24 Jul How to Make Money Online: From Zero to $100K/Year with Your Own Online Course
You have $100,000 worth of knowledge trapped inside your head.
Years ago, when I started my first online business, circa 2005, it wasn’t so easy technology-wise to create a course and make money online. In fact, it was complicated for the average person.
At the time, I had been doing a lot of public speaking and teaching classes, but I kept dreaming of turning my in-person classes into an online course. Finally, I put up a website and set up a sales page.
I remember launching my first online course back then at $197 and making $2500 in the first 30 days. Once I saw I could do that, I was hooked on creating a product that sells over and over and setting up multiple streams of passive income.
The great news is the technology is even easier to set up and make money online from courses. You don’t even have to have a website, a huge following or ever have sold anything online to do this.
Instead of a website you can have a sales page on a shopping cart platform.
Instead of an email list, you can create a following pretty quickly on platforms like Facebook.
I had no idea what I was doing back then, the technology was complicated, and I was able to make $2500 in 30 days. Imagine if you could do that every month!
The biggest obstacle I see is people saying, “I don’t know what I would create an online course about?”
There are courses for everything under the sun, including:
- Learning to play a guitar
- How to doodle
- Sewing
- Pinterest Marketing
- Instagram Marketing
- Improving your golf game
- Learning Excel
- Sleep Training for babies and toddlers
- Digital Marketing
- Life Coach Training
- Speed Reading
- Personal Productivity
- Time Management
- Sound Therapy
- Emotional Intelligence
- ChatGPT
- Voice Training
- Meditation
- Art Therapy
- Stress Management
- Car Repair
- Horsemanship
- Law of Attraction
- Screenwriting
- Study Skills
- Energy Healing
And hundreds and thousands more!
Here are few 6 Figure plus online courses you can check out:
Employee to Entrepreneur by Luisa Zhou
Luisa Zhou went from six figures to seven figures with her course, which helps professionals break free from their 9-5 jobs to run a successful online business. Luisa Zhou scaled her course sales from six figures to seven figures by focusing on delivering immense value and continuously improving the course based on feedback.
Recognized Expert with Dorie Clark
For years, Dorie wanted to create an online course. In 2015, she published her book “Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It.” The next year, she decided to leverage the research she did for the book and create an online course, “Recognized Expert.” In only five months, she generated $118K in sales, creating a new six-figure revenue stream for her business.
Forex Mystery School
Jazz Nicole created her course in 2021 and made $100K in 90 days! She did not outsource any of the work and built the course herself. This is her favorite and most lucrative way of making passive income.
The Happy Sleeper
Heather Turgeon, MFT, and Julie Wright, MFT, wrote a book in 2014, “The Happy Sleeper” (updated in 2024), which became very popular with sleep-deprived parents. They decided to milk their knowledge and create several online courses to go along with their book.
I wrote an entire book about how to create your very own Course Cash Cow that is on the bestsellers list right now: https://www.amazon.com/Course-Cash-Cow-Knowledge-Business-ebook/dp/B0D8CJ55RN
In my book, I share with readers the 30-day Lean Launch Method for setting up your first online course. Here is a shortened version.
- Validate before you create. Find other successful courses on the topic you want to teach on. Also check keywords people are searching for online to make sure there is a demand for your topic
- Pick Your Topic. When you are trying to come up with a topic for your online course think of things like hobbies, skills you have acquired at work, obstacles you have overcome and success you have had.
- What are the Results for Your Students. Once you decide on your topic, identify the results your students will get and the big promise of the course.
- Use ChatGPT and come up with a magnetic title for your course. Make it unique (like my “Course Cash Cow”).
- Course Clarity. Fill in the blanks: My course, ________________ (working title), helps __________ ______________________ (type of people you want to work with/ideal student), ____________________________________(what you are going to help them achieve specifically) so they can ______________________________________ (1-3 big benefits they will have after taking your course).
- Easy Sales Page Set Up. Create a sales page on a website or using a shopping cart program like Samcart (which is what I use).
- Write your sales page.
- Add some bonuses.
- Set up early bird pricing.
- Set up a private Facebook group on your topic and start growing that.
- You can also create a lead magnet on your topic and set up an easy opt in form on a platform like Flodesk (which is what I use) to start building your emails list. You can also set up a waitlist form on Flodesk while you get everything else set up.
- Start warming up your audience about your new course and building your wait list.
- You can sell the course before you create to make sure people will buy it. Just set up 1 or 2 modules and drip feed the other modules.
- Use slides in Canva to record your course. Upload to Samcart.
- Start making money!
Creating an online course is especially easy if you already have a book you wrote on the topic.
In 2020, I wrote a book called Digital Retirement, which is still at the top of the bestsellers list and was one of my top sellers, selling almost 10,000 copies. In 2023 I launched my first course and in a little over a year I created over $100K in income:
If people can make 6-figure teaching parents how to get their babies to sleep or doodling, then you can come up with a high profit topic and start creating multiple streams of income.
It's time to make your dreams come true and create your very own online course.