Making the Most of What You Create

If you’re a coach, educator, consultant, or course creator with valuable training materials, workshops, or presentations — you’re sitting on intellectual property (IP) that can be licensed and monetized.

Done right, licensing your content allows you to:

• Earn recurring or large one-time payments
• Reach wider audiences without doing more work
• Retain control over how your content is used

But to do it successfully (and safely), you need a clear strategy — and some basic legal and business infrastructure in place.

Disclaimer

The information in this article should not be relied upon for legal advice. You can find legal advice and support cost effectively online, and it’s a great investment if you want to make the most you can from all the work you create.

Is Your Content Worth Licensing?

If you the content you’ve created is information that is routinely interesting, informative, useful or entertaining to many people, there’s likely a way to license to other entrepreneurs profitably. This can include:

• Courses you have created
• Procedures you’ve documented
• Stories you’ve written
• Graphics you’ve generated
• Characters you have created
• Designs you have developed
• Code you have written

The people who will want to license your work are other individuals and businesses who serve that target market. If your work has real value to the target market, and it can be rebranded or repackaged as a product, or a sales tool, by others, then you can likely find someone willing to pay to use what you own.

What Licensing Really Means

Licensing isn’t just “letting someone else use your stuff.” It’s a formal permission agreement that defines:

• Who can use your content
• What they can do with it (teach it, include it in training, translate it, etc.)
• For how long and in what format
• Whether they can modify or resell it
• How much they pay you (and when)

It’s like renting out your intellectual property — without selling it outright.

What You Can License

You can license almost any original material you’ve created, such as:

• Slide decks and workshop recordings
• Course videos and lesson plans
• Templates, checklists, and assessments
• Articles, blog posts, and handouts
• Podcast episodes or transcripts
• AI-generated media — if you own the commercial rights
• Graphic art, illustration, designs

The key is: you must own or control the rights. If it contains third-party material (images, clips, software), you need need to make sure you have permission to include it work you license to others. This information will be spelled out in your agreement with the original creator or those they sell through (ex: Canva, Pond 5, Creative Fabrica). The information will be found in their Terms & Conditions.

Who Buys Licensed Content?

The biggest buyers of licensed content are:

• Training departments at companies, nonprofits, and government agencies
• Educational institutions (schools, colleges, continuing ed programs)
• Membership sites and platforms that curate expert content
• Fellow coaches or consultants who want a plug-and-play system
• Conference organizers who need workshop materials or videos
• Sales teams who need valuable ebooks, print books, or branded merch to spur sales
• Startups and new businesses looking for a way to jump start their connection to the target market they sahre with you.

These buyers want high-quality, proven resources they don’t have to build from scratch — and they’re often happy to pay for the right to use it.

Ways to Monetize Your Content Through Licensing

1. Per-Use or Per-Seat Licensing

• Buyer pays a fee based on how many users will access the content
• Common in HR, corporate training, and software-adjacent markets

2. Flat-Fee, Time-Limited License

• Buyer pays $500, $5,000, or more for the right to use the content for 1–3 years
• You retain full ownership and can relicense it again later

3. White-Label or Co-Branded Versions

• You allow another expert or company to rebrand your content as theirs
• Premium pricing, but requires careful legal boundaries

4. Content Libraries or Licensing Marketplaces

• Add your material to platforms that license courses, presentations, or templates to institutions
• You earn passive income, but usually at lower rates

5. Bespoke Licensing Deals

• You customize a package of content and training for a specific buyer
• Often combines a license fee + optional consulting or support

Steps to License Your Content to Directly License Your Work to Individuals and Enterprises

1. Audit Your IP.
   • What do you have that’s complete, high-quality, and useful?
   • Is it yours to license? Remove any stock or third-party media you can’t redistribute.
2. Package It Clearly.
   • Create a clean, labeled version of the content (PDFs, slide decks, or videos).
   • Write a 1–2 paragraph summary of what the content covers and who it helps.
3. Set Simple Terms.
   • Decide: digital or print? Editable or not? Time-limited or perpetual?
   • Consider using a basic licensing agreement (consult an attorney if needed).
4. Protect Your Value.
   • Ensure your work is protected by working with an Intellectual Property attorney. Trademark, Service Mark, Copyright, Patent, and other IP protection tools take years to understand and use correctly.
   • Watermark materials if distributing samples.
   • Provide licensed buyers with content behind login-only portals or download links, not indexed pages.
5. Start with Warm Leads.
   • Reach out to past clients, partners, or groups who’ve asked you to speak or teach before.
   • Position your offer as a time-saving asset they can use with their audience.
6. Price for Impact, Not Exposure.
   • If your content saves them 20 hours of development time or improves results, charge accordingly.
   • Don’t fall into the trap of “just getting it out there” — licensing should reward your expertise.

Remember to work with lawyers who are experts in intellectual property law to create the agreements that allow to use your work. Bad licensing agreements can through you into courtrooms very quickly, and they can result in the loss of the work you created and expensive judgements against you. It’s important for you to have your own lawyer, and not rely on the lawyer of whoever you are licensing the content to. Their attorney protects them. Your attorney will protect you.

The Best Licensee for Your Work May be You

When you have created some kind of intellectual property that really “works’ for your target market, whether as a product, service, marketing tool, take time to think of all the ways you can profitably repurpose it. If your How-To book is frequently purchased because dancers love it, or working mom’s think its really useful, you can turn it into marketing materials and courses they will love to.

If your cartoon character seems to have found a lot of fans on social media sites, then maybe you should be turning it into merchandise you sell through Lulu.com, Zazzle, Redbubble, and more.

Final Thought

Licensing is how experts scale — without burning out. If you’ve already created something that works, you don’t need more hustle. You need to package and protect it… and let others pay you to use it.

This is how content becomes an asset — not just a giveaway.