Guest Article
All books require explanation, even the #1 Book in the World – the Bible. So, why not explain your book? People oftentimes want to “hear” or ask questions about a particular statement, chapter, etc. Wouldn’t it be great to give them an opportunity to get their questions answers by turning your book into an online course?
Let’s face it, you’ve written the book, published it, but no one is buying it despite your repeated marketing efforts. Don’t fret, there’s good news and there’s great news about turning your book into a course.
How would you like to charge $97 to $297 for your book? You may be thinking, ‘you’ve gone mad woman’! It’s a hard to peddle books out of your trunk as a vendor at an event and not yield a great return. If you turn your book into a course you can sell your course designed by you book in your sleep and make three to five times as much.
People that purchase books will say they love it, but they may have questions on how to apply a certain portion of the book to their life and/or business. This may get you thinking like I did years ago – “wow, I need to answer their questions, but more importantly, what if other people had the same questions that went unanswered.”
Ultimately, you can turn your book into a 4 to 6-week class with worksheets, audios and full interaction with the participants! And, here’s the great news, as a starting point, you can charge up to 5 times the cost of your book!
Now that I’ve made the business case, let’s dive into the 5 Steps for Turning Your Book into an Online Course.
- Select an engaging topic. You might not need to use the title of your book, you might want to pull out a section of the book to build your course. Do your due diligence and select an attractive topic. A good topic acts as an attractive force that pulls in your target audience because it relates to them and solves a problem. Drawing the attention of the reader should be your first priority. You should consider the following points if at all you are in the research stage.
- What about your book solves a problem?
- Do you know your target audience?
- Where can you find them online?
- Do they have the capacity to invest in your course?
- Draw up an appealing outline. Don’t just jump into content creation but rather filter out your course outline like a sales document. You need to make each week’s course content appealing to your target audience. A well-planned outline will engage your audience in a most dramatic fashion. Try to be as concise as possible to stimulate your readers to action. You can do this by:
- Trying to stimulate their aspirational goals or solve a specific problem
- Tease important strategies and concepts they will learn
- Order your thoughts in a logical manner
- Create an eye-catching title. Your title should act as a package that meets the needs and wants of your target audience. What is it you are trying to teach your target audience? Does it provide a solution to their problems? Most readers are always interested in the title, it’s how they make the decision to keep reading. For example, a good title could read like: How to make more money online.
- Create captivating content. Your content should reflect the same quality and attractiveness as your title. The best strategy to use is to create content that appeals to all the ways people learn, You can start with walking your talk, or an audio course. Then your need slides for those who want to read the information and then you can add video elements to build connection with your audience and for those who you rather watch and listen. You can even go an extra mile by adding PDF worksheets and Word documents so they have homework to practice each week’s lesson.
- Be profit-oriented. You are providing a service to your audience by creating an online course. You are packaging your content to make it easy for your clients to get access to it. Don’t be afraid to charge for it. you can charge $97 to $497, per course and include the book. You can use great online platforms to upload and share your course. After doing all these, you will now be ready to launch and sell your online course.
Don’t just stop at writing the book. Maximize that content by creating an online course. What a great way to get some of those books off of your shelves, out of the boxes in the garage and into the hands of people that need your information! And you’ll make money too.
About the author
Joan Wilson is known as the Online Content Champion. She lands a knock out each time with her clients by utilizing her 1-2 punch combination to help them creatively sort out business branding ideas and uniquely package their content into profitable products. She is best known for her 6-figure content launch services. www.OnlineContentChampions.com
Don’t miss Joan’s message at this year’s Reinvention Weekend 2017 Conference Oct 6-7, 2017 in DC – http://reinvention17.com