Choosing a Niche for you Online Course: 3 Factors to Consider

When planning to create an online course, one major headache has always been about what to teach.

The main issue here is choosing a niche for your online course. You know there is no way you can create a course that appeals to the interest of the entire global audience. In fact, there is no need trying to do that even.

Hence, you’ve got to choose a niche on which you build your online course.

In this post, I am going to outline 3 major factors that you must consider when choosing a niche for your online course. There could be many other factors, but these three stand out.

• 1.    High market demand

• 2.    Personal knowledge and skill set

• 3.    Special need value proposition

#1. High Market Demand

There are topical areas that are selling like hot cakes- in blogging, videos, online courses- you will find hundreds of thousands of them.

Of course, when a market is over saturated like this, the competition is usually so tough that start-ups are likely going to have a lot of problems making any impact. So, many experts would tell you: if you’re starting up, avoid those niche areas.

But let me tell you, it doesn’t just work like that. I am going to paint a local illustration for you to understand better.

Do you notice that bread is one of the major staple foods in Africa? Those of us living in Nigeria can testify to this. There is a high demand for bread that no matter how many persons selling it, they would still sell all at the end of the day.

So, if you’re about to go into petty trading and the thought of selling bread comes up, only for one ‘expert’ to tell you the competition is so much and that you can’t make it, what do you do?

Yes! Stiff competition, yet high market demand! So, it’s going to sell.

Go online today and see millions of how to videos, blog posts and online courses and the people (even you) are always still looking for more. You know why? This is a century of practical skill set. The job market is collapsing- everyone wants to learn how to do certain things well.

So, what do you know how to do that you can teach others? Never look down on that skill- someone out there needs it.

#2. Personal knowledge and skill set

The slogan here is: teach what you know and what you know how to do.

In fact, this is the most important factor when considering your niche in online content creation.

As a teacher, what you know can come from your area of academic discipline, your personal experience as a teacher, your interaction with your environment etc.

Then think of all the special skills you’ve acquired over the course of your professional journey as a teacher. It could be tech skill, child development skill, administrative skill, English Language skill, Math tricks etc.

It may also include some vocational skills you’ve acquired over the years- home making, craft work and designs, decorations, special food preparation etc.

Do not belittle any of your skill set.

Do you know there are thousands of woman who are having problems in their marriages because they can’t prepare a particular dish the way their husbands expect them to do it? Most of these women are always online searching for: when should I put crayfish when cooking bitter leaf soup?

If you have an online content on how to prepare bitter leaf soup (This should be a short video course), your outlines would definitely include, ‘when to add your ingredients’, and someone is looking for your content.

If you have taught and helped students pass Math in external exams over the years, don’t you know you can create a short course on how to prepare students to pass Math examination? Let the world know what has been working for you- that can as well work for them- and they would be ready to pay for that knowledge.

#3. Special need value proposition

When choosing your niche based on this factor, be sure you might not have a large market, but you would definitely have a loyal one.

These are special areas that are only common with people with specific challenge. The problem of the target audience of these niche market is that many experts are not providing solutions in these areas. That makes it a good bait for whoever that provides solutions here.

Imagine, out of over 7 billion global population, you have only ten thousand persons seeking for solution in a particular area (where you have an expert knowledge). Eventually there are only 10 other persons providing solutions in this area- just 11 of you the world over.

Compare it to that niche area with over 4 billion potential customers, but with 2 billion solution providers.

If you can provide solutions in each case, which one do you think would pay you more? Your guess is as good as mine. This is exactly one area ‘experts’ always fail to emphasize when discussing online content creation and niche selection.

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