I just finished a great interview with productivity and time-management expert Alexis Haselberger for Course Builders TV.

We were talking about how to pick the best topic for your online course and Alexis made one of those points that seems so obviously right in hindsight that you wish you'd come up with it yourself!

Most advice on picking your topic is a variation on the theme of picking a big problem your clients typically have. Ideally an urgent one with significant financial impact they'd be willing to pay to get rid of.

But what Alexis pointed out was that for an online course, the problem also has to be one they can fix themselves.

If you think about the work you do with clients there are some problems where, once they know what the issue is, you can just say “go do this”. Those sorts of problems are good topics for online courses.

But there are other problems where you need to delve deeper with a client to diagnose things. Or give them regular feedback to help them course-correct. Or where they may need lots of personal support and motivation.

Those aren't such good areas for online courses.

Now obviously some online courses include an element of group coaching too, or the occasional one-to-one call. So the rule isn't a hard and fast one.

But generally speaking it's a very good criteria to use. Just ask yourself “if I told my client what to do in this area, would they be able to just get on with it and get great results by themselves?”.

If so you may be on to a winner.