If you have ever considered selling a course online, then you are certainly not alone. Sites like Udemy and SkillShare make it easy to create a course and put it online for others to purchase. Although there are some inherent problems with this approach, it still is one viable method.

Making the decision to sell elearning is easy.  Choosing a topic is a lot harder. You need to find the right mix between a topic that you know well and one that will sell.

That’s why the first thing you should do before creating your course, the one thing you must do before anything else, is market research.

This sounds boring, but it is arguably the most important component to selling a course online. Luckily though, this process is actually pretty easy and can be done mostly from your computer.

How To Get Started…

First thing you should do is a simple Google search and look at the results. First, look to see if your exact course idea appears on the first page of the results. If so, that is fine as you will be creating your own unique selling proposition anyhow. What you should look at though is who is selling the courses. Is it another entrepreneur like yourself, or a major company?

If the latter, will you be able to compete? If there is one major player, you probably can do just fine, but if there are multiple, then it will be more challenging (although not impossible).

When analyzing the search results for your course topic, make sure you look to see how many paid ads there are. The more paid ads, the better as that means people are paying money to be shown for the search term you entered.

One thing that people often think is that because they don’t see any competition that they will have a monopoly. While this could be true, I think it is more probable that there just isn’t money to be made in that particular niche.

Let’s face it, we all have good ideas, but very rarely are ideas truly unique 🙂 . Don’t be afraid of competition, embrace it as it means there is a market for your course subject.

This is just the first step in the market research process. You need to also consider market price research, potential market size, how you will be different, and so on. The point is, if you put in the effort up front, you won’t have to worry about wasting your time building a course that won’t sell. Also, this process helps you formulate a plan for how you will go to market.