Whether you’re a first-time speaker or a seasoned expert who delivers keynote speeches, no matter your field or niche, you can help more people and create more income through your very own online course. Here are strategies to pick your topic and ideas to create online courses from free to top-tier. There is only so much valuable, useful information you can give your audience within an average 30-minute or 1-hour talk. If you have more knowledge to share, instead of limiting yourself to each live speaking session, you can start by offering virtual coaching. Doing so lets you easily make your additional, supplementary or complementary content or lessons available to your audience virtually anytime, anywhere. You have more for back-of-room sales After speaking you can make a majority of your money with selling relevant products and is common practice for speakers as an additional revenue stream.
Common ways a speaker can sell product at the back of the room:
- Your book(s)
- Training modules
- Workbooks
- Audio CDs
- DVD videos
- Branded items like tee shirts, coffee mugs, and other items that have slogans or other sayings that match the topics of the talk
- Online Courses
While it may seem easy for someone who is already a speaker, you can become an industry expert by following these steps. And who knows maybe you'll go from doing free speeches to being paid top dollar to deliver keynote addresses to large audiences.
How to build yourself as a public speaker:
- Claim and master your topic. After you master 1 topic, then you can diversify and add additional topics
- Make sure you already love this topic and are always learning about it.
- Choose a topic you already love to do
- Think about what you've always wanted to learn.
- What have you been through in life and have succeeded out of struggle
- Choose a topic you're willing to live and speak about for the next 5 years
Why a speaker should create online courses?
By having your own online courses, you can increase your influence and impact to your audience. You can also benefit from these 6 things.
- You can continue serving their audience
- It creates residual income
- It gives you something else for back of the room sales
- It has a higher perceived value then a book, DVD series, etc.
- It keeps you top of mind to your audience, even after you leave the event
- It builds you as an industry leader
5 types of online courses a speaker can create to leverage their business
While there are many types of online courses you can create, here are 5 that you should consider, from free to top-tier.
1. A simple free text based course
Do you think an online course has to be complex to make and deliver to your audience? A simple text or sms based course that you send out every day or week that is easily readable by your audience may be a good start.
2. A free mini online course on your website
I highly recommend that you create something of value to get people to give you their email address and a freed mini course is the best way to go. A free mini-course delivers high value to your audience but is simple for them to go through. Carrie Wilkerson of the Barefoot Executive has a free 7 day business blitz video series that walks the viewer how to be more productive. I highly recommend you go through it to learn from her and see how simple a mini-course is. I produced the videos for her mini course.
3. A cheap paid online course
Have a cheaper paid course that fills in the gaps to your talk. Think of it as an expanded version of your talk. Surely you can't give all the information in your 30-60 minute talk, why not create a course that's under $97 that you can offer on stage or at the back of the room? A basic, paid course is best for offering your audience the information pertaining to your live talks that you weren’t able to discuss. Think of it as an expanded version of your in-person speaking sessions that fills in the gaps. It can be a five-series, five-chapter or five module course where you explain more.
4. Middle-range paid online course
This type of course is more valuable than a basic, paid course. A middle-range course teaches your audience a new concept that’s related to your talks. Consider it as a movie sequel. For example, if you discuss self-motivation in your basic-paid course further, you can talk about how to turn positive thoughts into action in your middle range course. The ideas are endless because once you have your main topics you speak about on stage you can create additional material that can be easily updated and improved with any of your online courses.
5. A Top-tier paid online course
A top-tier course is the most valuable type of paid online course you can offer. It features more content, giving your audience a richer online learning experience than a basic, paid course or a middle-range course. It can include a copy of your book or merchandise, a number or group coaching sessions and access to a private Facebook group. Think about how to add the most value which will allow you to increase the price on this top-tiered course. You can offer more valuable content than most other types of content. Just make sure that you aren't creating more work for yourself with monitoring a private Facebook group or coaching calls. Think of ways to streamline and create value while reducing your time commitment. Being able to give your audience even more content ensures their learning experience is satisfying. You stay at the top of your audience’s mind. An online course can be described as an intimate way to engage your audience. Unlike a live speaking session, where you communicate with them as a group, watching and listening to an online video of you giving a talk at the comfort of their home makes each of them feel as if you’re teaching only him or her. You can even make it interactive by letting them leave comments and replying. Taking your online course this way makes it much more personal, letting you create a deeper connection with your audience. Since they can access your videos whenever they want, they are more likely to keep you in mind than speakers who don’t have an online course. Having an online course also positions you as more of an industry leader. Credibility is one of the factors that dictates whether you succeed as a speaker. You won’t make any progress without earning the trust of your audience. While giving live talks still works, having an online course is now more effective given its accessibility, reach and the rapidly increasing number of netizens who are also potential students. As long as you offer the best content possible and make as many meaningful connections as you can, you’ll gain a following and become recognized or popular in your field or niche. Listen to other Online Course Coach Podcast interviews with acclaimed speakers Dan Miller - How Dan Miller uses online courses and digital products Tom Ziglar - Selling Tips and Building Ziglar on Demand Jane Atkinson - How speakers can leverage their knowledge with online courses Michael Kitces - Innovative Membership Sites Grant Baldwin - How speaker can create online courses These are only a few examples of how a speaker can leverage the power of an online course. If you would like to learn more about my coaching packages, please contact me below. I would love to help you create additional revenue streams for your speaking business! Simply go to OnlineCourseCoach.com to fill out the contact form.
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Almost everybody wants to start their own business, like an online course. Take Millennials in the USA, who now outnumber the Baby Boomers, for example. A 2015 Bentley University survey of this generation revealed that 66 percent of the respondents “have a desire to start their own business,” 37 percent “would like to work for themselves,” and 25 percent “would like to own their own company.” However, as of 2013, only 3.6 percent of all businesses in the country were owned by someone under 30, according to Forbes Contributor Jared Mayer in his July 20, 2015 article on this topic. This comes as a surprise to us, considering entrepreneurs make more than employees. In fact, there are online course creators or coaches who are making tens of thousands of dollars per month, but more importantly they've impacted and helped their students! If you have not yet acted on your idea for an online course, now is as a good a time as any to take stock and ask yourself, "why haven’t I gotten started"? If you don’t know how or where to start, you think you don’t have enough time to do it, or you’re worried about failing, stop worrying over being stuck anymore, because it just takes three easy steps that are all focused on visualization. Visualization is mankind’s powerful way of creating a mental image of things we want to see or have that we are yet to reach or attain, like our goals. Indeed, visualization enabled the residents of the Marshall Islands learn to navigate the surrounding waters by canoe in the daytime 500 years ago—without looking to the stars as guides. By harnessing your visualization capabilities with our surprisingly simple 3-step exercise, we’re more than confident that you’ll be able to successfully kick off your online course.
The first step is determining want you want to achieve with your online course.
Are you trying to teach a certain number of students? Are you trying to build your very own platform? Do you want to make a certain amount of money each month? Knowing for sure what you want to get out of your online course makes focusing on it easier—significantly improving your chances of keeping at it even if the going gets rough. The most effective way of visualizing that goal is not coming up with just one but three: an easy goal; a slightly harder goal; and a big, hairy, audacious goal. Breaking up your main goal—launching your very own online course—into three makes it easier to achieve by dividing the difficulty of succeeding into levels. Say your easy goal is getting 10 students; your slightly harder goal is getting 100 students; and your big, hairy, audacious goal is guesting on podcasts as a thought leader. By achieving your two easier goals, not only have you succeeded at launching your online course; you already have the experience, credibility and confidence to go after your big, hairy, audacious goal. Now that you have a clear idea of what your goals are for your online course...
The next step is coming up with a strategy for your online course.
You can create a detailed action plan to launch your online course, put dates of completion for each item (i.e., creating the course itself; choosing a web host; creating graphics, or hiring someone to create these; shooting the videos; etc.) and allot budgets for them. Creating a detailed action plan ensures you are on the right path and you can get back to it if you veer off course by simply reviewing your plan. Setting a deadline for each item of your plan (e.g., 6 months or 1 year) ensures you accomplish them in a reasonable amount of time. You will need to spend some money for tools to create stunning graphics, tools to shoot engaging videos and coaching.
The last step is getting rid of the negative thoughts or behaviors that have you stuck.
If you do not have enough time to create your online course, you can begin clearing up your schedule by lessening the time you spend on your low-priority tasks and doing away with your tasks that are not important at all. If you do not know how to go about doing an important part of the process, like marketing or reaching out to potential partners and affiliates, start reading up on it, or get help from a professional. Launching an online course is a very rewarding business to start. Yet many are discouraged from doing it, assuming it’s harder than they can handle. Actually, achieving success hinges largely on how well you can visualize the goal and how committed you are to it by removing the things that are preventing you from your life. By knowing for certain what your goal is, figuring out the best way to arrive at it and ridding yourself of the obstacles, you’ll succeed.