Create a course. Isn’t that expensive? And only experts can create courses? There are many sources of information about how to create courses. And in some cases, you may be tempted to think it’s a daunting, stressful, and tasking process that requires money and lots of skills that the average person cannot venture into. You would soon realize how easy it is to create and launch a course, even with no money.
An online course is one of the best ways to help others learn as well as grow your brand. Gone are the days when one needed to enroll in an educational institution if they wanted to learn something or acquire a skill. Today, there are lots of ways people learn and the internet is playing a big role. It takes a few key things and you are ready to launch your course. In a week, you could be one of the newest course creators on the internet. Sounds crazy? Let’s get started with the basics…
What is an online course?
An online course is a course delivered through the internet. Online courses are revolutionizing education and changing what we consider learning and how it is done. Online learning is achieved with online courses and now, you can learn almost anything online. You can access world-renowned experts in fields that you may never have met physically for a lecture. But with online learning and courses, you can benefit from the knowledge of mentors and thought leaders. The popular way to access online courses is through Mass Open Online Courses or MOOCs platforms like Coursera and edX. However, you aren’t limited to these two. There are several other platforms that allow almost anybody to create and sell a course. And we will show you just how to Get. Started. With. Your. Course.
Steps to Creating Your First Online Course
1. Perform A “Profitable Course” Idea Research
Figuring out which niche to create your course in could be as simple as looking at what you already do. If you are a developer, you can create a course on how to create mobile apps and build websites. If you are a consultant, you could create a course on your area of expertise. And if you are a graphic designer, you could create a course on how to use Photoshop to create a logo. These are options when you are in a niche with lots of interest and you are almost sure it will attract some interested buyers/learners. However, it may not be simple if you aren’t sure of your niche or if people have enough interest to buy a course on it. Most people who take courses want to learn something to make money. You should factor that in when thinking about the niche you come up with.
Simple ways to research a niche.
- Send a survey
- Ask your social followers
- Visit Forums Quora, Reddit, Stack Overflow, etc.
Top Online Course Niches to Consider
- Fitness Niche
- Art Niche
- Parenting Niche
- Decorating Niche
- Fashion Niche
- Writing Niche
- Personal Finance Niche
- Cooking Niche
- Beauty Niche
- Online Marketing Niche
- Coding Niche
- Self-Improvement Niche
- Foreign Languages Niche
- Healthy Lifestyle Niche
- Life and Career Coaching Niche
2. Understand Your Audience or Students
Without an audience, you would be building a course for a non-existent market. Without an audience, there will be no one to buy your course or even benefit from it. One of the important questions to ask yourself is whether your audience will buy your course, that’s is you will be adding a fee for access to the course. If you are not sure, you can simply set up a landing page and presell your course. The number of people who express interest will be a good indicator of whether it will pick up or not.
3. Create A Course Description and Learning Goals
Getting a niche and figuring out what will be most beneficial to your ideal student are prerequisites for writing good course descriptions and coming up with good learning objectives and goals.
The course description outlines what the course is about, who it’s for, what benefits it has for them, and the learning goals. The course description is not only for potential students. It has some benefits for you as a course creator. Writing the course description outright at the beginning will enable you to have a certain level of clarity on what exactly to
4. Create Your Course Outline
The course outline is a sort of detailed table of content for your course. It covers everything you will be covering in your course and includes the chapters, sections, and individual lessons you will be covering when content creation starts. Most courses have an introduction chapter that covers the basics. The rest of the content covers the entire scope of the course whether it is a masterclass, a minicourse, or some other type of course.
To be right to the detail, you can add details about what each chapter and lesson will cover. This is especially helpful if someone else will be writing the content. They can quickly know what it’s all about before proceeding. It is also a good idea to write notes or scripts for each lesson to make shooting the video content much easier. You don’t want to start Googling stuff in the middle of a video shoot. Always prepare ahead.
Your course content also includes workbooks, assignments and tests, and certificates. You can take your imagination to the next level. Courses are meant to get the student to the next level they are trying to achieve. That means anything you believe your course can do to achieve that, you should do.
Broad Categorization of Online Courses
- The Introductory Course
- The Transformation Course
- The Certification Course
- The Membership Course
5. Build Content into Your Outline
This is where the real work begins. The previous steps have been in preparation for making the course. Building your course content will make this process straightforward. Here, you do all the filming, recording, and editing of your online course. You may not have all the skills to get it all done so you could hire some professionals to get involved.
However, you can quickly learn some of the basic skills needed to get the tasks done saving you lots ofo money. There are software programs for editing videos like Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. Camtasia is a great tool fr screen recording. With screen recording, you can easily record your course videos using a PowerPoint presentation when necessary.
Prepare all course materials like assignments, workbooks, projects, tests, etc.
6. Decide a Course Hosting Partner or Solution
Congratulations on making your course. Now you need a host for your content before you can start selling it to students. When you have your course content and material ready, the next thing is to find a host. A host is a service that will “store your course” so anyone can access it anytime they want to. There are various ways to approach hosting your course. These include:
Ways to Host Your Online Course
1. Self-hosting
Self-hosting is a great option to host your course especially if you already have a thriving community and a website that is widely popular within your community. It involves hosting your course on your website’s servers. This way, students can pay through a gateway on your website to have access to their membership dashboard. While you can have a programmer build you a solution for this, the best is to use an already robust system such as using WordPress or a content management system (CMS).
Self-hosting involves a process already outlined in our article on how to create a blog.
Requirements for self-hosting include:
- Domain name
- Hosting
- Website
With these 3 requirements, you can host your course on your website and have students take your course on your website. The advantages are that you get 100% of the money or course fees. But in reality, you have to pay for a host, and domain name fees, as well as pay for other tools to help you self-manage your course platform. The best decision could be arrived at only after you have considered the other two ways of hosting your course.
2. Online Course Marketplaces
Apart from self-hosting, which could be daunting for a beginner, there are lots of online course marketplaces where courses are sold. With online course marketplaces, you can sign up as a tutor and have your course hosted for you. In most cases, your course is hosted for free while you share profits from your course with the platform. Examples of online course marketplaces include Udemy, Skillshare, Coursera, LinkedIn learning, etc. These platforms do not require further work from you once you have created your course content. All you have to do is sign up, read their requirements and follow suit. And boom! You are a course creator.
3. Learning Management Systems (LMS)
The last option for you as a course creator or online course tutor is to use a learning management system or LMS such as LearnWorlds, Teachable, Kajabi, Podia, Thinkific, etc. Some of these platforms can be operated on their own while others require you to use a content management system (CMS) as suggested in the first option. Kajabi for instance can be used without a website and has full course management features and so does Thinkific. LearnWorlds and some others require you to have a website on which they can be deployed to function.
On Choosing a Hosting Solution for Your Online Course
For a beginner who is just getting started, it may be tiring thinking through all this new information. Trying to make sense of stuff you just learned may be frustrating especially when you have to choose. But if you are no beginner and have a website, together with a community that is committed to you, you are better off with a website. This is for an advanced level and not all beginners will have the skills and resources to make it. The better option for someone who doesn’t mind sharing profits, has little knowledge in managing websites, with no community, and wouldn’t want the burden of managing a self-hosted solution, you are better off with an online course marketplace. Learning management systems take away having to develop a platform (reinventing the wheel). If you want to go with self-hosted, some of the LMS solutions can fit perfectly into your plan and reduce the work to customize your website.
7. Build a Marketing Strategy
You are done with your profitable niche research, done with creating your course content and you have built your hosting platform. The last and final effort you need to make is to design an elaborate launch plan and a marketing strategy.
The AIDA Model plus a Pricing model is good for beginners. The AIDA model is a marketing concept and stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action (AIDA). To get a sale, you will first have to have a marketing strategy that meets all of these prerequisites as outlined in the AIDA model. Combined with a good pricing strategy, you can start making a lot of waves and drive sales for your course.
Remember the presale? That is a great place to start and you can get your first students from that list. Preferably, you shouldn’t focus too much on making money from your first students as much as you are interested in getting valuable feedback that can help you improve your course and make it more helpful to your audience.
Some marketing tactics you can use to market your course
- Podcasting
- Affiliate Marketing
- Blog post announcement
- Email blasts
- Social posts
- Digital advertisements
- Podcast interviews
- YouTube promotions
- Influencer marketing
- Affiliate programs
8. Capture, Nurture and Grow Your Audience and Community
In marketing, the first step is to capture attention. It is for this reason that you see ads that have a catchy message at the beginning, mostly not related to what they are about to sell to you. They could say “The president is dead” or something shocking that would make you pause and pay attention to the ad. While such cunning strategies may capture attention, they may not drive sales cos the “hook” is not related to what they want you to buy. You are selling a course and you will need a strategy to capture leads into your course program.
The next is to nurture them. After getting their attention, they may not be into what you are selling or may not see how it is going to help. It is at the nurture stage that you provide them with resources and help them see that your course is the way to their transformation and personal and professional advancement. This could be appealing to the promotion they want, the extra income, or any desire they want to realize.
The last part of your grand course marketing plan should be about growing your community and helping them, even after buying your course. Maybe you can have more advanced courses, books, and membership packages.
How Much Does it Cost to Create an Online Course?
We have gone through an extensive step-by-step process to help you conceptualize and build your first course. But the main question you may have right now is, just how much will I have to invest into creating my first course? The simple answer is that your course product cost could be anything from zero to thousands.
Before we get into the economics of producing a course and the requirements, let’s set some benchmarks. If you are a beginner, which means you have no skills in shooting, editing, and marketing a course, you may have to hire talent to help out. On the other end, you know everything, and it is simply left with the following step-by-step process to create your course. You may also be in the middle, which means you have some skills you can use. The quality of the course is also a high-ranking factor.
You have two options, hire a few consultants to help in your production, or spend some time acquiring the relevant skills. Learning the skills could take a few weeks to months. Depending on what you feel comfortable with, your cost will differ.
Cost of Producing an Online Course
There are 6 main cost components:
1. Media You Use
The types or forms of media used in your course determine the amount of effort that goes into shooting and editing your course. These elements determine the course complexity and will either increase or reduce your cost. Video elements such as text, graphics, animation, video, audio, or more enhancing tools can be used in your course, but the more you require any of these in your course, the more specialty and skills you may need to get the course completed.
2. How Long It Is
The second consideration is how long your course is. Certification courses tend to have more detail and features to make the course more engaging to ensure that students cannot only remember concepts but also use the skills. This means longer and more immersive learning requirements. Mini-courses are typically less than an hour. Masterclasses are typically beyond an hour but not too long. MOOCs could go beyond 3 hours and have assignments, worksheets, peer assessments, and more.
3. Who Is Creating The Course
The people involved in creating the course mean more or less cost. The more features and quality you demand, the higher the cost related to producing your course. If you have to hire talent for each aspect of your course, you may be looking at paying quite a lot of people and probably hiring studio services to shoot your course. The other option is to do everything yourself which has fewer costs with a long learning curve if you are a beginner.
4. Equipment
Cameras, microphones, and more. These are a few types of equipment needed to shoot a video course. This equipment may require accessories. Extra cost. If you want full HD videos, more cost in cameras. Higher quality audio? Better microphones cost.
5. Online Course Hosting Platform
Hosting a course comes at a cost, you may share profits with the platform or have to pay for hosting and other components needed to manage your website.
6. Marketing Costs
Marketing doesn’t come cheap. Right from organic tactics to paid ones, there is cost. Organic methods don’t come cheap either and require time and effort.
Low Budget Approach to Creating a Quality Online Course
1. Content Management System (CMS)
A content management system is the best way to manage a course and its content without breaking the bank. The best CMS out there is WordPress which has lots of free resources and a growing community to support you through the process.
2. Domain Name and Hosting
To host your course, you need a website. With WordPress, you don’t have to spend on your CMS. But you would have to buy a domain name and hosting. You can buy both from services like Namecheap, Godaddy, and Siteground.
3. Plugins For Added Functionality
To add the necessary course management, community management, and extras in managing your course, a learning management system like Learndash, Learnworlds, and Podia are good starters for a small budget.
4. Build a Website
With a domain name, hosting, your LMS, and WordPress which is your CMS on which everything comes together, you are ready to build your website. There are lots of free and paid courses and YouTube videos that can guide you to create a good website without knowing a single line of code.
5. Marketing
Your marketing can be as simple as running a few ad sets of Facebook ads to creating an elaborate plan involving the many methods we shared with you earlier such as podcasting, email marketing, influencer marketing, and affiliate marketing. Your imagination is the limit here (as well as your marketing knowledge).
Skill Requirements to Create Your Course
1. Learn to Take Videos (Videography)
Videography is a skill you can use over and again even after you have created a successful online course. The best way to learn is to learn by doing and your online course is a great project to use. Your new videography skills will help you shoot your video even with your smartphone and a basic microphone or the inbuilt microphone in your phone.
2. Graphic Design
The go-to software for graphic design is Photoshop Adobe. But Photoshop is for professionals and may take a lot of time and effort to learn. If you require graphics skills fr non-professional reasons, you can look to other options like Canva, Visme, and Adobe Spark which are great alternatives for beginners who need quick designs. They have lots of templates so you do not have to begin from scratch, unlike Photoshop.
3. Video Editing
Shooting is one part of making a video. Post-production where you edit the video, perform color grading, and other enhancing touches is important and could easily get complex if you want graphics, text, and animation incorporated in tour videos. Learning Adobe Premiere Pro for editing and Adobe After Effects for video graphics and animations is a good starter.
4. Online/Digital Marketing
Marketing is crucial to making a successful online course. There are lots of videos on youtube and online courses that are free to get you up to speed. Social media marketing, email marketing, paid ads, and SEO are some of the types of online marketing you can focus on as a beginner looking to grow your community. However, the most important long-term strategy you can learn is how to capture, nurture and grow your audience.
Why Create an Online Course
1. YouTube is not Enough
YouTube is the second largest search engine and has the largest video library. There is a video for almost anything you want to learn on youtube. But. YouTube. Is. Not. Enough. YouTube is great but it lacks a structure and a defined curriculum which is important in learning. One will have to scour around for pieces of a topic before they can entirely learn everything. And they may find conflicting advice and information because anyone can upload a youtube video. Creating an online course gives people who want to change careers, make extra income, or simply learn something on a more structured platform the chance to get everything on a single course.
2. Become a Thought Leader/Build credibility
Creating a course may not be only about making extra money, but rather a strategy to establish you as an expert in your field. People who are tutors are seen as masters of their field and very knowledgeable: some of the qualities of thought leaders. This will boost your credibility and enable you to grow your business or consultancy.
3. Earn Extra Income
And yes, you can make money from your course. Many people have and you too, can.
4. Share Your Unique Perspectives and Methods
You may not be a thought leader and neither may you be an expert. But if you are in a field, you have a “voice” and probably you hold some great ideas about how the field can grow and be better. Courses, especially masterclasses are not simply about age-old concepts, but also about adding to knowledge and sharing your unique ideas.
Who Is Qualified to Create an Online Course?
Take a cue from the fact that you don’t need to be an expert to create a course. And abolish the idea that you need to be a thought leader to create a course. Conceptualizing and creating a course from scratch alone will greatly build your capacity to manage projects and teach. You will further learn things you never knew about your field. It is a personal learning process as much as contributing some value to others. If you have an itch in even a single fiber of your being to help others learn, grow and develop themselves in a field you are passionate about, you are the right candidate for an online course tutor.
Top Online Course Creation and Hosting Platforms
- Thinkific
- Teachable
- Kajabi
- Mighty Networks
- Podia
Common Online Course Creation Mistakes
1. Not Interactive Enough to Engage Students
Online courses are limited. They lack physical contact and sometimes lack the community involved in classroom-style teaching and learning experiences. This doesn’t mean they cannot be impactful. Some students learn better in self-paced online learning programs. But your course may fail to have an impact on students when it is overly boring and doesn’t include features that make it exciting and engaging. Making your course interactive can add some flair to your course and help students keep a lot more of what you teach.
2. Videos Are Too Long / Dense with Information
There are two ways to stress out your students, making long videos where you repeat everything 10 times (we may be exaggerating) or when your videos have too much information that requires some processing for the students. Learning in bits is essential and lessons should be short, only as required. Here is a guide to lesson lengths in your course.
- 0-5 minutes: For introduction sections and short capsules of information.
- 5-10 minutes: for explaining a unit but not the entire section.
- 10-20 minutes: Detailed videos, may feature demonstrations and practicals
- Avoid videos longer than 20 minutes in your course.
3. Not Gamifying Courses
One problem you may face as a course creator and tutor is low course completion rates. But there is a simple solution. Making your course is a good start, but bringing the community and “gamifying” your courses can revolutionize the course experience and increase completion rates for your course. Adding little points for students who complete lessons, units, and sections, awarding various areas of the course, and giving them a reason to push on to the next section will give you better results.
4. Transformation, Not information
Right before you shoot a single video, it is important to note that, students do not pay for information and neither do they pay for knowledge. They are paying for a transformational journey that includes information, knowledge, and advancement in their lives. They pay for transformation in their careers, their finances, and various aspects of their lives.
Conclusion
Creating a course is a transformational process for any course creator. It can help you as a tutor as you help others. It takes strategy and several skills to create a successful online course. However, you do not need to beat yourself up about not having it all. It all revolves around carefully planning your course and growing a community that will value you for what you do.
