Best Online Course Ideas And Ways To Find Profitable Topics

Educating yourself never stops, irrespective of your age or what position you are in. This philosophy holds true even with the recent pandemic where many found themselves trapped inside their homes and far away from traditional avenues of learning, whether for academic, professional or lifestyle purposes. However, where one door closes, several others open, with the world witnessing a rapid expansion in online course ideas through a variety of topics and several portals that offer the same.

It isn’t an unwise decision to capitalize on this trend, especially if you are eager to educate and inform others on something you are passionate about. However, considering the sheer size of the industry, it isn’t easy to understand what is and isn’t helpful for someone trying to build their online course. Read on below to learn the basics of profitable online course creation and the most effective ways to promote your course online.

How Do Online Courses Work?

Online courses are not like any other lectures at a university. They are different in that people get to watch lecture videos and even access additional guidance digitally instead of sitting in a classroom. When you create your course, the entire process is supposed to make the learner reach a final point where they are fully educated about the course they had initially opted for.

Your courses are not going to work unless you do. Although you don’t need a certification to start teaching what you are good at, it definitely is a plus point that will help you sell your online courses.

The Need For Online Courses

The 20th century has seen a very dynamic change in the educational field. As per the global trends, the number of schools has grown, and so have other mediums. Even online courses are widely accepted in the educational system, especially after the threats posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, there aren’t many sources that are considered credible, mostly because people try to get away with even more fraudulent and/or subpar activity in the name of online education.

Even before that, our educational system was starting to deteriorate. People take up jobs for teaching courses because they simply have to earn money. Where there is no passion, there is no joy in learning. This is why online courses are important, as it gives passionate, experienced individuals the opportunity to share and educate others.

Here are the reasons why online courses are considered the future of education and specialized learning:

• Easily accessible: With advancements in means and modes of communication, we can reach out to the farthest corners of this world. You can access all student details from just about anywhere, and the course pursuers can keep attending the classes or lectures easily without being afraid they’ll miss the first half.
• Personalized learning experience: Sometimes, online courses teach procedures by applying the one student at a time rule. Hence there is space for building better connections between the educator and the learner, through which the quality of education can improve exponentially.
• Affordability: A number of online courses with similar course structures are available, out of which the learner can choose based on their budget. People save up a lot on transport and class materials. Offers like discounts and scholarships are the best way to indulge seekers of such courses.
• Wide range of programs: To stay afloat in the rat race, you need to come up with the best online course topics. There is an infinite number of skills and subjects to choose from, and you are free to choose more than one topic for creating an online studying program.

Steps To Create An Online Course

The way to find the best online course ideas might be difficult, but following these simple steps can benefit your business greatly.

Step 1: Asking All The Questions

Question yourself, where do your greatest skills lie? What is the best you can make out of these skills? Whether you are passionate enough to teach the subject or not is extremely important.
You can do that by

• Making a list of things that you are good at or qualified in
• Chalk out how often you indulge in the subject and rank them according to your expertise
• Get second or third opinions from people who know you well to understand whether your perception of what you are good at matches theirs
• Checking whether you have access to all the resources, including physical and digital networks

Step 2: Research

Only after you have gathered profitable online courses niches will you be able to decide which one suits you the best. To sell your online course, the audience must be kept in mind. This is where the feedback comes in; they can be in the form of questions, complaints, personal stories, and even hopes. You should look into this feedback and update your course structure, as feedback helps to understand what challenges people face while relying on online courses.

Look into the topics that interest you and conduct online research; here are a few things that you should be looking into,

• Online platforms: As you will be marketing online, there is no better place than online platforms to look for problem languages and make sure you don’t repeat them.
• Keyword search: Observe the pattern of keywords people use. These would be debuted on the search engine itself or maybe found repeatedly on relevant websites. This way, you can simply search the keyword to know more about the content that students prefer.
• Surveys: This is for people who might already have a platform of their own. You can consider surveying your audience to ask about their personal experiences and valuable feedback to know first-hand where you are lacking and how you can fix them. Before creating an online course, if you have an established position on any social media platform, you can ask people to fill in surveys for primary data collection and inspection.

Step 3: Impact On The Audience

Once you know what the needs of your target audience are, it gets easier to impact them positively. For this, you need to establish a convenient means of communication that makes it easy for the learner. Remember, questions are not something to be afraid of. In fact, it is a good sign that your students feel comfortable asking you their doubts and are involved in the learning process. It is a way to make them realize how asking questions and having conversations lead to a better form of learning. Interactions guarantee positive effects.

The tips mentioned above are suggestions that will help you creating an online course on pillars of knowledge and research.

Online Course Ideas

The sky’s the limit. The internet itself has a vast expanse of knowledge, which is why people prefer specializing in certain topics rather than just brushing through the topics under a broader subject. But your perfect online course idea should be from one among the following since they have proven to be the most in-demand in the present times.

• Entrepreneurship
• Management and business
• Science
• Art forms
• Soft skills

To narrow these down, here is a list of the best online course ideas from each subject:

Technology

For a technology course, you need to break down the course in a way that even a non-tech person can have a better understanding. Technical skills are a must-have in the present world scenario, and people have to learn them whether they like it or not. There is a great possibility that people locked in for the course are simply here because they want to have an easier work experience with their new work-from-home job. Therefore, you need to make the experience fun. Here are some popular ideas:

• Simple programming for children
• Photoshopping, editing and video creation
• Data science
• Mastering Microsoft Office
• Coding for creation of websites, blog posts
• Coding for building smart homes
• Web creation and web designing
• 3D designing, printing and modeling
• Basics of computer and smartphone repairing

Business

Business and entrepreneurship go hand in hand, but an entrepreneur is an individual who indulges in business ideas and looks up for similar courses. These courses might be related to:

• Learning how to efficiently invest in startups
• Project management skills
• Sales maximization skills and ideas
• Prototyping for aspiring businessmen
• Dealing with customer service
• Understanding legal issues for creating private or public companies
• Reinvesting in a pre-existing business organization or company
• Crowdfunding
• Developing business plans

Marketing

Entrepreneurship is closely related to marketing online, but you can also find it in several scientific fields. This is why marketing is an important fundamental aspect that everyone needs to be well-versed in. For specialization, various courses can be taken up, including

• Affiliate marketing
• Social media marketing as a professional or starter
• Building marketing plans for beginners and startups
• Personal brand building
• Podcast creations, blog posts, and customer feedback for promotion

Development Skills

There is a greater need for people to develop themselves as well as soft skills. No matter what the career path might be, there is always a demand for learning how one can bring about personality development. One can grow and change for the better by opting for the following courses:

• Improvement in mental performance to deal with anxiety or depression
• Meditation and its various advantages
• Positive psychology along with holistic wellness
• Productivity boost with improvement in memory and study skills, proper time management, and understanding of goal setting
• Career development skills through personal networking
• Communication, leadership, listening and conflict management skills
• Application of skills and present life
• Overcoming trauma and understanding child psychology for better parenting
• Relationship building for better personal performance at home and work
• Development of confidence and self-esteem
• Stress management for better brain functions

As development is such a broad aspect, it can bring about a positive change at work and even at home. There is a wide generation gap among parents and children at times, making it hard to understand their behaviors. Investing in relationships through development courses is also greatly in demand in the modern world. You have to keep this in mind to be an efficient course creator.

Creative Arts

Globalization as allowed creative arts to become widely accepted by sections that were hesitant towards it in the past. People feel more comfortable investing in different art forms, especially under the following course ideas

• Photography
• Music-making and filmmaking
• Digital art
• Traditional cultural art forms
• Extinct or endangered art forms
• Creative writing, scriptwriting, poetry and story writing
• Working with fabrics
• Tailoring, sewing, and knitting
• Calligraphy, lettering
• Acting and theater artistry

Health And Fitness

Health is an extremely important topic, especially with the current pandemic, everyone is focused on maintaining immunity. This is why they will be looking for online courses which help them realize and utilize wellness essentials better. Besides physical fitness, there are numerous profitable online courses where people help others to relax their minds in the following ways

• Massage and aromatherapy
• Meditation and herbalism for an organic way of living
• Diet and nutrition programs to lose or gain weight or maintain it
• Meal planning for people with disorders
• Reflexology
• Vegan cooking for beginners
• Workout plans for weight loss or weight gain
• Muscle building through meal plans and exercises
• Developing survival skills
• Martial arts
• Sports

How To Validate An Online Course Idea

Just because you are skilled at a particular subject doesn’t mean that there is enough demand for that subject in the market. For marketing your course, you have to perform detailed research to realize whether you have what the audience is seeking.

Analyze Demands

Just like you looked up past experiences of students and people from online courses, use the keyword search to find out what is truly in demand. Machine learning is by far the most looked up an online course, followed by scientific studies on various topics. If you find your skill in one of the top course lists, you’re in luck!

Search Tests

This is done to simply validate whether the information you’ve looked up is true or not. Keep track of

• • Changing interests in topics of online courses
  • Similar courses offered online
  • Learning platforms like Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, with their most opted course descriptions and reviews

Utilize Lead Magnet Technology

A general term used for online marketing techniques disguised as free resources such as ebooks, webinars, checklists, and templates, a lead magnet allows you to gauge the applicability and validity of your online course on several aspects. First and foremost, it measures whether the content you are offering is something that is trending or of actual use to people, thus keeping a check on the present audience pool. Secondly, if you are sure of the above point, then it can be used to gauge how far your advertisement reaches and whether it is visible to the target audience.

For a lead magnet to work, it must be attractively designed and well placed, preferably in the form of a call to action (CTA) leading to a subsidiary page or resource, downloadable once the client’s email id is supplied.

Pilot Program

This is where the implementation of your skills is important. To make sure that you’re not wasting a lot of your time and money on something that will not work out, create an online course that needs students to sign up for a pilot program first. The group of beta testers will get the rest of your job done. Before this, make it clear to the learners that,

• • • It is indeed a pilot program
    • They are required to provide valuable feedback
    • The prices offered are low simply because it is a pilot program, and they are compensated with the opportunity to be the reason for a change in aspects of the online course

Once your pilot proves to be a complete success, give all those students huge discounts so that they continue to avail themselves of your courses. This will also create a lot of demand, with the target audience satisfied on the receiving end.

Online Course Creation Done Right

Being a competitor to the leading global online course creators and marketing your course to a target audience can be quite difficult and exhausting at times. This is why for comprehensive and composite advice, only those who have already been there and done that should be trusted- just like you may want to take a cooking class only from a certified chef.

Dan Institute is an independent e-marketplace targeted toward e-learning providers. It supports a huge range of resources such as guidelines, industry reports, marketing research, templates, and much more, along with certified statistics, which will help you realize your needs as an online course creator. DAN Institute treats the online course industry as it is and approaches it like any other business where service providers must be turned into digital professionals so that they can succeed online.

So what are you waiting for? Learn about the best-selling online course topics and promote your course with the best marketing strategy by getting in touch with the experts. Make the most out of this opportunity by joining them today.