1/ Here’s a thread on my current take on the online education market, which per below is absolutely exploding. It’s not as simple as “make an online course” as I’ll explain in a minute. It’s become a competitive market that has to be entered strategically
2/ First thing to understand: YouTube is completely consuming the low end of the market. There is simply no future for courses that cost less than a few hundred dollars, because “edutubers” will do it faster, better, and cheaper (for free!) than paywalled courses ever could
3/ Every course creator hears “But I could watch it on YouTube for free...” as a constant sales objection, and it’s an increasingly legitimate one. If what you’re teaching is a simple How To, YouTube is a far superior place to do that
4/ So what could justify a $500+ price point? It’s a short list: deep trust, accountability, group learning, true community, instructor feedback/coaching, peer interaction, future updates, immersive/intensive experiences, contributing to a cause
5/ Deep trust: potential customers have to know you, your story, the details of your work and life, over a long period of time. This points to the importance of being consistently prolific. It takes many “touches” to build the relationship (per below)
6/ Accountability: has become the new bottleneck in a world of hyperabundant content, but it’s impossible to be held accountable without some kind of relationship. I pay $1k/hour to my coach even though 90%+ of what he tells me to do I already know. Accountability is worth a lot
7/ Group learning: ppl want to connect over their learning, to not be alone in their discoveries. A huge value you add as an instructor is gathering a group of highly committed, like-minded learners together. The more they pay, the more committed everyone is, the higher the value
8/ True community: to be even more valuable, this group lasts beyond the course. So providing places like Slack channel, FB group, online discussion forum, twitter hashtag, subreddit, etc where they can continue to connect adds value, even if “free”
9/ Instructor feedback/coaching: anyone can follow instructions, a how to video, or a tutorial, but you still don’t know if you did it right. Providing feedback/coaching on a student’s work is priceless, making the learning personal and meaningful. But this requires a small group
10/ Peer interaction: as an expert your point of view is inherently limited. To maximize learning students MUST learn from each other, but this is itself a skill that you the instructor have to teach and enable! You have to intentionally break the one-to-many format which is hard
11/ Future updates: for students to invest this kind of money with you, they are essentially hiring you as their go-to expert on the topic for foreseeable future, whether either of you know it or not. Which means YOU have to commit to improving and updating the course material
12/ Immersive/intensive experiences: every great learning experience requires a disruptive shock to our mental models/comfort zone/growth edge. Students are hiring you to push them past the point they think they can go, as described here: evernote.com/shard/s204/sh/…
13/ Contributing to a cause: every purchase these days is evaluated through lens of social/enviro-responsibility, incl. info products. It’s increasingly a necessity that students feel they are enriching not just themselves, but a cause or movement, implicitly or explicitly
14/ @JamesClear gives to Against Malaria Foundation, @marieforleo to numerous charities (marieforleo.com/giving-back/), & @russellbrunson to World Teacher Aide (). It’s become expected
15/ If you just naively create a course, offer it for $99, and get no traction, it’s easy to conclude that the market isn’t there, that the space is crowded, that ppl are too price sensitive, etc. but it’s really that you’re missing the current context of online education
16/ I see so many newbie creators who LOWER their prices in response to customer feedback, but of course they’ll say it’s too expensive when compared to free, super high quality YouTube videos and free courses used as promotional tools! You can’t compete with free
17/ But this high end market is also difficult to enter, because it requires high touch sales skills. It actually requires *deemphasizing* production values, instant responsiveness, comprehensive “how to” material, & polish, which is really hard for perfectionist creators to do
18/ The classic red flag is instructor framing their course in terms of how much they are offering (no. of modules, hours of video, extra bonuses, MOAR of everything) when what premium customers want is LESS (headache, stress, time spent, maintenance, decisions, etc.)
19/ In fact, the single biggest mistake I see in online education today is assuming “more is better”: “all-you-can-eat” subscriptions like Skillshare and MasterClass, to “mega-bundle” (21 FREE courses Zomg!!!) Teachable promotions, to deep, incessant discounts from Udemy/Coursera
20/ No one wants “more courses.” They want the results, which more often come from paring down, doing instead of consuming, reducing info overload, holding them accountable, and everything else in my list above. Learning is not a commodity to be sold in bulk, like soybeans
21/ In fact, I actually believe learning has negative network effects, ie negative returns to scale. We know this when it comes to small class size and student-teacher ratios, but somehow we forgot it when it comes to online learning, as if human nature suddenly changed
22/ Everyone is looking for the next mega-platform, the “YouTube for education,” which has caused them to miss the groundswell of independent, indie, mostly solo creators on self-service platforms like @Teachable @thinkific @podia @Kajabi who are absolutely killing it
23/ They are in a way a return to the “one room schoolhouse” model, except divided by interest and niche topic instead of local geography. As @LauraSandefer explains in her book Courage to Grow, one-room schoolhouses were the backbone of the American education system: 
24/ This narrative doesn’t quite fit the “disruption of education” narrative. It suggests learning will get MORE personality driven, not less, w/ learning both centralizing (on subjects that can be taught the same everywhere) and decentralizing (on long tail of infinite niches)
25/ It also suggests a need for a completely different teacher training track, as entrepreneurs/marketers/coaches instead of just instructors (though they’ll have to instruct better than ever). They’ll also need to get used to conveying strong opinions, not just objective facts
26/ In fact, I think online teaching could be the most accessible path to entrepreneurship/self employment for most people, for whom their knowledge is their most valuable and monetizeable asset. It’s a bright future for those who embrace it
