TOP 5 ideas with minimal investment for opening an online school

Video: TOP 5 ideas with minimal investment for opening an online school

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Just ten years ago, online education was something unusual: it was believed that you can only study in institutes, schools, colleges or in refresher courses. In choosing an educational institution, people were limited by geographic location, for training it was necessary to leave for big cities, but not everyone had the funds for this. With the development of the online education market, it became possible to study in a convenient format from anywhere in the world. I live abroad and all this time I go through 2-3 online courses a month in Russian, this is very convenient and expands the possibilities.

I am a practitioner, I own an online marketing school and have already trained more than twenty thousand students: those who want to get a new profession, and those who need knowledge to develop their own business. I want to share with you top business ideas for opening online schools.

Last year, along with the pandemic, there was a real boom in the field of EdTech. According to a study by CloudPayments and Netology, demand for online education grew by 65% in April 2020 compared to March, and according to RBC, Skillbox's revenue for the second quarter of 2020 increased by 349% compared to the same period in 2019. At a time when all businesses were collapsing, online was actively flourishing, and experts predict further growth of the online education market up to 40 billion rubles. Building and launching an online school is an incredibly lucrative business right now.

Globally, online schools can be divided into two types.

The first are online schools based on the speaker's strong personal brand. As a rule, an expert maintains a blog on Instagram and other social networks, broadcasts his expertise and launches a personal school on this. Training courses are sold on the basis of trust in this particular speaker of a warmed up, warm audience in the blog. Selling cold traffic through the target is rather an additional sales channel.

The second is the schools themselves, as a brand. For example, Netology, SkillBox, etc. They have many speakers, and the positioning of the school's brand itself is being built on the market. Courses are marketed through contextual advertising, email marketing, but not through a strong personal speaker brand.

In the first case, they come to study from a certain expert, in the second - to courses of this particular school brand. Both options take place, and you need to choose which development strategy you will go for. As in any market, momentary current trends arise here, and there are stable directions.

With the rapid development of the online education market, the following areas remain the most demanded areas for a long time:

Slimming and slim body. No matter what happens, people always want to remain attractive. The perfect figure is an all-time theme. 65% of the Instagram audience are women, they are also the target audience of such online courses. There are a large number of educational product options in this area: various marathons and nutrition courses, recipe books and training in cooking quick meals, fitness marathons. Previously, there was a trend towards teaching diets, now they are actively launching more motivating fitness marathons, where they connect work with the consciousness and psychology of the appearance of excess weight, when a student of the course not only decides what to eat to lose weight, but also why those extra pounds accumulate. The slimming niche is limitless and is a gold mine. The bonus of such products is a long life cycle. They do not become outdated for a long time, remain relevant and can be sold longer than, for example, training courses based on program interfaces that change frequently.
Personal growth … People are looking for something that will allow them to achieve their goals faster and make wishes more efficiently: from various marathons and workshops on mapping desires, to rather serious courses in personal growth from coaches and psychologists. Moreover, there are strong specialists who make decent educational products at a high level. Such a course can be of great help in introspection and self-exploration. When launching your online course in this direction, try to find a unique niche that will set you apart from the competition.
Learning foreign languages. This knowledge will be useful in all spheres of life - from business to personal affairs. This direction remains in demand for a very long time. You can teach children, adolescents and adults. You can make a unique product if you think over the author's methodology, choose an actual niche from the category of the “blue ocean”, launch your own platform or application with a convenient, interesting interface. For example, training on films and training in narrow niches is now gaining a trend in this area. For example, an English course for admission to a specific arts university.
Solid skills: SMM specialists, designers, website creation specialists … Such narrow-profile short courses are popular among those who want to find a new type of activity and start making money quickly. This became very much in demand last year, when the pandemic intensified the crisis, the number of jobs decreased, especially in the regions. The field of marketing and promotion on social networks Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc. is also relevant. More and more people understand that social networks are a tool for fast promotion and sales growth, willingly change their profession and go to learn new things. Uniqueness of your project can be given by an unusual format, for example, mentoring, or a narrower niche - marketing for hand-made masters.
Programming. Programmers are initially more digitalized and are most willing to be involved in online forms of communication and education. This direction, along with the study of foreign languages, was first included in the list of the TOP-in-demand areas of EdTech. Programmers love a creative and non-standard approach to learning, interesting tasks, challenges. Build a program on this, and your project will become unique and in demand.