Myth-busting. There’s No Easy Money in Creating Online Courses
I’ve been creating online courses since 2016. It’s an important part of my business and it’s a significant income stream, too. But I always get upset when I see business gurus selling it as easy money, passive income, or the next big thing for your business. It’s time for some myth-busting…
The Online Course Market Became a Red Ocean
Let’s start with the obvious: In 2020, everyone launched their online courses. We all know why — and it’s just fine. But with that everybody-needs-an-online-course movement, we got only one thing: a lot of crappy online courses.
If you want to create an online course in 2022, in most niches, you’ll sail on a red ocean: a lot of competitors, a lot of noise, huge marketing costs, and price war.
And not all those competitors are that bad…
Are you great at knitting? Are you up for teaching it online?
Just go to Youtube and search: “knitting tutorial”!
You’ll find tons of epic, high-quality videos for free:
That’s your competition. Plus blogs. Plus podcasts. Plus Udemy courses. Etc.
You can try to niche down and focus on — let’s say — knitting dog sweaters exclusively. But even for that, you’ll find a lot of great tutorials for free:
And look at the change of the audience size, too, after niching down! Instead of millions of viewers, you see ten-thousands viewers. And we are still talking about the free tutorials! How many of these viewers would actually pay $100 for your online course?
I know: it’s anecdotal evidence. But research your own niche on the popular platforms and you’ll find the same. The competition is tough in almost every segment.
That was the bad news.
Still reading?
Okay, I have some good news, too! ;-)
Yes, it’s still possible to make a good living by creating online courses… But the game has changed. Here are three things to be aware when you just get started.
#1: Creating a GREAT online course takes YEARS of CONSISTENT work.
As I said, the game has changed. 10 years ago, it was enough to film your live workshop, upload it as your “online course” and sell it for $47 or $97. Probably, you would have made a lot of money with that. Many did.
But as I said, today, you’ll have to stand out to get students. It’s not enough to create a good course with good enough content. To stand out, you’ll need top-notch quality from every aspect:
- Your content has to be 100% polished.
- The students’ learning experience has to be beyond expectations.
- And your course has to be more than informative: it has to be fun, and it has to be motivating, and it has to be inspiring, etc.
It’s almost like cooking a very difficult dish. You have to have the perfect ingredients (your knowledge). And you have to add just the right amount of everything. (A little bit less of this and your course is not informative enough — or a little bit more of that and it becomes boring.) It matters a lot when you add and how you add your ingredients. (That’s your course structure, of course.) And I won’t even start to talk about the spices…
The point is:
Creating a great course takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work.
Here’s my example:
I teach data science and my flagship course is a 6-week online course called “The Junior Data Scientist’s First Month.” (I won’t link it here, as self-promotion is not the goal of this article but if interested, just Google it.)
I first tested parts of this course in 2015 in classroom workshops. Then I launched the online course version in 2017. Then I re-recorded all the videos in it in 2018. Then I trimmed it a bit. Then I added new parts. Then I changed parts of the curriculum again. Then I added bonus materials in 2020. I optimized the content and the student experience over the years — again and again, and again.
Since 2015, I literally put thousands of work hours into creating and fine-tuning this single online course.
I mean, sure, I thought at the first launch in 2017 that it is good enough already. The concept was nice, the execution was good enough. Students paid for it and they were satisfied after finishing it. I’d say, I was ~80% happy with the overall outcome. But I felt that this could be even better. 90%, 95%, 99%… I started collecting more feedback from students. (Since 2017, I had 1-on-1 calls with at least 500 students.) I continuously optimized and fine-tuned my course. I broke it down into parts, then put it together again and again… It was almost like an engineering process to achieve two things: the best learning curve and the best student experience one can get from a data science course.
As you can see, it took me 6 years so far, and I still think it’s only 99%…
Regardless, this perfectionist mentality helped me to get a few unexpected things:
- After a while, students started to recommend my course to their friends! (Which feels good — but it’s also practical: less marketing cost.)
- The landing page of the course became the TOP1 result on Google for “junior data scientist course” and it’s been there for nearly 4 years. (Don’t ask how and why, I’m no SEO guru. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
- I have a nearly 0% refund rate for this course. (Of course, there are every now and then a few folks who change their mind without even starting the course — and that’s alright.)
My story is only one example… But I honestly think that in 2022 to become a successful online course creator, you have no other choice than to create something exceptionally great. And that takes time and effort.
CONSISTENT work doesn’t mean a LOT of work
Just to avoid a common misunderstanding: I do not propose here to have 80 hour-work weeks. Sure, there are periods when you’ll have to work much more than average… But in the above mentioned data science course example, if I take a great average, I’d say I worked on this course ~5–10 hours per week in the last 6 years. If you do the math, it’s still 1,500–3,000 work hours in total.
The hard part is not working a lot for a few weeks or months. The hard part is the consistency: to put in the work and the care for years and years and years.
#2: Work hard on the things you have to work hard. Leave the rest to the professionals!
As I said, to create something outstanding takes time and effort.
Correction: to create something outstanding takes time, effort, and focus. For that, you want to spend time with the things you are the best at (teaching what you teach) — and leave other stuff to others.
What do I mean by that?
Here’s the simplest example: the online course platform you use.
I, for one, don’t want to build an online course platform for myself. Sure, I could do it by using a few cool WordPress plug-ins. I’d probably do a fairly good job in it — and I’d save a couple of dollars every month. But that would mean building and maintaining something that I’m not the best at. In other words: it’d be a complete waste of my time.
I use Teachable instead. Teachable is just awesome — not just the platform, but the whole team behind it. They continuously improve their software. They add new features. (Sometimes things that I didn’t know I need but I need.) They fix bugs. They continuously improve their online class interface. If I don’t know, how to do something, their support helps.
I mean… they are a team of ~100 people specialized in creating online course platforms: how — and why — should I compete with them if I can outsource the whole online-course-platform problem to them for $47/month. (If interested, here’s Teachable’s website.)
Another example would be working with freelancers. Sure, I could create my own logo, website colors, and whatnot… But why would I do that when I’m a data science teacher and not a designer. By the way, my logo was a $100 one-time cost investment and I’ve been using it for 7 years now. It’s nice, right:
So spend time with things you are the best at (teaching the stuff you teach) and outsource the rest if you can!
#3 Price high and earn what you deserve!
I get it: if you record another crappy course on a boring Saturday — and you put it on a mass-online-course platform, you’ll be fine with pricing it to $10 or $20. Sometimes, even with discounting that to $5 or $2.
But if you spend 5+ years and 1,000+ hours by creating the best online course you can, you want to be fairly compensated, right? I mean, it’s not only your best interest, but it’s also your students’ best interest!
An underpriced course usually means that you’ll need a lot of students to make an economical sense of putting hard work into the creation and maintenance of your course. (E.g. if you price your course to $20, you’ll need 200 students, to earn $4,000. That’s before taxes and expenses and everything else.) So if you price low:
- You’ll have a lot of students and less focus on the individuals. (E.g. no time for 1-on-1 calls — and less personal touch.)
- You’ll be continuously swamped with support requests. (It means more work and a slower response time from your side.)
- And these can lead to one thing only: lower student satisfaction (and as we discussed, in 2022, this can kill your course).
- And of course, you’ll have a higher risk of burnout.
Not ideal, right?
On the other hand, if you price your course high (e.g. $497 or $997 or even more), you can afford to run it with fewer students. It’s beneficial for many reasons. For instance, I price my course at $597 and I also limit the number of students to a max of 50 per cohort. I personally experience a lot of benefits from it:
- I spend $0 on marketing.
- I have time to have a one-on-one call with every student in the course.
- I don’t have to work a lot with support requests (it’s less than 1 hour per day).
- And there’s a much lower risk of burnout… Actually, I’m always excited when I start a new cohort and get to meet with people from the new class.
It’s a win-win situation. So don’t hesitate to price your course high, it’s better for everyone.
Conclusion
As I said: the online course business is not easy money. Not anymore, at least.
But you can make a good living from your course by following the 3 tips I gave you above:
- Try to create a GREAT online course — and accept that it takes YEARS of consistent work.
- Work hard on the things you have to work hard. Leave the rest to the professionals!
- Price your courses high and earn what you deserve!
Do you agree? Or disagree? Let me know in the comment section below!
Cheers,
Tomi Mester
NOTE: the Teachable links are affiliate links. Either way: Teachable is awesome!
