How To Validate Your Online Course Idea
One of the biggest mistakes that online course creators make is to not validate their idea and the market demand for it. Most instructors come up with ideas for their online course and then they will pick one randomly. As a result, they end up creating an online course the sales of which fall short of their expectations.
In this article, I will share the 7 best ways to validate your online course idea and make sure it is profitable.
The good thing is that validating your idea for a digital product is easier and less expensive compared to that for a physical product.
1. Get Search Volumes By Using Keywords Planner
Search volumes for keywords related to your topic is a great indicator of student interest in your niche and when it comes to search, nothing beats Google. To get search volumes on Google for your keywords, you can use this handy keywords research tool called Keywords Planner. Once you input a seed keyword, Keywords Planner will give you possible suggestions and their volumes as well. The keyword research will not just give you an idea of the search volume, but will also help you understand the intent of the users.
2. Search On YouTube
YouTube is the largest video platform in the world. On Youtube, you can find videos on almost any topic and in any possible niche. Go to YouTube.com and do a search with your keywords. You should see a lot of tutorial and how to videos related to your niche. Analyze the types of videos and video views which can give you an idea about students seeking knowledge in your niche.
3. Search In Online Forums
There are numerous Q&A forums on the internet and it's very likely that your niche has a few as well. Your potential students hang out in these forums, so you should join the community and follow and participate in the conversations. This will help you understand their pain points and you can fine-tune your course topic based on this intelligence.
You can also consider joining relevant Facebook Groups or Linkedin Groups as they can provide great insights into your customers' pain points. Quora is another excellent Q&A website and one of my favorite platforms for market research.
4. Search On Udemy And Other Course Marketplaces
While Udemy is the largest online course marketplace, there are other popular marketplaces like OpenSesame and Coggno. Searching your course topic on these marketplaces is one of the best ways to gather market intelligence in your niche and validate whether students are willing to pay or not. You can easily find information like the number of courses in your niche, the number of students enrolled in these courses and even read student feedback.
5. Search On Amazon
While Amazon is not directly related to online courses, it's the largest marketplace for ebooks which are nothing but information products like online courses. So, if you find any popular ebooks related to your course topic on Amazon, this is a great news for you.
6. Survey Your Audience
If you have an audience, you can consider creating a survey to get direct feedback from your potential students. You can use a free solution like Google Forms or a paid solution like Survey Monkey to create a survey and send it to your audience. With this method, you can also get feedback on your course curriculum in addition to your course topic.
7. Pre-Launch Your Online Course
If you’re still not confident about your online course idea, you can use pre-launch strategy to test it. With pre-launch, you sell your course even before you create it. Generally, instructors offer a heavy discount or, offer other benefits to motivate students to pre-order their online course.
If creating your online course will require a significant investment of time and money, and you want to be 100% confident before undertaking such a course project, you can consider pre-selling your course.
What's Next?
Having gone through the different validation strategies, it's time for you to implement what you learned in this article.
Whether you're a first-time course creator or not, these strategies will come in handy while testing the market demand for your online course ideas and will significantly reduce the risk of failure.
