How To Launch An Online Course Without Being An Expert

Online learning platforms have gained remarkable popularity for the last couple of years, so have online courses. People turn to online education more and more often, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Online classes are maybe lacking the interactivity of traditional classes, but you just can’t out beat other advantages that online education provides.

Of course, one of the biggest advantages is a safe way to learn. Can’t really argue much about this one during COVID-19. So, if you’ve got skills and knowledge on any subject and want to share it with others, create online courses and sell them on the Internet. Why not?

If this idea ever popped up in your head, then selling courses online is a good choice for making money online in 2021. Try this today and you’ll see that in the area of online education sky’s a limit! Oh, if you’re too worried that your expertise is not good enough, we’ll tell you what methods to use to get those worries completely out of your head.

Read this blog post to find out how to start selling online courses without being a super-duper expert!

Get Rid Of The Misconception That To Be An Expert Is A Must For Teaching Online

Since the beginning of time, people have always looked for ways to make things happen, for new things to make, and for shortcuts that, well… make things easier. But do you know what a magnificent force holds back over 30% of the population on this planet? This force is called fear of failure, which can be a common thing for anybody who wants to become an entrepreneur.

In fact, many people get scared whenever they need to start something new. Or they can fall into anxiety thinking that they don’t have enough qualifications for one job or another. And since fear is one of the primal instincts, we can’t blame folks for being extra precautious. But how to get this fear out of the way? How to find the courage to actually start chasing goals? Simply, stop believing that once you launch a new project, you’ll end up all crashed and burnt down to the ground!

Have you been thinking about building an online course? Then get rid of this overwhelming worry that you have in your head! What worry? That this course won’t work for your potential audience. Although people do like “experts”, you don’t really have to be one for building online courses. There are plenty of examples when too much expertise given in an online course actually got in the way of the productive learning process. Or even worked against its creator.

Basically, don’t make things too complicated for yourself. Teach people basic steps, if you can do something. Anything! Give them hints and tricks that worked well for you. Provide them with your own unique insights that they wouldn’t find anywhere otherwise. Go ahead, roll up your sleeves, and stop missing out on opportunities that are waiting! Don’t let your fears or misconceptions stop you from making your voice heard.

Ways to deal with spooky self-doubts that newbies get

Since learning is an everlasting and never-ending experience, there always is somebody who teaches. And if you teach a particular subject or topic, you’ll always run into an “expert” who claims that he knows more than you. In fact, there is no real “the top of the ladder” to anything learning wisely. You probably won’t find a universal teacher who has the most full or perfect scope of knowledge. So, discrediting and diminishing your own scope of knowledge won’t do you any good.

Here are three basic steps that can help you to eliminate those self-doubts:

• Smash and destroy that “imposter syndrome”
• Turn a vector of your mindset to the direction of the establishment of self-attitude
• Adopt a mental focus that is more growth-centric

What is Imposter Syndrome and how can it affect you?

The truth is that many highly skilled and knowledgeable people “suffer” from the Imposter syndrome (which is not contagious by any means). This syndrome expresses itself as constant doubting of one’s abilities/skills, as well as an overwhelming fear of being called a “fraud” by others.

If every time when you’re trying to start building an online course, your mind is freaking out telling you – you’re not good enough! Here you go, this is an imposter syndrome that talks to you. So, the first thing that you need to do is to stop beating yourself down and stop stressing out.

The statistic shows that there are about 70% of people all over the world who have the same problem. Or at least a great number of people experienced this syndrome at some point in time. 

Even top managers of large corporations and CEOs confessed that they had their moments of doubts thinking “I don’t belong here. I’m not skilled enough”. 

Some felt even scared thinking that people are going to find out at some point that they’ve been just “playing games on everybody”. However, thoughts like that are just a result of imposter syndrome. These fears had nothing to do with their real knowledge and skills, which they proved with hard work.

Actually, the American Psychological Association that did research on the imposter syndrome stated that this problem occurs mostly among high achievers. Those are the people who have a hard time accepting their own success. Consequently, high achievers get caught up in a vicious cycle of fear to be called a “fraud”. And, if they do get remarkable results, they believe that the anxiety helped them to achieve their goal.

But the real goal is to break through this cycle to free yourself from anxiety. This means to be able to change a mindset and remove all these self-doubts completely out of your head.

How to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset?

Since a mindset is a very strong force that can affect your reactions and responses,  you need to make sure that you don’t have a wrong mindset in place. If it is so, then your attitude towards different challenges will also be wrong. Of course, this will hold you back from your goal of building an online course.

Dr. Carol S. Dweck, an America’s leading physiologists, stated in her research paper on mindset and the new psychology of success that, in actuality, your mind and talents do just a half of the job on the way to success. The rest of success comes with a strong dedication to what you’re working on and from hard work. Her advice is that you need to make a shift from your fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

Here is an outline that shows what needs to be done to make a transition:

• Born talents vs. skills improvement through hard work;
• Avoidance of challenges and tendency to give up easily vs. Embracement of challenges and recognition of challenges as an opportunity to grow;
• Seeing effort as something you have to do only when you’re not good enough vs. Admittance that effort is something essential that can put you on the right path to grow further;
• Taking feedback too personally feeling defensive vs. Looking at feedback as something useful that helps to recognize areas that need improvements;

Obviously, if you keep telling yourself that you’re not credible enough for launching your own successful online course, you’ll never be able to make a transition to a growth mindset. And consequently, you’ll just talk yourself out of this. But if you do make a shift, then it will spark creativity. It will encourage you to experiment along the way. And, as we all know, creativity and experimentation are two essentials that can turn an entrepreneur into a great expert.

Here are more tips on how to adopt a creative and growth mindset:

Recognize the benefits of practicing gratitude and don’t overlook it. This is something that influences your self-esteem, confidence, and well-being with positive effects. Appreciate small moments and praise everything that you have in life. Remember that even negative experiences can be a chance for practicing gratitude.

Turn negative moments into positive outcomes. Ask yourself – what lesson did I learn from my negative moments? What can I do to make it a success? For example, your online video lectures didn’t receive as much attention as you wanted. In this case, take time to reevaluate everything and figure out why it didn’t work. Look at this situation as an opportunity to grow.

Cut off all negative self-talk and practice a mindfulness method. Boost your self-esteem by stopping all negative self-talk in your head. Treat these annoying thoughts as it would’ve been some obnoxious roommate talking to you trying to let you down. Hit this obnoxious guy back with a dose of wisdom and self-confidence.

Teaching as an “expert” vs. Teaching with fresh eyes. What can be more beneficial for students?

Whenever it comes down to a teaching process, many highly experienced experts would eventually get something called an “expert blind spot”. This problem affects teaching and not in the best way. Once an expert obtains a deep understanding of the subject, he/she can actually completely forget how difficult the process of getting there was. Some experts can be ridiculously advanced. But, at the same time, it’s almost like they scratch out all those years that they’ve spent crafting the skill to perfection.

Some experts fall under the impression that lots of things that they do almost automatically will be just as easy for students. But the reality is that they are wrong and their “expert blind spot” is just messing up the whole learning process.

In fact, those teachers who were not “experts” had much better results of teaching because they were closer to their students. So, not being an expert and teaching students can work to your advantage since it can bring you closer to them. This will let you react timely whenever students need some help and you’ll teach them what they’re actually able to learn – instead of forcing your insights on the learning process, which can be a little bit too advanced for people you teach.

In case you’re hoping to reach an “expert” level at some point in time, teaching online courses is a great way to improve your current knowledge. You’ll build a more solid base of knowledge by revisiting and re-learning content that you might’ve forgotten. This method will get closer to a desirable expert level without getting this awful “expert blind spot” problem.

So, how to get on this horseback and take a step closer to becoming an expert? How to teach with success? Some tips on how to get there:

Find ways for creating a unique learning experience. Develop your own approach for teaching and teach these unique steps to students. Since everybody is learning in his/her own unique way, something that works great for one person might just not work as great for another. So, create your own interpretations of the subject you teach. Make your online course uniquely engaging to learners. And make it so you’ll stand out amongst your competitors.

Establish your own niche. Teach what you know! List all aspects that can make your online course stand out and your teaching style authentic. Once you get this done, here you go – you just found your niche! And it doesn’t matter that your expertise is in the area that has been taught by millions of other online instructors. There are always ways to make an online course stand out from the rest. Look at the most successful online instructors’ teaching styles and learn from them.

For example, there is one online instructor who has been teaching web development online for over 10 years now and became very successful. This guy’s name is Rob Percival and he already made millions of dollars by selling his online courses on the Internet. Rob has taught millions of students all over the globe and new students keep coming in! Lots of people who have already taken his courses, noted him for his fun and perky personality.

Rob’s teaching style is fun and cheerful, which makes his courses very engaging and stand out from the rest. But not only his style is so appealing to the general public. Rob’s online courses provide learners with remarkably accurate content. His courses are organized in such a way, so it’s easy to absorb new information and develop skills in web development. Check him out on the Grinfer eLearning platform and see how his teaching style makes him stand out from the pack.

Take some time to think and decide what style of teaching appeals to you naturally. Then think about what you can add to this style to make it unique and engaging. If you like to add some humor, jokes to your teaching, that’s great! If you’re naturally a comedian, then keep online courses you teach light and fun. And if you’re inclined more towards the academic style of teaching, then make a focus on research and delivering unique information that is hard to find somewhere else.

Sell your skill level by combining your skills. Once you’ve got your list of skills all written out, think about what extra dot points you can add to it. Go ahead and list under each skill some basic skills that can come with it. The basic level is always super helpful for newbies and appreciated by people who are just starting out in their learning journey. Besides, you’ll get more chances to explore your skills even further!

The truth about eLearning is that many people take online courses for getting those fundamentals and basics all straightened out. So, let’s say you’re on a scale from 1 to 10, then your level is somewhere around 4. This means that you can teach to anyone who is interested in your subject and whose level is from 1 to 3. Teach them all hints and tricks of how to get to level 4 with no hassle. And, sure thing, they’ll appreciate it!  Validate your ideas along the way. Validation is needed just to make sure that you do something fruitful and that the online course you create is something people would want to take.

Bottom-line

Regardless of your skill level, there are always people who are interested in taking the course. So, don’t let your negative self-talk hold you back! Do some research online and you’ll see that there are plenty of examples of nonexperts who had very successful sales of their online courses. Some of those courses are best-sellers now!

Practice methods that we’ve talked about (mindfulness and gratitude) and stay focused on your goals. Try to draw a bigger picture and stay positive! Realize that eventually, you’ll have to take a step back to identify gaps in your knowledge. Always look for new sources that would let you learn more about your subject. Always keep some room for advancement and development and this will definitely make you a better online instructor.

Go to Grinfer’s website to learn more about how to start building online courses and sell them online. Keep in mind that the “expert” concept is not a cut-off point for making it happen!