5 Reasons to Start An Online Course

4 min readApr 2, 2020

Original Post: https://www.jordanpanderson.com/blog/5-reasons-to-start-an-online-course

You’re facing some unstable times and you’re not sure your business is going to hold up. You also may feel like your business is one in a million. You need a way to separate yourself from your competition. Creating an online course offers more than a new revenue stream. I think after reading this you’ll realize it creates a number of opportunities for your personal brand to shine.

1. Connect With Your Audience

What may be surprising with an online course is how deep you’re able to connect with your audience. Most content that we create is seen by less than 10% of your followers and nearly disappears within seconds of it being posted.

An online course creates a long term, committed relationship between you and your audience.

Think about it — as each student enrolls, you’re able to welcome them, ask if they have any concerns about the course, and guide them through the lesson plan.

2. Show Off Your Expertise

We’re on the brink of abusing the word, “expert”, but having your own online course really begins to solidify your status as an expert or at the very least exuding traces of expertise to the world.

Perception is Reality.

Acting as the expert and positioning yourself as the teacher and mentor — the dynamic shifts with you and your audience. You are now seen as a valuable resource among your peers and colleagues.

Obtaining expert status creates a halo effect not only around your online course, but around your brand and business as a whole. Our minds create a mental shortcut telling us, “A skilled expert in one field must have expertise in many other fields as well.” The shortcut works in the opposite direction as well.

In my expert opinion, by overcoming the challenges of building an online course, the perception becomes reality.

3. Articulate Your Skills and Knowledge

We think we understand something — until we’re asked to articulate it. Writing down your thoughts is a daily exercise I encourage because there is nothing more powerful than forcing your idea in your head to make sense on the page.

If I told you that you had to teach a skill to an audience of 300 people and you had a week to prepare — what would you do? Ideate, create an outline, make a Keynote, rehearse, question yourself, and rehearse again.

By creating an online course and a lesson plan around a certain topic, we are forced to come face-to-face with the limits of our knowledge. Do we truly understand this topic well enough to teach it to someone else? If you’re like me, teaching someone a skill is the exact way I solidify my knowledge. If you can teach something to someone else and they understand it — then it’s clear that you understand it.

There’s also this increased pressure to get it right.

You’re saying to the world — “This is what I know and I stand by it.” The reward for sticking your neck out is that we honor you with the title, Expert.

4. Generate A New Revenue Stream

I’m packing this point towards the end because I want this point to be a secondary or tertiary reason for teaching an online course.

We’ve witnessed the world contract and many creative entrepreneurs are facing refunds, cancellations, and postponed projects. Having an online, digital product like an online course could be a saving grace that these small businesses need to stay afloat.

When set up properly, an online course can yield income like a tree bearing fruit. It takes a lot of upfront effort and then’s the daily maintenance and tending. After a while, the tree shows signs of budding, and then finally bears fruit. It’s small at first and you don’t have enough to fill a basket but it’s something.

Over time, your online course will slowly gain traction. After a while, you’ll wake up every morning to a payment confirmation in your inbox.

5. People Are Stuck In Their House

Let’s be honest, we have a lot of time on our hands. With the onset of our quarantines, the internet and digital products have never been more valuable. The demand is out there for online courses, and this could be the start of a huge wave of educational content hitting the internet.