How to Create an Online Training Portal (Profitable Online Business Series #2)

You can earn a living by helping other people keep their skills up to date or learn new skills for a rapidly evolving global workforce. As outsourcing and global integration of markets continues, the need for retraining or skills training to keep up with changes in crucial. Help people in your field keep their skills up to date by offering distance learning and certification.

Teach your own course

You know how to do at least one thing (and probably a whole lot more) that others would like to know how to do. Make money by sharing your knowledge with others. Think about things you know how to do and what you could teach. Think about what you get asked the most by your friends or family. What do you find yourself showing others how to do. Do you know a software, hobby, technique. Do you have a process figured out – for finding deals, for getting strangers to work together, for organizing your closet? Develop a single course and offer it through an existing platform. Two new and popular sites that offer courses where anyone can sign up to teach what they know can be found at Udemy and WizIQ. 

Create a Course Management System for Others

Instead of teaching just one course, you could create an entire suite of courses that completely cover a topic and host the collection on a website and charge access per course or for people to become members of your site. Another twist is to set up an automated course management system and allow other instructors to create their own courses. Create a viral community by adding a social media component so that users can find other courses and share recommendations. Monetize your site by charging an enrollment fee to students. Alternatively, charge a fee to instructors that want to create a course offering through your site. You might also charge companies to advertise or include advertising networks on your site.

Third Party Platforms

There are numerous options out there to implement this business model of developing courses for individuals who pay to complete your course. You could use existing platforms like ProProfs, Edublogs or standalone software hosted on your own web host or server such as PilotGroup’s training software packages, eTraining and eLearning Management System.

Open Source Course Management Solutions

Open source course management options exist as well, such as Moodle, eFront, ILIAS or ATutor. Whether you are going with a self-hosted solution or a turnkey solution hosted by a third-party, you want to make sure your online courses are SCORM-compliant.

SCORM Compliance

SCORM is a set of e-learning and web-training standards developed by Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL). If you are only interested in teaching your own course (as opposed to creating and hosting your own platform to scale up or provide additional opportunities for other teachers to sell their courses through your site or students to form online learning communities.

Examples of online training portals to inspire you

Lynda.com is a software training & tutorial video library. Our online courses help you learn critical skills. Free access & previews on hundreds of tutorials.

E-LearningCenter has distance learning online courses with a complete eLearning source for IT certification training and business related courses.

At Kelbytraining.com, you are always on-location and in-studio! Become part of the action as we take you behind the scenes of professional photo shoots and show you exactly how the pros do it, step-by-step, from start-to-finish.

Hopefully, these examples inspire you to think of creative, targeted ways to offer continuing online education in your industry or field. The online learning segment is a hot trend now that is continuing to grow.

Originally posted 2013-03-04 02:43:55.