LMScast

Are you a parent who wants to spend more time at home with your kids? This LMScast episode explores the advantages of generating passive income for stay at home moms – and dads, too – by building and selling online courses.

You don’t have to be a teacher or a computer professional to build online courses. There is software available to help you do all of that intuitively, including marketing and fee processing. All you have to do is identify a subject you know about (and you probably know more than you think you do), get a learning management system like our LifterLMS, and put your course together.

You can create courses about cooking or camping, skills for parents of kids with special needs, family travel – the possibilities are endless. And you can build and manage your courses from wherever you call home, be that a neighborhood, a homestead, or traveling around the world.

Passive online income provides you with the flexibility to call wherever you are, or want to be, “home.” You can build and manage online courses at any stage of your family’s growth. And if you are already a stay-at-home parent, administering your online course now and again can be a refreshing diversion from full-time parenting.

Building online courses to establish passive income for stay at home moms, dads, grandparents, or other caretakers is not difficult, especially with a course development platform like the LifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could teach music through the internet? Well, you can, and this LMScast episode will tell you how to create and sell music lessons online quickly and easily.

Why should a music instructor consider offering online music training? First, the internet is a natural environment for music, as it allows for streaming interactive audio and video and almost universal access. Learning music is a step-by-step process that requires hours of practice, and your online music courses can provide students with a variety of drills, audio and video clips, musical notation, and other tools to help them learn at their own pace and practice as much as they need to, whenever they need to.

Providing online music courses allows you to teach more students in more places in less time than ever before. You can use it as a supplement to your in-person sessions, or you can provide complete courses that students can access who otherwise could not work with you at all. You can also do live training online, and interact with your students via messaging and other communications. From beginners to advanced musicians, you can create detailed courses for every level of expertise and add variety to practice sessions.

Plus there is the income you receive from course fees as well as the extra time you can be available for the students you see in person. And building online courses is not difficult, especially with a course development platform like our LifterLMS WordPress plugin. Not only does it make online course building an intuitive, creative process, the system even handles sales and marketing for you, so you can center your attention on your students and on the music.

Once you learn how to create and sell music lessons online, you will be able to share your passion and expertise with more musicians in more ways than ever before.

Consulting services conventionally involve customized solutions for each client, but how much of what you do for most people you work with is repetitive? This LMScast episode will show you how to productize your consulting business with online courses and packaged services.

Productizing your consulting is accomplished by packaging sets of services that target the standard needs of 80% of your clients. Clients are given a limited set of service options to choose from based on what you have found that most clients need. Packaging your services this way can save you significant time and increase your returns. You will also have more time to devote to the few clients who truly need specialized solutions.

You probably lose quite a few clients who simply cannot afford your professional fees, but there is an alternative solution you can offer them. In a weekend or two using a WordPress learning management system (LMS) plugin like LifterLMS, you can create online courses to help clients do for themselves much of what you would normally do for them at a fraction of the cost. By down-selling a lower-priced solution you will gain income and attract a new customer base.

Also, offering a free introductory course can be a lucrative lead-generation device. It will demonstrate your expertise and educate potential clients about what is actually involved in the level of service you provide. Clients will be willing to pay more once they know the value of what you can do for them.

Building an online course is not difficult with a course development platform like LifterLMS. It supplies you with all the tools and resources you need to put courses together simply and intuitively. It also handles course fee payments and progresses users through each stage of learning without direct involvement from you.

Whatever kinds of consulting services you provide, you can learn how to productize your consulting business with online courses you create with a learning management system like the LifterLMS plugin for WordPress.

If you have wondered if you could make money with your YouTube channel, but didn’t know what to do, this LMScast episode will show you how to monetize your YouTube channel in a whole new way.

Most people go the route of posting their videos, then becoming a YouTube partner, which allows pop-up ads to run at some point during the video. If your video goes viral and you attract an incredible number of viewers, then you might make some money. However, the reality is that most videos won’t generate the traffic necessary to realize much income this way.

There is another more direct, less intrusive way to make more money from fewer viewers with your YouTube channel, and that is by offering online courses. You simply post a few introductory videos to generate interest in your subject, and then direct viewers to your site where they then pay fees to take your courses online.

If you have already made videos about your subject then you have content ready to convert into online courses that people will pay for, and using a learning management system (LMS) like LifterLMS makes that process simple. And if you target beginners with basic courses to bring them up to speed, they will likely continue on into your intermediate-level courses.

You don’t have to be a professional instructor to create online courses. In fact, a lot of people prefer to learn from someone who is less polished and more accessible. And instead of editing out any mistakes you make in your video, use those as teaching opportunities. Your students will likely make those same mistakes, so they need to learn how to handle them.

No matter what it is that you enjoy and want to share in your videos, you can learn how to monetize your YouTube channel by offering online courses you create with a development platform like the LifterLMS plugin for WordPress.

Most people do not need a 40 million dollar enterprise-level eLearning solution to create and distribute their online courses. In today’s LMScast, Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett tell you how to create an eLearning marketplace clone and also discuss the importance of disruptive innovation for edupreneurs.

A marketplace clone is a less expensive, less complex version of a standard institutionalized product or service. Udemy is an example of an established platform for the eLearning marketplace. Instructors develop and distribute their coursework through Udemy, which provides an extensive array of resources, but also dictates policies and fee structure for users.

WordPress is a prime example of the power of disruptive innovation, which provides access to functional, customizable tools for a greater number of people at minimal cost. Users who want personal control of their content and income drive the creation and success of disruptive innovation solutions.

A competitive marketplace clone for eLearning can be built for WordPress using a plugin LMS development platform that allows developers to produce online courses using WordPress. A marketing and distribution service can then be employed to promote and sell customized course offerings.

Costs for such an implementation are minimal in comparison to enterprise systems, all the basic tools are there to create dynamic content, and instructors remain independent from external restrictions and fees while enjoying full control of their online courses. Learn how to create an eLearning marketplace clone with a development platform like the LifterLMS plugin for WordPress in this LMScast episode.

There are some very common mistakes when making an online course. In today’s LMScast, Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett list the most basic pitfalls course developers make and how to avoid them.

Edupreneurs embody a mix of entrepreneur, developer, marketer, and educator, and each discipline can present different sets of problems. Most course developers fall into a few simple traps when putting their course offerings together. Learning where to focus your energy and resources most will help keep you from making those mistakes yourself.

First, determine whether you have a significant audience for the information you wish to offer. A good way to do this is to pre-launch your courses while you are in the development stage. You can gain valuable feedback from users and see how well it sells before making a larger commitment to your complete course offering.

Making your course content too general diminishes its value, because that level of information is already available elsewhere, often for free. Target specific areas of your subject and focus on delivering detailed education and training for that specialized area.

Don’t get so involved in the subject matter or the technology that you lose sight of the end users. Your focus must be on finding out what they want and need, and making sure you provide the results they require. Otherwise your customer base will disappear.

You can easily address these potential mistakes by creating your online courses with a simple yet resource-rich LMS like our LifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin. LifterLMS allows you to get the most out of progressive eLearning technology and resources while focusing on course development and delivery that get results.

Creating a successful eLearning package requires the DNA of an education entrepreneur. In today’s LMScast, Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett discuss the traits of educators and entrepreneurs, and how they can learn to become successful edupreneurs. Specifically, an educator has a core passion for their subject matter, and they want to share it with as many people as they can reach. An entrepreneur’s primary drive is to promote and sell a product that will benefit many people. Both are passionate and want to reach an audience, but educators generally don’t know about selling, and entrepreneurs are not necessarily good teachers.

To be successful, an edupreneur needs to have traits of an educator and an entrepreneur. This can be realized with an active commitment to taking small, experimental steps toward gaining new skills. With the proper tools and a desire to succeed, teaching and selling can be learned.

When developing a tool to help each of these people to fully apply their strengths while developing new capabilities, the designer needs to understand what educators and entrepreneurs already know, how they do their work, and what they need help with in order to develop fully functional applications for them. A WordPress learning management system using LifterLMS makes it easier for each to achieve their end goals while becoming complete edupreneurs.

In today’s LMScast episode, Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett talk about the 3 E’s of online education, which are all about how you can create a successful online course and how you can really change someone’s life and help them improve in some way. The 3 E’s of online education are: Educate, Entertain, Execution.

Education entrepreneurs can apply the concept of results in advance in order to keep their students engaged with the online course content. Making the material interesting and fun is often overlooked by educators. And execution takes the course materials out of the intangible realm of ideas and into action steps the student can take with the material they learned.

The 3 E’s of online education are the secret to how you can take your online course to the next level. And after listening to this LMScast episode you’ll be ready to start implementing the 3 E’s in your next online course.

In eLearning it’s vital for teachers to be able to engage with their students in order to know if they’re learning and understanding the material. Today’s LMScast with Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett discusses how to use technology to scale the human touch between teachers and their students in online courses.

The lifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin allows you to use automation to scale your interactions with your students. You can set up the engagement system to meet your unique needs and to give you more productive time.

For Infusionsoft users, there’s also an add-on for lifterLMS that integrates with Infusionsoft. The integration will allow use of the ecommerce system in Infusionsoft, and campaigns inside Infusionsoft can be set up to trigger engagements based on students’ activity. This creates the foundation of a learning management system with a deep Infusionsoft integration for WordPress sites.

Creating an eBook requires a break from traditional thinking, but learning how to monetize a book with online courses is a simple, effective way to introduce your eLearning offerings to potential students. Today’s LMScast with Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett discusses how to make your text content more readable and add interactive support media so that your information becomes far more accessible than ever before.

Presenting text in quickly readable chunks instead of long paragraphs is a basic formatting technique for digital consumption. Online publishing provides low overhead costs for writing, publishing, and promoting your eBook, which can include existing course content through your WordPress learning management system using lifterLMS. This also allows potential students to get a feel for your online course environment.

Your ultimate goal is to provide students with whatever they need to succeed in your courses, and the eBook format allows you to provide content in a variety of media so each student can access your information in their preferred learning style. If you have already written a book you can expand it into a full online course offering. And if you have already created your online course, then you can easily create an attractive introductory eBook synopsis based on your existing course content.