How to make money from knowledge. Stages of creating an educational course

Currently, information and knowledge have gained the greatest value, and the demand for educational courses is growing every year. Investors are showing increasing interest in educational projects, students are acquiring knowledge and skills remotely, company founders are sending their subordinates to thematic conferences and training courses.

The growth of the online education market is confirmed by the HeadHunter study. From 2016 to 2018, interest in distance learning increased by 13%. Among the most in-demand courses are English language learning, personnel management, information technology, and marketing.

Distance learning is selling because people have realized its advantages. Now everyone can pursue their education anywhere and at any time, and the cost of online education is significantly lower than in offline mode. Furthermore, the quality of knowledge is not lower, and often higher, thanks to the possibility of involving practicing teachers and specialists. The pricing of online courses is lower because the teacher only needs to present theoretical data in a video lecture or article at home and, for example, conduct a webinar several times a week.

If you like the idea of earning money from your knowledge and want to organize your educational business, it is worth specifying the main stages of implementing an educational course:

Stage 1. Business idea and course topic

The educational course should have a simple idea that ignites people around, is interesting to you from the perspective of new experience, profitable, and beneficial to people.

Analyze the interests of your target audience, make a list of skills you will teach them, and determine the knowledge the specialist will possess upon completion of the training program.

Your course, first and foremost, should be valuable and to some extent unique. By selling in-demand information and working on your reputation, you will quickly gather satisfied customers around you who will become advocates of your brand or even business partners.

Stage 2. Detailed course plan

Describe the key indicators of your training: title, target audience, course duration in hours. If you are only going to manage the process, consider a list of experts in the relevant field whom you would like to attract for teaching.

Usually, training consists of theoretical and practical parts. In the online educational process, different learning formats are often combined, for example:

- online webinars with real-time chat. Live communication with teachers helps engage listeners in the process. This is the most convenient form of conducting classes for those who are taking their first steps in online learning;

- thematic online conferences where you can listen to expert presentations and ask them questions;

- tests and homework - for better understanding of the material covered;

- video lesson recordings, available anytime day or night;

- individual Skype sessions eliminate gaps in the knowledge of a specific student and adjust the learning process;

- electronic books, which, unlike paper books, are constantly updated and refreshed;

- practice on real services and projects, which is extremely necessary for the comprehensive training of digital specialists (SMM specialists, internet marketers, SEO specialists, etc.);

- communication in closed groups on social networks or messengers, which allows consulting with curators, discussing important points with other students;

- textual, article-based learning is often used in educational projects organized by services or agencies (example: Tilda, Netpeak, etc.).

Let's give listeners some amount of information, and then check how well they have absorbed it. Remember to start with the basics, without trying to cram all the valuable information into one session. People simply may not cope with learning the volume of information that you immediately pour into them.

Ensure the dosing of information delivery (step-by-step principle). Allow people to proceed to the next stages only after thoroughly verifying that the individual has qualitatively mastered the previous information. Also, the ability to pay for education gradually, as one progresses, increases customer loyalty.

By the way, at this stage, it is worth choosing the form of presenting your material: a simple narrative with a presentation or demonstrating working processes in services and applications. Technical aspects of working principles with applications and demonstrating the settings of something can be recorded separately (as screenshots) and attached to the course materials.

Stage 3. Test implementation on an existing educational resource

Now you can start the technical implementation. Start with a test version of the website or landing page, the basis of the content of which will be the educational process plan you wrote earlier. It is in your best interest to carefully craft the plan, as potential students will rely on it when choosing a course.

Before launching the course itself, you can start communicating with potential course students on social networks through content, analyze their needs and expectations from the training.

Don't forget about the other side of the coin - the technical aspect of the educational business. Shooting, voice-over, editing, color correction - high-quality video lessons require certain investments in equipment at the start.

To test demand, try uploading your course to a ready-made learning platform. You can use Webinar.ru or Recruting.biz as a webinar platform.

For example, in Recruting.biz, you can use a full range of tools for developing educational projects: distribute your videos, conduct and record webinars, provide instructions and tours, introduce consumers to information in a primary and step-by-step manner. A feature of Recruting.biz is that it opens up the possibility of using an affiliate program to promote the project.

An affiliate (referral, bonus) program is a special form of cooperation with satisfied customers. If people like your training, they can recommend it to their friends and receive a bonus from your company in the form of a certain amount of money, a free product/service, or loyalty points.

Importing an affiliate program into an educational project is definitely profitable and beneficial, although few course founders have come to this realization. The principle of such programs is successful due to the well-known fact that when it comes to purchases, people are more inclined to trust recommendations from friends and acquaintances.

By gaining the necessary knowledge from you, the consumer gets the opportunity to become not only a service buyer but also a company partner. Thus, through the partnership program, the end consumer can become a distributor. Moreover, such an approach has a positive impact on consumer loyalty and the overall reputation of the company.

Independent partners provide product presentation and advertising in exchange for earnings, bonuses, and discounts, thus acting as informants-salespeople.

By launching a test version of your course, you can analyze the demand for your course and its sales prospects. You can further ensure growth by reinvesting the earnings. Scale your business gradually as the company develops and its financial turnover increases.

Stage 4. Company Development and Business Scaling

Any project is a mechanism that requires constant improvement. By calculating perspectives and earning initial investments in the test launch of the course, you can start looking for developers who will be able to implement the functionality you need in their platform.

For example, one of FlawlessMLM's clients, before launching an educational platform, started by selling courses through social networks, establishing communication with the audience there. For quite some time, he studied his target audience and researched the demand for various course variations. By earning money from initial sales, he was able to scale his company into a full-fledged educational platform and integrate a multi-level partnership program into his business processes.

Scaling in the field of education can be achieved by introducing new thematic courses or expanding the program of existing ones. Just as David Braun (founder of Template Monster and Weblium) set a goal to build the McDonald’s of the web design industry, strive to build the McDonald’s in the field of education.

Some companies attract their best students as experts. In this way, they supplement their ranks with teachers or showcase cases. This type of collaboration can be one of the conditions of a partnership program.

For example, on the Business Youth website, the largest club of entrepreneurs in Russia, there is a whole section dedicated to cases, alongside articles. In this section, the best graduates of the educational program talk about their path and achievements they have reached after completing the courses.

Team FlawlessMLM will help launch your company and optimize business processes. FlawlessMLM specialists take educational projects to a new level by automating their sales through MLM. Contact our manager in the website chat (flawlessmlm.com) and get a free consultation on solutions for your business.