150+ Profitable Online Course Ideas in 2024 (With Examples)

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Are you thinking of selling online courses? If so, the first thing that comes to mind is what you’ll teach.

On top of considering your skills and knowledge, you have to make sure there’s enough demand, the niche is profitable, and the competition isn’t too crazy.

The upside is, when you find the perfect niche, it makes it easier to build an online course business. And so many good things come from it, like passing on knowledge and generating income.

In this article, we’ve compiled over 150 online course ideas in different industries to inspire you. We’ve also included real-life examples of creators that started from small and worked their way up in each niche.

Are you ready? Let’s jump in!

Health and Wellness

Everyone wants to be happy, and taking care of your mind and body plays a gigantic role in that. But unfortunately, people find it difficult to balance a healthy lifestyle with working from home and being full of quick options like fast food.

Online courses on health and wellness provide them with easy guides and tutorials on bettering certain aspects of their lives.

As this is such a huge industry, you can create a course on any topic, including yoga, fitness, yoga, healthy eating, mental health and nutrition, medical cannabis, plant-based diets, and more.

While businesses always offered in-person classes, online courses in this industry had lagged. However, there’s been a surge in demand for virtual health and wellness courses since the pandemic.

Take the topic “virtual fitness” as an example. Google Trends shows that searches for the topic saw a huge spike around March 2020. While it has come down a bit from its peak, it’s still above the pre-pandemic levels and generally trending up.

Virtual fitness has been trending on Google Trends

Udemy confirms this industry’s potential as well. For example, when you analyze the “Nutrition” sub-category using the Marketplace Insights tool, you’ll find a high student demand and high monthly revenue for top courses.

Nutrition courses have high demand on Udemy

Overall, health and wellness is an evergreen industry, and with technology facilitating everything, more at-home workouts and nutrition classes are being offered online than ever before.

If this seems like the right fit for you, here are ten ideas for online courses for this industry:

⦁ Face yoga for beginners
⦁ The basics of mindfulness meditation
⦁ Anxiety management 101
⦁ 7 Day Bodyweight Home Workout Program
⦁ Your guide to the healthiest weight loss
⦁ Learn bachata in five days
⦁ How to get over addiction
⦁ How to transition from vegetarian to vegan
⦁ Ten mindfulness practices to improve your daily life
⦁ How to become a fitness trainer

Keep in mind that the ideas listed here are just to inspire you. You can go beyond and think of any topic within the niche.

A Health and Wellness Course Success Story

Ziva Meditation, founded by Emily Fletcher, has its own meditation technique that helps thousands of students decrease stress in as little as one month. Emily is a full-time mom and meditation guru that wants to help others master their lives.

Ziva meditation success story

Ziva offers multiple online course options, including 15-day meditation boot camps, monthly live group coaching, six months of advanced pieces of training, and more.

Language Learning

Languages have always been a popular extra-curricular topic. People have all sorts of motives for learning languages — moving to a new country, learning their significant other’s language, a work requirement — there’s really no shortness in demand.

Traditionally, people fly to other countries to learn or take classes at the local community college. But since online language classes have become available and apps like Duo Lingo were developed, students are jumping at the opportunity to learn online.

And there are so many types of courses you can teach for each language, for example, English writing, conversation, pronunciation, grammar, literature, etc.

According to Google Trends, the keyword “English for beginners” gets pretty consistent search traffic. And you’ll see similar trends for other languages as well.

English for beginners Google Trends

When we analyze the “English Language” topic on Udemy, you’ll find that it scores pretty high on student demand as well as revenue.

English language courses do well on Udemy

Online language learning is great because you can create full-fledged online courses. Or, you can also teach live classes using an application like Zoom.

Here are ten online course ideas for the language industry:

⦁ English for business owners
⦁ English for the tourism industry
⦁ Greeting guests in English 101
⦁ Learning the basics of Japanese symbols
⦁ A guide on femininity and masculinity in Spanish
⦁ Cantonese for intermediates
⦁ Ancient Greek for beginners
⦁ Learning the sign language alphabet
⦁ Learning conversational Korean in 4 hours
⦁ Become a French speaker in 30 days

A Language Course Success Story

Sandra from 11percent lives in Berlin, Germany, and helps expats from around the world learn German the fun way. She teaches all levels of German, from beginner to advanced. And most importantly, she helps prepare students for their A1-C2 tests.

11percent sells german courses

Sandra has filmed, edited, and published six courses so far. She attracts a lot of traffic to her blog and uses Udemy to gain more students.

Personal Development

Personal development improves people’s quality of life by evolving skills that help them achieve personal and professional goals. It’s all about self-awareness and goal assessment.

But, unfortunately, many people can’t get there themselves and need help with inspiration and motivation.

That’s where life coaching comes in. It helps with stress management, efficiency, creativity, time management, and career guidance. And a lot of these topics are personal in nature, so working on issues from home is a huge benefit of taking online courses.

When thinking of sub-niches to target, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs goes over the different sections: self-actualization, aesthetic needs, cognitive needs, esteem needs, love and belonging, safety needs, and psychological needs. So pick a section you’re knowledgeable about, and dig deeper to find a specific course topic.

The interest in online courses in this industry is pretty consistent, as well. For example, a search for “self-improvement” in Google Trends shows that interest has been pretty consistent and is actually increasing slightly with time.

self-improvement google trends

While courses on personal development do well on Udemy, they aren’t as popular a category as those we discussed. But it’s still a great category to create courses in, especially if you want to sell online courses from your website.

personal development category potential on Udemy

Now, personal development coaches don’t technically need to be certified to operate a coaching business. However, you may want to earn a personal coach certification as it will help establish clients’ trust in your abilities to guide them through complicated life situations.

Here are ten ideas for online courses in the personal development space:

⦁ Productivity and time management for entrepreneurs
⦁ A complete blueprint to getting “unstuck” in life
⦁ Become a master of conflict management at home and work
⦁ Master tarot reading for newbies
⦁ Boost your psychic gifts with EFT tapping
⦁ Learn to fall asleep in 5 minutes with the moving into sleep method
⦁ Learning how to learn with brain hacks
⦁ Confidence: how to create a 1000-watt presence
⦁ The ten laws for personal success
⦁ The ultimate guide to cracking job interviews

A Personal Development Course Success Story

Tim Ferriss is a big name in the self-improvement industry after the Four Hour Work Week release. The huge demand for the New York Times best-seller inspired the 4-Hour Life course.

Tim Ferriss 4-hour life program

The course has eight hours and 38 minutes of content and 16 video lessons, and over 40,000 student registrations. The content covers holistic approaches to a healthier lifestyle as a hard-working professional.

Personal Finance

Personal finance is someone’s budgeting, saving, and spending of savings over time while considering monthly payments and future life events. It helps consumers set themselves up for all big life stages, from buying their first house to retiring.

Since being smart with money is an important part of life, more and more people seek ways to organize themselves financially. After all, mastering money management takes skill, knowledge, and the right mindset.

And you can target the many sub-niches including budgeting, reducing debt, creating new income streams, surviving bankruptcy, investing, revenue streams, retirement, and more.

Plus, more and more people are looking to learn to manage their money better and grow their wealth. So if you search for “investing” on Google Trends, you’ll notice that it has been increasing over the years.

Searches for investing keyword has been trending up

On top of that, it’s a highly profitable niche. In fact, online courses in this industry boast one of the highest monthly earning potentials, and the same is true for Udemy courses as well.

Personal finance courses do pretty well on Udemy

I like the personal finance niche because it’s evergreen, and there will always be demand for these courses.

Here are ten profitable online course ideas in the personal finance industry:

⦁ Complete stock market investing course
⦁ Seeing the big picture: understanding financial statements
⦁ Financial skills for the real world
⦁ Expert asset allocation
⦁ The basics of budgeting
⦁ Get out of debt in 30 days
⦁ Personal finance mastery: the 6 phase personal finance plan
⦁ Investing with a Robo advisor
⦁ How to live on less than most people do and enjoy it
⦁ Personal finance for teens

A Personal Finance Course Success Story

An inspiring personal finance course is one from Making Sense of Cents. It teaches how to budget and create new income streams.

Making sense of cents success story

Michelle started this blog to pay off her student debts, and thanks to blogging, she could do it in just seven months. She now offers her advice to students through online personal finance courses.

Business and Entrepreneurship

Statistics show that the number of people starting businesses in the US (and globally) is rising. Can you believe there were over 4.35 million new business applications in 2020?! That’s the highest in recorded history and during a pandemic, as well.

It shows that entrepreneurs are eager to start something of their own, no matter the state of the economy. Likewise, business owners, whether they’re at the beginning of their entrepreneurship journey, have already started a business, or are now scaling their business, are looking for ways to expand their knowledge and develop business skills.

So, this industry isn’t going anywhere any time soon. And after stating that 2020 was the year with most new businesses, we can make a safe assumption that getting your foot in the door now as a business and entrepreneurship course creator is smart.

No matter what you’re knowledgeable about, there’s a category for it. For example, you can teach business planning, supply chain management, presentation skills, recruiting and hiring, project management, etc.

Demand for business and entrepreneurship topics has always existed and is still trending up. For example, here are the Google Trends results for the keyword “start a business” over the past five years:

More and more people are looking. to start a business

Udemy also rates this industry with high student demand and competition

business fundamentals udemy courses

Just like there’s no wrong time to open a business, there’s also no wrong time for creating online courses around this topic.

If you’re interested, here are ten online course ideas for the business and entrepreneurship industry:

⦁ Business lessons from a CEO
⦁ Freelancing best practices
⦁ Business strategy planning for competitive advantage
⦁ Understanding the supply chain fundamentals
⦁ Customer service for dummies
⦁ How to skyrocket sales on Etsy
⦁ How to start a real estate business
⦁ How to build a business plan
⦁ How to start a dropshipping business
⦁ How to build a successful blog

A Business and Entrepreneurship Course Success Story

Chris Haroun is one of those that made it big using Udemy to sell his online business courses. He sold more than 1,000,000 of his business courses in 12 languages and 196 different countries. 

Haroun education ventures courses

His courses have been mentioned in Business Insider, NBC, Inc, Forbes, CNN, and more. In addition, Chris is the author of the #1 best-selling online business course called “An Entire MBA in 1 Course®” and many other courses.

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing pertain to every industry. Whether it’s retail, education, events, or entertainment, they all need it.

Learning sales strategies and marketing is something people value because it can help boost their businesses. So you’ll be able to sell premium courses in the niche.

And as a course creator, you can choose your market. For example, if you have experience with eCommerce marketing, your audience will be people who want to boost their online store’s bottom line.

The good thing is that there are several sub-niches, including traditional advertising, digital advertising, search engine marketing, branding, social media marketing, public relations, marketing analytics, etc.

But, generally speaking, the digital marketing sub-niches are pretty hot right now. For example, the interest in “social media marketing” has constantly been increasing.

Interest in social media marketing has been increasing

When we search Udemy for the same, you’ll find many existing courses and high student demand. The monthly revenue is pretty high as well.

social media marketing is a great category for teaching online courses

Ten online course ideas for the sales and marketing industry are:

⦁ Creating the perfect sales strategy
⦁ TikTok advertising for businesses
⦁ Learning to retarget customers through an email strategy
⦁ Sales talk 101: effective ways to entice prospects
⦁ Growing your YouTube audience in just one month
⦁ Google Adwords for beginners
⦁ The fundamentals of social media marketing
⦁ Setting up Google My Business
⦁ The complete affiliate marketing course
⦁ Learning to public speak like you’re giving a TED Talk
⦁ How to build a supply chain model in Microsoft

A Sales and Marketing Course Success Story

The Authority Hacker is a big name in the SEO industry. They sell an entry-level program for building authority sites called The Authority Site System, and they have an advanced program called Authority Hacker PRO.

The Authority Site System success story

Rather than selling a large number of courses, they focus on selling a couple of premium programs, and even with a small number of students, they have made millions of dollars with these two courses.

IT and Software

Another popular industry to teach courses in is IT and software. As technology is changing, this industry is growing fast. Companies are looking for professionals to help them build robust IT systems and stand out amongst the competition.

Online course creators have a huge opportunity to get their foot in the door here, especially because not just anyone can teach this kind of course. Instructors must have deep knowledge of the topics and explain them thoroughly so students can understand.

Having said that, if you have expertise in any of the sub-niches like programming languages, IT software, cyber security, certifications, etc., you can create a course.

At the same time, it becomes more important to choose the right topic for a fast-changing niche like IT and software.

For example, interest in Python has increased over the past five years, while it has come down in Java.

Interest in python language has been going up
Python Programming
Interest in Java programming has been moving down
Java Programming

IT and software are among the most popular niches, including on Udemy, where some courses in this category make upwards of $100k every month. However, the competition is very high for these courses, and the revenue potential isn’t equally high for all the topics.

Python courses do extremely well on Udemy

Here are ten ideas for online courses in the IT and programming industry:

⦁ The complete A-Z Javascript course
⦁ Go from zero to hero Python bootcamp
⦁ Embedded Systems Object-Oriented Programming in C/C++
⦁ The complete guide to becoming a software architect
⦁ HMI programming and design
⦁ The complete cybersecurity course
⦁ The beginner’s guide to Microsoft AZ – 900
⦁ The complete course on network security
⦁ Intermediate to advanced network hacking
⦁ Shell scripting: discover how to automate command-line tasks

An IT and Software Course Success Story

Total Seminars is an online school focused on creating courses and practice materials for IT and Security certifications courses. They cover popular certifications from various vendors like CompTIA, PMI, ISACA, etc.

Total Seminars online course success story

Total Seminars adopted a multi-channel sales strategy, and as part of that, they sell their courses through their website and other popular marketplaces.

Design and Development

Design and development is an umbrella term that describes creating and developing websites, software, games, etc. It’s a fun industry to dip your toes in, as you can grow in different directions and focus on what you love.

Many people get into this industry because they can work as freelancers or from remote positions. So, there’s a lot of demand from people looking to leave a corporate job or graduates choosing a career path.

As a design and development professional, you’re likely to be experienced in multiple sub-niches like game development, user experience design, graphic design, etc. That opens your doors to creating and teaching multiple successful online courses down the line.

Search results for “website design” show a consistent interest in the space over the past five years.

Website design google trends

And, let’s say you want to teach courses on WordPress website design. Udemy’s top courses in this field make $12,462 per month. So, if making a full-time income from your online courses is your goal, design and development is an excellent option.

WordPress Online courses do well on Udemy

Here are ten design and development online course ideas:

⦁ The complete Android developer course
⦁ User experience design fundamentals
⦁ The ultimate Adobe Photoshop training course
⦁ How to create animations from scratch
⦁ Become a master WordPress developer
⦁ iOS 11 and Swift development boot camp
⦁ The complete guide to React Native
⦁ Data science and machine learning boot camp
⦁ The essential guide to game development with Unity
⦁ The ultimate MySQL mastery training course

A Design and Development Course Success Story

Ryan and Kim Desmond founded Coding Nomads to help coders skip the traditional university degree and fast-track their careers. It all started 20 years ago while daydreaming of how they could make money online while in Costa Rica.

Coding nomads course success story

Theirs is a full-fledged online school with full-time course creators and several courses that help develop a coder’s skills from nothing to a pro coder.

Academic Topics

Academic topics will always be around. They are the foundation of traditional learning topics, and they’ve become very popular for online learning as well. There are two angles to academic topics: making your online course geared toward students or teachers.

Students generally take academic courses online to complement their learning styles or boost their grades. But, on the other hand, teachers can learn how to use and manage different online learning platforms, how to be better online teachers, and categories like early childhood education.

What you can teach as a course creator depends on your knowledge in the category you wish to teach. For example, if you graduated high school and want to make money by teaching grade 12 Math, you can create an online course to teach the basics of Algebra to high school students.

Or, if you’ve been working in a specific sub-niche like child education for years and hold certificates, you could develop a successful online course around that since you are qualified to give advice.

Other sub-niches to consider include statistics, calculus, physics, history, biology, communications, psychology, critical thinking, test prep, fiction writing, etc.

The good thing about this niche is that the topics are evergreens, so you’ll always have a demand for your courses.

Here are ten academic online course ideas for you:

⦁ Physics for dummies
⦁ Algebra for beginners
⦁ World history for
⦁ Becoming a master in Chemistry
⦁ Teacher training: remote teaching in one hour
⦁ Introduction to reincarnation
⦁ Mechanical and electrical engineering explained
⦁ Educational psychology and special education certificate
⦁ Introduction to criminology: explaining crime
⦁ Influence people with persuasion psychology

An Academic Topic Course Success Story

Krista King always struggled in Math as a child, mostly due to teachers’ poor explanations. Finally, Krista could figure out the equations independently and was inspired to show other students how. She became a tutor, and later on, developed courses.

Krist King teaches Math courses

Krista is now in the #1 position for all Math courses on Udemy and has over 160,000 students

Art and Creativity

Not every online course needs to be about serious subjects like Math and programming. Many people are looking to discover their creative sides and develop skills.

Online classes offer students the perfect opportunity to have fun with your course while in their homes or other comfortable places.

You can create art and creativity courses aimed at people who want to learn skills like drawing portraits, making ceramic bowls, singing, etc.

You can also target artists and teach them how to score positions in art shows, sell their art, and teach others how to make art.

While the adoption of online learning wasn’t that great in the art niche, the COVID-19 pandemic changed this significantly. A search for “online art classes” on Google Trends will show the same:

Search for online art classes has gone up since the Pandemic

While teaching courses in the art niche might not sound like the most profitable idea, The sub-niche “drawing” sells well on Udemy and receives a monthly average of $13,470.

Drawing is a profitable niche on Udemy

Ten art and creativity online course ideas:

⦁ How to draw realistic human faces
⦁ The basics of using watercolors
⦁ Make all your plates and bowls by hand
⦁ Designing and boosting your brand as an artist
⦁ Pitching 101: how to land a spot in your dream art gallery
⦁ 12 ways to make extra income as an artist
⦁ Face and body painting for birthday parties
⦁ Sew a sweater in 3 days
⦁ How to use online marketplaces to sell your jewelry
⦁ Japanese art: connecting art and culture

An Art and Creativity Course Success Story

The Ceramics School, founded by Joshua, has over 100 workshops on ceramics, including making bowls, sculpting ingredients for ceramics, and more.

The Ceramics School successful example

Joshua turned his school into a marketplace model where reputable instructors offer their courses. They also have an online community for discussing pottery and sharing tips and videos with over 200,000 members.

Photography and Video

Photography and video are a hot niche since they are creative, allow you to experience and work your own hours, and pay pretty well. Many people are looking to improve their skills, and they want to learn from the best.

So, if you’re experienced in photography/video, you can create a powerful online course that will fill up with students.

Start by choosing what kind of students you want to attract, nature photographers, cinema videographers, wedding photographers, etc.

Then, prepare an online portfolio to demonstrate your work. Your work says a lot about you as a teacher, and it’s often the reason students sign up — if they feel inspired by you, they’ll sign up for your course.

Sub-niches you can target include photography tools, portrait photography, drone, and aerial photography, video design, cinematic video, video editing, etc.

A search for the “learn photography” keyword shows that interest in the topic isn’t increasing.

Search for "learn photography" has been consistent

While the overall niche may not be trending up, the good thing is it’s an evergreen niche. Plus, there will always be some sub-niches that will be trending.

And on Udemy, photography is a wildly successful niche!

Photography is another profitable niche on Udemy

Here are ten photography and video online course ideas:

⦁ Posing like a pro: how to create the best portraits ever
⦁ Photography lighting on a budget
⦁ iPhone photography crash course
⦁ Taking your Adobe Photoshop skills to the next level
⦁ Complete filmmaker guide: become the best videographer
⦁ Cinematography for 2D animations
⦁ Creating 3D environments in Blender
⦁ Beginners guide to flying DJI drones like a pro
⦁ Wildlife photography for beginners and amateurs
⦁ Food photography from your kitchen

A Photography and Video Course Success Story

Lost Creator Academy (LCA) by Christian LeBlanc is all about making it big from content creation, including photography and videography.

Lost Creator Academy

Christian studied accounting and was destined to work in the finance industry, then on his trip. He went on a trip to Thailand with his GoPro and started uploading YouTube videos. It picked up, and now he’s one of the most successful photographers out there.

Home Improvement and Gardening

People love home improvement and gardening content. There’s a reason why this is consistently a trending topic on Pinterest and Instagram, and sales in this industry are through the roof.

Out of all the industries in this article, home decor and gardening are the easiest to create an online course. You don’t need any certification, education, or training. You just need passion and attention to detail.

Sub-categories include home repair, interior design, farming, electrical wiring, feng shui, beekeeping, hydroponics, etc.

Searches for “home improvement” have been increasing consistently, showing an increased interest in the niche.

Home improvement topic interest is up

On Udemy, the top monthly revenue for home improvement courses is low. This is because the category is at a nascent phase on the platform.

Home improvement category doesn't do that well on Udemy but there is a market for it outside

However, I believe that there is a big enough audience for such niche topics as well. It’s all about going out and finding your tribe.

Ten online course ideas for home improvement and gardening:

⦁ Patching walls like a pro
⦁ Organize your home like a pro
⦁ The basics of household wiring
⦁ Feng Shui – The easiest way
⦁ Introduction to permaculture design
⦁ Growing microgreens for business and pleasure
⦁ A growing guide for soft fruit
⦁ 101 questions a beekeeper should ask
⦁ Grow your hydroponic farm at home
⦁ Rock at composting

A Home Improvement Course Success Story

One of our favorite examples in this category comes from a pro succulent care specialist, Cassidy. She runs the Succulents and Sunshine blog, where she offers digital products that revolve around succulent care.

Succulents and Sunshine courses

Her most popular product is the Successfully Growing Succulents course. It aims at helping gardeners understand succulents and their needs, reducing succulent deaths, and leading happier and longer lives.

It’s pretty niche; still, it does so well.

Family and Relationships

Most people who enroll in relationship and family courses want to gain insight into enhancing their relationships. They want to improve communication and gain essential relationship skills.

It’s another industry where people may feel more comfortable learning from their homes, and It’s also just as effective to have online sessions as it is in person with an instructor. For that reason, you can create successful online courses in this niche.

As a creator, you can teach about supporting children, increasing listening skills, building confidence, conflict resolution, consistency, and boundaries for children.

To teach in this industry, you need to be a therapist, counselor, or psychologist or have experience in overcoming challenges in your relationship.

Searches for “relationship building” have remained pretty consistent, even though it has been trending up since the pandemic.

relationship building is trending

While the potential of a relationship-building topic on Udemy isn’t that great, it still goes on to show that people are willing to pay for such courses.

relationship building udemy potential

Ten family and relationships online course ideas:
⦁ Neuroscience for parents: how to raise amazing children
⦁ Relationship building: transform problems into growth and love
⦁ How to find love using the law of attraction
⦁ Introduction to child psychology
⦁ How to become a homeschool teacher for your child
⦁ Trauma treatment for children
⦁ Relationship coaching and couples counseling masterclass
⦁ Challenging behaviors in children and how to handle them
⦁ The power of deep listening
⦁ The science behind love and connection

A Family and Relationships Course Success Story

Carl and Kenya run the Progressive Love Academy, where they offer several courses and coaching programs. Their courses are targeted at both love coaches and individuals who want to better their love life.

progressive-love-academy

Pet Care and Training

Pet care and training are an ever-growing hot niche. As new pet owners are looking to educate themselves on being better fur parents and people are finding opportunities to educate others in the field, there’s always more room for online courses.

So, whether you’ve volunteered in an animal shelter, been recognized for high-quality dog training, are a veterinarian, or are an exotic animal enthusiast, you can consider this a great niche for online course creation.

You can even market your courses to big companies like Petco and Just for Pets. They use the content to help further educate their staff, increasing the customer experience and brand vision overall.

There are many options for teaching in the niche, including dog training, horsemanship, animal nutrition, cat behavior, etc.

The interest in “dog training” has always been there, and it’s only increasing with time, as new dog owners need this knowledge.

Interest in dog training is high

And the same is validated by Udemy where there is a high demand for dog training courses, and they make a decent revenue as well.

Dog training isn't so profitable on Udemy

Ten pet care and training course ideas:

⦁ Simple solutions for common dog behavior and issues
⦁ Predation substitute training
⦁ Learn how to groom your dog from home
⦁ Dog nutrition 101: what’s in the kibble, and is it enough?
⦁ Professional pet sitting diploma
⦁ How to massage your dog to relieve stress
⦁ Cat behavior rectification and cat healthcare
⦁ Train your dog to eat the BARF diet
⦁ Crucial concepts in dog behavior and training
⦁ Supercharge your horse riding confidence

A Pet Care and Training Success Story

Emily Larlham from Dogmantics is a world-recognized dog trainer based in San Diego, California. She’s made over 350 YouTube videos on positive dog training, hoping to inspire people to treat dogs better.

Dogmantics successful course example

Aside from her free YouTube channel, she also has multiple paid courses that focus on leash training, multiple dog households, weekly manners for dogs, etc.

Sports and Outdoor

Traditionally, people take sports classes in sports centers and with in-life teachers. While that’s still mostly true, there’s an emerging market for people who want to develop skills through online courses.

Take Muay Thai, for example. Of course, it’s helpful to be in a room with a trainer, but being online and performing the exercises is also effective and works better for some.

Online courses also heavily serve those looking to educate and teach others in the industry, like becoming a certified sports coach.

There are also some subjects that people must take half of the certification online and half in-person.

For example, to become an aquafit instructor, you must take a water theory exam online, which reviews the physics of water and muscles, arthritis and joint disorders, etc., before asking them to teach in-person practicums.
Here are ten sports and outdoor online course ideas:
⦁ Soccer training from home: learn to master the ball
⦁ Total immersion swimming: learn to swim better, faster, and easier
⦁ Learn Kickboxing from home
⦁ Become a pro Cricket player
⦁ How to perfect your golf swing
⦁ Sports psychology: develop the sports mindset
⦁ Turn your forehand into a weapon: effortless tennis forehand
⦁ How to be a great sports coach
⦁ The essentials of sports leadership and management
⦁ Sports massage: muscle energy technique certification

A Sports and Outdoor Success Story

Sean Fagan, the founder of Nak Muay Nation, runs a membership community for those interested in learning Muay Thai. He offers exclusive training material, including thousands of videos inside the membership.

Nak Muay Nation

Sean has participated in 30+ fights and has won a couple of amateur titles as well and he shares everything he’s learned from his fights with other enthusiasts.

Miscellaneous Ideas for Online Courses

While the categories above are the most popular and best-selling, many niches and unique online course ideas don’t fall into the niches above and are worth considering for your online course.

Here are a few such niches, including a course idea for each of them:

Travel: The ultimate guide for a trip to Switzerland
Gaming: How to become a Twitch gamer
Safety and first aid: CRP and AED for first aiders
Beauty and makeup: Become an eyelash extension practitioner
Cryptocurrency and blockchain: The fundamentals of Blockchain and Bitcoin
Food and beverage: How to open an award-winning restaurant
Dance: Learning the Right Steps in Contemporary Dance
Real estate: Selling Your First BIG House
Music production: Be a Boss In the Studio: 15 Tips
Religion and spirituality: Introduction to the Philosophy of Western Religion

Taking travel as an example, you could create a course about international travel preparation and wellness. You could even teach people how to become travel guides if you have experience.

Here’s a great travel course idea on Coursera:

Miscellaneous ideas for online courses travel niche example

Similarly, safety and first aid are big industries, with many workplaces making certification mandatory. Then, there’s also lifeguard training, babysitter first aid for children and babies, senior care home emergency response, etc.

So, whatever you’re passionate about, there’s always a niche waiting for you.

How to Find Your Profitable Online Course Idea

Now that we’ve gone through the niches and the online course ideas, you’ve likely picked out a few that caught your attention. Of course, it’s normal to have several ideas for your online course.

Also, remember the ideas mentioned in this article are just for inspiration, and you can think of anything that attracts you.

However, choosing a course topic doesn’t come down just to what you’re most knowledgeable about or comfortable teaching. If you have an income goal, some courses will perform better than others. So, analyzing the market is a crucial step in choosing ideas for your online courses.

Come Up With Your Online Course Ideas

Which niche looked most promising to you? Based on that, write down online course ideas that you could teach in that particular niche.

Let’s say you’re a dog trainer who’s been working in the industry for years. Your list might look something like this:

List of potential online course ideas for dog trainers

When I was thinking of topics for my online course, I had already worked in the supply chain industry for four years. I loved and was good at it, so it was pretty straightforward for me to choose my niche.

So first, think about your skills and professional experience. If you’ve worked with dogs for years and that’s where you excel, you can teach informative and helpful courses based on your experience.

Validate Your Online Course Idea

Once you narrow down which courses to teach, it’s time to check if there’s enough student demand for your course ideas.

The easiest way to do that is by checking the search volume for your main keywords. An excellent tool for this is Ubersuggest. It’s free and accurate for checking search volumes.

Validate your idea by looking at the Google search volume

You can also see all sorts of keyword ideas and their search volumes, fine-tuning your ideas even more.

If your keywords have enough search volume, it indicates students’ interest in your topic.

Another great way to validate your idea is by analyzing Udemy courses. You can look up any keyword in the Udemy Marketplace Insights, and it will give you the rundown of student demand, competition, and average monthly revenue.

Udemy Marketplace Insights Tool

While we don’t necessarily recommend using Udemy as your online course platform, it’s a great reference point during your initial research on course topics.

And it goes without saying that you should also look at the competition while validating your idea. No competition likely means there is no demand, or you are just getting really lucky and digging up a gap in the market. However, it’s always good to have some competition.

These are just some of the many ways to validate your online course idea. If you would like to learn about all the other strategies, you should check this in-depth guide.

Online Course Ideas Wrap Up

Now that we’ve gone through this massive list of online course topic ideas and we’ve talked about idea validation as well, I’m sure you have found your profitable course idea.

Teaching online courses is an excellent way to share your expertise, grow your brand, and earn a passive income. With the technology we have today, there are plenty of ways to teach almost anything online if you set your mind to it.

After you’ve chosen your topic, it’s time to start creating your online course. We’ve created a step-by-step guide on how to do so; check it out by clicking this link.

Did we miss something in this article? Or do you have any questions? Please let us know by leaving a comment below!

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