Passive Income for Freelancers – How to Create an Online Course

You work remotely, you have extensive knowledge in your specialization, and you also have a lot of experience thanks to working with many clients. Not only do you know the technical aspects of your field, but you also know how to promote and sell your services. At the same time, you are looking for passive sources of income that will be your protection, for example in the weaker months, or finance your “security cushion” .

Freelancers looking for additional sources of income can use their unnecessary jobs or projects prepared especially for sales. These can be, for example, graphics, photos, actions and prestest for Adobe programs or other tools useful to your colleagues.
Another option is to create an online course. It is undoubtedly more time-consuming and requires some investment, but for those freelancers who have managed to gather a certain audience around them and who have the opinion of experts in their field, it can be an interesting option for passive income.

In previous posts, we advised you on how to start creating a course and how to start preparing it . Today, we will discuss how to sell, promote the course and measure the effectiveness of these activities.

Online course: how to promote your training?

First of all, it is worth starting the promotion of the course before it is even available for sale. In this way, you will prepare the recipients, you will be remembered and at the same time increase the number of people who will be interested in the training.
If you run a blog or profile on FB, keep your readers informed about the progress of work, invite them to leave their comments and suggestions – you create this course with them in mind, so their involvement is doubly valuable to you.

To promote your course effectively, don’t limit yourself to the community that has already gathered around your blog or Facebook profile.

• Regularly report on the progress of work on your blog and Facebook profile, encourage recipients to comment and leave their suggestions to get their engagement.
• Create a Facebook group related to the training topic. As you will probably notice, Facebook cuts the reach of posts on company websites quite significantly – blogs, courses, companies, etc. The
  way to increase the reach may be to set up a group that will be related to the topic of the training. In this way, you will gain a new group of recipients who would otherwise never reach your blog / website, and at the same time you will have the opportunity to present yourself as a specialist in your field.
  If you feel that managing a group and keeping it active is too time-consuming and burdensome, try to establish cooperation with other, already existing industry groups.
• Use the potential of webinars . You can host the webinar yourself or invite another freelancer to interview – possibly recognizable, reputable, or knowledgeable and experienced that may be of interest to your audience.It is also a good solution to establish cooperation with a website, blog or influencer who organizes webinars to act as an expert. Remember that the goal of a webinar is to provide participants with valuable knowledge, not to advertise your course intrusively.
• Invite influencers to cooperate . Does any of your friends run a blog, a popular profile on social media, have their audience? Ask for a possible mention of your course or affiliation. Thanks to the extended range, you will gain access to new recipients.
• Use the mailing list. If there is a subscription to the newsletter available on your website or blog, inform the recipients in it about the next stages of the course – preparation, pre-sale, launching the sale and its planned completion.
• Fine- tune your course landing page. All channels – webinars, live reports on Facebook, activity in groups and social media, blog entries should lead to your sales page. Make sure your landing page looks good! It cannot miss a clear call to action, a transparent price list and information about what the student will get for his money. Testimonials from users who have already completed the course will also be useful here.
• Prepare a free sample . If this is your first online course and you are not sure if you will convince the users, present its mini / teaser version. You can choose a few small fragments to show what materials the course consists of and what the recipient can expect, or you can focus on one simple issue that the “mini course” explains.

Online course: how to sell training?

Theoretically, this is the easiest part, practically – it is often the most difficult part because you have to break the barrier of “is my job really worth that?” As a seasoned freelancer, you may know this dilemma earlier in your freelance career, but that doesn’t mean it won’t come back with the new experience of preparing and selling your online course.

The first question you need to answer is your method of operation: “sell the course first, then do it” or “do the course first, then sell it”.

Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. The “Sell a course first, then create it” approach requires a lot of trust from your audience and places a lot of responsibility on you. If the course sells poorly and you decide not to create it, you will have to return the money you paid in and lose the trust of your audience, which will be difficult for you to rebuild. So you need to have a plan B prepared in case the interest is low.
The advantage of the “Sell a course, do a course” approach is that you know exactly what your audience will be, what they expect and what their requirements are, so you can prepare a project tailored exactly to their needs.

On the other hand, the “Take a course, then sell it” approach means that you can invest a lot of effort in preparing a course that will not find interest among your audience. However, it gives you the comfort of working at your own pace and does not put so much pressure: you do not think about the deadline that you have to meet and what will be included in the course depends on your creativity.
A good way to sell this type is to set a lower price first to get your first buyers. Their feedback will help you polish the course and bring it to perfection before you raise the price and start regular sales.

How to prepare and sell an online course – summary

Creating an online course is a safe investment that will require time, and in the case of more complex courses, e.g. with video recordings, also the purchase of equipment or software for processing materials (recordings, video).
However, if the course is carefully prepared to suit the needs of the audience, you can count on it to become an attractive source of passive income, which is always a valuable safeguard in the work of a freelancer.

Are you planning to prepare your online course? Are you wondering if it’s worth it? We are waiting for your comment!