ideas are ideas I’ve taught before and some of them are ideas I have never taught publicly. 🙂
The Myth About Online Course Creation
Not all online courses have to come from your own life experiences or expertise…
You can create a perfectly good and valid course by doing research and turning your research into a course, or by interviewing experts and including the interviews in a course, so one of my goals with this article is to help you expand your definition of what an online course is and how anyone can create an online course.
It’s a lot easier than you think!
Let’s get started with 7 ways to get content for your courses.
By the way, some of these strategies are things I’ve never taught before, so you’re going to want to take notes.
Since this is Part 1 in the series, we’ll start with the basics; the very beginnings of getting content for your online courses.
LIFE EXPERIENCE
Number One is obviously your life experiences.
What kind of challenges have you overcome in life?
You know, sometimes people have gone through some pretty difficult things, for example, maybe a divorce or abuse or they’ve overcome alcoholism or other addictions. Maybe they learned how to live after losing a spouse or a loved one.
Perhaps they suffered major financial loss and learned ways to cope with the loss and ways to deal with debt collectors or ways to live on less income.
The bottom line is, if you’ve overcome something really difficult and tough, something that most people would perceive as a huge challenge (and often it is) and something that a lot of people also want to learn to overcome, then that can be a really good idea for a course.
And, before you say, “Well, there are already courses on that topic”, yes, there probably are, but they haven’t been done with your unique story, with your unique message and with your unique findings and learnings.
So think about some of the challenges that you’ve overcome and, and write them down.
KEY QUESTIONS TO STIMULATE IDEAS
Other questions you can ask yourself:
- What kind of problems have you solved in your life?
- What kinds of things did you come up with solutions for that other people would love to know?
- What did you live through and survive that might help other people that are going through those same circumstances?
- How did you grow as a person (either through self-improvement or through life experiences or character-building situations) into the person you are today?
- Did you learn how to be a leader in a previous situation? (leadership is a great topic)
So, those are some great ways to get your mind working towards, “What are some life experiences that I could put into a course?”
NEVER THINK THIS WAY!
One of the main objections we get (when people want to get into the course business) is they feel like, “Oh, nobody’s going to want to learn from me.” Or “Oh, I’m not a nationally-renowned expert on this topic.”
The truth is, people will buy from you if you can present them with a solution to their problem, period!
And then, if you have the right marketing in place and you make your course such an obvious choice for them so that it just makes sense for them, then you’re going to sell a lot of your course!
Think of it this way… If you work hard to be sure that you are providing 3 – 10 times more value than the amount they are paying you, guess what?
They will buy from you! 🙂
Creating and selling online courses is an amazing business. I call it “The World’s Most Perfect Business”… Because it is!
We’re starting with the more simple ways to get ideas for online courses, but stay tuned as each strategy will get more and more advanced as we go!
Part 2 is coming soon – be watching for it!