You are a successful trainer or coach and want to explore new paths? Courage and a desire for new experiments will move you forward, but do not be misled: "Making passive income" with online courses is not the right way. You will learn why pure online courses are mostly not worth it and how you can still reach the next level of your training in this article!
The Temptation: Make Money While You Sleep Online
The dream of great success seems tangible: You are an expert in your field, you have been working as a trainer, coach, or consultant for years – and now you want to really take off online. Advertisements suggest: With an online course, you will never have to sell again! The world is open to you on the Internet, and you will become a star overnight!
What sounds exaggerated here is not far from real advertisements. And of course, it sounds tempting: No more annoying sales calls, because you will be "just found on the internet".
Michael Witzke, managing director of blink.it, has been dealing with trainers and coaches for years who desire just that: to make money online almost while sleeping. However, Michael also knows – the numbers speak against such assumptions: "I generally advise trainers and coaches against offering pure online courses."
Yes, the dream of overnight wealth through online courses is nice. But why it is not realistic, I will explain to you in the following section.
Even if the dream is so beautiful: Making money in your sleep does not work with online courses either.
Success with a New Product AND New Marketing is Utopian
Let’s assume you want to pass on your knowledge online. So why not collect it all and put it into a comprehensive online course? The opportunity is there, but you should be aware of how much work it actually involves:
You have a new product that needs to be created
You have a new medium and therefore need a completely new marketing
Just the effort involved in creating a good online course cannot be underestimated. How much time do you have for your online project? Probably not more than 20% of your regular time, because after all, your daily business must continue to operate.
Regarding the aspect of the new product, many trainers and coaches are somewhat aware that creating it involves effort. The real stumbling block lies in marketing, which must look completely different for online courses than for classical training!
Online Marketing is a Subject in Its Own Right
How have you previously done your sales? As an experienced trainer or coach, you have likely built a solid customer base through long-standing relationships. Your clients are mostly decision-makers in companies who know and appreciate you – from experience and personal contact.
An online course, on the other hand, has a completely different target audience, and you should keep this in mind from the start: Pre-packaged online courses primarily interest self-employed individuals, small businesses, and private individuals. For this target group, you need a completely new approach, new marketing measures – and of course, also a completely new pricing strategy.
We at blink.it are very familiar with the challenges of online marketing: There is a battle for attention on the internet, and maintaining the blog alone requires a full-time position. If you want to start with online courses, you should prepare for the following "subjects" related to online marketing:
Content Marketing
Marketing Funnels
Advertising
Search Engine Optimization
Blogging
Landing Pages and Websites
Social Media Marketing
Facebook Advertising
Facebook Posts
Community Building
Affiliate Marketing
Content Seeding / Backlinks
Guest Articles
Do you think you don’t need any of this? Surely every product and every target group is a little different, but with slight deviations, these aspects of online marketing are relevant for everyone. Those who do not deal with this from the beginning when starting with online courses will pay the price later: If no one becomes aware of the finished product (which is your online course).
The Product: Effort and Costs to Create an Online Course
The measures in online marketing are one thing – creating your online course is another. Michael Witzke compares the effort to writing a book: In both projects, you have to process, compress, and ultimately reassemble your collected knowledge so that it can be sold. This takes time!
Expert knowledge alone is not enough: Just like with writing a book, you need a lot of time when creating and marketing an online course.
As far as the price is concerned, you should not fool yourself either: How much are you willing to pay for a good book? 20, 30 euros? With an online course, you cannot expect much more, especially if you want to establish a name for yourself on the internet.
Whether book or online course – both are products that can be created once and sold repeatedly. But they are also products that
convey knowledge on a specific topic
are complex and time-consuming to create
require a lot of marketing
are not priced higher than 20-50 euros
For orientation, take a look at some courses on Udemy: For example, all courses on the topic "Learning Strategies" are offered on the first page for 11.99 euros.
The Smart Alternative: Blended Learning
If you have made it this far, you might be asking yourself: Why are you writing this? Don’t you want me to use blink.it?? Yes, of course I do – but only if you are successful with it!
While you can also create pure online courses perfectly well with the blink.it software, we at blink.it advise trainers and coaches against this idea. We have seen too often that the marketing aspect has not been thought through, and the pure online courses, after costly creation, have hardly been visited.
Therefore our advice: Don’t make a 180-degree turn right away! Stick with what you know and can, and expand your existing training or coaching with online content. This way, you don’t have to create a completely closed new course but rather create targeted online impulses that meaningfully enrich your seminars. This method of combining online and offline is called blended learning.
The Advantages of Blended Learning Over Pure Online Courses:
Much less effort in creating your online content
Online marketing is almost completely eliminated (a website presence is generally advisable)
You can test new media on safe ground
You have little extra costs
You provide added value for existing clients who are happy to recommend you
What do you think about pure online courses? Are you perhaps already working with blended learning? Leave a message under this article and share your experiences with us!
Disclaimer: We have deliberately taken a strong position in this article. We do not mean to say that making money with online courses is completely ruled out. Our experience simply shows that the expectations of many trainers and coaches do not correspond to reality. In the end, the most money is not earned by you as a trainer, but by those who explain to you how to implement online marketing!
¹ Current status at the time of publication of this article
