You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 167.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove Podcast, your calm space for practical help to get your dream business up and running while being authentically you and taking care of your mental health. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you're here!

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Hi, My Strong Friends. 

 

Hey, happy August, how's that heat doing for you? If you're on the Northern California coast, it's getting a little warm. Usually we're around 55-75 degrees. It's nice and cool all the time. But today, I think we're actually getting closer to 80. And the coastal houses out here don't have air conditioning. 

 

So I know he doesn't sound very hot. But when you're not used to it, when you're used to 55 degrees as your warm temperature is not so fun, especially when you're in an office and you want to keep your window closed to keep sound down. As you're recording podcasts or helping clients. It's like the heat. 

 

Anyway, hopefully you're able to get out, enjoy the sunshine, but also a cool breeze because we could all use a cool breeze right about now. 

 

Now, if you happen to offer online courses, that might give you that extra time where you can go out and enjoy the outside and enjoy that cool breeze. Because your clients are completely taken care of. They have access to learn from you 24/7. There could be clients from all over the world, there could be clients that they prefer to learn in the morning, some that are night owls, online courses are amazing. 

 

And in fact, you probably have been the customer of online courses. And let's be honest, some of those courses you completed and some of them you didn't. And we're going to talk a little bit on this statistics in this podcast also, only two, I'm not going to overwhelm you with statistics. I know not everybody loves statistics. But they help to make very informed decisions. 

 

WAYS TO INCREASE REVENUE WITH ONLINE COURSES

 

Okay, so first, I'm going to lay the very first statistic on you, which is about how this industry is growing with online courses? Like is it? Is it dead? And over? Should this not be something that you explore? Or is this something that's growing that you might want to get in on? 

 

Also, I'm going to go over the 10 different ways that you can increase your revenue. By using online courses, I'm going to give you some different combinations that you may or may not have thought about already. And then right in the middle, I'm also going to share with you about the completion rates of these courses, because that might influence some of the ways that you use online courses. 

 

THE PROJECTED GROWTH OF THE ONLINE COURSE INDUSTRY

Okay, so first off, we're going to talk about some statistics as to how well online courses are doing as an industry. This statistic is coming from techjury.net. And this was published in July of 2023. So just a couple of weeks ago. So they say that the worldwide e-learning market is projected to be worth $325 billion in 2025. And it's also expected to have a $12.8 billion growth between 2020 and 2024. 

So we're not even all the way through 2024. So this is still growing. It's expected to continue growing past 2025. 

 

So if you're wondering, is it even worth creating an online course? Well, according to the statistics, there's quite the demand and people are purchasing those courses. So sounding pretty darn good. 

 

Okay, so let's talk about the 10 different ways that you can increase your revenue with online courses. 

 

1. SELLING YOUR COURSES

So the first off, pretty simple, easy is people can just buy them outright, right, you can make one fully intact course, you can advertise it, and then people will come in, they'll buy it, and then they'll sit down in front of their computer or on their phone. And they'll take that course itself guided, you might decide to do drip content, so they get a little bit each week. But overall, it's completely on them. They just come in they buy the course off the shelf. 

 

Now you can choose to market this completely on your own and that is advertised and presented on your website. But you can also choose places like Udemy where you can upload your courses and Udemy is marketing for you. So Udemy is a course platform that people already know about and they go there searching for courses. So Udemy needs course creators to create a whole bunch of different courses and have They're for them. 

 

LinkedIn Learning is another one where they're advertising the different courses, but they need to have people creating the courses. Now, I'm not sure if you can actually upload your own courses to LinkedIn learning or if you need to arrange with them for their own production team.

 

I do have a coach friend out there, who was marketing her own course, she had it available on her website, and it caught the eye of some people on LinkedIn. And they work for LinkedIn. And they offered her a deal to be able to produce a professional copy of that course, and put it into LinkedIn Learning. And then she gets royalties on that. And I think she's sold something like 10 or 15,000 copies of her course now, because they were on LinkedIn Learning. 

 

So pretty awesome stuff that you can just create a course and then either market it yourself or choose a platform that markets it on your behalf. 

 

2. SELLING YOUR COURSE AS A GIFT

 

Okay, number two, again, this one's gonna seem pretty easy. It could be a gift. So one person can purchase it as a gift for somebody else. Now whether or not the other person wants it, that's obviously up for debate. That's always what it comes down to when you're buying gifts for people anyway. 

 

But you can offer different times of the year, you'll notice that there are a lot of businesses that are offering gift certificates for different things, or Black Friday sales so that people are buying holiday gifts, your course can also be one of those things that is a gift. So you would market it specifically saying buy this for your friend or loved one, or you know somebody else as a gift. And here's how you would buy it as a gift. And here's how I would deliver it to the gift recipient. That's a pretty simple one, right? People buy it off the shelf, or they just buy it as a gift. 

 

3. SELLING YOUR COURSE TO A CORPORATION

 

Okay, so now we're going to look at some of the other things. So if you happen to make one that a corporation would absolutely love, so that they could have it for their employees, a corporation could buy basically like a course license from you. So they're buying a certain number of licenses for that course. 

 

So in the software world, this licensing idea happens all the time. So if people want to all have a version of SAP, SAP will say how many users and we're going to sell you that many licenses. And then the company can have that many employees access that software program. So of course it can work the same way. Now how you track this is usually with bulk coupon codes. 

 

So I don't know what software you're using, I use Kajabi for all of my courses, my website. So Kajabi offers bulk coupon codes. So someone can come up to me and say, Hey, I'd really like to buy 100 copies of this one course to give to my employees. And I can decide if I want to have full price for 100 courses, or if I want to give a bulk discount because there are 100. And then I give them 100 unique codes. And then they hand out each individual code to all of their employees. 

 

So if you find a company that, maybe they have a gap in their training program, and they don't have the staff to create a training program, maybe you come in and you learn what their processes are, and you create a training program for them. And then you're able to sell it to them using this license thing. Or if it's more of a soft skill development, that could work for any company, it's not company specific, you can create something that then you could mark it out to the different corporations. So you might send them something in the mail that has a whole brochure on your course. 

 

Or you might end up finding the email addresses to some of their decision makers and then emailing them directly telling them about your course. Or of course, there's always advertising and there's so many different ways that you can advertise these honestly. But you're basically saying, Hey, is your company? Are your employees struggling with this soft skill? I offer this course to help to develop that soft skill. Would you like to purchase it? A bulk license rate is available for you. 

 

And so then they might call you up directly to have a whole lot of questions. They might be willing to buy right off of your website with a click of a button just saying how many they want, or they might need you to create a special invoice for them that they can then turn into their procurement department that would authorize the purchase and then they send you payment for that case. 

 

4. SELLING YOUR COURSE TO A SCHOOL DISTRICT

 

So those are some different ways also included in that corporation idea, or schools. So if there are schools at any age range that need some extra training, either for their staff or for their students, that's also another opportunity that you can create something that solves a problem that they're facing. And then you can market to them. Or you can meet with a school or a whole school district to learn what their pain points are, and then you can create that solution for them. And they can purchase it based on the number of students or the number of employees that would want access to it. 

 

5. OFFERING A FREEBIE OR A MINI-COURSE

 

Okay, two ways that I'm going to share with you, they don't generate revenue immediately, but they are part of your Sales Funnel. And Sales Funnels will create extra revenue for you. So one could be a mini-course. So this is just you offering a free mini-course, this is something less than an hour, maybe even a half an hour, where somebody can sign up for it, they're putting in their email address, and they get this course. 

 

Now you'd want to make sure that your course can actually solve their problem within that short amount of time that you're delivering the course. So it's giving them knowledge, it's giving them an action plan, and they can go and do something so they actually get a result. And it's important that they get a result. Because if it's just knowledge, and okay, that's interesting, and they don't do anything with it, they're not going to be as excited to go and purchase your next thing, your next bigger course or program. 

 

But when people have a sense of accomplishment, and you're the one that helped them with that, then they want to come back for more because then they can accomplish even more stuff with you. So also included in a Sales Funnel, our follow-up emails or some other way of outreach to them directly. To find out how that course went for them and to nurture them and let them know of the next things that are available. 

 

So offering a mini-course as a freebie is a great way to increase your revenue because it has a draw, it's bringing people in, they're getting results they already know, like, and trust you afterwards. And they're already really warmed up to be interested in the next thing that you have to sell. So you have a better chance of selling those other things as bigger programs. 

 

The other part where you could use this as part of your Sales Funnel, again, it's a freebie option. But instead of just having one course where they sit down, they watch the whole thing. Instead, you're breaking it up into little tiny modules of like 10 minutes or less. Because we know that in today's world, people seem to be going a mile a minute, and they don't have a whole lot of time to sit down and watch an online course. 

 

So when you can give it to them in small bite sized pieces, and make it actionable. So they've learned something, and they have a little homework assignment to do for the day. And they can go out and they can do that homework assignment. It doesn't take very long, they have that sense of accomplishment. And then the next day, they get the next piece of the training that builds on what they did the day before. And you can choose whatever length you want to so like three to five days is pretty common. 

 

Anything longer than five days, I would say don't do that as a freebie, because people need to be really invested to be willing to spend that many days on what you're doing. But three to five days seems to work pretty well. If you can get somebody results after three days, that's even better, because then they're like, okay, this person knows how to teach me and help me get results quickly. So that could be something in your favor. 

 

This will help you to create more revenue, because one, it has the draw of something free, it's promising some type of education and results right away. And then the person knows, likes, and trusts you because they've just spent three to five days with you, and they have something to show for it. They are much more likely to buy your next product or service. 

 

Now the cool thing about doing these courses or mini-courses as part of your Sales Funnel, is that this is happening around the clock. They're getting to meet you any day of the week at any time of the day. And you might be asleep. Right? Like it could be the middle of the night and you're sleeping. 

Meanwhile, the salesperson of you is still delivering all of this great value, it's still helping them and there's going to be some type of a pitch during this freebie course that you're telling them about the next thing that they could go into. So it's basically like having a salesperson working for you 24/7 That you don't have to pay because you've already invested your time and resources into create In this and it's running for you on autopilot, and the clients are super happy because 24/7 availability, they can get the help exactly when they need it. 

 

6. COLLABORATING WITH OTHER BUSINESS OWNERS

 

All right now the next one I'm going to go over is a collaboration opportunity. So you can create more revenue when you tap into other people's audiences. So if you don't like to market that much, this could definitely be an extra thing for you.  Somebody else is marketing on your behalf and including your courses in some way. 

 

And then all of a sudden, you have people coming to you, which seems like from out of nowhere, because you haven't talked with them. But really, they've gone through somebody else's funnel, and then they were redirected over to you. So how this would work is that you find different business partners. So not meaning that you've entered into a legal agreement as like official owners or anything of the business, but that you have this collaboration. And so there can be collaboration agreements, you can search for those online, there's a couple of different ways this works. 

 

So it could be that there's another business owner that offers a product or a service that also is for your ideal clients, but they do a different part of it. So it could be the same journey. It's just they specialized in one thing and you specialized in the other. Or it could be totally different journeys, where we know that once someone finishes this one journey in their life with you, they're ready for the next thing. 

 

And then a final combination could be that while you're working with someone if that client is struggling with something, and they really need a breakthrough, but it's not something that you help them with, you could then have this other person's online course that you offer to them that they get a breakthrough with. And then they're ready to do the rest of the program with you. 

 

So you can have an online course that you can offer to other business collaborators out there. So they can either purchase those bulk coupon codes, and then offer your course directly into their client base. It can be added on to individual services or group service or even a membership.

 

So that's one way, there's also the concept of white labeling where you're creating a course, but it doesn't have any of your branding on it. In fact, you're going to put the other company's brand on it, but they're paying you to create that course. And you might set up something with royalties at some point. 

 

You can also create a course that somebody else can use as a bonus when they're offering their products and services out. So they may have a big launch plan where they're doing a huge amount of marketing. And they're offering early signup bonuses. So those early signup bonuses can include an online course that you made, because you do something a little bit different or teach in a different way than that business owner. 

 

And so oftentimes, what happens is that either you also promote and say, “Hey, I have this course that you can only get when you sign up for this other person's program”. And then they get to go over there, they're getting your bonus, because they signed up for this other person's program. And you're getting an affiliate commission from that person. So it's not that they get all the sales, and you have to do all the marketing that you're splitting that revenue. 

 

It could also, of course, be that you're not doing any of the advertising your product alone is enough. And that other business owner is doing all of the promotion. And they're talking about your course, and people really, really want your course. So they're willing to not only purchase this other person's program, because it's an amazing program, but they want your course. And now you have exposure to all of their audience. They love your course so much that now they're going to come to your company looking for what else you offer. 

 

HOW MANY PEOPLE COMPLETE ONLINE COURSES ALL THE WAY THROUGH?

 

Okay, so now we're going to take a quick little break on our list of 10 ways to increase your revenue with online courses. So that we can talk about a statistic. And so the statistics specifically is how many people actually complete online courses. 

 

So if you have been that student, you purchased a course, this is exactly what you needed. You know, it has all of the information, the tips, the tools, everything so that you can actually achieve something and then it's there and you know that it's at your own pace. And then sometimes you realize that your pace either doesn't exist. You're not actually doing it, or you bought the course too soon, you're not ready for it. Or you've bought way too many courses and you don't have enough time to fit everything in. Or you just plain old got distracted. 

 

Okay, so what are the statistics for the number of people that actually complete a course? This statistic is coming from linkedin.com, and this was published in January of 2023. And they're saying that based on their various research, they found that the completion of online courses was between, eeeeh, 5% and 15%. 

 

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch! 

 

You put in all of this time and effort on an online course, you're so excited for people to get results. And then people buy it, you get to celebrate you love the revenue, and then you're looking at the progress report, and you're seeing, wait, people bought this and they haven't even started, or they started and they only took a little bit, and you're starting to think there's something wrong with you? 

 

Well, there's not there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with your course. The challenge is it being self paced online courses, people get distracted, they get overbooked with their different things. It's normal, unfortunately, that only 5% to 15% are completing the courses. 

 

So why am I telling you this? I mean, after all, I'm supposed to be encouraging you to create online courses, right? Well, yes, of course. And I want you to be set up for success. And I want your clients to be set up for success. 

 

7. GROUP PROGRAM WITH A COURSE

 

So the rest of the ways that I'm going to teach you on how you can increase your revenue with online courses, is also designed to help your clients actually complete the online courses. Very first one is talking about including your course, as part of a group program. And it's a group program that would have like, weekly check-ins where there is accountability. 

 

So maybe they are watching one portion, one module of your course per week. And then there's a call that everybody comes to, and it's a check in on the material to see, what did you think of the material? Did anything get in the way of doing the material? Do you have any questions on it? How are you going to apply that material, and there might actually be extra coaching involved or office hours or something. So some way where people are feeling a little bit of pressure to make sure that they actually complete that course. 

 

And in fact, they might be willing to pay a little bit more for this group program, because they know it's going to set them up for success to actually complete this course. And that's why they're buying it like they actually want to complete this, have the knowledge, be able to apply it and get the results. So a group program with a course component is really helpful. 

 

And if you're thinking to yourself, well, if I'm going to do a group program and show up every week, what's the point? I'm already there, I might as well just tell them the information. Well, you can do that. The problem, though, is that it cuts down on the amount of time for interaction with them. And for group discussion, or discussion of different questions that you might pose as part of that training. So by offering it as an online training, they get to take their learning part offline of the meeting. And then the meeting itself is fully concentrated on that interaction between you and all of your clients. So that in itself is a huge bonus. 

 

There might also be a Facebook group or some other community group with it so that there's dialogue throughout the week, that's helping people to achieve what they are setting out to do, and to generate the discussions around the course. Okay, so group program with a course embedded, great opportunity for revenue. 

 

8. COURSE FOLLOWED BY A STANDALONE MEMBERSHIP

 

The next three examples I'm going to give you all revolve around a membership. So memberships are a month-to-month commitment. And there's different ways that you can combine courses with a membership. So one model is that you're selling the course all by itself at first, and it might be one of those more expensive courses because it's a signature course. People are coming they there's a high achievement rate based on this course in high demand.

 

But what you find is that people get in, and they have a really hard time again, because it's an online course to actually sit there and get it done. So there are some people that decide to promote their course one time a year, a huge amount of marketing. Just so they launch once a year they get a huge amount of sales, and then they choose to add on a membership as the back end. 

 

So people can purchase that membership, it's separate from the course. So they can buy it at any time. And then they come in, and it can be a month-a-month or a yearly membership. And they come in and inside you have extra calls or support, are meetings where it's helping with the implementation of the things that they learned inside of the big course. 

 

Now with a membership, the beauty of this is that there's no official end date. So it gives a lot of flexibility for everybody based on their learning style. And also their workload. Some people might need to have this after work, they don't have all of their time available. And other people might be more of a full time student and they have all of their time available to focus on the course and try to get done as fast as possible get the results as fast as possible. 

 

So a membership model gives them that freedom, that flexibility to stay for just the part that they need, or to stay for as long as they need to until they finish. So typically, a membership has a lower fee per month, then a group program, a group program that has a deadline for when they're supposed to be done. And so that's adding to their encouragement to get it done, a membership, it's more affordable. So they can stay for the long haul if they need to. 

 

9. MEMBERSHIP WITH 1 INCLUDED COURSE

 

The second variation of membership is where there is a course but it's included in the membership. So they're not buying it separately. So it's still a low, affordable amount each month, but it includes the course and then it includes all of the support that goes with it. Now what's different with this for the course access is that they only have access to the course for as long as they're in the membership. 

 

And then if they come in and they only stay for two or three months, then they have taken all of the parts of the course that they want, they're done with it, they don't have any further access with the previous model where they buy the course first, and then they buy a membership, they have usually lifetime access to the course. So they can have that for years or the life of the business. 

 

But in a membership, they only have access as long as they're an active member. So this also helps with it being affordable and accessible to people because instead of having to pay like $1000- $2,000, for an online course, they might just pay a hundred or a couple hundred to be in a monthly membership. So a lot more affordable. And if someone who's budget conscious, they're going to come in, finish up as soon as they can and get out which is also good because then you're seeing someone get results quickly. 

 

And hopefully you're going to reach out to them for a testimonial on what's possible through your course. And of course, we know that testimonials help to influence other people on why they would want to buy your course or your membership. 

 

10. MEMBERSHIP WITH MULTIPLE COURSES

 

Okay, the final one is having multiple courses in your membership. So there might be a big thing that you're trying to help people to accomplish. But you know that if you were to put it all into one course, they would be so overwhelmed, and it would take them forever to get through it. So instead you choose to break it up into specific topics. And each course has its own result that you're promising that if they sit there, they learn all of the stuff in this one course they do all of the homework, they do the action items, that then they can get the result that that course is saying that they can get. 

 

And then each of the different courses within your membership, they're all providing a piece of the puzzle, right? So it's like all of that knowledge still is intermixed in some way, the end results of each of those, when you smush all the results together, it helps the client to get that full result that they want. 

 

That's actually the membership model that I chose to do. I like to help people get their businesses up and running smoothly and profitably while putting their mental health first. So I actually include six different courses in my membership, because I know that they need to know all of these six different pieces in order to have that result where their business is up and running, that it's running smoothly, that it's profitable, and that they're taking care of their mental health. 

 

Okay, so that is a great example of 10 different ways that you can increase your revenue by using online courses. 

 

SUMMARY OF THE 10 WAYS TO INCREASE REVENUE WITH ONLINE COURSES

 

So just a quick recap:

• Buy your course right off the shelf, or they can buy it off of the shelf of a company (Udemy or LinkedIn)
• Market it as a gift, offer gift certificates; run promotions around gift giving times
• Sell bulk licenses to corporations and schools
• Include courses in your Sales Funnels; offer a mini course or  freebie
• Collaboration opportunities with another business; your courses in their business model or offered as a bonus
• Make sure that your clients can complete your course by choosing to do a group program where it has a course and a live component.
• Membership Model 1: Sell the course first and then a membership afterwards to support it; 
• Membership Model 2: Sell the course with a membership to help people to get all the way through it; 
• Membership Model 3: Multiple courses included for a bigger goal; has a live component to it. 

 

 UNSHAKABLE BUSINESS CO-LAB MEMBERSHIP

 

So I love online courses, I've created 10 of them at this point, I've used them at different places in my business model. I especially love having the courses in the Unshakable Business Co-Lab Membership. So that's a month-to-month program. And it helps you with defining your product and service. So including online courses. So this helps you to understand the market research that goes into it, how to do versioning of your products and services so that you don't allow perfectionist tendencies to stop you from getting your thing out into the world. And it also breaks down specific project plans for one on one group programs, workshops, online courses, and memberships. 

 

So you'd be able to come in, learn all of this stuff, and build something all the way through and launch it and sell it to your clients. So that course is there. Plus you have the coaching that happens twice a week inside that membership. And that's just one part of the membership. 

 

The other parts are on Sales Funnels, so that you understand: What are Sales Funnels? How do you use data to make your decisions? And then how do you optimize Sales Funnels, so that you have planned predictable revenue all of the time. And that could be for breakeven financial goals, your minimum math revenue goal, or even your bold goals. I mean, really, the sky's the limit when you're your own entrepreneur. 

 

I also have the connection factor, which is teaching you how to talk with people using your own stories, to connect with them deeply and have them want to work with you. So that's going to help you become fully booked on your products and services and even have a waiting list. And then there is an Emotional Freedom course. It's going to teach you everything about mindset so that you can take care of your mental health. 

 

There's also a Love Your Schedule course that's going to help you to define what your dream schedule is, and what your schedule is now as you're building everything up so that you can realize that dream schedule. And it comes with a business planner to help you work through all of those obstacles that get in the way. 

 

And then finally, the one that I love the most is called Wired for Success. And this teaches you the clarity step process. This is a seven step process that helps you to achieve any goal while putting your mental health first. And this course also goes into how you can use this to help your clients to achieve their goals, whatever the goal may be, and also some life and business hacks on how you can repurpose the clarity steps to help you as you're creating your products and services and also your marketing material. 

 

So all of that is available to you within a membership for only $149 a month. And where else are you going to get that much business expertise and support for only $149 a month. So with that you get to weekly group coaching calls with me where you're taking turns having one on one coaching, we're sharing screens when we need to. I'm giving you tech help. I'm also coaching you on mindset. I'm coaching you on any of the business principles that were covered in those courses so that we can get all of your products in services going your processes, your schedules, your sales funnel. 

 

And, more importantly, we are taking care of your mental health. Because if you don't take care of your mental health, your business won't matter. And we want to make sure that your social well being is more than taken care of. So we also have a private Facebook group so that you can interact with the other members. And you also have 24/7 access to me and extra coaching when you need it. And a monthly social call so that you can get to know other entrepreneurs, learn from each other, socialize, create friendships, and explore collaboration opportunities. 

 

Remember how I said that selling your course was someone else's program, that that's a great collaboration. It only works if you can find collaboration partners, right? So the Unshakable Business Co-Lab brings together people that love to help other people, and that also love to collaborate. 

 

So I would like to extend a warm invitation to you to come and check out the Unshakable Business Co-Lab you can go to my website at myfreedomgrove.com And there's the Unshakable tab. That's where you'll find the Unshakable Business Co-Lab. Or to go to that page directly, just type in myfreedomgrove.com/join. I would love to have you join us inside the Unshakable Business Co-Lab.

 

All right, my friends. I hope that you go out, get some sunshine, wear some sunscreen, protect yourself and enjoy some nice cool breezes. 

 

Stay cool on this warm August. 

 

I will talk with you soon. 

 

Bye bye.

 

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Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove Podcast. When you are ready to make your dream business a reality and take care of your mental health, I invite you to join the Unshakable Business Co-Lab. This is the mastermind membership you've been waiting for. There's no limits on your imagination, nor your timeline. We're with you every step of the way. To learn more, please visit www.myfreedomgrove.com/join. I'll see you there!