Almost every blogger wants and tries to monetise his blog at some point of time. After all when you are spending your valuable hours on it, getting some passive income from it won’t hurt, will it?
If you Google, you will find articles, blogs and webinars teaching you 10 or 101 proven ways to make money online.
They will tell you their stories of how they started getting a 6 or 7 figure income from their blog in just a month and how they are, now, travelling the world carrying a laptop and blogging from a beautiful beach.
It will take your motivation level through the roof and you will start applying a few of these 101 money making ideas right away.
But with time, you start feeling frustrated. Even after working 4 times more than that 7 digit income guy, your blog is not getting more than a few thousand page views and a few pennies a day through Adsense.
Like every other blogger, I followed the same path. I started blogging as a hobby and to change the world by writing revolutionary articles. LOL
Then I realised millions of other bloggers are out there trying to change the world so I could calm down and relax.
After spending a while blogging I came across the blogs of those 6-figure-income-in-a-month guys. Oh goodness. I couldn’t sleep for a few days. The dreams of big cars and beautiful beaches were in my eyes all the time. It was somewhere around 2009-10.
For the next 3 years I tried all those ‘Make Money Online’ ideas and believe me I didn’t work any less hard than those successful guys. And I was always more tech-savvy than the average guys around me and I believe I was not dumb (though looking back at the fact that I dragged with those ideas for 3 years, I doubt it sometime ;))
But anyway, one day suddenly the miracle happened and I found the magic key to make 6-figure income online and I am going to share that with you today.
Oh~ just kidding. Don’t get excited, please. I still don’t make 6 figure.
But something truly happened in 2014 which made me realise that I had been working hard in the wrong direction all those years. I found that there are easier and more legitimate ways to make money online. And I would confess, I had no role in or I didn’t do anything special to reach this realisation point. It was just a coincidence, or I can say pure luck.
I tried something on my blog and it worked. But it wasn’t that I knew it beforehand. I seriously had know idea it would work. I was trying it as I had tried numerous other ideas in blogging. And if you ask most successful bloggers about their success point, they will tell you it was not deliberate and planned. It’s mostly a Yureka moment. You keep trying different things and one day you feel like ‘Holy Shit! I can’t believe this is working so well.’
And that successful idea was to create and sell online courses.
I was shocked how simple it was to make money by creating and selling online course. I was not able to figure out why not everyone else is doing this. Why not those 6-figure-income guys empahsize this idea instead of giving those 101 ways to make passive income. I will let you know why.
But before that I want to make this statement in bold letters that ‘Teaching an Online Course is the Best Way to Make Money Online‘. For everyone…
And I will give 8 solid reasons to support my statement. Stay with me.
1. Other methods to make money online are too difficult and complicated
Money making methods like Adsense or other form of advertising are not very useful for new bloggers. You need huge amount of traffic to get any more than a few dollars through advertising. It generally takes a lot of time to reach that level of traffic and once people are on your site, it doesn’t make sense to sed them away for $ 0.05 ad clicks. Also you aways face the danger of your Adsense account banned due to stupid reasons. Freelance work field has got saturated and it’s very difficult to get even decent rates for your work. Selling physical products or even drop-shipping is not everyone’s cup of tea. It involves a lot of offline and manual work and I don’t know if we can even call it an onlinebusiness. Also not everyone who is coming to your site looking for some information is willing to click on an ad or buy a physical product from you or give you a freelance project. So these online business models are not really reliable and I don’t think I would like to depend for the livelihood of my family on any of these businesses.
On the other hand, everyone who visits your site is looking for some information, and you are giving that information. It’s highly likely that you can sell some ‘information or knowledge product’ or in other words a course to this visitor. It’s very simple. People have always spent money to learn new things and they always will. You just have to convince them that the knowledge that you provide in your course can help solve their problem.
2. Anybody can create and sell Online Courses
Now, this is one of the biggest misconceptions about selling online courses. Most of the bloggers think that they have to be a high level professional expert or some professor or coach to teach an online course. But just think about it, what makes someone an ‘expert’? Is there some university that gives a degree of ‘expert’? All these gurus teaching you how to build a million-dollar online business – are they all MBAs from Harvard or did they all establish their own million-dollar businesses before writing a blog or teaching a course about it? may be some of them.. but definitely not the most. Most of them are common people with average education.
So what exactly makes people an expert in any field? They are just passionate about a field or a ‘niche’ and they know more about that niche topic than many average people. Those average people are their target and because they know more than these average guys, they are ‘experts’ for them.
Just think what topic you know more about than average people around you. Let’s say you know how to clean your house better or how to make good tea or how to prepare for a test better. You know how to create a WordPress blog, install a theme and plugin. There are many people who don’t know or know less about these things than you. And for them you are an expert. Definitely there are many people who have better knowledge of these topics than you but they are not your target customers. So, that’s not a problem.
The online courses do not have to be about programming languages, coding, web design or business. They can be anything, from breastfeeding techniques to pet care. You just have to find your idea and that’s it.
3. People are ready to Pay money for online courses
One more worry of online course teachers is that would people pay money for the course, even if similar content is available for free on YouTube or elsewhere. The truth is – yes, people pay money for the organised courses as they offer much more than watching videos on YouTube. The courses can have quiz elements to test the learning, they can interact and get help from the instructor and fellow learners. They can also get certificates of completion.
4. It helps you build your reputation as an authority
Teaching online courses also helps you build other passive income businesses. When you teach something online, you automatically becomes an authority in that field. That’s why people are paying money to learn from you. You can use this authority reputation to write and sell books, get corporate projects, public speaking opportunities and much more.
5. It’s less time consuming than other online business models
As I said before, it takes a huge amount of time, with other online business models, to make any more than a few dollars a day. Comparatively online courses takes less time to create and start bringing steady income. But don’t misunderstand me and think that making a course is an easy task. It takes a lot of effort and time but it’s definitely not years. And it’s a one time effort that keeps bringing you steady income and the satisfaction that you are helping people learn something.
6. You don’t have to invest a lot of money to build an Online Course Business
You don’t need to sell a kidney to build an online course business. In fact you don’t need to sell anything. If you just have a laptop, internet connection, a camera or a phone with a camera and an earphone with mic, you are good to start. Once you start making money from your courses, you can upgrade to those fancy equipments.
You can sell your courses on your website but even if you don’t want to create a website, you can sell them in marketplaces like Udemy and Skillshare. They handle hosting, payments, refunds and everything else for you.
7. It’s the future of Education
There was a time, when people gave more value to degrees and accreditations than the knowledge itself. So, studying meant going to a college and institution, attending classes, taking exams and getting degrees.
But times have changed. online education is not the ‘next’ big thing. It’s the big thing right now. People are ready to pay money to learn new skills online. It’s a multi-billian dollar industry. All the major universities are moving towards online courses. Check Udacity, Coursera, edx, Udemy, Skillshare etc. and you will know that it’s a real trending business and not some crappy idea from those 6-figure-income-in-a-month guys.
8. It’s Fun and Exciting
Teaching is fun and exciting! For most instructors, creating and launching their first course is most challenging but after that it becomes so fun to create new courses and do new launches. It, kind of, becomes an addiction.
And the emails from your students, thanking you for helping them learn something and bringing change to their lives, are just priceless.
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