Welcome back, this is Dave Espino and today I would like to answer a question I heard recently which is do online course creators think everyone is qualified to create and sell online courses? Well that's kind of a loaded question because you're almost generalizing that all online course creators think the same, and that's definitely not true within the online course creating world. There are people who believe that you can only teach online courses if you have incredible credentials, and these people tend to be the more technical online course creators.
There Are 2 Types of Course Creators
In other words, they're teaching on technical topics like programming or engineering or analysis or excel or things like that. Then there's the other side of the spectrum that says anyone can teach, and I fall closer to the bottom side of the spectrum of saying that anyone can teach. And the reason is we all teach people all the time.
If you're a parent, you're teaching your kids. If you work as a manager somewhere, you're teaching the people that work with you, right? So we're all teachers to some degree or another.
The real question is, what are you teaching? Yes, if you're teaching lifesaving CPR skills you better be qualified, and you better be credentialed and you better really know your stuff. But if you're teaching somebody how to bake chocolate chip cookies, just about anyone can teach that, right? So the question is, what are you teaching? What is the topic that you're teaching? We need to boil down this question too. What is it that you're teaching? If I learned a cool strategy for selling on Amazon that I've implemented it in my business and I've proven it to work amazingly well, why am I not qualified to teach that?
Some People Are Just More Qualified Than Others In Certain Topics
You can teach that if you're talking about some incredible programming language, some really technical programming language, then for sure I'm not qualified to teach that. I'm not a programmer and at that point yes, you should have somebody that's very qualified.
Let's not be overgeneralizing with the online course business. Let's really treated on an individual case by case basis. If I want to teach how to bake sourdough bread, like my good friend Theresa Greenway, and I'm good at baking sourdough bread, then why can't I teach sourdough bread? If I've developed a strategy that works in my business and it's generated a 2x or a 5x profit in my business, why can't I teach that?
So is Everyone Qualified?
So again getting back to the question, do online course creators think everyone is qualified to create and sell online courses? I believe there's a range, a spectrum, and only a certain percentage of the online courses out there really require high credentials to teach.
I would say a good percentage, probably 70% to 80% of the courses that are taught right now, do not require high credentials. We're quickly moving into a world because of technology and because of the Internet. We're quickly moving into a world where your skills are going to be yours that you've developed primarily on your own, where your skills did not come from a school or a degree or some kind of specialized training. We're quickly moving into that world.
So as time goes on, more and more people will need less and less credentials to teach, and that's just the way things are going. I hope you enjoyed this article. If you're interested in getting started in the online course business I recently created a free Online Course Fast Start Kit which I encourage you to check out. You can find that kit at http://freecoursekit.com. I'll see you next time.