How much time does it take to create a digital course?
Hello! And welcome to another episode of the Simplify Your Sales podcast.
This is part 2 of a 5-part series of bite-sized solo podcast episodes where I’m going to get real with you about what goes into creating a digital course-- the practical elements like time commitment, revenue scalability, that sort of things vs. other digital products…(take me to Part 1 >>)
And today we’re talking about TIME INVESTMENT.
Now there are two different “time” approaches we’re going to explore, initial time investment vs. ongoing “maintenance” time investment. And we’re going to talk about the latter in a later episode in this 5 part series because today I just want to talk about the INITIAL time investment of creating a digital course.
This is a BIG hangup for most people that are thinking about creating a digital course ot earn passive income--the idea of creating a digital course seems overwhelming and tech-heavy, and flat-out time consuming.
I don’t want to sugarcoat things-- it DOES take time to create a digital course. Absolutely. You have to get clear on a course curriculum and create the lessons and compile everything and there are quite a few things that need to get done.
And so it’s easy to default to the gut reaction of saying that a printables or templates or digital cut files or whatever type of digital product is going to be waaaaaay easier from a time-perspective to whip out than a digital course.
Now I’ll admit-- you wouldn’t be wrong from a one-off perspective. The time it takes to create ONE digital cut file is much shorter than the time it takes to create ONE digital course.
But let’s think this through from a “big picture” perspective. You’re not going to stop with just ONE digital cut file, right? Nobody would ever find your shop or feel confident in buying from you. In order for a printables/template digital product to work, there needs to be dozens-- if not hundreds-- of items in order to “get found.”
The more items in your shop, the greater your chance of getting found in search, right? And because you need such high volume of traffic to hit your revenue goals due to their lower cost, search is a CRITICAL part of your traffic strategy. So we can’t discount that and it becomes absolutely necessary to create a large “library” of products in order to get found in search.
So you are CONSTANTLY going in and adding new products and working “in” your business instead of on it-- because there’s always product you need to be developing.
And suddenly the time it takes to create a one-off printable isn’t as fast as you thought-- because you’re multiplying that by 100 or so-- and it’s a consistent, ongoing time-consuming process.
And so saying that it’s going to be so much faster + simpler to go the digital printables/template route is actually not true at all and something to consider if you’re leaning that direction. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go that route, but it’s a good idea to have a really clear understanding that while it may be easy to create one design, that’s literally just the first of many, MANY designs you’re going to be creating and uploading for the foreseeable future.
WHY DIGITAL COURSES MIGHT BE THE ANSWER
So let’s now talk about time re: digital courses.
On the surface they look like A LOT of work upfront, right? It’s not as simple as creating a piece of digital clip art and popping it into your shop. It DOES take some additional effort to put things together.
But here’s the time-saving gamechanger in it all: With digital courses, you just need ONE.
What I mean by that-- you don’t need a product suite and you don’t need a collection of “mini courses” in order to make significant revenue-- whether that’s 5 or 6 or even 7 figures of income.
You just need ONE digital course. That’s it. That ONE digital course can have a HUGE impact on your revenue. One product you create ONE time.
And I’m not speaking form theory here-- I scaled my business to over $1.5 million dollars from just ONE digital course. I didn’t have a “product suite” or anything crazy in the beginning-- I just had one program that I sold over and over and over again to scale my revenue and bring my family this crazy amount of financial freedom.
And I don’t know about you, but I am ALL about simplicity + efficiency. I don’t want to create hundreds of $5 printables only to have a handful of them sell regularly. Like, that’s a huge waste of time for those other 80 that I created that barely even sell.
I’d rather have ONE digital product that I create ONE time that I can pour my focus into and make it a really great product that I’m proud of and then sell it at a much higher price point than a $5 printable-- where each sale is earning me like 20x MORE revenue than a printable.
Now that doesn’t mean that having multiple products is bad-- but going the digital course route *does* eliminate the NEED for creating multiple products-- which is a huge deal for time-crunched entrepreneurs that want things to feel hands-off in their business and not deal with the ongoing pressure to constantly be creating new products!
So really it’s a personal preference thing. Digital products and passive income DO take time-- it just depends on if you want to be spending a dedicated amount of time every week on an ongoing basis creating new product and constantly focusing on getting more and more traffic to your shop so those $5 printables add up…
…or if you want to frontload that time investment ONCE, create a SINGLE digital product-- a simple digital course--and create a really “hands off” digital product experience moving forward that doesn’t require you to constantly be working on a product line and instead focusing on things that have a direct impact on moving the needle forward in your biz.
Again, there’s no right or wrong answer here because it’s really up to YOU and what YOU want to do with your business. And if ongoing product development is more your cup of tea, go for it with printables and templates! If one-and-done is more your style, a digital course may be the way to go
And if you’re looking for a SIMPLE way to brainstorm, create, and sell the heck out of your digital course WITHOUT the overwhelming tech and marketing, make sure you head over to passiveprofitpath.com/freeclass and I’ll break down exactly what the “big picture” for all of this looks like + share an opportunity for how we can work TOGETHER to create YOUR passive income-earning course!
And that’s a wrap! Thanks for joining me + I hope you found this episode helpful in helping you get clear on if a digital course is the right product for you!
See you next time on the Simplify your Sales podcast! Bye now!
Part 1: Are digital courses more scalable than other passive income products?