This is a guest post by Crissy Herron

The thought of holding your own online class may sound scary and it might cause you to step out of your comfort zone a little, but the benefits are well worth it! Here are a few reasons on why you should set up your own class:

Expand Your Business

Holding your own online class is a great way to expand your business. You can base the topic of the class on what you already do. You will have a built-in audience – your current readers – and have a new product to offer them.

For example, if you are a copywriter, you could teach a class on how to write blog posts that sell. Your current clients may want to take the course, as they probably do a lot of their own blogging. They will still hire you to create their sales pages, but buy offering this extra class, you are expanding your business and creating additional income.

Reach New Customers

You can be the best graphic designer, virtual assistant, or so forth. You can be the absolute best at whatever it is you do, but there will always be some people who will refuse to hire you. These people just prefer to do things by themselves.

By teaching an online class, you can reach this market. These people are much more apt to purchase a learning product that will teach them to do something rather than hire someone.

If you are a graphic designer, you could teach a class on creating simple graphics. If you are a bookkeeper, you could teach a class on how to organize business finances. There are plenty of people who want to learn these skills, and will be more than happy to pay you to teach them!

Earn A Higher Profit

When you work one-on-one with a client, you can only earn your regularly hourly fee. If you charge $20 per hour, that’s what you will earn in a one-on-one situation. But if you teach an online class, you can greatly increase your dollar per hour average.

Let’s say that you decide to teach a one-hour class on how to set up a Facebook fan page. You charge $15 for the class and 10 people sign up, giving you a total of $150. Let’s say that it takes you one hour to create the materials for the class and one hour to deliver the class, giving you an average hourly wage of $75. That is almost four times as much as your regular one-on-one hourly wage!

It Doesn’t Cost A Lot To Get Started

There are many free and low cost tools available to help you teach an online class, from free web rooms, such as DimDim, and free screen recording software, such as CamStudio. There are some items that you may need to purchase, such as a computer microphone if you decide to use a web room, but the costs are minimal.

Residual Income

Teaching online classes can also provide a sort of residual income. Going back to the above example of teaching a class on setting up a Facebook fan page, the materials would only need to be created once. The class can then be taught over and over again using the same materials. You will still have to do some marketing to promote your class and take an hour out of your week to deliver the class, but one hour of work per class isn’t so bad, is it?

Holding your own online class can be a lot of fun, and as you can see from the above examples, it can also be great for your business. With ‘back to school’ season just around the corner, this is a great time to start thinking about creating your own class. Everyone is ready to learn something new in the fall. And you can be just the person to teach them!

Would you like to learn more about holding your own online class? Crissy Herron, the author of this post, will be teaching a four week workshop that will walk you, step by step, through the process of creating your own class. By the time the workshop is over, you will be ready to enroll your own students!

Click Here for more information and to register.

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