Welcome to episode 11 of Dreamchasers! Josh Hall is a web designer and business educator loves making online courses – and just clocked in his 7th course.
Together, we talk about why making a course is something valuable for your brand. Many people have a lot of knowledge and education. For Josh, he had a decade of experience in web design, and is now scaling into a small team. He’s learned so much, and has a passion for helping others.
Turning his knowledge into online courses that he can charge for has changed his life, and his entire business.
Dreamchasers is the interview series for people who want human marketing on a zero budget, with your host, Dominic de Souza. Listen in for tips and insights, for (about!) 15 minutes a week. It’s the dreamers who make the future. Chase yours.
Summary & Notes
If you don’t enjoy teaching, courses may not be for you. It is a lot of work, but it can absolutely work as a form of passive income.
Josh’s first course in 2018 was crafted to solve his ‘feast to famine’ problem – he had no recurring income.
He already had an audience, and access to a tribe, before launching his courses. He was a blog author with Divi, one of the most popular web designer platforms.
One of the biggest problems people face is that they don’t know their audience, before starting their course.
He beta-tested all his content with an existing tribe before turning it into a course product. His course is his videos and blogs brought together. There are plenty of other course creators, but none for the tribe he was tapping into.
You don’t always need to build your own tribe. You can tap into existing ones.
Josh didn’t copy-and-paste past content. He rewrote everything, and went into a lot more detail. If you’re already giving away a lot of value and content, the goal of a course is to go into a whole lot more detail.
In marketing his course, he uses his blog content as teasers to lead people into a particular course page.
Blogs and resources can often be all over the place, and posted in a variety of structures. But courses are highly structured.
For media types, he used a simple combo of video, text, and screensharing. It can be simpler: an audio track and a text piece.
If you’ve run workshops, now you can go into more detail, and start charging.
If you have a ton of knowledge that can be used for good, can help people, can be a source of recurring income, and enjoy giving back, then a course is a way to go.
There are a ton of options for simple course creation online. Like Udemy, Podia, or LearnDash.
Why could your course be valuable? Because no one is you.
A lot of your followers want your insights. Josh found that his helpful emails were turning into mini ‘courses.’ Creating a course allows him to now refer people to a cornerstone piece of content, and brings a lot of value to his brand.
There are different kinds of people, and we all bond with different kinds of teachers.
You bring a unique edge to your content simply with your personality.
