Platform-building is about sharing your expertise, extending your influence, and making a living in the process. If you created a Venn diagram of those three categories, right in the center you’d find creating your own online course.
How can you turn your platform into your very own online course? We’ll show you how.
YouTube Changed Everything
Imagine you’ve just finished cleaning up after dinner. The dishwasher is loaded. The counters are wiped clean. You’ve finally sat down for the evening when you hear a gurgling sound coming from the kitchen. Half curious and half anxious, you get up to investigate, only to find a pool of water emanating from under your dishwasher.
Do you call a plumber? No! You open YouTube.
From searing a steak to sewing on a button to changing your car’s alternator, YouTube has revolutionized the way people DIY—“do it yourself.” Information that was once the realm of specialists is now readily available and helpfully presented.
YouTube has become the default do-it-yourself search engine because video recreates personal experience like no other medium, allowing creators to quickly and easily share their perspectives with high-quality video and audio. Visual and audio learners alike get the best of both worlds as specialists from every discipline imaginable share what they know. It’s so popular that YouTube is now the world’s #2 search engine, right behind Google.
But what do you do if the problem you need to solve is much larger than a DIY hack?
What about when you need to understand the strategy behind launching a blog with an audience growth strategy, or the insides of the publishing industry so you can publish a bestselling book?
That’s more than one short video can teach you, but that’s why we’ve created those solutions in the form of an online course.
Teach Your Expertise Online
Online courses are the most effective way to teach-for-transformation online. Maybe it’s the video format or the blend of convenience and engagement, but for whatever reason people are buying more online courses year-after-year.
In 2017, online courses made $46 billion and the most recent projections show “e-learning” collecting $325 billion by 2025. If you’re not already doing so, you need to offer an online course of your own. Courses can establish your authority, serve your audience, and turn your platform into a revenue-generating business.
Online courses allow you to take your expertise and focus it on one detailed solution, without having to shrink your expertise down all the way to a single podcast episode, YouTube video, or blog post.
Try Platform University!
Want to give Platform University (your one-stop shop for building an online audience) a spin? Get your first week of Platform University for just $1. Cancel anytime. Try Platform University for Just $1Online courses allow you to teach transformational content at scale, so students can consume your content on their own schedule and ask questions as they arise. Authors like Seth Godin and Lewis Howes have created courses to teach content similar to what’s in their $10 books, but the courses sell for $100 or more.
People pay that because they want personal instruction.
Create Your Own Online Course in a Day
Want to take your platform to the next level? It’s time to DIY.
Here’s are the four steps to how you can create your own online course in a day:
- Identify and focus on one problem you could help your audience solve in less than one hour of training.
- Using that problem as your Product Focus, outline 3–5 short videos to walk through the solution you’d recommend.
- Record those videos on your phone, and upload them to a course platform like Teachable (which we recommend).
- Email your audience and let them know that your course is now available for sale, at just $100.
You don’t have to be a best-selling author or professional educator to create an online course. All you need is yourself, a phone, and a day. Your platform will never be the same.
