1. Come up with a topic to teach that you’re passionate about and know inside and out. It also helps if it’s something people hire you for or maybe from a book you wrote, etc.

2. Create a lesson plan around that topic that includes 10-100 (or more) lessons.

3. Decide what format you’ll deliver these lessons in: written, audio, video or a combination.

4. Decide on a price you’ll charge for folks to access your online course. Price it to sell (i.e., $19.95+) and/or consider the fact that your course might help other people make money from what they’ll learn from you and then you could charge a higher amount in the $100+ range, etc. It’s up to you how much of a marketing effort you put into your class. I’d offer discounts periodically to encourage signups.

5. Decide how you’ll host and deliver your online course. Will it be through a company like Thinkific.com, Udemy, Podia, Lynda, SkillShare, Teachable or other like websites where you benefit from their large student body to see your course and take a percent of sales while they handle all the maintenance and technical delivery of your course … or will you host it on your website, maintain all the controls, responsibilities and take home all the profits! If you only get 3-30 students a month at $30 a pop, for example, it would seem better to host your online class yourself and keep all the profits. If, on the other hand, you were to score 300 or more students at one of the aforementioned websites, then it might be wise to give a percent to one of them to manage the volume of traffic, bandwidth usage, etc.

6. Decide what level of support you’ll offer your students. How will you communicate with them, how often, not at all, etc.