So why create an online course?

Well first of all, as I've already mentioned, the online course market is booming. Here are a few stats to get you excited:

• The global online learning industry has been on a steady rise in the past two decades. Since 2000, it has grown by a whopping 900%
• The global online learning market is expected to double in size from around $250 billion in 2020 to $499.1 billion in 2027
• Thinkific and Teachable, the two leading platforms for creating and selling online courses, have together helped course creators make more than $1 billion in revenues to date
• When it comes to pricing, the average price of courses sold through the Teachable platform is $177 while almost 25% of schools priced their courses in excess of $200

(source: Top 75 Online Learning Statistics & Trends for 2021)

But there are 3 other really good reasons why bloggers, in particular, can really benefit from selling online courses:

• Diversify your income / Futureproof your blog
• Big money from small blogs
• It’s passive & scalable

Diversify your income / Futureproof your blog

As bloggers we never quite know what's around the corner, so it makes a lot of sense to take steps to diversify your income streams and futureproof your blog.

What do I mean by this?

I mean many bloggers are sitting in a rather precarious position... with all (or nearly all) of their income dependant on one income stream. For many bloggers that's display ads from companies like Mediavine... or sponsored posts. But what if the next big thing to come round the corner for you was something that will completely wipe out that revenue stream in one stroke?

When the COVID pandemic first hit, many bloggers who were dependant on sponsored posts had all their contracts cancelled and no new work for months. And bloggers dependant on ads saw their RPMs tumble... and if they were in certain niches, like travel, they saw their pageviews tumble too... resulting in a massive drop in income.

Creating an online course gives you another revenue stream, which puts you in a much less precarious situation and cushions you from whatever the next 'shock' for bloggers might be.

Big money from small blogs

But for many bloggers their blogs are just too small right now to make money from ads, and their social media following is too tiny to attract high paying sponsored posts.

The great thing about creating online courses is that you don't have to have a ton of blog traffic or a large social media following to be successful. In fact, you can make good money from selling courses even if your audience is tiny - so long as you listen carefully to your audience and create what they really want to buy (more about that in Module 1!)

Though of course if your audience is larger, online courses will really help you rake in the big bucks!

It’s passive & scalable

The truly beautiful thing about online courses, is it's basically passive income... you make the thing once and you can sell it over and over again, for years to come... this is in complete contrast to say, sponsored posts, VA services or physical products.

This ability to sell an online course over and over again, without having to put in any additional work, means an online course business is incredibly scalable... as your blog grows, so will your course sales... and you can easily create additional courses to increase your income too.