Even if you aren’t aware of it, there’s a good chance that you have some unique knowledge that others would benefit from…
Perhaps it’s related to your professional career as a zombie makeup artist… or your mycology hobby, or your unique style of iPad illustration or cartooning.
Whatever your skills are… On the Internet those skills create an opportunity!
You have an opportunity not only to solve a problem for someone else who is looking to learn, but also create a business for yourself.
How?
Create an online course to teach your skill to others.
If you have a WordPress site, you create a course simply with a plugin called “WP Courseware”.
Why I’m Writing About WP Courseware
Sometimes I am lucky enough to be hired by businesses that need help with online marketing strategy.
On one occasion I was hired to do an e-learning consulting project… And this was when I discovered WP Courseware.
Basically, WP Courseware is a WordPress plugin that turns your WordPress site into a Learning Managment System (aka “LMS”).
An LMS allows you to create custom online courses using video, build quizzes, add downloadable files for learning material, provide certificates of completion for your students and more… All from your WordPress dashboard.
The reason I am writing about WP Courseware specifically, is because of the consulting project I mentioned above.
A media company that has a dog enthusiast website with around 5,000,000 monthly visitors was exploring offering online training classes for its visitors…
Visitors were already coming to this website looking for information on dogs… Everything from dog walking, to dog food, to dog problem solving… Basically, if you can think of a dog related issue… This website has content about it!
I was hired to evaluate the opportunity.
My project also involved evaluating the competitive landscape of the “online dog training” world… Then exploring the technologies that could be used to inexpensively experiment with online courses.
I compared WP Courseware with another e-learning plugin called “Sensei”.
In the end, I chose WP Courseware not only because of its ease of use… But also because of its quiz functionality.
Quizzes are a huge part of making money online.
Why Are Quizzes So Important For Online Classes?
Why do I think quizzes are important?
Actually, the reason I’m so interested in quizzes is because of my experience selling online quizzes as a business in the online exam preparation space.
In 2013 I launched an online exam preparation site for a professional credentialing exam called “LEED”.
LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a certification program for “green buildings”. LEED certifies buildings, but also people can become LEED accredited.
Architectural, design, building and construction companies place a high value on LEED credentials for their employees.
So, it turns out that this is a good opportunity for an online business for three reasons:
- Green building is a growing field.
- Architects, designers, contractors, etc. need to earn LEED credentials.
- The LEED exams are hard.
So we sold a lot of online practice tests, which are basically quizzes. The nice thing about selling online quizzes is that it’s pure information.
There’s no incremental cost to selling 10 per day vs. 100 per day. The incremental sale is pure profit.
This business has been a wonderful experience for me because it earned me money as a business while helping a lot of people pass their exams. People who worked for of all kinds of companies (from SpaceX to Wells Fargo to Rhode Island School of Design (“RISD”)) used our tests to pass their LEED exams…
When I passed my own LEED exam back in 2008 I remember what a great feeling it was to see that passing score pop up on the computer screen at the Prometric testing center.
So, I started learning more about LEED, incorporating it into my work and becoming an “expert” on passing the exam.
Soon I wanted to create my own tests and offer built in quizzes on my own site instead of sending people to another website.
So I knew what functionality I wanted to have with my quizzes… And WP Courseware provided it.
WP Courseware Free Demo
So if you have a WordPress site and you want to create an online course, you can do it with WP Courseware.
I mentioned that it’s easy to use, and the quiz functionality above… But those are only a couple of aspects of the functionality of WP Courseware.
Here are some other features in the plugin:
- Drag & Drop Course Builder
- Drip Content
- Grade Books
- Course Certificates
- Membership Integration
- Instructor Roles
- Built-In Shopping Cart
- Recurring Subscriptions
- Integrates with WooCommerce (works with Stripe, PayPal, etc.)
- Protect Courses
- Quizzes (as mentioned above)
- Manage Students
- Email Notifications
- Course Prerequisites
- Custom Themes (use any WordPress theme you want)
- Offer FREE or Premium Courses
WP Courseware costs $129.00 before coupon discount available on their website.
But WP Courseware also offers a free demo that you can use to test it out here. I hope you like it… And I’d be interested in your personal take on it.
In a future post, I’ll walk through the installation and customization of WP Courseware and also how to get your first quiz up and running.
Good luck!