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Hello All, An interesting development in the past year and a half , while we have all had a lot of time on our hands, has been the explosion of online learning. Many of us have sought to improve our skills while a comparable number of individuals and small businesses have sought to monetize their skills. Its been an exciting and profitable time for those who have been able to do it successfully as well as for the ecosystem of those who provide the necessary tools to make this happen. We all have at least one thing (and sometimes many things) that we can do better than the majority of people. While not all of these are marketable (my uncanny ability to recognize character actors at a glance is probably not going to be saleable), more and more communities and groups and courses are popping up to try and draw in those of us who are eager to learn or to join a community of like minded people. Building this type of business model, like every other business, takes a great deal of time and effort and success often depends on the personality and authority of the creator. So how do you go about monetizing your skills? First and most obviously, you have to come up with an offering that solves a problem and that people will pay money for. If you are a prolific writer, you might have a developed a methodology that you have developed over time that allows you to write more efficiently. The question then is are you able to translate this into a model that other writers can learn from and implement. If so, you could create a course that takes other writers through your process. Or maybe a community/membership model with separate resources would be more appropriate and in line with what your customers want. The next step after coming up with your product offering would be to find out if potential customers actually have an interest in and would actually pay for access. This likely requires some market research and “pre-selling” (seeing if people actually sign up in advance for access). And finally, and perhaps the hardest part, is to build yourself up as an authority in the broad or narrow field that you are planning to sell. The importance of building authority is that once you have done so, people will gravitate towards you and and will want to be in your eco-system. Some may simply join a newsletter or free Facebook group while others will want to soak up as much knowledge from you as possible. Of course, to keep your community engaged, you need to offer them value on an ongoing basis. One of the reasons that there are so many free resources available whether they are YouTube videos, blog posts, ebooks and courses is for the “stickiness” factor. The more often they partake of your free resources and recognize the value that you have provided, the more likely they are to subscribe to your paid offerings and recommend you to others. It should be noted that building authority is an ongoing effort that takes time and patience but as long as you are motivated , you can build a successful business.
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