Validating your course.
Now this is an important topic that definitely needs to be something that isn’t skipped when creating your online course. Because if you don’t validate your course, and you start creating your course and go all the way through the entire process and build it and to find out at the end that nobody wants it, it becomes a waste of time, money, energy and it’ll definitely become discouraging
However, if you validate your course in the beginning and make sure there is a demand for it, and people do want it then you have a better chance of success with your course. You’ll have a higher probability of it being profitable.
Some of the tools that you could use
To make this a little bit easier and to help you out to see if there is a demand for what you want to teach, you can use tools like:
- Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends.
- You can use a website called Skillshare
- Check on Udemy for other courses that are in the similar or same topic that you’re trying to teach.
- Check Amazon for any kind of books on the same topic, and you can check the reviews, both the good and the bad, and see what people are saying about that particular topic.
Researching your topic
In the researching phase, the way you would do this is you would search Google Keyword Planner or Trends with some of the terms that your audience might search on.
For example, if they do searches on heart healthy foods, healthy foods or best foods to live a healthy life etc. and see what kind of results you end up getting. See what the demand is using that search term. You can do a search using Udemy or Skillshare for existing courses.
As I mentioned before, see if there is somebody else that has a course that is similar to yours or if you see a lot of people doing a course that is similar to yours or a similar topic, that’s a good thing.
If you don’t see anybody with a course on the same topic, that’s validation telling you that there is not a demand on it because somebody else would have definitely created that course prior to you thinking about it.
Another thing you can do is check reviews on another course. Look for both the positive and the negative reviews. See what people are saying about the topics. See what people are saying about their course. If people are putting negative comments about their course saying there was a lack of certain content, that’s maybe something you should consider putting in yours for your course.
Another useful approach would be to search Amazon for books on the similar topics and probably use the same strategy. Look at the reviews. See what people give high reviews for. What do they like about the books? What do they dislike about the books? Try to incorporate that in your course.
One of the best ways you could do your research is to talk to people. Talk to people one-on-one, face-to-face, chat with them on social media and get some feedback from them.
If you have an e-mail list, send an e-mail list to them and let them know that you’re thinking about building a course and what are some of the things that they would like to see. The particular topic that you are thinking about, and even if they would be interested in signing up for a course based on that topic that you’re thinking about.
Do an online survey, using websites like Wufoo or Survey Monkey, Google Forums, there are tons out there.
You can ask around in Facebook groups and if the group admins allow it, post a question, create a small post and let them know that you’re thinking about this particular topic and that you’re creating a course on it, and what their thoughts are. What would they like to see? What would entice them to consider signing up for your course?
You could also reach out to past clients. Let them know that you’re thinking about building a course for them. You would like to have some of their input and feedback on it, and that it would be valuable to you when building out this course. Maybe offer some sort of a discount for that kind of a feedback for signing up for that course.
I hope after reading this post that you received some valuable tips on the different ways you can validate your new online course. It would be a waste to invest time, money and energy into a digital product that no one wants.
If you would like to learn more and enjoy this lesson from my full guide on how to Create a Wining Course, check out my program at https://CreateWinningCourses.com