Originally published on medium.com

Whether you are creating an internal or external course, you likely want to know what value it will provide you in the long term. There are four main parts of the value of online courses and eLearning programs.

#1. They Are Evergreen

To start, your online course or eLearning program is evergreen. This means that it is always there, always working for you. People can take the course and sign up for it on holidays, in the middle of the night, if they are sleeping, or if they are on a remote island in the middle of nowhere.

From a training perspective, this means that you don’t have to work to train your employees. From a selling perspective, you don’t have to hand off the course to customers. Either way, the value of online courses comes from the fact that learners can access one at any time, far into the future.

#2. They Decrease Cost

One of the major points of the value of online courses is their ability to decrease costs. Whether it is an internal or external cost, you would have to travel to get to your learners without an online course. Maybe you have to travel to provide training to your team, or you have to travel around the country to do in-person trainings. By contrast, when the course is online, learners can reach it from anywhere. This saves you the cost of travel.

You also save money from the fact that you don’t need to pay a trainer to deliver the training; learners just take the course on their own at the time that works for them.

#3. They Save Time

Online courses save time in the same ways they save money. To start, there is no need to travel at all, even if you need to train people on opposite sides of the country. So, there is no time spent on planes and at airports.

You also save the time that you or someone else would spend teaching the course each time to new learners. Instead of having to spend several hours of your day at regular intervals teaching the same thing over and over, you just do it once, and then, your learners can access it.

#4. They Help You Scale

Finally, part of the value of online courses is their ability to let you scale your business.

For internal training, onboarding new employees become easy. You don’t need to find trainers for every single new group of people. You just give them access to the online course.

For external courses, you can sell as many copies of the course as you want without having to sacrifice your time. Remember that the course is evergreen and always there, letting you sell it to more and more people.

Conclusion

Creating an online course is smart, thanks to the value it provides, which it does in several ways. Online courses deliver evergreen content that can be accessed again and again for years to come. They also save time and money, and they let you easily scale up your business, even if that business is just selling the course.