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The Context If you’ve never considered selling your knowledge online - now is the time. Or if you have tried and failed why not try again? We all know that lecturers and researchers desire and are under pressure to appeal to wider audiences and bring in extra money either for their university, college or for their own personal incomes.

This desire and pressure will probably increase in the context of the current economic difficulties that lie ahead and as we contemplate job and financial security. In such times, it is my view that the ability to market and sell information and knowledge (academic and other kinds) is going to become increasingly important for academics and knowledge specialists. But the opportunities for them to do this, to improve their professional profiles and personal incomes, are better than they have ever been.

As a former academic, but now running my own businesses I am very familiar with the difficulties of developing a knowledge specialist/consultancy type profile alongside, or instead of, a pure academic one. But the good news is that there is now so much more that academics can do to achieve this – especially online. Individual knowledge professionals in almost any subject can now access a potential global ‘market’ for their ideas, research, knowledge and skills. My invitation and challenge, is that academics and other knowledge professionals (not to mention educational institutions themselves) should to be looking more at these opportunities and using them more effectively. There are lots of reasons why: Why Sell Knowledge Online?

Given the uncertain times we are living in, wouldn’t it be good to know that you could generate a supplementary or extra income and skills (not to mention additional career strand) that need not affect contractual obligations with employers?

Tenured academic positions are increasingly rare and academia less secure or satisfying than it may once have been – developing other skills and knowledge and ways of disseminating knowledge provide a way of ‘cashing in’ without losing out.

Many people are selling their knowledge, skills and expertise in ways other than through their traditional academic roles. Academics shouldn’t be getting left behind, particularly when their knowledge is often superior to the some of the charlatans out there.

Diversifying work activity by developing an entrepreneurial online stream is incredibly exciting and great fun – it can also improve academic and consultancy profiles.

Ever wondered what to do with all those articles and books that you can’t get published? People will buy them!

It is quite easy to take the opportunities available and relatively inexpensive to achieve success with them. How to Sell Knowledge Online the basics,

• Do a ‘Google keyword’ search to find out what people in your knowledge area are looking for. This is called a ‘niche’.
• Get a website – a very simple DIY one is good enough to start with. Develop this around the keywords
• Make sure the site has an ‘opt-in’ section so that people can add their name and email to a mailing list – offer something free to persuade them
• Also make sure the site is ‘content rich’
• Start a low cost ad campaign based on your keywords words to drive interested people directly to your site
• Provide a range of downloadable ‘products’ on your site, start with one

Start building a list of all the people who entre their name and email These are the basics but there are other lots of other effective techniques one of which doesn’t even require a website! “Who’d be interested in my knowledge?” This is a question posed by many academics I talk to but it is often put in a somewhat cynical even rhetorical way – as if the answer were obvious – ‘nobody’! (other than those who attend their courses and get access to the journals they publish in). This is not so. I know academics who provide consultancy and information to a wide variety of organizations, businesses and individuals (both offline and online) and from a wide variety of academic disciplines. In fact, I would go as far as to say that almost any academic discipline can find an outlet or can sell its knowledge in other than traditional ways.

Having been an academic and consultant (and now training and coaching independents, freelancers and small businesses to market their knowledge) I know this to be true. Think outside the books Make your knowledge applicable and/or exciting and more people will buy it. ‘Re-purpose’ your articles (ie target different audiences) and more people will want it.

Academics and knowledge specialists are notoriously (and necessarily) bookish. Of course, it’s their job. But while books and journals are indeed a necessary source of knowledge, information, inspiration and ideas they can also be too theoretical and obscure to excite and encourage those outside that knowledge clique to think practically about its application or to be inspirational.

My invitation here is simple: to ‘think outside the books’. I’m sure you’re familiar with the tired cliché addressed to inspire corporate seniors to innovate and ‘think outside the box’ when it comes to urging creativity and progress. Well, this is the academic equivalent, at least for those who want to develop a strong profile beyond pure academia or beyond their own institution by selling their knowledge in other than traditional ways.