Who buys online courses?

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“Who buys online courses?”

This is the first question I get when I tell someone about what I’ve done for the past 5 years.

People often struggle to believe that you can have a full-time job teaching people online.

(Let alone helping people to teach online.)

Now to me, it’s obvious, because I’ve spent my whole life learning things on the internet.

I learnt to code 15 years ago, entirely online.

Since then I’ve learnt everything from 3D modelling to filming the same way.

I’ve always preferred online education because I never loved school.

I wanted to learn the things that excited me, in a way that excited me.

And in my professional career I’ve realised I’m not alone.

I’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people buy products that help them learn things or improve their skills.

But I’m also aware that I’m just one person in a huge world.

Maybe I’d been lucky and found all the people that were interested in these things already?

Maybe that was as big as the market was?

So, I decided to do some proper research and answer two questions:

1. Do people buy online education?

2. If so, who are they?

The Results:

After weeks scouring online articles, research papers, business reports and market data, I came to three realisations:

As I said, I knew that some people trusted and worked with independent online educators, but I didn’t realise how many.

It turns out the global online education market is already worth over $399 billion, and it’s expected to grow to $602 billion by 2030.

That includes everything from creator courses and coaching to membership programs and bootcamps.

The creator economy alone is already worth over $250 billion, and education is one of the biggest categories inside it.

Not only are loads of people buying online education every week, it looks like that number is only going to increase over the next few years.

According to the World Economic Forum, over 1 billion people will need to reskill by 2030.

IBM also found that 40% of the global workforce will need to retrain in the next 3 years because of AI.

There’s that common phrase at the moment:

“Your job isn’t going to be replaced by AI. It’s going to be replaced by someone using AI.”

And I think that’s true.

Our jobs are fundamentally changing.

That means people will need accessible, affordable education to help them learn new skills over the next few years.

We’re at this unbelievable point in time where the market for vertical education businesses is better than ever.

A vertical education business is one that teaches just one thing in detail, rather than lots of different skills.

Alex Hormozi has a simple framework for identifying good business markets:

A good market is:

Growing: Online education is growing at around 9% per year, which is faster than traditional education.
Big Enough: If $602 billion by 2030 isn’t big enough for you, I don’t know what is.
Easy to Reach: Thanks to social media, paid ads and online communities, it’s now easier than ever to find your target customers.
In Pain: Millions of people are being forced to learn new skills, right now.