4 Steps to Know Your Course Will Sell (Before You Build It)
Apr 15, 2025
Will anyone actually buy it?
How do you know if there's real market demand for your topic, or if you're about to pour your heart and soul into something destined for crickets?
Even worse, what if there is demand, but the market is already overflowing with competitors? How do you avoid launching into a saturated space where you'll struggle to stand out?
These are critical questions every course creator faces. Wasting time and resources on a course nobody wants is painful. Thankfully, there's a systematic way to validate your idea, gauge demand, and carve out your unique space, even in crowded markets. Let's break it down.
Step 1: Identify Your Core Market (The Big Three)
Nearly every product or service ever sold, since the dawn of commerce, fits into one of three core markets:
Health: Anything related to physical, mental, or emotional well-being.
Wealth: Topics concerning making money, saving money, managing finances, business, or career growth.
Relationships: Dealing with connections between people – romantic, familial, professional, or social.
Your course topic will fall under one of these broad umbrellas. Decide which one is the primary focus for your expertise.
Step 2: Find Your Submarket
Within each core market are numerous submarkets. These are more specific categories.
Under Health: Think fitness, weight loss, bodyweight training, healthy eating, intermittent fasting, emotional regulation, sleep training, gut health, pain management, digital detox, postpartum care, etc.
Under Wealth: Consider financial management, real estate investing, cryptocurrency, stock investing, selling on Amazon, debt elimination, options trading, retirement planning, career coaching, affiliate marketing, wealth planning – and yes, even course selling itself!
Under Relationships: Examples include conversation coaching, dating advice, marriage communication, sexual intimacy, conflict resolution, navigating workplace conflict, EQ leadership, divorce recovery, dealing with difficult bosses, parenting, etc.
Identify the specific submarket where your course topic resides. My own submarket, for instance, is "course selling" within the "Wealth" market.
Step 3: Define Your Niche (Getting Granular)
Now we go one level deeper to the niche. A niche is essentially a submarket of your submarket. It’s where you start getting really specific.
Example 1 (Wealth):
Market: Wealth
Submarket: Investing in Crypto
Niche: Investing in Crypto Altcoins (or Meme Coins, or Trading NFTs)
Example 2 (Relationships):
Market: Relationships
Submarket: Marriage
Niche: Intimacy with your spouse (or Communication, or Dating within marriage, or Managing finances together)
Your niche should be directly related to your core expertise.
Step 4: Choose a Niche That Plays to Your Strengths (Crucial!)
Which of the Big Three markets is the most profitable? Honestly, it doesn't matter as much as you think. While Health globally has the highest revenue, followed by Wealth, then Relationships (though this can vary by platform), they are all multi-billion dollar markets. There's plenty of money in each.
What truly matters is aligning your niche with your strengths and expertise.
Many aspiring course creators make a critical mistake here. They see a trending topic, assume it's profitable, and jump in, regardless of the market. Often, the result is getting crushed by competition because:
Saturation: If a niche is already mainstream popular enough for you to notice easily, it's likely already crowded (a "Red Ocean").
Lack of Depth: They didn't build their course based on genuine, deep-seated strengths and experience.
Instead of chasing trends, start with you. What are you genuinely skilled at? What problems have you solved? What results have you achieved for yourself or others? (In my own coaching, we use a technique called "Domains and Layers" to help clients systematically uncover all their skills – one recent client identified 47 distinct skills!). The struggle usually isn't a lack of topics, but choosing the best one from many good options based on your unique strengths.
Step 5: Validate Your Niche – Is it Growing and Trending?
Once you've identified a niche based on your strengths, you need to confirm there's actual interest and it's not a dying field. How? Look for signs of life and growth:
Buzzwords: Does the niche have its own specific terminology or jargon? (e.g., Pickleball: "dink," "kitchen," "Erne"; Amazon FBA: "private label," "OEM," "Alibaba").
Communities: Are there dedicated online groups (Facebook Groups, Discord servers, Telegram channels, Subreddits) where people discuss this topic?
Events: Are there online or in-person conferences, masterminds, or trade shows focused on this niche?
Channels: Are there popular YouTube channels or TikTok accounts dedicated to the topic?
Podcasts: Are there podcasts covering this niche? (A quick search on Spotify and Apple Podcasts will usually suffice).
Courses: This is key! Do other online courses already exist in this niche? If yes, it's a good sign. It proves people are willing and able to spend money to learn about this topic.
Experts/Gurus: Are there established experts or well-known figures in this space? (e.g., Online Marketing: Gary V, Neil Patel, Alex Hormozi).
If you find activity across several of these areas, you know there's strong market demand.
Step 6: Carve Out Your Hyper-Niche (Your Blue Ocean)
Okay, you've found a strong niche aligned with your strengths. But what about saturation? This is where the hyper-niche comes in.
A hyper-niche isn't something you find; it's something you create. It's a unique subcategory within your niche that addresses a specific segment, problem, or outcome in a way others aren't.
Example 1 (Wealth):
Niche: Investing in Altcoins
Hyper-Niche: Investing in Ethereum (ETH) specifically to pay off debt.
Example 2 (Relationships):
Niche: Intimacy with your spouse
Hyper-Niche: Improving sexual intimacy for Christian couples married 20+ years.
My own hyper-niche isn't just "selling courses." It's: Helping men of faith create wealth by turning their expertise into a course, specifically focusing on the intersection of business and ministry (changing lives).
How do you create your hyper-niche? Ask yourself:
What is a subcategory of my service? (e.g., not just course creation, but turning expertise into a course).
What is a subcategory of my client? (e.g., not just humans, but men of faith).
What is a subcategory of my client's dream outcome? (e.g., not just making money, but making money while changing lives).
By combining these specific elements, you create a unique positioning. The niche ensures your market is strong and has buyers (it's okay if it's a Red Ocean full of "sharks"). The hyper-niche ensures your offer is new and stands out, creating your own Blue Ocean.
You'll "fish" for customers in the broader, validated niche, but you'll attract them specifically to your unique hyper-niche offer, pulling them away from the general competition.
Launch with Confidence
By following these steps, you can move from a vague idea to a validated course concept with a clear, unique position in the market:
Decide which of the three core markets (Health, Wealth, Relationships) you're in.
Pick a Niche (submarket of a submarket) that genuinely plays to your strengths and expertise.
Validate that your niche is growing and trending by looking for the 7 signs of life (buzzwords, communities, events, channels, podcasts, courses, experts).
Carve out a Hyper-Niche by getting specific about your service, your ideal client, or their dream outcome, creating a unique Blue Ocean offer.
This process transforms uncertainty into a strategic approach, allowing you to build and launch your online course with much greater confidence that people not only need what you offer but are actively looking for a solution like yours.