Creating paid training and other educational content is similar to marketing content — in order for it to be effective, it has to be the right message framed the right way for the right person. So the starting point is the same when you need to know “what to say and how to say it,” and that’s what the Empowerment Marketing Toolkit delivers. Save 50% by signing up now.
Selling online education is a unique business.
While the “product” can be online courses, paid email newsletters, membership websites, or ebooks, the right mindset combined with various business and revenue models is equally, if not more, critical to your success.
And that opportunity is getting ever larger thanks to new attitudes about retirement and what it means to be a vibrant older adult. Traditional notions of what one does in their sixties are shifting away from a withdrawal from society into second and third careers. And this is just the most obvious application of “long life” learning.
With falling birthrates and the shift to an older society, traditional learning institutions like universities and community colleges see what’s happening. While they will play an important role, they will never be able to offer the variety of topics and expertise that the broader commercial education market can offer.
So, while there is a demand for online training, it still needs to be approached as a business. Spotting the opportunity is only the first step, and many of the “common sense” notions of new education entrepreneurs are incorrect.
Let’s take a look at five ways that successful education entrepreneurs think differently about the business. Having the correct mindset going in can save you from making mistakes that could dampen or defeat your success.
The Customer is the Market
The first crucial concept when it comes to selling information in general and online training, in particular, is that every customer is a market unto themselves. This is in contrast to grabbing the largest market share (or the largest number of customers), and instead is about focusing on maximizing your “share of customer.”
In other words, your aim should not be to sell courses or training to as many older consumers as possible. Instead, you try to sell to a single customer over and over for as long a period of time as possible by continually serving their evolving needs and desires for advanced and updated education.
This is called the “lifetime value” (LTV) of a customer relationship in marketing circles. Understanding LTV for your particular business can dramatically increase your profitability, and it also allows you to get really strategic about how much you can invest to get a new customer.
An obvious example was the mobile phone market before the iPhone. The money was not in selling the phone but in the recurring cellular service contract that made the phone work. Carriers would often give the device away or deeply discount the unit and then make up the customer acquisition cost down the road with recurring revenue.
Even without a recurring subscription model, information and education entrepreneurs use the “ascension” model to take new customers “up the ladder” with increasingly valuable, and therefore expensive, training and access. It’s fundamentally the same situation — early purchases are structured to acquire a customer, but the profit comes from later transactions with that same customer.
Here’s the point: Educational content is not only a product; it’s also a potent form of marketing. Teaching someone well leads to the next sale organically and ethically, as long as you have advanced or updated expertise to share.
Teaching another person is one of the most persuasive relationships possible. In other words, just by fulfilling your end of the bargain with online training, you’re “selling” your students on sticking with you. You’re naturally opening up new marketing opportunities with them as well. When you truly teach people, you are literally altering and expanding their minds. It’s powerful stuff.
By advancing their knowledge, you’re preparing them for more advanced training that you, in turn, can provide. By setting them up to enjoy the benefits of the knowledge you deliver, you’re in a trusted position to help them get the most out of future experiences.
Teaching is an exercise in persuasion that allows for hugely lucrative business models when structured properly. You effectively expand the market within each customer just by doing your job. The more you can teach your learners, the more you can sell them. The more they learn from you, the more they’ll want to learn and spend. It’s a classic win-win.
The Holy Grail of Revenue Models
Imagine taking your knowledge and expertise, packaging it up beautifully, and getting paid handsomely for it. That’s the allure of selling online education — one of the best businesses for a solo creative person or small team.
But people often have misconceptions about what it takes to succeed. A business based on one low-priced course or an email newsletter charging $5 – $10 a month often fails to play out as expected. The few examples that do work out that way are statistically rare, but that doesn’t prevent would-be education entrepreneurs from assuming they’ll be the exception.
Going back to the earlier point about maximizing customer LTV, you have to understand that the money usually isn’t in the first sale. Entrepreneurs who build an audience first before creating a course have an advantage, as they can sell an initial product with a built-in base of prospects. But given that it often takes advertising to attract an audience in the first place, you still have to factor in your total return on investment.
In other words, you may not make a sustainable profit on the first sale. But once you make that first sale, you have a valuable customer relationship. Assuming your product delivers, they’ll be primed for more expensive future purchases.
Some aim just to break even or even lose money on the first sale, knowing that the right marketing funnel will make that customer profitable long-term. The whole purpose of many info products is actually to enable more lucrative “backend” sales or the holy grail — recruiting subscription revenue.
This is the dream that Substack is selling to email newsletter publishers, but it’s been around for a long time with membership sites and paper newsletters delivered via mail pre-internet. But these days, we’re inundated with recurring subscriptions, from streaming services to consumer products of all kinds.
So, while it made sense to start with a subscription offer at one point, you may need to try a different approach to establishing value and building deeper trust first. Your first standalone sale is to begin a trusted customer relationship and then work your way up to a recurring payment relationship.
This means eventually shifting from standalone products to “communities of learning,” which means selling membership access instead of products. Deliver enough initial value that customers are comfortable subscribing long-term as you provide more advanced training and the vital component of community.
Keep in mind that your price point will likely need to be much higher than you initially think. It’s easy to develop visions of grandeur about thousands of people joining your low-cost learning community, but it’s more likely you’ll attract fewer people who, nonetheless, are willing to pay more.
Focus on true teaching techniques, multimedia formats, and fostering a community that creates bonds beyond education. Take customers from an initial low-risk relationship to advanced benefits as sustainable subscription members. That’s the education entrepreneur’s true Holy Grail.
The Benefits of Knowledge
In today’s fast-paced, ever-evolving world, pursuing information has become a daily ritual. We scour search engines, surf social media, pore through magazines, and, on rare occasions for most of the population, read a book. However, the truth is that people don’t really want information; they crave actionable knowledge and the benefits that come with it.
Raw information holds little value without the context and synthesis that transforms it into knowledge. It’s like a puzzle piece without its companions — incomplete and lacking purpose.
Knowledge, on the other hand, empowers individuals to achieve their goals and aspirations. Just as people don’t buy a drill for the sake of owning one but rather to make a hole and hang a picture, people seek knowledge to accomplish something greater.
Take the college experience, for example. The motivation behind pursuing higher education goes beyond the process of learning. Parents invest in their children’s education, hoping the knowledge gained will lead to a degree, a job, and, ultimately, a fulfilling life. The benefits of knowledge, such as financial stability, personal growth, and societal recognition, are the true driving forces behind the sacrifices made for education.
In today’s general economy, a high school diploma or college degree is no longer the end goal; it’s merely the beginning. Continuous learning has become a necessity for professionals to maintain licenses, certifications, and stay ahead in rapidly evolving industries. To remain competitive, entrepreneurs and freelancers must also keep pace with the explosive growth of innovation and technology.
Now add in the evolution of the space presented by the longevity economy. The “third segment” of life is being transformed from the dream of leisurely “golden years” to an active and exciting phase with vast implications for education entrepreneurs.
Plus, the pursuit of knowledge extends beyond the professional realm. People seek to learn about every aspect of their lives to achieve happiness, personal growth, and fulfillment. From learning a new language to gardening techniques, individuals invest in the benefits of knowledge to improve their overall quality of life.
In this context, the opportunity for online training is immense. Educators and content creators can tap into the growing demand for “long life” learning by providing information framed in terms of the benefits of knowledge. As work and life continue becoming increasingly complex and technology continues to reshape our world, the need for constant learning intensifies for everyone, but older people in particular.
The future is filled with endless opportunities for those who recognize the power of knowledge and its benefits. By embracing the role of a lifelong learner and investing in the acquisition of knowledge, older people can unlock their full potential — both personally and professionally — in the 21st century.
People will happily pay for “information” when it’s couched in terms of the benefits of knowledge. And people will and must invest in the benefits of knowledge well beyond a college education. In fact, “real” learning is just beginning when people embark on the process of becoming who they want to be after age 50.
The Art of Instructional Design
Instructional design is a crucial skill for any aspiring online education entrepreneur. In essence, it’s the art and science of using media and content to create learning experiences that effectively transfer knowledge and its practical benefits to the learner.
Designing an effective course requires considering your learners’ existing knowledge, the goals of the training, and the tools and media formats at your disposal. As an entrepreneur, the key question is: how can instructional design support your business plan for creating profitable, paid interactive learning environments?
The answer is that good instructional design is just like smart business planning. When designing a course, you focus on benefits to the learner while ensuring you can sell the course profitably. Similarly, a savvy business plan outlines how a product benefits customers and how the company can profit from delivering those benefits.
In the world of interactive learning, instructional design is your business plan. Well-crafted instructional design not only shows you how to teach effectively but also maps out your business model. This becomes clearer when you consider ongoing transactions or recurring models that continue delivering increasing value, retaining customers through subscriptions or higher-priced purchases as they progress through your sales funnel.
To illustrate instructional design in practice, consider the example of teaching long division. As a parent helping a struggling child, it’s easy to fall victim to the “curse of knowledge” — you know how to do it, but explaining it is another matter. That’s where instructional design comes in.
Rather than simply reciting rote instructions, effective instructional design involves helping learners internalize information at their conceptual level. One educator developed a method for teaching long division that allows kids to discover the algorithm’s steps and grasp the underlying concepts by connecting it to a relatable problem involving dividing money among friends.
This exemplifies the essence of instructional design: presenting information in a way that resonates with learners, making you their trusted teacher and go-to resource for reaching the next level. Happy, well-educated learners are more likely to make additional purchases, directly tying instructional design to revenue and business models. That’s why beginning with an intimate understanding of your ideal learner is critical — creating marketing content and educational content are more similar than you may think.
By mastering the art and science of instructional design tailored specifically for your ideal prospect, you can position yourself as a trusted educator and build a thriving, profitable online learning business. And it all begins with the process set forth in the Empowerment Marketing Toolkit.
Teaching as Creative Adaptation
One obstacle those interested in building an online training business face is finding a “new” topic. But these hesitations are often unfounded. Even in a crowded market where it seems every subject has been covered, the most successful strategy is often to take existing information and present it in a new, more engaging way.
This is where the concept of “creative adaptation” comes in. Just as the best teachers don’t simply recite from textbooks but find innovative ways to explain concepts, information entrepreneurs can adapt existing material into interactive multimedia formats that are more effective for learners. By combining audio, video, text, and interactive elements, courses can be designed to match how people actually learn and retain information.
Again, the “right” story, analogy, or metaphor depends on who you’re teaching. And that takes us right back to values, attitudes, and worldview. Working through the process of creating a detailed profile of your prospect, along with the “what and the how” of what they need to learn to succeed, is a huge part of the battle.
Creative adaptation is not just about better packaging and marketing to increase perceived value, although that is important for making the initial sale. Transforming dry text into an engaging, multimodal learning experience creates real value for students. They are more likely to grasp and internalize the material. For entrepreneurs, that means happier customers, less churn, and more repeat business.
You don’t need to be the world’s foremost expert on a topic or conduct groundbreaking research to succeed with creative adaptation. Popular authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Pink make careers out of synthesizing complex academic studies into bestselling books. The key is to first deeply learn the material yourself, then become skilled at teaching it to others in an accessible way.
As technology advances and online education continues to grow, the ability to creatively adapt information into high-quality interactive courses will be an increasingly valuable skill. Entrepreneurs who master it will be well-positioned to ride the “long life” learning wave into the future of education.
Let’s Dive In
With the proper initial mindset, you’re ready to get rolling. The first step is to ensure that you choose a market of hungry learners before investing time and money into developing paid online training.
More soon!