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Moving Online: Learning Business Opportunity to Boost Revenue

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Thought Industries
April 8, 2017
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Does your business run in-person or event-based learning operations? Are you thinking about moving some of those operations online? If not, maybe you should. Adding online courses to your catalog of learning content adds a whole new revenue channel to your business.

According to John Leh in a recent webinar, “There are a lot of commercial training companies that are just in the process of moving online. They provided consultants, expertise, live content—and now they are in this process of trying to capture some of that online market without losing the specialness of their live, instructor-led classes.”

Whether you already have an in-person learning business or are launching from scratch, there are two different ways to set up your learning business and capture the online market:

  1. Provide a combination of in-person and online learning content
  2. 2. Provide online learning exclusively

Pairing an online learning business with in-person learning

Benefits: Firstly, two revenue streams are better than one if you have the resources. Secondly, every learner learns a little differently. If you already run an in-person learning business, some of those learners might want to keep in-person learning as an option. If you are launching your learning business from scratch, decide if there is special value you could add by offering online and in-person learning options together.

Challenges: Do you already have a well-attended, valuable in-person learning program? The challenge is to make online content as engaging as your in-person sessions. If you don’t have proper resources in place, launching an online learning business could cause your in-person learning program to suffer or vice versa. It’s a challenge for smaller teams to maintain the same quality of learning materials when they add online learning.

Moving everything online

Benefits: Are you ready to put all of your learning content online? Odds are, your learners will embrace online learning for the convenience, cost and self-paced learning. Online learning content is more convenient for most learners because it is portable and can be accessed on different devices from any location. Going all-in with a 100% online learning business also allows you, the learning business, to provide more support for learners via discussion boards, one-on-one consulting and by offering a variety of learning experiences.

Challenges: Getting your online learning business up and running requires the perfect platform. To find the perfect platform, John Leh advises businesses to do a lot of research. After you choose a platform, online learning business are tasked with crafting a revenue model and creating the courses.

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