105: Why 2025 is the perfect year to launch your first online course

Welcome to episode 105 of the Digitally She Does It show. In this episode, we will explore why 2025 is the perfect year to launch your first online course. The e-learning industry is booming like never before, with a growing appetite for online education and a cultural shift toward lifelong learning. Whether you’ve dreamed of sharing your expertise, creating a new income stream, or building a business that aligns with your lifestyle, there has never been a better time to get started.

In this episode, we’ll discuss the trends driving the demand for online courses, the advancements in tech that make course creation more accessible than ever, and the steps you can take to confidently enter this thriving market. I’ll also be sharing actionable strategies to help you create a course that not only stands out but also makes a real impact.

Plus, stay tuned because I’ll be giving you the details about my upcoming masterclass, How to Create Your First Online Course in 2025, where I’ll walk you through the exact steps to turn your ideas into reality.

This year is bursting with opportunities, and I’m here to help you make the most of them. Let’s dive in and make 2025 the year you share your brilliance with the world!

If you find this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear this. 

Let’s get started!

Transcript

Karen Davies [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to the digitally she does it show. This is episode 105 and in today's episode, I'm talking about why 2025 is the perfect year to launch your first online course. So let's jump right in and let's get started. Welcome to the Digitally She Does It Show. I am your host Karen and I'm here to lift the lid on what it actually takes to create a successful business. If you are an ambitious creative ready to build a business on your own terms and without compromise, then this podcast is perfect for you.

With my award winning approach to marketing, and expert knowledge in creating online courses, this show will leave you feeling inspired, energized, and ready to bring those big dreams to life. Join me each week for a dose of motivation and marketing know how along with actionable step by step strategies to help you accelerate your businesses grow.

Karen Davies [00:00:59]:
So, let's dive in and don't forget to subscribe to all my upcoming episodes which drop every Wednesday. Hello, and welcome. Thank you for joining me today. A happy New Year. I am your host, Karen, and I really do appreciate you hitting that play button to listen to today's episode. Can you believe we are now in 2025? It is crazy. I don't know where last year went. Last year flew by, and now we're in a brand new year.

Karen Davies [00:01:36]:
It's an exciting time because, obviously, we've got the year ahead of us to make of it what we will, but I just I can't seem to keep up with time. It it's mad. So happy new year to everybody. I hope everybody had the most wonderful Christmas and that you all managed to enjoy some New Year celebrations and that you are now in a position where you have done your goal setting, you've done your reflections, you've done all of that fun stuff, and now you know what it is you wanna achieve this year and you're ready to bring that to life.

And today, in the spirit of that, I'm talking about why this year in particular is a really good year to launch your first online course. But before I do, I just want to talk about the Digital Creators Hub. This is your one stop shop for getting started online. So if you're not in the hub, go and get yourself in the hub.

Karen Davies [00:02:36]:
It's still free. You can get all the resources, templates, all that good stuff. It's completely free. Just head on over to www.karen-davies.com/hub. And you can go and get a load of resources and tools and things to start your online journey. So head on over there and go and grab these amazing resources. Okay. So back to today's episode.

Karen Davies [00:03:04]:
And today, I am talking about why 2025 is a great year to launch your first online course. So if you've been sitting on an idea for a while, maybe you're curious about online courses, you have an idea of maybe what you would create, but you haven't taken the the leap, I suppose, in getting started, then today, I just wanna talk about why now is the perfect time to to take action. As I said earlier, we're in the a brand new year. We've got a whole year mapped out. And, realistically, you could have a brand new income stream in your business by the end of Q1. Wouldn't that be amazing? A a new income stream for the new year that's gonna bring in some income. But let's talk about online courses for a moment because I just want to dive in and talk about why 2025 is the year for you to get started. Now online learning is no longer a trend.

Karen Davies [00:04:11]:
So years back, it seemed to be very much a trend. It was a new thing. Everyone was jumping on the bandwagon of it. And now we are quite a few years past COVID and things have settled down. Actually, online learning has become an important industry that is growing exponentially. And it is estimated that by the end of this year, the elearning market is expected to surpass $400,000,000,000, which means that it has solidified its place as a cornerstone for education and personal development. That's how popular it is. That's how the industry is growing because people are recognizing the fact that there is a real need and a demand for elearning.

Karen Davies [00:05:01]:
And so many entrepreneurs, many teachers, consultants, all different professionals are jumping into this space and building their courses so that they can share their skills, their knowledge, their expertise with the people that need it the most. And I think this year is going to represent a real pivotal moment because it's going to offer huge opportunities for entrepreneurs, educators, and businesses to step into the online course space and make a lasting impact. And who doesn't want to make a lasting impact in their business? So I wanted to share with you some reasons why creating your online course is a smart move. Now before I do, I've had a few people say to me over the past year or so, isn't online aren't online courses dead? They've actually said that to me. I've been out of networking. I've been talking, and they said nobody's buying online courses now because we're past COVID and nobody needs to learn online. It couldn't be further from the truth and I wanna share with you why that is the case. So if you have been thinking that and you're questioning whether there is a need for you to turn your expertise into a course, then I hope what I'm gonna share with you in a moment is going to, get you to rethink because this industry is not going anywhere.

Karen Davies [00:06:35]:
It's growing at an exponential rate and that opens up huge opportunities for, entrepreneurs. Okay. So number 1. The global demand for online education is huge because the world has shifted and now it is consuming education at a ridiculous rate. So post pandemic, people are more open than ever to learning online. So that shift has happened. It's no longer a trend. People are doing it.

Karen Davies [00:07:10]:
People are expecting it. So this isn't just about formal education where you go and get a degree or or or whatever. There's a growing appetite for niche knowledge. So that's improving professional skills, exploring personal interests, or it may be creating new hobbies. So when I talk about niche, I'm talking about maybe things that people wanna learn that are not mainstream. So it may be that what you have to teach is niche, but there's going to be an audience out there that are looking to learn it. So for example, someone might sign up for a leadership training course to, excel at work while another might take a class on breadbaking. So you might have somebody that is looking to further their skills in the workplace by, as I said, taking lead a leadership training, but then you might have somebody in that team that goes, sort of home and learn how to create bread by following an online course.

Karen Davies [00:08:12]:
So the great thing about online courses is that if you have a creative side, but maybe you work in a corporate environment or maybe you work with, clients in in in a space that is quite corporate but you have this desire to be creative, then you can go get an online course, learn a skill, learn a hobby and do that from the comfort of your own home. And that's the beauty of an online course is that they often serve every niche no matter how unique because somebody somewhere is going to be selling their knowledge around a specific skill or expertise. Now by creating your course this year, you can cater to an audience that is most likely actively seeking solutions and knowledge that you can help with. And it doesn't need to be a massive topic. It just needs to be one that resonates with specific needs and interests of your ideal person. So you're not looking to build an online course for everybody. You're looking to build an online course for somebody that has a desire to learn what you are going to teach them. Okay.

Karen Davies [00:09:22]:
So number 2, let's talk about tech because tech is one of those things that can really overwhelm people and actually stop people from taking action. Now the good news is that if tech makes you feel overwhelmed, then in this space, tech has advanced so much that it has become so easy for aspiring creators to create their online courses. Because what has happened in this space is that the space has become quite saturated which means that there's a lot of options out there on the market. But because they're all competing with each other, they're all looking to make their platforms as user friendly and as easy to use as possible, which is great news for us users because it means that there's no coding, there's no complex interface, and you can more or less jump into a piece of tech safe in the knowledge that you will be able to figure it out and you will be able to use it to build your online course. Now as I said, there's so many course platforms out there. It's it can be overwhelming just choosing a platform to host your online course on. But if you look at platforms like Sistem or Teachable or Thinkific, you can even look at MemberVault and Kajabi. These platforms are so robust and well made that you can literally get your online course up and built in no time.

Karen Davies [00:10:54]:
We also have access to design tools like Canva, which make means that we can make professional looking slides, workbooks, and promotional materials really easily because there are so many templates and things available to us to help get us started. AI assistance. The world of AI is growing. It's becoming more and more popular. If you are not using it in your business, then chances are you should be using it because there's an AI bot for almost everything. But AI like chat g p t can generate content ideas. It can help structure lessons and it can even draft engaging course copy. So that is such a time saver if you are somebody that just doesn't have a lot of time available.

Karen Davies [00:11:45]:
And then, of course, in order to create your content like videos, we have video tools available like Loom. I use, Filmora. I absolutely love Filmora. But then you've got Imovie as well. And with these tools, you can do exactly what you need to do in terms of editing your video literally at the click of a button. It is so easy to upload a video and to chop it where it needs to be chopped and then to export it. And more often than not, in my own experience, that's all you really need. You don't need to create a high production in terms of your video quality because the phones and the computers that we now have, they have absolutely fantastic sort of cameras and and and whatnot sort of within the the tools that makes it easier for us to do what we need to do.

Karen Davies [00:12:42]:
So we don't have to go and spend a ton of money on all the tech. We can do what we need to do at an affordable cost simply by using the tools that we have available to us. Now in terms of a course platform, I have recently moved to a platform called Sistem. I love it. It is one of the best platforms. I still use MemberVault, and I really do enjoy using MemberVault. But there's something about Systeme, it it just offers everything. It's the course builder, the membership builder, the funnel builder, the email, all of that good stuff.

Karen Davies [00:13:17]:
Very easy to set up, very easy to use, and you can build your first online course for nothing. And then once you exceed some, I suppose, perimeters, if you like, on their pricing tier, then you pay $27, which is about 19 quid. So it's not expensive, very affordable, and you can get your online course built. Canva. Absolutely brilliant. I love Canva. It's probably the most used tool in my business. What's that? 10 quid a month if you go pro? AI assistance like chat, GPT, how much is that? Well, you can upgrade to the pro.

Karen Davies [00:13:54]:
You don't need to. That can be free, so there's no cost there. You can do what you need to do on the free version, making it very affordable. And then video tools like Imovie and Filmora and Camtasia and things like that, They're not expensive. I think for Filmora, I pay something like 35 pound a year. And I rely on Filmora because it does all my audio editing and all my film editing and all of that stuff as well. So, you know, over a year, over 12 months, it's hardly anything. So less than £50 a month, you can have everything that you need to create your online course.

Karen Davies [00:14:37]:
So don't be be put off by the cost of tech. There are so many options out there. I have my preferred tools that I use that I swear by. Some have a cost, some don't, but you can search online. You could have a look at what's out there, and I can almost guarantee that you will find a tool that you can use at a free level to get you through your first online course. So if you are thinking about creating an online course and you're worried about the financial investment then I wouldn't because it's not that expensive to get your first online course created. Okay. Let's talk about number 3.

Karen Davies [00:15:21]:
More and more people are working and learning from the comfort of their own home because the workplace landscape has fundamentally changed since COVID. And remote and hybrid working models are more popular than ever before across all the different industries because the companies want to create a culture where people have greater control over their schedules. So that means there's more flexibility and that time work balance, that that personal life balance with work is more important than ever. And people are working to strike that balance so they can do other things as well. And one of those other things is, of course, on demand learning, where they can learn for the comfort of their own home, in their own time, during lunch breaks, in the morning, first thing in the morning, or even late at night. It really doesn't matter because once they get access to an online course that gives them what they need in order to, give them the the skills and the expertise on the skills that they're looking to adopt, then they can they they can learn it whenever it takes away the the time aspect because it's on demand, which means that they have access to it whenever it is convenient to the to them. The other thing is that there's a a global reach. Remote work has made people more comfortable with virtual communication.

Karen Davies [00:16:57]:
Zoom is probably the one of the most popular tools that people tend to use in their businesses. Most meetings are done on Zoom. Networking meetings are done on Zoom. It's if it's not Zoom, then it's Teams. But people are becoming more and more comfortable with having meetings online instead of this in person meetup that used to happen a lot before COVID. So I think jumping online and doing an online course is becoming second nature to people. And and, honestly, when I talk about the convenience of it, it is so convenient. Who doesn't wanna have something at their fingertips that's gonna help them to progress and develop new skills and expertise? It just makes it their life so much easier.

Karen Davies [00:17:45]:
And as I said, it's gonna give them back that work life balance because it means that remote workers especially can work towards getting that balance, and online courses offer solutions to help them streamline their work, improve their skills, and, of course, enrich their personal lives. So again, a lot of benefits there as to why people are jumping in and taking online courses. Number 4. Since the pandemic, the landscape has changed, and now the economy is in favor of supporting entrepreneurs. And I I don't say this lightly because if you watch the news and you watch how everything's unfolding, you'll you'll sort of question that. But what I mean by that is there are small business grants available and online business resources available that can help you to do what you need to do. So if you are looking to create an online business, then there's most likely going to be something out there that is going to help you to get started. So this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs are thinking about because, of course, it's gonna help them diversify their income streams.

Karen Davies [00:19:02]:
And I think one thing we could probably all agree on in in the current climate is that now more than ever, we need to be thinking about how we can diversify our income because cost of living is expensive and we need to be able to live. We need to be able to keep the lights on in our businesses and we need to be able to do what we do so we can help the people that need helping. And then number 5, There has been a really strong cultural shift towards lifelong learning. So people are no longer viewing education as something that tends to end after school or university. I think lifelong learning has become a cultural norm with people so eager to improve their skills so that they can they can strive for better. They can work to achieve more in their lives. So whether that's mastering a new skill to stay competitive in work or maybe it's pursuing some kind of passion project, there's definitely been a mindset shift towards ongoing growth. And I think the personal development space has also been a space that is continuously growing.

Karen Davies [00:20:21]:
I think I think we are spending more and more time, you know, looking at ourselves and trying to grow personally and professionally. So what that means is there's never been a better time than now to share what it is that you have to share because the demand for actionable skill based education is increasing and your course could be the solution that somebody is ultimately looking for. And I think by stepping into the e learning space in 2025 you're not just launching a course, you're actually becoming a part of something that is bigger than just selling courses. It's something that provides value, flexibility, accessibility, and empowerment. And I do think that sharing our skills and sharing our knowledge and and all the things that we have that we bring to the table, it can change people's life. It can create a huge impact and it can do a lot of good in the world. And who wouldn't wanna be a part of that? So if you are somebody that maybe you've been tinkering on the edge, maybe you've been unsure about whether or not an online course is right for you, then hopefully by what I've shared with you today, you will understand now why 2025 is a perfect time to get your online course launched. If you are looking to create a sustainable income source, maybe you're looking to scale your business, maybe you're looking to create a passive income stream, maybe you just wanna be competitive against your competitors, Then creating an online course is a no brainer, and now is the perfect time to get started.

Karen Davies [00:22:08]:
Now is the perfect year to plan and launch your online course. 2025 is your year to shine. The opportunity to create an online course and make a lasting impact has never been greater. And your expertise is extremely valuable, and there's someone out there that is going to be waiting to learn from you. So thank you for tuning in to today's episode. And if you found this episode helpful, then please do go on to Apple iTunes and leave a review and share it with a friend. If you know of somebody that is thinking about creating an online course but they're uncertain as to whether it's for them or not, then please do go ahead and share this episode. And remember, the world really does need what only you can teach.

Karen Davies [00:23:02]:
Now before I sign off, I just want to talk about my upcoming masterclass that is happening on the 28th January at 2:30 PM UK time. It is called how to create your first online course in 2025. So if you are curious, maybe you have questions, maybe you want to know a little bit more about the steps involved in creating your first online course, then please come along to this masterclass and come and learn because I share a lot. I break it all down. I give you the essentials. And by the end of it, you're going to walk away with clarity and confidence and an understanding as to whether this is right for you. So come along, book your place, and I will put the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode.

Karen Davies [00:23:55]:
I hope you found this episode of value and of course please do feel free to share it with others who you may think will also benefit from today's episode. If today's discussion has sparked some inspiration and you're eager to dive deeper into creating your online presence, then be sure to visit my website www.karynhyphendavies.com because you'll find a whole load of resources that you can download to help you kick start your online journey.

And if you're ready to take the next step and create your very first online course then join my membership sell your brilliance online, which is designed to guide you through the simple process of creating your very first online course. Head over to my website www.karen-davies.com/membership. I will be back next week with another episode, but until then, have a great week. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the digitally she does it show. Don't forget to check out the show notes for all the links and resources mentioned in today's episode. New episodes drop every week on a Wednesday.

Karen Davies [00:25:08]:
So, why not rate and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Thank you for tuning in today, and I will see you next time.