Creating and marketing an online course for psychologists and therapists part 1: Creating a freebie to grow your online audienceThis is the first episode in our series on how to effectively develop and market an online course. This series is designed for any psychologist or therapist that is thinking about developing an online course as a passive or semi passive income stream but the strategies we talk about are equally useful for any other product or service that aims to help lots of people at once. So keep listening even if your dream is a book or a resource pack or an app rather than a course. 
It might seem weird that we are talking about creating a freebie before we start thinking about your overall online course. This is actually a very important part of your strategy for two reasons. Firstly because if no one downloads your freebie you may need to re-evaluate the topic of your course and secondly because in order to sell an online course you will need at least a few hundred people on your list (even to sell just a handful) so you need to get cracking right away.
Later in the series we will have episodes on how to create a landing page for your freebie, how to promote your freebie, how to create engaging course content, and how to eventually sell your course via email marketing to the people who have downloaded your freebie. I will be bringing in experts along the way to give their input and I will be sharing my experiences too. 
So with that, I am excited to get going with part one! 
Why should psychologists and therapists create a freebie to sell an online course?You can't expect people to trust you enough to buy your online course based on an advert, or even a google search. People need to develop a relationship with you before they can trust you with their time and resources. The best way of developing this relationship is collecting contact information for people who you know are definitely interested in what you are offering. You can then regularly contact them with valuable free content and information about your paid products and services. In a nutshell a freebie helps you to:
Grow a list of interested ideal clients for a product or service.
Create a stable base of interested people to promote future products or services to.
Create an audience you can talk to when designing products + services.
Create a valuable asset for your business that gives you something to sell when you retire https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-business-of-psychology/marketing-strategies-for-psychologists-and-therapists-three-styles-of-marketing-to-get-more-therapy-clients-or-grow-your-practice/ (see the episode on the three marketing strategies) to read/hear more about the importance of online audience building. 

When should a psychologist or therapist create a freebie to sell an online course?It is beneficial to start growing your email list as soon as you have an inkling you might want to create an online course or other passive income product. However, a few things need to be in place first.
Consistent revenue from your core practice (focus on high touch relationship building if you are still struggling, listen to the podcast episode on this https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-business-of-psychology/marketing-strategies-for-psychologists-and-therapists-three-styles-of-marketing-to-get-more-therapy-clients-or-grow-your-practice/ (here)).
You need a good understanding of your ideal client for the online course you want to create and what they need. If you don’t have that yet then go back to our episode on finding your ideal clients https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-business-of-psychology/ideal-client-avatar-psychologists-therapists-marketing/ (here).
You need to have created some "cornerstone" content. See our episode on blogging https://psychologybusinessschool.com/the-business-of-psychology/titles-for-psychology-blogs/ (here).
You need a GDPR compliant email marketing software set