Digital Business Mastery: Business Model

Successful entrepreneurs share some common traits. You have definitely heard about many of these. Passion, motivation, self-belief, flexibility, hard work and networking, right?

But there’s one trait which overrides all – ‘’asking the right questions.’’

If you are planning to launch a new business, you have multiple challenges that stare you in the face. At any given point of time, you’re asking yourself whether you should do something or you shouldn’t do something. In fact, there are millions of questions that you face. But only a few of them actually matter, ones that you should really ask yourself to get started right and lead your business in the right direction. You need to know what those questions are.

Given below is a list of five questions that are essential to your success as an entrepreneur.

1. Is my market segment profitable enough?

Before you start to operate your business, you should find out whether that market offers opportunities for making sufficient revenue. On the surface, the market you pick may look like a promising one. But the truth emerges when you dig deeper and explore. Nowadays, most market segments are highly competitive because they have been so saturated.

Do adequate research and make sure that the market you choose will allow you to build a profitable business.

2. What are my target audience demographics?

Your business can’t win them all. To achieve success, you must reach a specific group of people who have a specific need. The challenge for you, as an entrepreneur, is to identify that specific audience.

It requires you to know as much about your target audience as possible. Once you have collected that information, you’ll find yourself in a better position to reach out to them and make a real impact. Start your research by looking at the key demographics of the geographical location that’s on your radar. Study groups of people in terms of their age, gender, income range, marital status, occupation and education among others.

3. What are the needs of my potential customers?

Now, move on to the next vital piece of information: customer needs. Why would people purchase your product or service?

The answer lies in understanding what your customer needs are. If you are going to start a business in health and fitness, you need to find out what your customers care about. Are your customers looking for home-based exercise? Do they have time to attend a gym? Conduct thorough research and connect with friends and colleagues who are conscious about their health and aspire to lead a happy and disease-free life, for insights.

That way, you’ll be able to craft a product which fits in with the actual needs of your customers and marketing will be easier too.

4. Who are my key competitors?

To beat competitors, you need to know and understand competitors. When you start a new business, one of the first things you should ask yourself is what your key five or ten competitors look like.

Find out who your top competitors are so that you can learn from them and improve your own offer. When you keep a close watch, you’ll always be aware of the changes they make to their marketing and advertising, which in turn reveals new processes and strategies. Use different tools for researching content strategies, display ad strategies, ranking strategies etc. It will help you size up the competition really well.

5. What are my business goals?

Be crystal clear about what you want to achieve from your business – both for the short and long term. Not just business goals, you should also take your personal and financial goals into consideration. Knowing your expectations from day one will help you make the right decisions.

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As online entrepreneurs, we’re all looking for ways to increase our profitability. With only so many hours in the day, having multiple streams of income in your business can help you quickly level up your online business.

You probably have noticed a significant rise in the sheer number of business owners who are offering online courses to their audience. You’d have to be living under a rock not to!

What you may not know is exactly what goes into an online course, or why it’s revolutionizing the way we learn and earn an income online.

To start understanding the what and why, we first need to define what an online course actually is.

What is an online course?

An online course is essentially a collection of lessons on a central topic that can be accessed on the web from anywhere and is often broken into modules with in-depth lessons underneath each umbrella topic. Many educators call this “distance learning” because there are no location limitations.

While online education is nothing new, its influence in the world of online business in the last two to three years has been staggering.

We’ve seen many online business owners go from full-time freelancing to solely selling online courses. Years ago, that would have seemed risky, but today it’s become almost a new normal.

Now anyone with a computer and Internet access can sign up for an account and start selling an online course. And while it may seem like the marketplace is already oversaturated with online courses, we’re really only at the beginning.

There’s still so much room for you to grow your online business through online courses. But you still might be wondering what the big deal really is. So why are they worth working into your current business model?

What can an online course do for your online business?

Online courses provide the unique opportunity for you to teach a wide audience about a topic in your particular skillset. And not only do online courses generate more revenue, they also build your online business’ credibility and authority. This is important in building trust with your audience as the go-to expert in your field, all of which lead to better conversion.

Here are a few additional reasons why online courses are worth incorporating into your online business:

Online courses are scalable

When you’re solely providing services, how much you earn is largely tied to how much time you put into a project. This is true even if you’re pricing on a project-to-project basis vs. hourly rates.

Time is the great equalizer in online business. We can’t buy additional hours, so we want to make the most productive use of the time we have.

Online courses help you scale not only your income but also your thought leadership. In a sense, you’re getting paid to share your knowledge and build your platform as an expert in your field. Solidifying yourself as an expert is invaluable and well-worth the investment, especially if you’re able to generate revenue along the way.

Online courses fit lower budgets and create niched-down audiences

If you’re a service-based entrepreneur, some people in your audience may not have enough room in their budget for your services. It’s understandable, but you’ve spent all this time building your audience from scratch that it’s worth looking into options on how to further monetize your influence.

While these audience members may not work with you one-on-one, they might have an interest in a lower-budget option that helps them DIY what you do. Maybe they want to dip their toes in before they make a larger investment. This is where creating an online course comes in.

Let’s say it costs $100/hour to work with you as a consultant. If you sell a course for $200 with four hours of content (not to mention all the bonus material and freebies you’d include), the student gets double the value of hours. If you include a course community, which I highly recommend, they’d get even more value from connecting with other students.

Online courses at a lower budget (often priced around $100-$500) create a stronger connection with your audience. One of your online course students may even turn into an ideal client down the road. They’ll already know how much value you provide so when they have the budget to outsource, you’ll be top of mind.

Online courses give you flexibility and freedom

Have you always dreamed of working from anywhere as a location-independent entrepreneur? Do you fantasize about not having to ask for permission to take time off? Do you want to be more hands-off with your work?

This can become a reality with online courses. When you’re creating an online course, you can set your own schedule and work at your own pace. If you know you have a busy month, you can work ahead or pause your schedule when you need to.

Online courses can be created at any time during the day, too. No one has to know that you recorded one of your online course video trainings at 11 p.m. or wrote your sales copy at 5 a.m. This flexibility can be especially helpful for side hustlers.

Most common content types within online courses

Now that you’re warming up to the idea of weaving online courses into your business model, let’s chat about what kinds of content go into an online course. With the recent rise in multi-media, there’s more options than ever to create a unique course in multiple formats.

As we all know from our time in traditional school, not everyone learns from reading a textbook or listening to a lecture. That’s why including different content types ensures that all types of learners– from visual to auditory– feel like they’re comprehending the material.

Let’s break down the most common content types that are used within online courses:

Email or plain text

Although there are multiple visual and audio formats that can be incorporated into online courses, plain text is still widely used. Some online course creators create their course solely using plain text. More often than not, online course creators mix plain text with other visual formats.

With the flexibility and creative freedom of plain text-based online courses, you can mold and shape your lessons to fit your audience’s needs. You may wish to create a separate PDF worksheet your students can print out and fill in on their own to test their knowledge, or include step-by-step written instructions within the text of your email or lesson web page.

Want to test plain text course creation for yourself? You can start creating an email course using only ConvertKit and Gumroad. This can be a great way to test the market with free, user friendly tools.

Video

Including high-quality, engaging videos within your online course raises its perceived value. In a sea of long-form blog posts and eBooks, online courses provide concise videos for maximum learning.

Video engagement drops after six to nine minutes so it’s best to keep your videos around this length. This gives you enough time to prime your students for the subject, answer any important questions, and share an actionable activity.

But if you’re thinking “I can’t boil down all this information into a five minute video”, don’t worry. Your best option is to take longer videos and break them into smaller, bite-sized chunks. This will help your content become more digestible for your students.

To help you film and edit your online course videos, our friends at Teachable have some best practices for getting started:

Best file types: mp4 or mov
Recommended resolution: 720p (1280 x 720px)
Recommended frames per second (fps): 24-30
Supported file size: 1.5GB or smaller
Audio specifications: H.264 + AAC audio (advanced users)
Compress videos when possible

Audio

Maybe your audience wants to learn on-the-go or your topic doesn’t need visual instructions. Audio can be a great option for this type of audience.

For the best audio quality, invest in an external mic (usually priced around $40-$90) and a pop filter (usually $9-$20). You can record your audio files using free software like QuickTime, and edit them using GarageBand or Audacity all on your own.

Also, don’t worry about being weirded out by the sound of your own voice. You’ll get used to it after a few times, trust me.

Slideshow viewers

If your students want to go through your slide deck on their own time, embedding a slideshow viewer is a great option. This way students won’t have to watch your video with commentary if they want to pull out a quick quote from a slide or go through an activity after the lesson.

Some online course platforms like Teachable have slideshow viewers built into their software so you can be up and running in a few clicks. Another option is to create a slideshow on Slideshare. It acts as a public slideshow viewer so you can share it with a wider audience if so choose.

Quizzes

Want to test your student’s knowledge of what they’ve learned so far? Many online course platforms give you the option to create custom student quizzes with select lessons. We recommend looking into Teachable and Thinkific if you’re interested in including quizzes.

How do you know if you’re really testing your student’s knowledge? Here’s a few tips:

Use multiple question formats. Most quiz builder tools allow you to ask multiple choice questions, rating questions, or even simple yes/no questions. Use a variety of question types to keep your students interested.
Ask open-ended questions. These are used for answers to larger themed questions that can’t be summed up in a simple sentence. Think of it like a mini-essay for students. These answers will also give you great qualitative feedback.
Be concise. Clarity is more important than cleverness so keep your questions short and actionable. Also, determine how many questions are needed by how much content you’re covering. Does it make more sense to ask five questions every lesson or give a 25 question quiz at the end of the module? You can decide depending on your format.

Downloadables

Along with quizzes, you may want to give your students what Regina of byRegina likes to call “adult homework”. These worksheets and workbooks give your students an opportunity to complete exercises and apply what they’ve learned. You can give online course students the option to print them out or create fillable PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Some examples of downloadables include:

PDFs
Worksheets
Workbooks
Checklists
Timelines
Calendars
Spreadsheets
Trackers
Planners

Are online courses the right move for your online business?

The first step is to survey your audience to discover what they want to learn about. We’ll talk more about this in our next article on How to Find the Problem Worth Solving for Your Online Course Audience.

In the meantime, share your thoughts about online courses with us in the comment section below. Are you intrigued by the idea of creating and launching an online course? Is there anything specific holding you back? Let’s talk about it below.