If you’re a coach looking to create a course online, you may or may not have heard of an evergreen course. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to launch one, why you should, or even what exactly it is. Which is what this article is all about, to tell you the answers to all of those questions. So you can decide if an evergreen course is for you.

What is an evergreen course?

Let’s start at the beginning, which is explaining what an evergreen course actually is. The “evergreen” part is the biggest clue because it’s a nod to evergreen trees, which as you might remember from science class, are trees that have live and functioning foliage all year round.

Apply that same concept to a course, it means that the course will be available to clients throughout the year. From the day an evergreen course is launched, until… forever, it can be accessed by the general public. This is a sharp contrast to what’s called a “timed launch” in which a course is released and is only available for a short time.

Some people prefer timed launches because they only have to focus on advertising their course during certain times; plus it can produce a large and sudden cashflow, whereas funds from an evergreen course are more likely to trickle in throughout longer periods of time.

But there are a lot of benefits to evergreen courses, as you’ll see in this next section.

The benefits of an evergreen course…

Increases Scalability For Your Business – 

The thing about timed launches is that when you’re getting ready to put the course back on the market for a limited time, all your focus is on that. And when it’s not on the market, it’s not making money.

But with an evergreen course, you only have to worry about the launch process once. Then it’s simply earning passive income afterwards, aside from the times where you want to give it a little boost. This frees up your time so that you can spend it on building other parts of your business, since you aren’t only focusing on one course.

This benefit makes an evergreen course the perfect option for someone who is planning on scaling their business in the future.

Gives You A Source Of Consistent Income – 

As I just mentioned, when a course with a timed launch isn’t on the market, it isn’t making you any money. Therefore, this type of course isn’t necessarily a good idea if you need a reliable flow of money.

An evergreen course on the other hand, can provide you with money all year round. So it can be an active part of your monthly, or even weekly, earnings. And if you notice that the cashflow from the course is slowing down, it’s easy to simply make some improvements on it and then relaunch rather than having to build a brand new course.

You’re Not Just Getting Paid An Hourly Rate – 

One of the biggest benefits of launching a course, evergreen courses included, is the fact that you’re not getting paid a flat hourly rate like with traditional coaching. There’s a lot of value to be found in coaching the traditional way; but the fact is, at the end of the day you’re simply trading time for money.

But when you launch a course, you’re just getting paid. You only spend time on a course during the beginning, then it becomes a somewhat passive income for the most part (especially with an evergreen course). Even if you want to continue with traditional coaching as well, there’s no denying that this a great way to add to your income.

Section 3: How to build an evergreen course…

Now that you have a good grasp on what an evergreen course is, how it works, and why you should have one; let’s take a look at how you can actually begin to build your course.

Step One – Create Your Course

You can create your evergreen course in the same way that you’d create any course, in the beginning at least.

• Choose what you’re going to teach people with the course
• Map out the customer journey, aka which steps the course will take them through in order for them to get the knowledge they came for
• Finish designing it

That’s a very simplified version of the steps you’ll need to take, but what you really need to remember is to be organized throughout this process. You need to keep detailed, organized notes; as well as have a place where you can store your ideas, the map of the customer’s journey, and thoughts about your program design. Personally, I believe that coda can help you with this and make the process of building your course a lot easier.

Step Two – Market, Market, Market

To be honest, creating an evergreen course is really as simple as one step; simply make a course, release it, and leave it released. The only thing you have to do afterwards is continue to market it even after the initial buzz of a newly released course has passed.

You can do this in a variety of ways; funnels are effective ways to keep finding potential buyers, as is using social media, and even word of mouth. Find your advertising medium, or mediums, of choice and continue to promote your course whenever sales start to dwindle.

Then… voila! You’re the proud owner of an evergreen course, and you reap the benefits of it for as long as you want.