Why are so many course creators struggling?

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

“Creating an online course is so easy!”

“Online courses are your ticket to passive income!”

“You can make millions working in your pajamas!”

This is what many “gurus” would like you to believe.

But if any business would actually be liabilitieswe all would. Does that mean you? it should not create an online course or an e-learning program? In no way.

The size of the e-learning market was more than $200 billion in 2022, and forecasts have it reaching over $800 billion by 2030.

Beyond the financial implications, there is nothing more rewarding than helping people transform their lives. Creating an online course is a way to exponentially increase your influence in a way that you can't with one-on-one services.

So if you're going to dive in the e-learning industryhere's what you need to know.

You can earn money by selling courses…

… but it may take more than you think to achieve your financial goals.

One of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs make is thinking that creating a course will be easy. But even if it is “easy”, it is not fast.

So if you're relying on your eLearning business for 100% of your income, consider building your course in your “off” hours if you have a traditional 9-to-5. Or, if you're offering one-on-one services, you can continue to work with those clients while you build your program.

You also don't have to wait to get started selling your course until it is finished. For some entrepreneurs, selling a program that isn't complete (with the promise that the rest will arrive by a certain date!) is the motivation they need to finish it. You can even offer a “beta” version at a lower price.

Honestly, your course will never be “done”. The first course I created and sold online, The Comprehensive Copywriting Academy, looks nothing like when I first started in 2012. This is because once students entered the course, they they were the ones who gave me clear direction on what else I could add to the program to make it even more valuable. We continue to add to it today.

Selling the minimum viable bid version of your course not only allows you to start earning faster, but it allows you to start impacting more lives faster as well.

AI cannot create your course

there are AI programs My team and I use (and love!) to synthesize information, conduct competitive research, and any number of admin tasks. But these programs are not able to create quality and valuable content. The power of AI is in its ability to synthesize information that already exists. If everyone used AI to build a course, everyone would have the same course.

But you should be creating a course – not retrieving information that already exists. You are the expert and you shouldn't teach a course if you don't know the content.

Ask and answer these questions before you begin:

What do you do? OWN offering unlike others in the space?
What transformation am I delivering to consumers that other programs can't?
What do you do? ME the best person to guide my audience through this transformation?

The answers to these questions are the foundation of your offer – and they are answers that HE could never dream of.

“Build it and they will come” is not a strategy

What you have to offer is valuable. It can transform lives, and you've probably seen that firsthand.

But having a handful of people—or even a few dozen people—buy your offering doesn't translate into a sustainable business. You need a system to find your audience and convert them into customers. Not everyone will be eligible for your offer. Even the people who ARE perfect adaptability is people, meaning they resist taking action and making a change, even if that change benefits them. EFFECTIVE messaging it's essential to make sure they understand why they need your offer—and why they need it now.

Know your numbers

Running a business without understanding your numbers is like flying an airplane in the clouds without any of your instruments working.

No matter what income The number you have in mind—six, seven, or eight figures and beyond—you need to know what it means to reach that number.

These questions are just a small part of those to be answered:

What is the price of your offer?
Where does your data come from and how much do you get each month?
How much does it cost to get a bullet?
What percentage of people who get on your list make a purchase?
How much does it cost to convert a lead into a sale?
What percentage of people are opening your emails?

If you're showing ads, you really you must know your numbers. (In fact, I recommend making sure your course generates sales without first advertising and then using advertising as an accelerator. If you can't sell your course, advertising won't magically fix it.)

When I first started, the gurus in the space said, “If you run ads for $10 a day on Facebook, you can make sales.”

Guess how that went.

You need to know your click-through rate, landing page opt-in rate, and your cost per customer to get started. Do these numbers add up to a return on ad spend?

Make sure your mentor use the tactics they teach

Many online entrepreneurs are making a living teaching other course creators. But the dirty secret? They are not using the tactics they learn. You want to make sure that the information you are consuming has been tested.

Of course, there's no guarantee that what works for one business will work for yours. But it's certainly worth asking anyone you're learning tactics you're not using.

Above all, creating an online course is rewarding. The amount of lives you can positively impact increases as the time you have to spend on certain elements of your business decreases.

But, like I said… it's a business. There never has been and never will be anything passive about running a profitable and sustainable business – e-learning program or otherwise.

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