Why It Is Your Duty To Create an Online Course As A Creative

Ok let’s put this down: Internet put an end to the “starving artist” cliché.

You can both share your art for free and make a living and help people.

In fact, you HAVE to create stuff and do what you love to provide value. I know what a dread right?

The Creative Dilemma: art vs business

If you’re the average artist online your strategy is probably something like this:

• put out 353 pieces of free content on YouTube or social…
• …and yea that’s about it.

 You hate the “business-y” “marketing-y” stuff. You hate selling and asking people for money.

And in your holy, devoted mission to help people and spread your gift *light shining upon you*, you don’t want to be a “sell out”…

Here is the thing though: If what you do is great and you are helping people, it is your duty to sell it.

It is your duty to learn how to market and sell your stuff, not by tricking people but by holding their hands through the learning process.

 

And the best way to do that is by teaching.

The truth is people will not value much what they don’t pay for… It’s kinda sad but true.

So, in a way of looking at it, you’re doing them a favor by charging them (how kind of you). You’re allowing them to have some skin in the game and buy in.

Of course, I’m not pretending here that you are doing this out of the kindness of your heart. But for the people that are really interested in getting good, then they probably need to pay in order to commit to it… all the way.

After all we’re just human and we both know that without an incentive to do anything, we’d just watch memes on Instagram all day.

Why an online course and how?

Online education is booming.

[rant]I would argue the main reason for that is that people are looking for information they’re not finding in the formal education system… I won’t rant about it here, but these are slow, outdated and unpractical. [end of rant]

If you had to go through all the shit, failures and tribulations and the wrong ways of doing things, then it is your duty to provide a better education and teach the RIGHT way of doing it.

Not that your way is the only way but if your audience likes you and your vibe, then they can learn better. And that alone puts an end to the question “what gives me the authority to teach that…” (self-esteem and all, remember?)

That being said, there are definitely wrong ways to go about this.

Here is what doesn’t work:

• You create an online course you think people want without actually asking them (rude!)
• You put it out with an underwhelming sales video.
• You wait and hope…

This is definitely not about doing some hard selling either. That doesn’t work.

In today’s noisy online world, the one thing that will always work is permission marketing.

What you’re doing is asking your audience what they want, create it then separate people that are interested from the herd… and sell them!

In sum: you’re not a sell off and you’re just asking for the permission to tell them more if they’re interested.

“Marketing is about turning the maybe’s into yes, and no’s into maybe’s.” – Me

The benefits of an online course

Of course the first obvious benefit of selling a course is… money.

But in the longer term, this will also allow you to start building a list of people that are interested in paying for your stuff… Which will be useful for any projects in the future.

Now in the short term, putting a course together is time consuming, you have to pay forward. I get it. *pat gently on the head*

But in the long term, once the course is finished, it will always be up there for people to get and will provide a stream of income if you put the right systems in place (yep I shamelessly put a link to my contact page).

It also builds up your profile. Even if you were already helping and teaching people for free, now you are actually a teacher (put that on a plate with your name and have people call you “professor”).

This builds your authority and gives you a lot of material: The more you teach, the more you find out what people struggle with and want. So it helps giving them what they want, need and provide a lot of value in the future.