Online learning has never been so popular. Gone are the days when people will judge you if you’re studying online instead of in person. If you want to capitalize on this wave of virtual learning, you can start by brainstorming online course ideas that students will love.
Learning how to create your own course can be much more straightforward than you think. At least, that is if you use the right tools. That means you can spend more time focusing on finding the right digital course ideas and less on figuring out how you’re going to publish online classes.
In this article, we’ll go over seven course ideas to sell online. For each idea, we’ll talk about how you can implement it and show examples of available digital courses. Let’s get to it!
7 Online Course Ideas to Sell Online
1. Social Media Marketing (Digital Marketing)
Everyone uses social media nowadays. If you run a business and you’re not on social media, you make it that much harder for customers to find out about you and learn more about what you offer.
If you look at online learning platforms, you’ll notice a lot of the most popular courses have to do with social media. People are fascinated about learning to leverage it to grow brands and promote businesses. Reliable courses that teach this information are always in demand:
Image credit: Skillshare.
The easiest way to differentiate your courses from everything else that is online is to focus on specific platforms and how to use them. Courses that cover the basics are a dime a dozen. That means it’s important that you consider what aspects of social media marketing you’re particularly equipped to cover.
2. Remote work and freelancing opportunities (Employment)
Remote work is here to stay and a lot of professionals are interested in finding opportunities that will allow them to work from anywhere. However, if you’ve never worked remotely or freelanced before, chances are you’ll need help making the switch.
A lot of resources to learn about online work focus too much on telling students how much they can earn, what careers they should consider, and other information that’s not truly helpful. If you’re knowledgeable about this, you can help students with courses that cover how to find remote work opportunities, optimize their LinkedIn profiles for the jobs they want, and more:
Image credit: Udemy.
Practical advice on how to make career switches is not only in demand, but it can also come at a premium. If you can help people find remote work or freelancing opportunities.
3. AI Tools (AI and Productivity)
There are new AI tools coming out almost every day and promising to overhaul almost every aspect of our workflow. If you’re not on the lookout for these kinds of news, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and not know where to start in terms of what tools to use and how they can help you.
If you look around online, there are a lot of communities where people discuss how to use new AI tools. However, they’re mostly geared toward enthusiasts or advanced tech users:
Image credit: Udemy.
Online courses that provide an overview of what new AI tools are available and how to use them are likely to garner a lot of attention. If you can stay ahead of the curve and publish courses on new, popular AI tools, you’re bound to get enrollments.
4. Arts and Crafts (Hobbies)
Arts and crafts, such as pottery, knitting, and even origami have surprisingly active communities. However, not every niche has decent resources for beginners or advanced crafters. In a lot of cases, people pass on their knowledge in forums or rely on outdated videos, particularly if they don’t have local places where they can practice.
If you have experience with any particular type of craft and you’re willing to show people how to do it, you can create your own course to do it. This can be lucrative depending on the craft and how big the surrounding community is:
Image credit: YouTube.
One problem with a lot of online learning resources for arts and crafts is they often don’t have comprehensive curriculums. A lot of people are expected to learn as they do, so having access to well-thought-out online courses can make their journey a lot easier.
5. Pilates (Fitness)
Pilates has been one of the most popular fitness systems for a long time now. However, it’s been gaining a lot of interest in 2023 in particular. Searches related to pilates have gone up by 50% worldwide during this year. That makes it a “hot” topic in the world of fitness.
Image credit: Udemy.
If you’re into pilates and you know enough to teach others the basics (or more advanced routines), you can capitalize on this interest. However, keep in mind that students will expect to see someone on camera. That means you’ll need to show yourself demonstrating exercises.
You can find a lot of pilates instructors on platforms like YouTube. A lot of them also have private communities and sell online courses. This is because having your own membership site will give you full control over the content you post. More importantly, you get to decide how much you can charge for it.
6. Productivity (Workplace and Personal Wellbeing)
If there’s one topic that people love to discuss online, it’s productivity. Anytime you go on social media, you’re bound to see influencers discussing how they stay productive, their routines, and what their secrets are, and people love this.
While there’s no real secret to productivity, it’s clear that a lot of people are interested in trying different methods and seeing what works best for them. A great course idea to sell online is to provide breakdowns of different productivity methods and teach people how to implement them:
Image credit: Udemy.
The great thing about this idea is you don’t need to be a certified expert to teach others how to be productive. As long as you’re productive and you can create engaging courses, you can show other people how to follow in your footsteps.
7. Dieting & Nutrition (Health)
Finding reliable information online about dieting can be a challenge. However, if you have a background in nutrition, you’re perfectly positioned to give advice on what works and what doesn’t.
This is the kind of online course niche that always has more content you can tackle. You can set up courses that explain how specific diets work (and whether they work at all), their pros and cons, what you recommend for specific types of people, and more:
Image credit: Udemy.
With this kind of course, trust is essential. There are always new diet fads popping up and a lot of people are looking to learn about what makes them different and if they’re safe. If you can provide a trustworthy voice that discusses these topics, you won’t find it hard to increase enrollment.
Conclusion
Coming up with online course ideas is not as easy as most people might think. You need to combine the right idea with proper membership marketing. Moreover, you need to find an audience that will commit to learning. On top of that, you need to learn how to create your own course and sell it.
That last part is something we can help you with. Paid Members Subscriptions can help you transform your WordPress site into an online academy. You can use the plugin to sell online courses from your own website and the process is simple. That means you can focus more on finding the right ideas and building a course and less on how to do it.
Paid Member Subscriptions Pro
Accept (recurring) payments, create subscription plans and restrict content on your website. Easily setup a WordPress membership site using Paid Member Subscriptions.
Get Paid Member SubscriptionsDo you have any questions about how to pick the right online course ideas? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!
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