Thanks to the emergence of new course platforms and easy-to-use technology, developing a new online course is now easier than ever before, and this is not an exaggeration. It takes less time to create a new course than to go through your email inbox.
Online course creation can be a feasible objective, provided that one possesses adequate expertise and receives appropriate advice.
Why Create an Online Course
It’s crucial to know the purpose of all the effort put into creating an online course. Is it worth investing in building an online course? Our findings and expertise indicate that it is. The online education industry, worth over $315 billion, is projected to expand by 20% per year, according to Global Market Insights.
Online courses have become a popular alternative for people exploring different education options, including non-traditional subjects like dog training and TikTok content creation, which can also be learned digitally.
The conventional classroom isn’t the future of education. Instead, it’s the device you use most frequently, such as your desktop or mobile phone. Online courses are now an integral component of contemporary learning, implying that regardless of your field, there is a willing audience eager to enroll.
Ways to Create an Online Course
1. Identify the Opportunity
Like launching a startup, developing an online course requires identifying the appropriate opportunity. To do so, you need to uncover and clarify the problem.
To make an effective online course, it is crucial to determine the specific goal that your audience wishes to achieve. For example, are they seeking to acquire Python skills to enhance their profession, or do they seek the most recent SEO marketing methods to increase their website’s organic traffic?
Having knowledge empowers individuals, and they want to leverage that power to change and develop themselves through new learning. Your online course aims to support and facilitate this transformation journey.
Identifying the problem that your audience requires a solution for is not a simple task. It requires extensive research and a considerable amount of time. Rushing to build something that you assume people require without finding the right opportunity is not advisable.
How to Identify Opportunities
There are several ways to identify opportunities.
- Send a survey: If you have an email list, send a survey to your subscribers to see what they’re struggling with or what they’d like to learn.
- Ask your social followers:Â Throw up a post or survey on your social media channels to see what your followers want or need.
- Search intent: Open your search browser and start typing, research on Google Trends, or use a free SEO tool to see what topics people are searching for.
- Visit Quora: Use forum sites like Quora, Reddit, and Stack Overflow to see what your audience is talking about. Is there a question that’s getting a lot of attention? Do you notice any themes or trends around questions? Are there any specific questions that people keep asking?
2. Validate Your Course
After you have come up with a great course concept, it is essential to validate it before proceeding to the next stage of outlining and constructing your course. Conducting a comprehensive smoke test is critical because having a good idea does not guarantee it will convert into an excellent course. To avoid wasting several hours of time and effort on a product that no one desires, it is prudent to conduct thorough validation checks to ensure its feasibility.
Keep in mind that your aim is to attract customers who will pay. Consider all the unread books gathering dust on people’s desks and unused gym memberships. These are not the type of unreliable customers you want to confirm your idea.
Validating an idea becomes challenging when people merely express their interest, but it becomes effortless to obtain relevant data once customers are compelled to invest. This is where a smoke test proves its usefulness.
Bring Out the Smoke Test
To perform a smoke test, you begin selling your online course even before its completion. This involves creating a landing page and directing traffic to determine whether or not people will click the “buy now” button.
Explore and discover potential students over the internet to determine if they will enroll in your course. Send out emails to your list, participate in forums by commenting, and promote your landing page through social media.
It shouldn’t take more than a few days to complete this entire process. You’ll only need a couple of hours to create a landing page and perhaps two or three days to make it available to the public. After that, all you have to do is review the data.
Determine the number of individuals who clicked to attempt a purchase of your online course. Establish a click-through rate objective. If your initial experiment meets or surpasses the objective rate, you have successfully verified your idea. Otherwise, it’s time to re-evaluate and revise your idea.
3. Outline Your Course
The most challenging aspect of developing an online course is constructing the outline. At this stage, you must determine what information to communicate to your audience and what to withhold.
The internet is a vast realm comprising inquiries and responses. Unless your teachings are highly innovative, it’s probable that your content already exists in some manner on the internet. Nevertheless, individuals aren’t necessarily compensating for the information; they’re compensating for the metamorphosis it can bring.
The worth of your course lies in its aptitude to direct individuals from their present position to their desired destination, that is, from Point A to Point B.
Repurposing your existing content is the simplest method of developing a successful course plan. Creating completely new content from the ground up can prove to be an enormous time sink and the reward may not justify the effort.
Examine your current content, including blog posts, articles, social media posts, guides, whitepapers, and webinars. Choose your top-performing material and adapt it into an online course format. However, at this stage, don’t get too detailed. Keep in mind that you are only outlining the course. Collect the basic structure of your course and arrange it in the simplest way possible.
Organize your information into distinct sections or modules. The completion of a module indicates that your student has effectively acquired a new skill or aspect related to your subject matter. Your course arrangement should facilitate a smooth progression for your students, providing them with the fundamental concepts required to transition from a beginner to an advanced level of understanding.
4. Create the Course Content
If you have prior professional knowledge of your course theme, chances are high that you have created content covering it previously. Did you ever produce a webinar or compose a blog article regarding the matter?
If you are hosting a podcast or managing a YouTube channel related to your business, consider reviewing your previous discussions on similar topics. Using your existing content to create an online course can aid in initiating the process and also conserve significant time.
With the materials you have collected and the outline and investigations from the preceding phases, you are all set to generate the authentic substance for your virtual course.
When it comes time to create online courses, most people use video as their main form of communication, which is what we’ll be discussing here. However, you can also use written content, audio recordings, slides – or a mix of a few different types of media.
5. Bring Your Course Online
After preparing the course content, the next step is to develop a platform where everything can be consolidated. If you possess a professional website, you may include your online course as a section. However, if you do not have one, establish a new website solely for this objective.
Your lectures can be added either as individual videos or grouped together in a library sorted by categories.
Depending on your intended audience and course material, you have the option to determine whether a static or dynamic website would be more suitable.
6. Sell Your Online Course
Depending on your business plan and needs, you can choose from four distinct alternatives for selling your online course.
Individual lessons for rent or purchase: Allow users to rent or purchase your online course on a video-by-video basis. When purchasing a video, users will enjoy unlimited streaming of the lesson they’ve purchased, so that they can go back and rewatch the content at all times. Choose if you want to allow viewers to download the video, or watch it directly on your site
Users have the option to subscribe to a channel by paying a monthly fee, granting them access to all paid videos within that channel. This creates a pay-wall, dividing the content of your website into that which is publicly available and that which is premium.
Subscription plans allow you to offer various payment choices to your students, such as a one-time payment or a recurring payment system. You have complete control over the selection of plans, what is included, the duration, and other aspects. Clients may choose from several plan options presented on your website and complete the payment process. Paid Plans create a pay-wall, restricting entry to content only when users pay and log in to your website’s member area.
One-on-one real-time lessons: In addition to the course, you may teach live lessons to students in a personalized 1:1 setting. This format allows students to ask you questions and learn in a tailored approach that meets their specific learning level. Course takers can easily book an available spot with you through online scheduling software. Choose if you want to offer this option at an extra fee or have a predetermined number of private sessions included in the fixed course price.
In addition to charging for your courses, providing a brief glimpse of your program for free is essential. By giving students a taste of what’s to come, they will be more likely to enroll in your paid classes. You can offer a brief trailer for each lesson or make the entire first lesson free while requiring payment for the remainder of the course.
One suggestion for a giveaway is to host a live Q&A at the start of the course and encourage users to participate for free, building excitement. To accomplish this, establish a live stream video to engage with supporters immediately.
No matter which giveaway option you prefer, the complimentary version of your course will be useful for marketing your online course.
7. Market Your Content
After investing a substantial amount of time and creativity, you have successfully developed an online course that is profitable. The next step is to advertise your course and encourage registration, which can be achieved through a combination of free and paid marketing strategies. In addition, creating a logo can enhance the professional appearance of your course and make it distinct as you promote it.
8. Gather Feedback
Over the past few years, we have transitioned to conducting a greater amount of our business and educational activities on the internet. Consequently, we are now able to utilize larger quantities of data in decision-making, leverage extensive analytics, and expand our outreach to acquire more feedback from consumers. This contributes to your ability to make knowledgeable decisions and generate actual profits from your web-based course.
Use the digital resources at your disposal to enhance your online course curriculum by soliciting feedback from participants throughout and after it has ended. A refined and developed course will increase the likelihood of positive student experiences, recommendations, and interest in your future workshops or learning programs.
Generating surveys using a form builder is an effective way to obtain feedback. The surveys should include questions regarding the students’ experience, recommendations for enhancement, and any additional expectations they had for the course. After measuring accomplishment and assessing the responses, adjustments may be made to improve the quality of the course. This methodology can be repeated to continually enhance future courses.
