5 Must-Haves Before Choosing Your Online Course Topic
Reading Time: 7 minutes 
How do you choose the perfect online course topic?
Creating an online course is an incredible way to grow your business and generate revenue.
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Choosing the right topic for your online course is so important. It’s what drives people to actually sign up for the course, giving you the results you’re looking for!
These tips will help you choose the right online course topic for your niche, every single time.
Why Is Choosing The Right Online Course Topic So Important?
There are so many reasons to consider creating an online course. Whether it’s making money while having more free time or breaking past a cap on your income, courses have lots of benefits!
If you’re ready to help people by sharing your knowledge, it’s time to create a course….but choosing a topic can be tough.
Why is choosing the right online course topic so important, though?
Lots of entrepreneurs put in tons of work creating their first course only to wind up hearing crickets.
There are other factors involved, but honestly, your online course topic is one of the main things that makes or breaks your course sales.
That’s why it’s so crucial to get your topic right before you work on developing or marketing your course!
Choosing the right online course topic will make your course irresistible to your ideal audience and help you be more profitable.
5 Mistakes To Avoid In Choosing An Online Course Topic
Here are the five biggest mistakes you need to avoid when you are honing in on your perfect online course topic. (I’ll also share exactly what you should do instead!)
Mistake #1: Choosing An Online Course Topic That You’re Not Absolutely Positive Your Audience Needs or Wants
Mistake number one is choosing a course topic that you think your audience wants without actually confirming it.
Here’s the thing: your business does not exist in a bubble.
You are the expert in your business, but the very best way to ensure your success as an entrepreneur and as a course creator is to be completely dialed into your audience.
Even more than that, you should regularly chat with your audience members. Doing this helps you know what they actually want and need so that you can serve them in the right way.
My point here is to avoid just guessing what online course topic your audience would like.
Even if you’re making an educated guess about what your course topic should be, ask people!
It’s a great idea to ask the audience that you’re going to be marketing your course to in the near future. But what does this look like in action?
Here are some ways to check in with your audience about potential course topics:
- Run polls on social media
- Send surveys to your email subscribers to get their feedback
- Have conversations with your most active community members in a one-on-one way.
- Speak to former clients to get their input
- Set up a few one-on-one clarity calls with members of your audience to really dive deeply into what they need and really want from you
You should find out what is top of mind for your audience right now. What are their most pressing desires?
What is the biggest problem or challenge that they’re currently facing that you can help solve?
That is what your course should be about.
Mistake #2: Choosing An Online Course Topic With No Competition
Mistake number two is choosing an online course topic that has no competition.
Now, I know this sounds backward. You probably thought that choosing a course topic with tons of competition would be a mistake, but it’s the opposite!
You need to change your mindset as you develop your online course.
Competition is essential when you’re choosing an online course topic! If there’s competition, you know there’s a need for the information your course will provide—it’s validation that your idea is good.
Think about it! If others are successfully selling a course on a topic that’s similar to the one that you want to create, that means people are buying it.
And that means you stand to make money from a course on that topic because the interest is there!
Competition is a good thing, not something negative.
In fact, if you do some market research and you find out that there are absolutely zero courses on the market right now about a particular topic, it’s a red flag.
Especially if you can’t find any experts or coaches who are helping people with that topic in a one-on-one way, it’s a huge red flag.
You’ll probably want to choose a different online course topic.
Mistake #3: Choosing An Online Course Topic That No One Is Willing To Pay For
The next mistake you should avoid is choosing an online course topic that people won’t be willing to pay for.
There are tons of topics you could create an online course about. But not all topics are worth investing in!
You need an online course topic so enticing that people are willing to spend money in order to learn about it.
If your topic is so simple that it could be taken care of by a free resource or YouTube video, no one is going to pay for it.
Even worse, if someone does pay for it, they’ll likely feel let down and request a refund.
So how do you actually choose an enticing topic?
One way to do it is to focus on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a psychological theory by Abraham Maslow about human motivation in the form of a pyramid.
Source: SimplyPsychology.org
This pyramid lists out human needs and desires in five layers. The bottom has our most basic physiological needs, like food, water, and sleep.
As you move up the pyramid, you’ll see safety needs, belonging and love needs, esteem needs, and finally self-actualization, which means realizing our full potential.
If you can figure out where your audience is on the pyramid, you can create a course designed to meet what they need most.
The online course topic you choose—and how you market it—depends on your audience’s needs.
Related: How to Launch Your First Wildly Profitable Online Course
Mistake #4: Choosing An Online Course Topic You Aren’t Passionate About
The fourth mistake to avoid is choosing an online course topic that you’re not passionate about.
Energy is everything. It’s what helps sell your courses and what attracts your students to them. You shouldn’t create a course just because you think it will be profitable.
Instead, you need to choose a topic that you’re super excited about.
Even if your audience is begging you to create a course on a topic, if the passion isn’t there for you, don’t do it. You need to be passionate and have the right energy behind your course if you want it to be successful.
Mistake #5: Choosing An Online Course Topic Without Considering Results
Last but not least, don’t get stuck on choosing an online course topic without thinking about specific results.
What I always suggest (and what I teach all of my students) is to zero in on the result, the big promise behind your course.
The truth is that topics don’t really sell courses—you’re selling a result. Your students are not paying you just for information….they are paying you to help them achieve a specific goal.
For example, you could create a nutrition course, but that’s really just a topic, right? On the other hand, a course on “how to lose 10 pounds this month with a healthy nutrition plan” offers a real result.
The result is what’s irresistible.
Before you take any next steps on your course, you have to get super clear on one big, specific result that your course is going to help students achieve.
If we circle back to that first mistake of not checking for what your audience needs, this result should be something that your audience has already raised their hands for. If your audience has already told you what result they want to achieve, base your course around that.
When you’re getting ready to create an online course, you’re opening yourself up to incredible growth and potential profit!
Avoiding these five mistakes when choosing your online course topic will help you succeed, no matter your niche.
Your assignment now is to download your free copy of the Course Creation Roadmap and start mapping out your online course topic and launch plan now!
Follow along on Instagram!
I think it is so important to do initial research and understand what people really need help with. Running a business and teaching people can be stressful. It will be even harder if you are not passionate about the topic you teach.