Outline Of The Video Content:
I have been an online instructor for over 8 years and on Udemy alone I have had 300,000 students take my courses and that is just one of the platforms I sell on, so I know how to build a full time profitable training business…
In this article I am going to guide you through the key thought processes you need to follow if you want to create your own online training business and will also reveal quite a few industry secrets throughout the video that other people are not going to tell you…
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Step 1: Find Your Expertise
Find a problem you know how to solve that other people have, that is what you will build your business on.
Research how other people are already solving that problem on platforms like YouTube and think about how you might improve on that or offer a different perspective.
The more time you spend understanding how people are already training others and where you think you can do better, the quicker your own content will take off, don’t reinvent the wheel.
Step 2: Choose Your Business Model
Decide on what business model you want to use.
YouTube:
Income Potential: 6/10
This is the simplest way to start and probably the easiest way to get going and the one I recommend if you have no video production experience.
You are basically uploading to YouTube and putting out enough content until you get monetised on the platform for as long as it takes for you to get traction in the algorithm for your core audience.
This works well if you have a niche that is not being supplied, or you have a unique perspective.
One of the real opportunities right now is shorts content to grow a channel that teaches simple tips and skills, just make sure it is entertaining and try to tie it into trending subjects.
YouTube shorts are also searchable so there is an opportunity for tutorials that are a minute or less in length, this is a massive gap in the market.
Training Platforms:
Income potential 3/10
You upload and the platform takes care of the marketing.
You are competing with established courses and the platforms can be very greedy with their commissions.
They can also switch you off whenever they feel like it.
Platforms also have their favourites, so you are not always competing on a level playing field.
They are a good place to start if you don’t want to get involved in marketing and can find a niche, but you are handing over control of your business to them and many instructors never escape that.
You can earn massive income if you find an untapped trending niche, but they are rare, those days are gone for the most part.
Professional training on your website:
Income potential 8/10
This is the system I operate and the one you should aim to move towards as it creates an income stream that you control.
You are basically creating a funnel with free content on social media, gaining people's trust and then offering them an upgrade to more structured training.
For instance I have a dedicated Online Instructor Training Course as part of my Business Buddies programme, that has over 3 ½ hours of structured training that will help someone design and create a full course.
See what I just did there?
I have told you that this video leads to even more training, this is essentially the model in action…
YouTube is still the best for marketing in my opinion as they allow you to link out to a registered website, TikTok tend to be very selfish with the traffic on their site and don’t want you to link out and shadow banning happens constantly.
But plenty of people have grown businesses on TikTok, Instagram. Facebook Groups are good for special interests and LinkedIn groups are good marketing tool for vocational based training, I use all these for various aspects of marketing by different online businesses.
Another thing to consider is providing a free mini training course on your website so that people can test your content and also give you a means to market to them through an email list, you can see all this laid out on my website, check the links in the comment below that go to my website, and have a nose around and see how I have set my training school up…
I currently use Squarespace as the front end for my school and Zenler as my course backend as both are relatively easy to learn and relatively good value, I don’t use Wordpress as I don’t want to be fighting with security updates every week!
Step 3: Design Your Training
All training basically takes someone with a problem to the solution.
So that is the flow your training should follow.
Always assume that the person consuming your training has no knowledge whatsoever, so make sure you take them through the problem step by step.
Make sure you ‘translate’ all industry specific words into words they can understand, this is where the Gold is in training content, in the simplifying of the concepts, this is what a lot of online instructors miss, you should teach everything as if you are teaching chinese to a complete beginner, they don’t understand the language you are using a lot of the time!
Step 4: Plan the Course Flow:
Outline the course's progression following the step by step process you identified.
Use modules to cover each step and then break each module into a set of short videos, 3 to 5 minutes work best because students like to study in bite sized chunks, don’t force them to watch 20 minute videos as this will tire them out.
Create a video playlist if you are going to go with the YouTube model, build the YouTube channel content as if it was a course, so plan the content before you start filming.
Step 5: Equipment Investment
Basic Setup:
Always prioritise your equipment in this order:
Audio
Lighting
Camera
Decent audio is a must, so get a good budget microphone absolute minimum.
Learn how to sound treat a room (not sound proof), the more reverb you can reduce the easier your filming will be, maybe I will do a full studio tour of my new studio if people are interested, let me know in the comments below!
Lighting, you want consistent lighting, so invest in a 2 light basic lighting kit if you are filming inside.
Camera, if you have a modern smartphone, good lighting will be enough to make that work, but after that start looking at cameras that are created for vlogging as these have most video features you use, be careful to check they don’t have 30 minute power offs though, as a lot of cameras will switch off after 30 minutes.
Environment, pick an environment that suits the subject, so woodworking in a workshop, skateboarding at a park, think about what resonates with the audience, but also pick an environment where you can control the audio as background noise is tough for new video creators to get a hold on and is the biggest challenge to overcome in terms of production, even for experienced videographers!
Don’t spend lots of money on equipment at the beginning, you might not even need a camera if you are just doing screen shares!
Just start with essential equipment and gradually upgrade as you get better at filming and see results with your content.
Step 6: Skills To Learn
Scripting: Script everything, shorts or long form, a script saves you time in editing and you will invest most of your time in the editing phase, it is better to spend 3 minutes getting a sentence completely correct whilst recording, rather than 15 minutes trying to cut the sentence together in editing to get it righ.
Another advantage of scripting is that you don’t have to think about what you have to say, you are thinking about delivering the script, scripting helps you deliver better!
AI Tip: create a rough outline for a script, give it to ChatGPT, ask it to create a script for you, then go back and edit your voice, your style back into it, also ask AI to check to see if you have missed anything you need to cover in the script!
Editing: Get good at cutting fluff; people want information quickly. Look at AI editing tools for speeding up the process, you can use CapCut for short videos.
Education: Focus on leading people through problems step by step in easy-to-understand language, work on your delivery and cutting out fluff, people don’t have much spare time, so learn how to deliver with that in mind.
Presentation: Learn how to light properly and get decent audio results, this is as much a part of presentation as being on camera, then learn to look into the camera and deliver full sentences without mistakes, learn to place your emotion into your voice and movements and focus on communicating a friendly persona through a positive emotional connection (this is one of the hardest things to do because there is so much you need to be thinking about.
Marketing: There are two aspects of marketing to master these days.
Search-friendly content:
This is marketing that focuses on optimising your content so that when people are looking for a solution, your content comes up in the search.
Trending topics:
This is very important these days as more and more platforms are adopting trending based algorithms rather than search based algorithms, so make sure you learn how to piggyback off trends to grow on social media quicker, shorts are particularly powerful for this.
Utilise multiple social platforms to reach a wider audience and diversify your marketing.
Step 7:
Bonus Success Secrets:
Beginners: Focus on specific problems that beginners have as this combination of a niche problem that beginners are trying to solve is what get sales, beginners are much more likely to be looking for guidance.
Focus on building social proof: Social proof sells courses, it doesn’t matter what you say, it only matters what other people say in the beginning, so this is reviews, follower count, interactions, anything where someone else interacts with you publicly and does so in a positive way.
Provide value: Comprehensive long courses (no fluff) encourage investment, playlists of videos covering a single subject also attracts followers.
Learn your trade: Learn on social media with shorts; practice video production by creating shorts, you will be surprised how quickly you will improve.
Study other creators: Study what other creators are doing with shorts; shorts can explode a business and help you test content and delivery styles, they also force you to learn how to optimise videos quickly so that your videos can get viewed, I am running a huge shorts experiment at the moment, so keep an eye out for that in the near future!
On YouTube, find 4 or 5 creators in your niche and look through their videos to see what was popular, if you can find a subject that at least 2 of them have had success with, you are probably onto a winner as a subject.
Embrace failure: Embrace failure as a learning opportunity, analyse what works and iterate on your approach, you will iterate your way to success, every business I have ever grown has followed this pattern..
Supplementary resources: Offer supplementary resources like guides or checklists whenever possible, people like the course in written format a lot of the time as well and with AI, it doesn’t take long to generate this type of content. In fact I will add a link to a cheat sheet in the description below for this video!
I transcribe my videos in Adobe Premiere Pro and then give that transcript to ChatGPT to turn into blogs, social posts, youtube descriptions, cheat sheets, in fact, I will put a cheat sheet on the blog page on my website for this video for you to download and will pop a link to that in the description!
The Biggest Secret:
Make a start, grab your phone, record a short training video, put it out there, it doesn’t matter if just your Mum watches it!
Going through the process once is how success is born…
Most people fail because they never start!
Bonus Tip:
Some platforms take free courses, you can then use them to promote your social media profiles or your business, by putting links in them to your content, one thing I do is have a free course that comes with an exam and certification, the course is on a platform and the exam with certification is on my website, this generates plenty of sign ups in my online school as people finish the course and at the end of the course I give them the link to the exam…