Monetising Your Expertise In 2020: 4 Steps For Success

With all the upheaval 2020 has brought so far, you might be looking for ways to utilize your spare time and your existing expertise to find an extra source of income. One of the best ways is to share your knowledge with others by teaching online. Follow these four steps for launching a successful online teaching business:

1. Decide how to teach online

The first step towards monetizing your expertise by teaching online is to decide exactly how you're going to do it. You have two main choices: tutoring individuals or small groups, or creating an online course.

If you've got a lot of experience and qualifications with popular topics that people might be studying at school or college then tutoring can be a good option. It's a bit more informal and also gives you a lot of flexibility for it to fit in around your schedule.

But if you're looking to find a long term source of income from your expertise then set up an online course that people pay to access. Online courses are often more profitable and require less long term investment of your time than individual tutoring sessions. While initially, you'll have to invest a lot of time in creating it, whether it's through webinars or video tutorials, you'll then be able to sell your course again and again.

2. Choose an online course platform

While it is possible to set up your own website and then create an online course, it will require some technical knowledge and there are lots of different online course platforms that will make it a lot simpler. Once you start to develop an online course you can choose to use a standalone platform that creates a branded site specifically for your course, or an all-in-one platform that includes a website plus marketing and customer relationship manager tools.

Alternatively, you could choose to use a marketplace online course platform, where people come and search for courses - this could make it harder for your course to stand out, but you'll have access to an audience that is interested in learning online.

3. Plan and create course content

To start planning out your course you need to focus on exactly who the course is for and what people should be able to achieve, or understand by the time they've completed your course. You also need to be able to demonstrate the value of your course, and why it will teach people something new or different to other courses.

For example, if you're putting together an introduction to digital marketing course that’s aimed at people with no experience or people changing careers then the end goal is to give them a broad understanding of key topics and where to start with marketing. If you were targeting business owners who need to market their business, then you would choose a more specific goal like how to create and implement a marketing plan to increase sales.

Once you've decided on the goal of your course then you need to list out all the important parts or stages that someone needs to get through to achieve that.

To make your online course easy to follow, break it down into modules that cover smaller topic areas or goals, and then separate these into individual lessons. The ideal length for each lesson will vary depending on the topic and your target students, but 20 minutes is roughly the maximum attention span of an average adult. Include tests and quizzes at the end of each lesson or module to help reinforce what students have learned.

When it comes to actually create your course, whether it's via video or webinar presentation, try to tackle it by modules and get feedback after each one.

4. Marketing your online course

Unless you are already a well-known expert in your field or have established a reputation, then you're going to need to market and promote your course to attract paying students.

To get your course off the ground you could join relevant professional groups on LinkedIn or approach friends and colleagues and ask them to test it out.

The best way to market an online course is to focus on the previous success of your students and share student testimonials - you want to be able to demonstrate the benefits of taking your course. You also need to focus on what makes your course unique and your credentials, qualifications, and what makes you an expert.

Your website needs to look professional, trustworthy, and you need to optimize it for search engines. Do some keyword research to find relevant words and phrases you should be including in your website copy to help your site appear higher up in search results. You could also run a PPC campaign and paid social media adverts to drive traffic to your site.

Creating an online course does take a bit of time and planning, it's a lucrative opportunity to monetize your expertise and share valuable knowledge with others.