How To Teach What You Know Online

by Elaine Slatter

To teach what you know online isn’t that difficult, thanks to the multiple software options now available.  You only have to check out the online course provider, Udemy to see a vast array of courses.  Whether you are a graphic designer, home stager, yoga instructor, business coach or photographer, your expertise can easily be developed into a course or courses.

Many experts have created significant additional income by teaching online. Dorie Clark, Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out  is one expert who has successfully added online classes to teach entrepreneurial skill sets.  She talks about how she went about designing her course in this article.

Steps For How To Teach What You Know Online

Step One – Who Is Your Audience?

Once your audience avatar is established it’s easy to create a course outline, because you will know how to structure your course depending on whether it is for beginners, intermediate or advanced students.  You may even have material that can be adapted from blogs, ebooks, or full instructional books you have already written.

Step Two – Design And Price Your Course

To teach what you know, one way to create your course is to check out how other experts in your field deliver their course material.  Platforms such as Udemy require that 60% of the course is in video format, whereas other platforms don’t have such restrictions.  By checking out other experts, you can decide how you want to deliver your lessons.

Breaking down the course into lessons that naturally flow from start to finish is essential to teach what you know in a logical sequence that does not confuse the students.  Checklists, quizzes, and assignments are all ways to keep the learning going in the right direction.

Pricing your course might include a quick free introductory course or webinar to encourage signups for the paid courses or a landing page to sign up for a paid course and receive a free gift.

Step Three – Choose The Platform For Your Course

There are a variety of options for hosting your course.  Some require more technical expertise than others.  For a full list and comprehensive guide to all the options here is a link to the 15 Best Online Courses.

If you already have a website, you may want to go a different route and host your own courses.  For example, if you have a WordPress website, there are several plugins that can host your course, some are free and others are premium plugins.  Elegant Themes does a great job of evaluating the top 6 WordPress plugins for LMS.   (Learning Management Systems)  You can use these plugins with your existing theme.  Some include membership as well as payment gateways.  There are so many options to teach what you know using these plugins.  If you use this option 100% of the proceeds is yours to keep (minus the percentage kept by the payment gateway).

Many experts have found that private Facebook groups are a great way to keep the students engaged.  They can ask any question in this type of forum and the personal interaction with you will create a bond that both help the students move forward to complete your course and also be interested in any future courses you might design.

Step Four – Market Your Course

Once you have built your course the next step is to let the world know that you have a course.   You can use your current mailing list to advertise your course by sending them to a landing page to sign up.  In addition, you can use paid advertising on Facebook, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

You can also post your course in Facebook Groups, Your Twitter page, LinkedIn or Instagram feeds.  Using graphics or video are key to engagement.   Another tip is to use a posting schedule to create the buzz on all the platforms and to give discounts for early signups with a countdown to when the discounted offer will end.   The idea is to create a sense of urgency for the signup.

If you already have designed a course, we would love to hear which tools you have found to be indispensable to teach what you know.

Elaine Slatter

Elaine Slatter is a Small Business Expert, founder of XL Consulting Group and author of the popular book, “Fabulous Fempreneurship”, a complete business guide for women. XL Consulting Group helps entrepreneurs with market planning, strategy, branding, web design and social media. She has over 30 years of executive business and marketing experience and is ready to help you rocket your business to success. Elaine is passionate about mentoring women to become successful women entrepreneurs. To find out more, visit XL Consulting Group or join the Fabulous Fempreneurship mastermind.