Teach. Train. Conquer Your Market.
Online course failure. I was prompted to write about this topic because of a conversation I had recently with the financial director at an organization that is not getting good sales results for its online courses. The critical part of the conversation went something like this: [Read more…]
Ever struggle to determine whether an idea is a good one? Whether it is really a good fit for your business, something that really deserves to be pursued? In this post, I share a deceptively simple visual I use for focusing my business ideas.
I call it the “3M” model – not because it has anything to do with Post-It notes (though those can be useful!), but because it focuses on three factors that I think are essential for success with a business or even a specific product (like an online course).
These are: market, means, and motivation.
In a nutshell, there has to be demand for the product you plan to sell (market), you have to have the capabilities necessary for creating and delivering it (means), and for real success, you have to truly driven to create significant value through making the product available (motivation).
If any of these factors is weak or missing, your efforts will be off center – as suggested in the graphic above – and you will either fail entirely or be much less successful than you could be.
I cover each of these areas in more detail in what follows and also include links to a range of tools I hope you will find helpful. [Read more…]
I decided to write this post in response to some common questions I get from Learning Revolution e-mail subscribers. These include:
On the surface, these may see like completely unconnected questions, but they all suggest underlying assumptions about what does or doesn’t make a course valuable. None of these, I would argue, is the most important factor. The most important factor, the thing that makes your courses unique, is you.
I don’t say this to make some sort of “woo woo” touchy-feely point. No, my argument comes from cold hard business facts: [Read more…]
A lot of people end up on this site because they are seeking success selling online courses and usually have come across my 15 Platforms for Selling Online Courses post. As you might expect, I also get a lot of e-mails from people sharing their challenges and asking for advice. If there is one common thread that tends to run though these e-mails its this: too much focus on technology.
People want to know which platform to use. Which course tools are best. How to best host videos, or Webinars, or eBooks, or …. name your product of choice.
But the thing is, when it comes to success selling online courses, these things are not what makes the difference. [Read more…]
Landing page from a Tagoras Leading Learning Webinar
Do you use or plan to use Webinars as a way to create and deliver online courses or other educational products?
If you do, you probably realize you are far from alone – the Web is jam packed with Webinars, many of them free, and a lot of them of pretty low quality. Whether you are trying to make money directly through selling Webinars or indirectly by using them as a means of lead generation, you need good ways to stand out from the crowd.
Running successful Webinars isn’t rocket science, but it does require some basic knowledge about the medium and attention to details. To help you out, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Leading the Learning Revolution, updated and adapted slightly to reflect my ongoing experience with Webinars. [Read more…]
