When you start your own business selling online courses there is nothing more exciting than making those first few sales.

You will be motivated to gather feedback and continue to refine your course. You will also get a better understanding of your target audience and therefore improve upon your marketing efforts.

But after your course has been live for six months or so you will begin to “get the itch” again. You will start wondering if there are other ways to generate revenue.

Probably the first thing you will think about doing is launching another course. You already have an interested (and hopefully satisfied) audience. But courses take time… a lot of time.

While creating another online course is certainly a logical step in your business, it shouldn’t be the only avenue you pursue. There are easier methods.

Serve The Supplementary Needs

As more people take your course you will begin to uncover supplementary needs. These are the things that your customers need that your course doesn’t necessarily fulfill directly.

These are your “low hanging fruit” opportunities.

They likely won’t make you a fortune but it will increase the revenue per customer and help to fund your next big project (or course).

For example, if you sell a course related to financial investment strategies then a portion of your customers may be interested in some sort of solution that gives them additional insights and visuals.

This could be something robust like a custom software dashboard or perhaps a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with all the calculations and graphs pre-programmed.

You could look to have these developed specifically for your audience or you could partner with someone who already has this created and earn a commission for the referral.

The latter might not be as lucrative but it also means you don’t have to worry about support – and time is money since you can spend that time focusing on the things that you are good at, like creating your next course.

Supplemental needs are all around us. Listen to what your customers are saying and give them options. They are paying for your expertise. If your recommendations save them time then you have provided them additional value and earned some extra revenue in the process.