137: The secret to creating an online course that your audience wants!

In episode 137 of Online Business Uncovered, I’m diving into one of the most crucial yet often overlooked parts of creating an online course: making sure it’s something your audience actually wants!

I’ll be sharing my own behind-the-scenes experiences including how I validate course ideas before spending hours creating them and simple ways you can gather real feedback from your audience.

Whether you’re just getting started or you’re ready to add another digital product to your business, my step-by-step advice and practical examples will help you feel confident about what you’re building. I’ll also share some of my favourite tools to help you stay organised and focused as you bring your course to life.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know exactly how to test your ideas, save valuable time and set yourself up for a successful launch.

Grab a notebook, your favourite beverage and let’s dive in.

Transcript

Karen [00:00:01]:
Hello and welcome to Online Business Uncovered. This is episode 137 and in today's episode I'm talking about how you can ensure that your online course will sell and that you will actually make money from it. So let's jump right in and let's get started. Hello and welcome to Online Business Uncovered. 

This is the show that helps you turn your into digital products, passive income and time freedom. I'm your host, Karen, and I really do appreciate you hitting that play button to listen to today's episode. Now, before I dive into today's episode, I just want to invite you into my free community, the digital creators community hub where you'll be able to access replays of live masterclasses I have delivered. There are also some tools and resources in there that you can access for free.

Karen [00:01:03]:
So if you are thinking about creating an online course or even starting an online business, then be sure to join the community because that's where you're going to get access to resources and tools that will help you to get started. To access for free, head on over to my website, www.sell your brillianceonline.com/community because now is the perfect time to get started online. So head over there and come and be a part of the community. 

All right, so let's dive into today's episode. And today I am delivering week three of an eight part series where I am literally walking you through the entire course creation process step by step so you can start to turn your expertise into a profitable online course that gives you more time, more freedom, and of course more flexibility in your business. And who doesn't want that? I'm sure everyone wants flexibility, so I'm breaking it down and walking you through step by step. Now, before I do that, I just want to almost share a business update, really, because something that I do in the background that I don't often talk about is my digital resource shop that I have online where I have tools, resources, templates, lots of different things to help entrepreneurs create their online business. And I've been doing this for a good few years now and I jump behind the mic every single week and I talk about building a business online.

Karen [00:02:57]:
And it's born out of my own experience and my own journey. And part of that journey is being a digital product creator. And the tools and the resources and everything that I've created have been tailored to supporting entrepreneurs on their journey. And this week I have launched a brand new product which is an online course planner in a platform called Notion. Now, if you are an avid listener of the show. You know, I absolutely love Notion. It is such a brilliant tool. It's absolutely free, so there's no charge to use it.

Karen [00:03:41]:
But in terms of being able to set up systems, it's absolutely brilliant. And I know in my business, because I do so many different things, the systems that I have in place that I've built out are the things that have helped me to move forward. Because the things that kind of keep me accountable, they keep everything in one place. I stay organized, I stay focused on track. And so I've created an online course system to help other entrepreneurs create their online courses, but with ease, so that you're not going down all the different rabbit holes that you can do when you do this on your own. 

The other thing that I have also created this month is a 30 day plan on how to get started with creating an online course. So next year, if you, if an online course is something that you want to have in your arsenal so that you can make money from what you know, then I would encourage you to check this out as well because this 30 day plan is literally the roadmap broken down into 30 easy to follow steps. So head on over to my website, www.sellyourballoonsonline.com/shop and go and check these resources out.

Karen [00:05:05]:
They're not expensive. I keep everything very reasonably priced. Then they're designed to really help you get started so that you're not second guessing yourself and you have a very clear roadmap and system to build out your online course. And what you can do is you can take episodes that I'm sharing with you and you can plug these in as well because I'm literally giving you the step by step process to actually getting this done. So do go and check it out. Go and have a look at my shop. I probably don't talk about it enough to be honest, but. But I am building it out, I'm adding more resources and I'm really proud of it as well.

Karen [00:05:49]:
So it's definitely a revenue stream for me and I just love it because I get to bring what it I know to the table and delivering it in a way that is of value to my audience and my customers. So yeah, definitely go and check that out. Okay, so back to today's episode. And today I am talking about how you can be confident that your online course is going to sell. Because this is one thing that I come across a lot with a lot of sort of entrepreneurs who want to create an online course, but they're not sure if their idea has Merit, whether it's actually going to be purchased. So there is a process that you can go through to guarantee that what you're creating has a need and a demand for. But I think by, by doing this, it's going to build your confidence. And I think that's the key when we spend time creating things.

Karen [00:06:55]:
So whether it's for me creating a digital product or for you creating an online course, we have to be sure that the thing that we're creating, there is a need for it. Our audience needs the thing that we are putting our time and energy into. And I know as well, I've spoken to course creators that have made no sales because they haven't done this one step that is actually a game changer. So it's really important, I think that before you even start creating anything, you do your due diligence and you, you validate your idea before you start spending that time on it. And that's what I'm going to talk about today. I'm going to walk you through a very simple process on how you can do this. Now, it's not going to take a ton of time. You can do this very quick, quickly, very easily.

Karen [00:07:55]:
The idea though, is that at the end you will have that confidence to know that you're not wasting your time and that you're creating a product that people are going to buy. So this stage is really important. Now, before I share with you sort of my step by step process on this, I just wanted to, I suppose, share a story really. So. So when I created my branding course, probably again, I think this was back in 2018, I mapped it all out and I created sort of almost like a plan of what would be in my course, the pathway that the students would take and the outcome. And I was feeling really sort of pleased with it, thinking, you know what, this is exactly what people need. This is my course. And then what I decided to do is I popped over into Facebook and I was part of some groups and I decided to kind of run a poll.

Karen [00:09:04]:
And in that poll I asked the group if they were to take a branding course, what is it that they would want to have included? So I did this over, I think at the time, I did it over about three different groups and I. And I worded each of the polls slightly different, different. And what was really interesting was the responses that I got back because people came back and told me what they wanted. And what was really interesting was that what they told me was different to the course that I was going to create. It was still based around branding, it was still kind of within that theme, but where I'd sort of developed a kind of overview on what I would include in the course. So the modules, the lessons, the content, what they were telling me, what they were struggling with was slightly different. And I found that really interesting because I'd made assumptions that the course that I was going to create needed to have X, Y and Z in it. But actually by carrying out that research, my audience was telling me something different.

Karen [00:10:24]:
And so what I did is I collated all of the responses that I got from, I think it was the three groups that I ran the polls in. I built a, it was an Excel spreadsheet, so I built an Excel spreadsheet where I collated all of this research and I had loads of different comments as well. And I copied and I pasted all these comments into the spreadsheet and I used that research to guide my decisions on the course that I then went on to create. And it was different to the course content that I'd originally thought about creating. So that research, it didn't take me long, it doesn't take long to run a poll. I think it probably took me, what, 10 minutes to set it up. But the insights I got from my audience were highly valuable and it helped me to create a course that, that, that then went on to be sold. So taking time to validate and to get research, to carry out research and to get insight is so important because it will give you what people, it will tell you what people need.

Karen [00:11:46]:
And the thing is, people are time poor, so they're not necessarily going to go and buy a course because they're wanting to buy a course. They're going to course most likely because they're looking for a result. And that result is what they're going to be basing their decision on. And if you create an online course and it isn't aligned to what your audience want or need, it's not going to sell. So we need to make sure that before we do anything, before we spend any time creating, we carry out research, we do our due diligence and we make sure that we have the right insight for our audience so that we can actually create something of value. Think of the validation process like your safety net. It's going to help you confirm that your idea is something that your audience wants, something that they need, and of course something that they are going to be willing to pay for. So before you create anything, carry out that research, because that's going to be the thing that's going to save you a ton of time going forward because it's going to stop you from wasting months and months and months building the wrong thing.

Karen [00:13:06]:
And it will give you the confidence that you're going to need to know that you're on the right track. And when you're in the weeds of creating your online course, you want to kind of feel confident that all that time, energy, effort that you're spending on it is not going to be wasted. Just think of it like this way. You wouldn't spend thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds building a house before checking certain things, making sure that the land was stable, that it was in a good area, it had good foundations, you know, you had the right people in place, you know, there would be decisions you would make at the beginning that would affect the outcome of that building. It's exactly the same with an online course. I think actually course creators are architects, they're just building a course, not a building. So you need to make sure that you've, when you go into the planning stage, you have all that necessary information and insight to actually create something that's really going to work. Once you have validated your idea, then selling it's going to become so much easier because the energy that you're going to have for it, the confidence that you're going to be putting behind it is going to be so much more.

Karen [00:14:39]:
And you're not going to be sort of putting something out that you're unsure of. You're probably most likely going to end up wanting to put something out that you know people are going to need. So. So you can't wait to get it out there. I know of late that that's exactly how I feel about this online course planner that I've created in notion, in my membership. And when I delivered my program a few years ago, I built out this Trello board. And this Trello board is a system. It gives you everything you need to outline your online course.

Karen [00:15:12]:
And my members love it because it really does streamline that process of pulling everything. And I like Trello, but this system that I've recently created is so much more in depth and offers so much more to somebody creating their online course. And at the moment I am designing visuals and I'm creating a marketing strategy and I'm working on how I'm going to get it out into in front of my audience so that I can promote it. Now how I feel about it is so important. I feel excited because I know this one thing is going to make a huge amount of difference, and I can't wait to get it out there. But I have created products in the past where I probably haven't been that bothered about really promoting them. Not because they're rubbish or anything, because everything I do is of high value. It's.

Karen [00:16:21]:
It's some. I wouldn't spend time creating something I didn't think people would need. It's just that that topic doesn't perhaps light me up as much as kind of building systems that I know is going to save somebody so much time, energy and effort. So because I know it's going to have a huge impact and it's going to really streamline the process and make things so much easier. I want to get it out there, I want to promote it, I want to sell it. And I think that's the difference because I know that this product I have created, there is a need for, there's a demand for, and it's going to make a huge difference. When you feel like that about your idea, selling it will become so much easier because of the energy that you're putting behind it. It.

Karen [00:17:14]:
So it's really worth spending this time going through this piece of the process. Now, I know it's tempting to skip over it because of course, once you've got an idea and you get excited about your idea, then you just want to kind of get it created. And this piece of the puzzle can often be overlooked. But I would say this piece of the puzzle is probably the most important piece because this is the piece that's going to actually give you that to know that what you are creating is going to be very much needed. So let's talk about just very quickly, how to test your product idea just so that you know that what you're going to be creating isn't going to be a waste of time and that you are creating something that is needed. I want to just run through a very simple. A few simple ways in which you can test demand. So first and foremost, obviously, you can run a poll.

Karen [00:18:18]:
That's what I did, and it was highly successful. It saved me hours and hours and hours creating something that. Where I was kind of off. So, number one is that you can run a poll or. Or ask a question on social media. So this is of course, what I did, and I'm so glad I did this because this gave me such valuable insight. So you could just put something out within a Facebook group, ask a question, like I say, run a poll and see what comes back. It's such an easy way and a quick way to just get that customer insight and to gauge interest in your topic and to also see what people are talking about as well.

Karen [00:19:21]:
The second idea is that you could talk to your clients and just have a conversation. So if you have been working with clients creating stuff forum maybe around your topic area. So for example, maybe you are somebody that delivers a particular service and you've delivered this service to your clients, but now you're thinking about automating this service through an online course. Then it would be worth reaching out to those clients that you've worked with and have a conversation with them and ask them some questions and, and see how they respond to your question. So it could be things like, you know, I, we have worked together on X project. I am thinking of creating an online course on this topic that helps people like you do whatever. So you would put your specific problem. Does that sound really, does that sound useful? And would this have been, would this be something you would have been interested in before we started working together? And you can actually kind of gauge their response to that and see what they say around that.

Karen [00:20:39]:
And just as a side note, and I come across this a lot in my business, some people, they want to work one on one because they want to be handheld. But some people want the do it yourself option. So having both options in your business is going to widen your customer base. So you might have a client that may say to you, no, I wouldn't have paid for this online course because I wanted to work with you. But then you may get somebody that says, well actually, yeah, that would have been really useful to have had that. And it could have been something that I would have been interested in buying. So you can then take that insight and that conversation and make decisions on how you move forward. Off the back of that, again, it just gives you that insight that's going to help you to make the right decisions.

Karen [00:21:32]:
And then idea three, you can share a mini piece of your idea. So you could create maybe a short live on social media, you could create a post or maybe you could even create a freebie that touches on the main topic point and see how people respond. Do they comment, do they download your freebie, do they ask questions or do they even share it with their audience? That's going to be data that's telling you that you may be onto something. It's watching how people respond to the thing that you're putting out. So for example, before I created one of my products, the Easy Course Kickstarter kit, I didn't just assume people needed it. What I actually did is I asked my audience and I asked my members in my membership. What's stopping you from creating an online course? And the things that came back to me were things like I don't know where to start and I'm also scared nobody's going to buy it and also people not feeling expert enough. So what I then did was I designed the kit to tackle those exact problems.

Karen [00:23:00]:
Helping people validate and plan their first online course idea with confidence. That was sort of the proposition of that product. And because I validated it first before I launched it, I knew that I would achieve sales because I knew it was something people wanted. That's the power of validation and that is why it's so important not to skip this step. So before you dive into building your online course, I think it's, it's smart. Just take a little bit of time out and test your idea. Ask your audience, listen to what they say and observe the how they're talking about the topic as well. Because your audience is going to tell you exactly what they want.

Karen [00:23:53]:
You just need to ask the right questions. So spend some time, do your validation and then you can then take those insights and create a product, an online course that is actually going to sell and of course make you money. Okay, so now I hope you have found this episode helpful. Next week I'm going to be moving on to how to start shaping your course idea into a structured outline that is going to help you sell your online course as well. Because once we validated it, then we need to start pulling it all together and start creating the framework of what your online course is going to look like. 

So until then, thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope this episode has given you some clarity and spark some new ideas is if you have found this episode helpful then I would love you to share it with a friend or a fellow entrepreneur who's also building their online business. Because this might be exactly what they need to hear today.

Karen [00:25:27]:
And if this episode has you thinking that you're okay, you're you're now ready to start turning your expertise into income, then I'd love to invite you to join my free community, the Digital Creators Community hub where inside you'll get access to free tools, free resources, templates and my monthly masterclass replays that's going to help you to get started with your online business. I will be back. Head on over to my website www.sellyourbrillianceonline.com/community. I will be back next week with another episode but until then Have a wonderful week.