How To Earn Money In This Current Economy While Stuck At Home

It’s an interesting time that we’re living in right now.

People are staying home, brick and mortar businesses are closed, and people are pinching every penny that they’ve got left because they’re unsure of when they’ll be able to work again.

Some people are using this downtime to catch-up on the latest bingable show on Netflix or to play Call of Duty all day long.

Others are using this time as an opportunity to create new income streams for themselves or to finally focus on growing that side-hustle.

With the economy trending in the wrong direction and so many people with uncertainty around when their next paycheck will be coming, now is the time to focus on those efforts that will make you self-reliant.

Now is the time to hunker down and put in the work to create a new income stream that can pay the bills in both certain and uncertain times.

People make a lot of money in every economy. It’s the ones that see the opportunities and jump at them, even when they’re scared and even when the future is certain, that stand to reap the largest rewards.

Right now, as we see it, the greatest opportunity is in educating others.

While ambitious entrepreneurs like us are spending these crazy times focusing on building our online income streams, millions of others are spending this time consuming content. They’re learning new skills, going deeper on existing skills, and doubling down on their self-education.

…And that’s where we believe the biggest opportunity lies right now… Online educational courses.

In this article, you will learn the exact steps that you can take to get an online course up and for sale in the quickest time possible and with the smallest budget possible.

Since budget is a concern for most people right now, we’ll stick with the most cost-effective path to get something created and online quickly. Keep in mind that, if budget is not an issue, there are more premium options to accomplish the same goals but we can cover that in a future article.

Deciding What To Teach

The first thing that you will need to consider is what you can teach your audience.

Start by making a list of skills that you already possess. If you can play guitar, add that to your list. If you’re a ninja with Excel because of your past dayjob, add that to your list. Write down as many things as you can think of where you have a bit of skill and believe that you could teach others that skill.

The next thing you’ll want to do is analyze which of those skills would be difficult to teach. For example, teaching guitar may be a little more complex than teaching Excel. Excel can be taught by using screen capture tutorials. Guitar will require a bit more camera work and better than average audio quality. Rank each skill from easiest to most difficult to teach.

The next consideration is understanding what people are buying right now. In economic downturns, people purchase fewer items that they consider luxuries. If you teach magic or juggling or something like that, it might not be the best time. You’ll also want to consider the isolated nature of people right now. Teaching how to be a pick up artist while all the bars are closed probably won’t work too well. Cross out anything that just doesn’t make sense in today’s climate.

Things like cooking, job improvement skills, creative skills and tech skills will likely weather the storm the best at the moment.

Pick the highest rank skill still left on your list. That’s what you should be teaching.

Creating The Course

Start by outlining the things that you want to teach. Basically create a “Table of Contents” for your course and arrange them in the order that makes the most sense. It’s best to have a full picture of how your course will play out before you start recording, this way you can reference what will be discussed in future videos if necessary.

How you create the course will depend on the skill that you are deciding to teach.

If you are teaching a tech skill that requires a computer, you will likely be recording your screen and capturing what you are doing on recording.

If you are teaching a skill that is away from the computer, like cooking or a musical instrument, you will likely be capturing yourself demonstrating the skill on camera.

If you’d like to make tech tutorials on your computer, grab a free tool called Loom.

Loom works on both PC and Mac and it allows you to record your screen and the audio from your computer’s mic at the same time. You can create a slide presentation for the information that you’d like to teach or you can simply record your screen and just start walking people through how to do what you’re teaching. To really make your course feel polished, use a combination of slides and screen capture.

If you’re recording away from a computer, there’s no need to overthink things. Use your smartphone to record yourself teaching. The audio and video quality of most smartphones is pretty phenomenal these days.

Keep in mind that you can always go back later and recreate and update videos. You don’t need everything to be perfect the first time around.

Getting Your Training Content Online

If you used Loom to record your videos, you are already set! You can link people to where they can watch your videos right on Loom. No need to upload anywhere else… At least not for this MVP (minimum viable product) version.

If you recorded videos with your smartphone, upload them to a free YouTube account and set them as “unlisted.” When they’re unlisted, people can’t just randomly find them on YouTube through searching. You can, however, still link to them so that people can find them.

Now we need to give people a way to access these videos…

Since we’re focused on doing this in the most budget way possible, you can simply create a Google Doc. In this Doc, you can map out written steps for people to follow and, with each step, paste in the link to where people can watch the relevant video.

This method is not the most secure way to host a membership. As sales begin to roll in, I’d look into investing in a membership platform like Teachable or Thinkific but, for now, this will get the job done while we’re in the early phases. I’ll show you how to make it slightly more secure in a minute.

Collecting Payments For Your Online Course

Now that you’ve got your videos created and an outline doc that links to each step in your course, you’re ready to setup a sales page and checkout process.

This is where your only cost for this entire process comes into play.

You will want to have a sales page that looks good and a checkout process that is secure so that people feel comfortable buying from you.

We highly recommend a tool called Thrivecart for this.

Thrivecart isn’t necessarily inexpensive, however, it is the best value for the money among all available options.

Most sales page platforms run about $100 per month and, separately, most checkout platforms run between $100 and $200 per month.

What really makes Thrivecart standout above the rest is that it’s not a monthly or annual fee. You purchase it once and you’re set.

Instead of paying upwards of $300 per month to have a sales page and checkout page, you pay roughly $500 once, with no ongoing cost and, if you’re in one of the countries that has it available, you can use Paypal’s credit option and pay it down at whatever payment makes sense to you.

With Thrivecart, we have a page builder and a checkout platform all in one. Your sales page and your checkout page will all be the same page.

The simplest way to create a sales message for your offer is to make a video of yourself telling people why they should purchase your course.

How to create an amazing sales letter is beyond the scope of this article. However, one of the best ways to sell is to use a story. Tell a story of what life was like before you learned this beneficial skill, tell them what life is like now that you have this skill, and then bridge the gap by telling them how you can teach them this same skill and change their life in the same way.

Here’s a quick example…

“When I was out of work, I struggled every single day to find a job that I was qualified for. I was looking for an administration job and every single company that I talked to asked if I knew Excel. I was embarrassed everytime I had to say ‘no but I can learn.’ Companies weren’t looking for someone who they needed to teach a new skill to. They wanted to plug someone right into the position that could hit the ground running. That wasn’t me.

Today, when someone asks about the same skill set, I can confidently tell them that I’m a complete expert. I send them links to spreadsheets that I’ve created and show them functionality that they’ve never seen before. Now, instead of praying that one of these companies will call me back, I routinely have multiple job offers, allowing me to pick the one with the best pay and the most freedom.

I realized that these skill requirements were something that almost anyone looking for a job would love to have and that’s exactly why I created ‘Excel Ninja.’ In just 4-weeks you will go from ‘what’s a spreadsheet’ to Excel guru. Simply fill out your details below and let’s get started”

That’s obviously some very basic copy and it’s a very short story but that’s a proven formula that works.

Create a video that makes your pitch, upload it to YouTube as unlisted, and embed the video on your Thrivecart checkout page.

On your success page (the page people see after purchasing), you can link to your Google Doc with the instructions on how to access their training content. Thrivecart gives you an option to make the link expire. After someone purchases, you can give them 24 hours to access the doc file and then the link expires. This provides a little extra protection from people sharing the link around (although it’s still not perfect).

Getting Traffic To Your Course

The final step in our process is making people aware that your course exists.

The lowest hanging fruit is showing it to people you already know. You likely have some sort of social media following on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or somewhere else. Share your offer there.

The next phase would be to offer the ability to others to promote the course. You can setup an affiliate program and offer a percentage per sale to those that refer people to your course. If you sell your course for $50, you can tell friends and family that you’ll give them $10 for every new customer that they refer to your course.

Thrivecart actually tracks these referred sales and will automatically send the payments out to people for you. Just make people aware that this option is available and ask your existing network to share the course around.

Finally, inside your doc that has instructions on how to access the videos, tell people that, if they like the course, you’ll give them the ability to offer it to others and you’ll pay out a $10 commission per sale. Mobilize your existing customers into an incentivized referral network (make them affiliates too).

Between sharing it on your social networks, incentivizing your current network to share it for you, and encouraging existing customers to share it, you create a snowball of activity into the offer and, the next thing you know, you have an online course that’s selling consistently.

As you drive more and more customers and the sales ramp up, you can consider upgrading your delivery mechanism, instead of sending a simple doc.

With the world the way it is now and everyone on a tight budget, I recommend starting by building out the minimum viable business and upgrading over time as you see results.

Hopefully you found this insightful. No go out there and get cranking with your new online income stream!