Making online courses is one way to generate a stream of passive income. If you love to teach and what you teach, this method is a fulfilling source of passive income.
Don’t make profit as your primary purpose. Money must be secondary. If our goal is only to make it, then we are frustrated if we fail to reach it. The primary goal must be to build another person with the knowledge we have accumulated, organized, and shared, and we see that it builds them as it builds us.
Knowledge is meant to be shared. Compare Dead Sea vs. Jordan River: the Dead Sea is so-called “dead” because it just keeps on receiving water and minerals. As a result, it becomes so dead that no fish or any organisms living in it. While the Jordan River or any other river receives waters from the springs, pay them forward. As a result, they flourish. Hence, the saying, “to give is better than to receive.”
What are possible topics?
Experts suggest focusing on an overall topic that you have knowledge about, and where you can build sub-topics and deeper studies later. Try to assess your life situations, unique experiences, and passions. You can teach anything ranging from how to live life as a seafarer, overseas worker, or how to live in a certain locality. You can also build courses on gym exercises, how to use certain software for beginners, programming languages, cooking courses, cultural practices, real estate marketing, and sales.
What are the forms?
You can share your course by making a video such as recording yourself and your screen, making audio recordings, blogging, or creating interactive quizzes.
Where can I build my online courses?
The top platforms where you can build your online courses are Skillshare, Coursera, Udemy, and Kajabi, or within your own website.
Foundations
Selling online courses mean that people have to pay first before accessing that knowledge. This is called “gated content” or “paid content.” But people won’t easily enter their credit card details or pay you money without trusting you first. To do this, you need to build trust, authority, and rapport. You can do this by offering free content and exposing yourself to your target audience. Here are the ways to build this foundation:
Build a Facebook Group/Community
Facebook has a large user base that most of your friends are already using for years. Facebook is a good way to build lasting relationships, trust, confidence, and familiarity in a cheap way. With Facebook, you can position yourself as a go-to-expert in your field, and even create multiple Pages focusing on different specialties. When you have an organic post that gains a lot of organic views, try to boost it by paying Facebook because if it is being commented on, shared, and liked by a non-paid audience, there’s a high chance it will be liked by the paid audience. Also, don’t forget to build your email list. When your audience may no longer be using Facebook, most likely, they may still be using their emails.
You can also build your own FB group based on your location (like being in the same subdivision, sub-urb, barangay, or city), interests (like motorcycles, photography), life situations (single parents, cancer survivors, solo travellers), or advocacies (pet adoption or recycling). You can also combine categories like “Yamaha Nmax in Manila” so that your community will be highly relevant and engaging.
Within a group, create a sense of community like organizing meet-ups, rides, electing officers, collecting monthly dues, printing t-shirts, jackets, or stickers, or doing outreach work. Increase trust and likeability by encouraging volunteerism to help members, post group activities and live streams. Make sure to create a good group photo and a well-written about us section.
Build a Youtube Audience
Youtube is dubbed as the world’s second largest search engine. It can help other people find you through searches, suggestions, and if your content matches their interest, you appear on their Youtube homepage.
Before selling an online course, it is recommended that you give value first for FREE. How can people trust you with their money if they don’t experience or know you first?
Later, I will share how to build your Youtube audience, and how to earn through affiliates, ads and sponsorships.
Boost your exposure through Podcasting
Podcasting is another way to promote your content or brand.
Podcasts are becoming popular because it does not need your full attention. People use podcasts when they are doing other things like driving, doing exercises in the gym, or babysitting. Unlike TV ads, people can pause it or listen to it at their own pace.
Podcasts can also be downloaded and do not consume very big amounts of space in phones. People can download and listen to it while on their vacations or unplugged moments.
Podcasts can also be listed on various devices such as phones, laptops, desktops, and Apple iPods.
Podcast creators can also easily record audio and upload them on Spotify, Youtube, or Apple Podcasts.
In 2022, here are the statistics of podcasting:
- 78% of Americans are aware of it while 91% of Australians
- The Philippines has 31 million podcast listeners, the biggest in Asia – spiralytics.com
- 41% of Americans listen to podcasts on a monthly basis
You can earn also earn through podcasting by:
- Cross-selling products, souvenirs, or brand items
- Listener donations – you basically create good content and convince your audience to support you via funding websites like Patreon
- Advertising – this is usually done when a podcaster shares a ‘promo code’ during the podcast so that the advertiser knows how many converted through that podcast episode
- And as we discussed, you can promote your online courses through your podcast