Benefits of teaching online
Before we begin, here’s the key benefits to setting up an online training business:
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- Low Capital outlay – Unlike many other businesses, setting up an online school is one that do not require a lot of capital. That’s the key benefit especially for people who lost their jobs. All you need is your skill, a phone that can take video if you do not have a video camera, and a website.
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- Start in minutes – You can get started almost immediately. In whatever we do, it’s important that we strike when the iron is hot. If it takes too long to get started, we will lose interest. The good news about starting an online school these days is that there are so many platforms and tools that allow you to get started in minutes.
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- Passive Income – Selling courses is probably the best retirement plan because you are essentially earning passive income.
Critical Success Factors
Of course, you may wonder if it is a low capital route, then the barrier to entry may also be low and the competition will be great, making it difficult to succeed. That’s not really true with teaching. Let me give you an example, for any particular non-fiction book, you can probably find many similar titles on the same topic written by many different authors. How is it that they can coexist? The reason is because, each author writes it differently and has its own unique contents.
Similarly, when you teach what you are good in, it is a combination of your passion, interests, research, experience from failures and success, and knowledge you acquired over time. No one can produce a similar content. Your content in itself is its own has its differentiation, its unique selling points.
Hence, the key to success is :
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- Teach what you are good in or passionate about
- Market your course well.
How to Set Up An Online Cooking Class
All right, now here’s all the ingredients that will get you started with the cooking class. We will go step-by-step from making your videos to getting your students. We will be recommending simple via viable tools so you can get started easily.
Step 1 – Plan Your Contents and Write Your Script
Unless you are an experienced TV chef like Gordon Ramsay, otherwise, you will find yourself fumbling over what to say and that will make your video less interesting. Many teachers who are very eloquent and experienced with physical classes find themselves fumbling when the video is in front of them. Hence, it is important to do some planning and scripting, especially for your initial lessons. That will save you a lot of time and effort from re-doing stuff and getting discouraged.
Let’s say you are creating a lesson on “How to cook Ginseng Chicken soup”, you can first get all your ingredients, display each item neatly on the kitchen table top, plan what you want to say and how you want to introduce each of these item. You might want to talk about the nutritional benefits of each ingredient, where to buy them or how to process each item. Then you need to plan the cooking process and what you should capture in the video. Hence, the most efficient way is to write your script and plan out each video taping. Essentially, at this stage, you are like the director of a cooking show.
Step 2 – Get Your Equipment
The most basic equipment you need is a mobile phone that can take videos. If you have a video camera and could get someone doing the video taping, that will be excellent. Your camera man will follow your script to take each video accordingly. However, if you are doing it all on your own, you would need a Mobile Phone holder.
For kitchen, a good mobile phone holder may be something like this:
You can purchase this item from ebay or search other mobile phone holders here.
Step 3 – Edit Your Training Videos
If you find yourself fumbling during the video recording, do not worry. You can edit trim your video or edit it easily with simple software such as Powerpoint. Just insert your video in Powerpoint, select the video, and you will see the Playback tab at the top and the “Trim Video”. When you click on “Trim Video”, a pop-up screen will appear where you can adjust the slider to trim your video, that is at what point you want to start the video and at what point you want it to cut off.
Step 4 – Price Your Courses & Design Your Logos
After you have complete your training videos, do a research in Udemy and some other online cooking class. As the courses there are less than $20 during promo period (which they have promotion often), you may even want to buy a good course and use as a reference. At this stage, you know how much effort and resources are put in to build the courses as well as what competitors are charging. Remember that when you sell online, you are reaching out to millions of students. You have no school rental space and you are not limited to getting students within your locality. Hence, you can afford to price it lower to reach a wider audience.
Next, you need to create a brand. The first thing is to design your logo. Check out Envato Elements where you can get accessed to millions of ready-made designs, tweak it and make it unique for your branding purpose. Here’s some examples of ready made logo resources that you can get:
Step 5 – Build Your Course Website & Promote Your Course
This is an important step as it forms the foundation where all your training videos are hosted and how you can market your course. There are several options and the decision you make here will also impact your marketing and sales.
Firstly, there are several platforms that you can choose to build your website. These days, you do not need to engage a developer and pay thousands of dollars to get your website set up. Essentially, you have the 4 options and we will explain the pros and cons for each option:
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- Use a Course MarketPlace like Udemy
- Use an e-learning platform such as LearnWorlds or Talentlms
- Build your own website using a website builder such as Wix
- Build your own website using a self-hosted platform such as WordPress and with a theme such as Elegantthemes Divi.
| Options | Pros | Cons | |
| 1 | Use a marketplace such as Udemy | 1.Easy to set up. You just need to upload your training videos.
2.Millions of potential students visiting the Udemy website. No expenditure on marketing. 3.No subscription fees. |
1.You earn approximately 37% of the revenue.
2.You are competing with many other course providers. 3.You do not have a business branding. 4.You still need to create awareness of your product. |
| 2 | Use a e-learning platform such as LearnWorlds or Talentlms | 1.Easy to setup. No programming needed.
2.Useful marketing tools available. 3.You are able to build your own business branding. 4. You earn 100% of your revenue. |
1.A recurring monthly fee starting at $24.
2.You need to learn how to create awareness of your product and need to advertise. |
| 3 | Build your own website using a website builder such as Wix | 1.Easy to setup. No programming needed.
2.Useful marketing tools available. 3.You are able to build your own business branding. 4. You earn 100% of your revenue. |
1.A recurring monthly fee starting at $24.50.
2.You need to learn how to create awareness of your product and need to advertise. |
| 4 | Build your own website using a self-hosted platform such as WordPress.org and a Theme with website builder such as Elegantthemes Divi | 1.Easy to setup. No programming needed.
2. Thousands of marketing tools available. 3. You can equip your website with almost unlimited powerful features with just a few clicks. 3.You are able to build your own business branding. 4. You earn 100% of your revenue. |
1.A recurring monthly hosting fee starting at $3.95.
2.You need to learn how to create awareness of your product and need to advertise. 3. You need to learn about which tools and functionalities to use. |
Our Recommendation
We have helped clients create their education websites. Depending on their resource and objectives, there are clients who have opted for WordPress because of the almost :unlimited powerful features they can add on to their website and giving them the flexibility in marketing their business. There are also clients who have lesser resources and opted for Udemy so they do not need to worry about how to set up and manage a website, just concentrate on teaching. However, for most clients who are starting an education business, opting for a specialised e-learning platform such as LearnWorlds or Talentlms is the best choice. That, in fact is our recommendation.
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Featured Photo for this post by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash
