Are you ready to add an online course or digital product to your business? Here’s how to tell…

I get asked this question a lot from those in my audience who are not sure if they're ready to create an online course yet. They often think they don't know *enough* and are filled with fear and doubt. In today's episode, I'm sharing 6 signs that you're ready to add an online course to your offer suite.

– Why being clear about what you *do* know will help you to create an offer that solves a problem or achieves a transformation.
– What you can do if you don't want to take on anymore 1:1 clients or have reached your ceiling.
– The importance of listening to what your audience are asking you for.
– How working with clients in different ways can help support those who may not be able to afford your main offer and/or those who have already worked with you previously.

Links:
– DM me “KIT” on Instagram (@stephtaylor.co) to grab my free ebook, The Digital Product Kickstart Kit—3 simple steps to start creating an online course, membership, or other digital product or visit https://stephtaylor.co/digital-product-kickstart-kit
– DM me “OLSM” on Instagram (@stephtaylor.co) to find out more about “Offer Less, Sell More” or visit https://stephtaylor.co/offer-less-sell-more

 

 
Today, I'm talking about some of the signs that you might be ready to add an online course or another digital product to your business, whether that might be a group program, a membership, templates, or some kind of one-to-many offering where you're taking your knowledge or your expertise and you are packaging it up into an offer that you can sell at a scale where it doesn't require you trading time for money.

I guess the very first thing I want to touch on before we jump into the signs is that you don't need to be an expert. So if you're waiting until you know enough to be that expert, you're going to be waiting a really long time.

So some signs that you are ready to create an online course or a membership or a program in your business. 

 

Sign #1: You have an area of expertise that you can share to help somebody solve a specific problem or achieve a transformation. 

Even if it is a really small problem or a really small transformation, you have that expertise where you can guide them on that journey. It doesn't have to be this big signature thing where you teach all of the different steps. We make it really simple for the person to take action and get from A to B. That's the value. 

It's not the value that's in the content. The value lies in how quickly you can get them to that finish line to solving that problem or achieving that transformation.

 

Sign #2: You don't want to take on more one-on-one clients.

Or you have hit an income ceiling where you can't earn any more without taking on more clients and working longer hours but you're not quite at your income goal yet and you don't have to be at this point before you create and launch your first digital product. 

I do want to say that you don't have to wait until you're solidly booked with clients. You don't have to even want to work with clients if you don't want to but this is something that I've noticed is really common with coaches and done for you service providers. You know, in my audience, I have a lot of copywriters, designers, nutritionists, and coaches who have all up to this point worked one-on-one, but then they've hit the ceiling where they can't make any more money without increasing their prices or working more hours.

And they potentially don't want to increase their prices beyond this point that they're at, or they don't want to work more hours. And in some cases, they want to work fewer hours, which I'm a big fan of creating freedom where you can actually be away, you can enjoy your life where you're not at your laptop.

But they can't free up their time without losing their income. For each hour that they work, they can charge their clients. So they end up getting stuck in this cycle of having to keep working harder, and then they can't step away from their business without it all falling apart or without losing income. That is a great sign that you are ready to add some kind of one-to-many offering.

 

Sign #3: You have people asking for help with the problem that your future offer solves or the transformation that it will deliver for them.

For example, in that Facebook ads course that I told you about my old offers, I had people reaching out for help running their Facebook ads. They wanted me to run and manage their Facebook ads for them. With the podcast launch plan, I had people reaching out and asking me. Hey, how do I start a podcast? 

And look, if you're new to the business and you don't have an audience yet, you probably won't have people reaching out and asking these questions, but maybe you can get creative and look like, what questions are people asking in Facebook groups? What do they want help with? What are they asking on Reddit? Where else are they hanging out? What questions are they asking? And that's going to give you great ideas for an offer that will serve somebody that they will pay money for. 

This is a great sign that there is a market for it. It doesn't completely remove the need for market research.

And I'm a big fan of pre-selling your offers before you create them as much as you can. So selling the course before you go and spend 12 months outlining it because once you've sold it, then you'll know if there's a market for it. 

 

Sign #4: You want a way to help those who can't afford to work with you one-on-one.

I think back to one of my very first launch strategy clients, who is also my website and brand designer, Emma Troy. When she and I worked together many years ago now, she was only working one-on-one with clients, and through our work together, she came up with a beautiful launch strategy for her website templates that for her now is a great way for her to help people without it being tied to her time and without them having to invest tens of thousands of dollars in custom brand design, and website design.

So creating some kind of one-to-many offering means that you can help people at a more affordable rate, which makes your offers much more accessible outside of the people who have a big budget. The caveat here though, is that sometimes people tell us they can't afford our services. It's not that they actually don't have the budget for it, it's more that they don't see why they should prioritise spending money on it right now, in which case a cheaper version might not actually get them across the line anyway. 

So you need to be really careful that your messaging is still good on your higher ticket offers and if people are telling you it's too expensive. For them, they can't afford it. We need to get really clear. Is it the wrong people? Is it that they need a lower ticket offer? Or is it that my messaging needs to show them why they need to prioritise it? Or is it in fact maybe that this is a problem they don't have? They don't value spending money on this or they don't need to solve this problem.

We need to figure out which one this is first but if you know that there is a market for a lower-priced version of your one on one, then this can be a great sign that you are ready to create it, if you have people who can't afford that higher ticket one on one. 

 

Sign #5: You want a way to help the people who have already worked with you, and now they have a new struggle that they need help with.

So a good friend of mine, Bec Miller from Health with Bec, her main offer is her three-week body reset. It's a three-week weight loss program but then once somebody has completed the three-week body reset, they now need to maintain the awesome habits and the lifestyle that they have created. So it's created this new problem for them where they've been doing this awesome lifestyle for three weeks but now they need to maintain it over the long run. 

And that's where her next offer, her membership comes into play. And when somebody finishes working with you, potentially in a coaching capacity or in a service capacity, what's next for them? Could you create some kind of course or membership or some other kind of offer that solves the next problem that somebody has after they finish working with you? Because it is so much easier to keep working with the same clients and helping them again and again with each of the different problems that they are facing than it is to always try and bring in new clients into your business. 

And, you know, there might be space for a course or it might be a membership or it might be something else completely different. It might even be some kind of ongoing support that you offer them. 

 

Sign #6: Your audience isn't yet ready for your main offer.

For example, with Launch Magic, one of the big hesitations that come up, and the big reasons that a lot of people tell me when I survey them after I close doors, and often they will tell me the reason they didn't buy was that they have Offer Less, Sell More because that solves a problem that makes somebody ready to go and learn about how they can launch their offers.  

If your main offer is one-on-one and you want to keep offering that, there might be something that your ideal client needs help with before they are ready to buy your main offer. How can you potentially solve that with a course or a group program or something else, or maybe there is something that someone who is one step before your ideal client, one step earlier in that journey. Maybe there's something that they need to solve before they can become that ideal client. That can be a great opportunity for a course. Maybe it could be a workshop. 

 

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