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After dedicating countless hours mastering your expertise, you’re now ready to share that valuable knowledge with others.
Forward-thinking content creators recognize that failing to capitalize on your expertise represents a missed opportunity. The creation and distribution of online courses extends beyond just another revenue stream—it stands as a robust business framework.
The essential foundation for establishing your online course enterprise begins with developing well-organized educational content that delivers genuine benefits to your learners.
If you’re searching for guidance on this journey, you’ve arrived at exactly the right destination.
Throughout this comprehensive resource, we’ll provide detailed, step-by-step instructions for developing your online course. By the conclusion, you’ll possess both the essential understanding and appropriate resources for constructing your inaugural online course.
Additionally, you’ll discover numerous linked materials throughout this guide, so to extract maximum benefit, be sure to explore those references as well.
Prepared to begin? Let’s dive in.
Online courses have witnessed tremendous popularity growth and continue expanding rapidly. The industry experienced unprecedented development at the pandemic’s onset, with approximately 36.3% growth rate during that period alone.
This upward trajectory shows no signs of slowing in the upcoming years. Projections indicate the market will reach an impressive $1 trillion valuation by 2027.
Beyond market potential, what truly excites me about selling online courses is the sustainable revenue stream they generate over extended periods.
After investing initial effort into course development, you can repeatedly offer your educational content to new students. The maintenance typically involves periodic content refreshes and providing learner support, making this business model remarkably scalable.
Furthermore, effective online courses help create meaningful transformation for your participants, naturally establishing you as a recognized expert in your field.
Your professional identity evolves from practitioner to educator, signaling advanced mastery of your subject matter. This transition simultaneously builds credibility for your brand and tends to enhance your entire business ecosystem.
Additionally, online courses serve wonderfully as complementary offerings to your primary business ventures. For instance, if you operate a musical instrument shop, you might enhance a piano purchase by offering a specialized learning course for new owners.
Similarly, you can strategically utilize complimentary courses as effective lead generation tools, value-added bonuses to improve conversion rates, and numerous other tactical applications.
The reality is that developing online courses presents virtually no drawbacks. The essential requirements are understanding proper course creation and effective marketing strategies. Once you’ve mastered these fundamentals, you’ll witness all the anticipated benefits materializing for your enterprise.
Anyone with knowledge in a particular area can create online courses. You don’t need a formal qualification or a degree to teach an online course. Plus, your niche doesn’t matter as profitable online courses exist in all niches.
While some course creators make $50k+ month, most successful ones make between $1k-$10k per month. However, your actual course revenue depends on various factors, including your niche, price, audience, etc. Check this guide to estimate your potential earnings.
As you might expect, there is no set-in-stone amount of time to create an online course. Generally speaking, it can take anywhere between 20 and 500 hours. If you’re creating a shorter course, you can create it in a couple of days. More content takes longer.
Generally speaking, it can cost you anywhere between $140 and $10,770 to create your own online course. But, of course, it could even be more, as much or much less. We’ve written an entire guide on this topic, breaking down every expense.
Yes, it is possible to create an online course for free, but for that, you’ll need to do all the work yourself. Plus, you should use your smartphone camera to record, free editing software like iMovie, and upload your course to a platform like Thinkific, which has a free plan.
An online course should be as long or short as it needs to deliver value to your target audience and cover the information thoroughly. Overall, it could be a 2-hour course teaching a specific topic or a 25-hour one covering a much broader subject.
In most cases, you don’t need any technical skills. You’ll have to learn about a few things, such as video creation and setting up your course website, but you can do these even if you aren’t tech-savvy.
There are several options for hosting your online course, but the two best platforms are Thinkific and Kajabi. These platforms allow you to build your online school and deliver your online course. Plus, you also get sales and marketing tools.
We’ll explore these concepts more thoroughly later in this guide. For now, let’s begin with the essential steps.
Before diving in, it’s crucial to understand what creating a course entails. While course development yields excellent results, successful implementation requires harmonizing numerous components.
This complexity can sometimes feel overwhelming, often triggering feelings of inadequacy or doubt in your abilities.
Imposter syndrome manifests as persistent feelings of insufficiency that remain despite clear evidence of success. Many individuals experience chronic self-doubt and feelings of intellectual fraudulence that overshadow their accomplishments and external validation of their expertise.
Research indicates that approximately 84% of entrepreneurs and small business owners report experiencing moderate, frequent, or intense feelings of imposterism.
“Do I truly possess sufficient expertise to educate others on this subject?
What happens when I encounter questions I cannot answer?
What if no one purchases my course and the entire project fails?
Do I have the technical capabilities to accomplish the necessary tasks?
Will I be able to successfully complete this ambitious project?”
While these uncertainties may feel burdensome, they shouldn’t prevent your progress. The very fact that you’re investing time into developing this educational content indicates meaningful purpose—you possess the qualifications, necessary capabilities, and determination to achieve your objectives.
Remember that maintaining a constructive mindset empowers you to accomplish anything, including substantial undertakings like developing comprehensive online courses.
After committing to course creation, you must address the fundamental question: “what knowledge will I share?”
Selecting your teaching subject presents challenges because it requires balancing your personal expertise with sufficient market demand to attract a substantial learner base.
Consider these guidelines to help refine your course topic selection.
Before pinpointing your specific course topic, you need to establish your niche or broader subject area.
Your objective is to discover the ideal convergence—the intersection between your existing skills and knowledge, personal interests and passions, and viable revenue potential.
Begin by reflecting on your areas of expertise, unique capabilities, and topics where others frequently request your guidance.
Have you accumulated years of experience within the technology sector?
Do you provide business advisory services professionally?
Have you earned specialized professional credentials?
Are you currently teaching academic subjects in your primary profession?
Recognizing these established competencies can effectively define your online course niche.
For example, when launching my educational business, I selected supply chain management as my specialized area. My rationale was straightforward—I had dedicated over four years to supply chain consulting work and maintained genuine enthusiasm for the discipline.
What if you lack formal professional qualifications or specialized training?
In these situations, consider the personal obstacles you’ve successfully navigated or the individual growth you’ve accomplished in your life journey.
Perhaps you’ve mastered productivity techniques while managing full-time employment commitments, or achieved significant health transformations through consistent dietary discipline—these experiences can form the foundation for valuable educational content.
This approach exemplifies the strategy employed by Lori and Michelle of PurelyTwins, who developed courses teaching women how to enhance their physical wellbeing through a spiritually-centered fitness methodology.
You might possess expertise across multiple niches, potentially enabling you to develop courses in several areas. When facing this scenario, prioritize these niches based on your personal enthusiasm and enjoyment level for each subject.
After establishing your broader subject area, you’ll need to refine your focus.
Consider this example: You’ve chosen culinary education as your field. You enjoy cooking and have five years of professional chef experience at the Shangrila Hotel. This background provides you with substantial knowledge and expertise to educate others.
However, creating a comprehensive course simply on “cooking” proves impractical. The culinary world encompasses countless specialized topics, and your expertise likely varies across these areas.
To simplify this process, explore deeper into specialized categories. Within the cooking domain, you might consider these focused sub-niches:
After identifying your preferred sub-niches, brainstorm specific course topics within those areas. This exploration leads to concrete online course ideas:
Greater specificity in your course concept offers significant advantages initially. Specialized courses require less complexity during development, and attracting targeted learners becomes considerably more straightforward.
Subsequently, validating your course concept becomes essential. While multiple validation approaches exist, examining search volume for relevant keywords offers the simplest method.
For example, when developing a vegan cooking course, investigate search volumes for terms like vegan cooking, vegan cookbook, and similar phrases.
Analyzing these results typically reveals substantial search volume for primary keywords. Additionally, various related terms with respectable search volumes indicate genuine interest in learning about your chosen subject.
An additional effective method for evaluating market demand involves examining topic popularity on established educational platforms like Udemy.
Udemy provides a specialized MarketPlace Insights resource that delivers valuable data regarding course topic demand and existing competitive landscape.
We particularly value this research methodology because it reveals not only learner interest in your subject matter but also confirms their willingness to invest financially in acquiring this knowledge.
Beyond market research data, comprehensive validation requires additional approaches.
Begin by examining conversations within popular Facebook Groups or specialized online communities. Take your investigation further by establishing direct communication with potential students to gather their unfiltered feedback.
For comprehensive information on this process, we’ve developed a complete resource covering course validation techniques.
Course idea validation can also occur through implementing a pre-sale strategy. After finalizing your course topic, consider marketing your educational offering before developing any actual content.
Accomplish this by identifying your most engaged audience segment and distributing an email announcement about your proposed course. Include a thoughtfully designed survey requesting their perspectives on your concept.
Conclude your survey by inquiring about their potential interest in enrolling as participants.
The questionnaire I distributed to my community regarding the network design program
After identifying those who responded with “Yes,” follow up with them by sharing more comprehensive information about the program, its specific advantages, the anticipated release date, and an exclusive early-registration discount opportunity.
This follow-up correspondence presents an excellent chance to incorporate limited availability tactics. For instance, you might restrict the discount to only the first 20 participants who enroll, or implement a countdown feature indicating when the pre-enrollment period concludes.
For those who have already established a following, pre-enrollment serves as an exceptional approach. Beyond simply confirming interest in your concept, you also secure funding for your educational content development project.
This represents the substantial portion of the process. Developing educational content typically spans several months, necessitating strategic organization of all elements.
Consider course creation as a comprehensive project. It encompasses numerous components, and without dividing them into achievable milestones and actionable tasks, effective execution becomes challenging.
Your initial determination involves choosing between developing a live program versus a pre-recorded curriculum.
With live instruction, you organize your educational materials beforehand and deliver weekly sessions through platforms such as Zoom. Following each live presentation, you can then upload the captured video to your educational platform.
Conversely, with pre-recorded instruction, you capture all your educational videos in advance and upload them to your learning environment either simultaneously or in scheduled releases.
We suggest implementing the pre-recorded methodology for your online educational program. This approach enables you to edit your videos, eliminating mistakes and even re-recording segments when necessary.
Consequently, your ultimate product will appear more refined. Most significantly, you’ll only need to generate your content a single time.
Next, you need to evaluate the various categories of online courses. You can focus on three distinct types:
An Introductory Course is crafted for absolute beginners in your field. Your training delivers exactly the right amount of information to help them build their initial knowledge base. You’ll guide your students through taking small but significant steps toward their long-term goals.
Examples: The novice’s guide to pottery, The basics of puppy training, etc.
A Specific-Outcome Course zeroes in on one key area. It’s tightly focused and provides highly specialized knowledge, typically organized in a step-by-step format. It’s designed to help learners develop skills and expertise in a single domain.
Examples: How to expand your English vocabulary, Master graphic design in Canva, etc.
A Signature Course is a comprehensive, extensive program that covers topics in-depth. It’s targeted, detailed, and spans the entire subject from start to finish. As a result, the participant undergoes a complete transformation.
Examples: Web design professional bootcamp, Soccer coaching certification program, etc.
Generally, the specific-outcome course proves easiest to develop and market more successfully. Why? Because when your course maintains focus, you’re speaking to a niche audience. When you target a specific group of people, they show greater enthusiasm for the content.
In contrast, introductory and signature courses appeal to broader audiences, leading to heightened competition. That’s why I don’t recommend choosing either of these two categories for your first educational product.
What comes next is the course framework. An outline establishes the structure of your program and simultaneously serves as a roadmap for online course development.
When building your course outline, always start with the learner’s goals in mind. Then, identify the various milestones students must achieve to reach these objectives. These milestones form your modules, and most courses contain approximately seven or eight of them.
Each module includes multiple lessons. These lessons function as steps that a student will need to complete to achieve the milestones.
Enhancing your outline with comprehensive details will significantly streamline the creation of an exceptional online course.
Consider adding specific information about each lesson and enumerate the topics you’ll address using bullet points. Additionally, include notes about your preferred teaching methods and the anticipated duration of individual lessons.
When developing your outline, remember these crucial course design fundamentals:
Creating a thorough online course outline requires substantial time investment, so allocate several weeks for thoughtful development. This allows you to fully explore and organize your expertise.
Capture your initial concepts using various methods—sticky notes, whiteboard mapping, digital notes on your device—before formalizing your structured outline in a collaborative tool like Google Sheets.
Struggling with your course structure development? Our Course Framework Builder can assist you in rapidly and effortlessly generating a comprehensive curriculum blueprint complete with organized modules and instructional segments.
Following this, you’ll need to develop meaningful learning outcomes for your entire course, individual modules, and specific lessons. These outcomes will guide your module structure and maintain alignment with your educational goals.
Document what participants will accomplish upon completing your course. Consider using this effective format:
We enable X to accomplish Y through Z.
For instance, if your course teaches illustration techniques, your statement might read:
We enable newcomers to create realistic human portraits through guided practice with live subjects.
This serves merely as an illustration. Your specific learning outcomes will naturally depend on your course’s unique subject matter.
Additional examples of effective learning objectives for your curriculum:
Formulating clear learning objectives represents a crucial step because it enables you to align your instructional materials accordingly. Moreover, these objectives can enhance your marketing copy, course descriptions, and other promotional materials.
The next step involves naming your online course. While you likely have some preliminary ideas, we’ll share several attention-grabbing title examples to inspire your decision.
When developing an Introductory Course, your title should convey the general subject matter while incorporating keywords like “Fundamentals,” “Beginners,” “Complete,” and similar terms to increase appeal.
Examples of effective introductory course titles include:
For Specific-Outcome Courses, your title must reflect precise objectives. The recommended approach involves incorporating your target achievement directly in the course name.
Examples of outcome-focused course titles:
When creating a Signature Course, aim for greater brand recognition. Your title should feature broad industry keywords alongside powerful descriptors such as “program,” “formula,” “bootcamp,” or similar terms.
Examples of compelling signature course titles:
An additional strategic approach involves researching competitor offerings before finalizing your name. This practice helps you identify existing titles and avoid duplication while simultaneously generating fresh inspiration.
Searching for the perfect name for your educational program? Our innovative AI-driven Course Title Creator will instantly provide you with hundreds of compelling and memorable course name options.
With your detailed outline and content strategy in place, it’s time to begin producing your actual course materials.
This phase involves creating videos, developing downloadable resources, and more. So prepare your creative tools and start bringing your vision to life!
Before diving into video creation, determine your production methodology, particularly whether you’ll focus on screencasts or talking head presentations.
Screencast recordings capture your computer display and all on-screen activities. This format works exceptionally well for tutorial-based lessons or presentation-driven content.
Here’s an example of an effective screencast lesson:
Conversely, talking-head videos feature you directly addressing the camera while delivering your instruction. These create stronger engagement with your audience by establishing a personal connection with viewers.
Here’s an example of an effective talking-head presentation:
Screencast productions typically require less technical expertise and financial investment. If you experience camera shyness, we recommend primarily utilizing screencast videos throughout your course. You might still record a single talking-head segment to welcome participants and establish initial rapport.
However, if you’re comfortable with on-camera presentation, consider incorporating both formats, as alternating between talking head segments and screencast demonstrations significantly enhances viewer engagement.
Now comes implementation time. Every element you’ve carefully planned requires execution.
Creating screencast videos follows a relatively straightforward process. You’ll need several essential tools, including a reliable computer, quality microphone for clear audio capture, and professional screencasting software such as Camtasia.
Additionally, if you’re developing presentation-based content, you’ll need to design your slides. We suggest utilizing Google Slides for your recordings. It offers intuitive functionality without subscription costs.
Suggested Reading: How to Create Effective Screencast Videos – The Comprehensive Guide
Transitioning to talking-head production involves somewhat greater complexity. You’ll require additional equipment including a camera, backdrop system, and proper lighting setup.
Nevertheless, professional talking head videos don’t demand extravagant investments. Many educators successfully use iPhones as recording devices. Furthermore, you can establish a functional home studio environment for approximately two hundred dollars.
Consider these recommendations for creating compelling course videos:
While video production represents one crucial component, you’ll also need to create supportive materials that complement your visual content.
These downloadable resources serve to enhance student comprehension, improve information retention, and facilitate practical application of your teachings.
Consider incorporating these valuable supplementary materials into your course structure:
Your specific educational resource selection should align with your students’ preferred learning styles and methodologies that accelerate their progress.
The most impressive resource implementation we’ve encountered comes from Stu’s The Membership Experience (previously called TRIBE). His innovative combined workbook approach effectively summarizes lesson content, emphasizes critical insights, and enumerates specific action steps.
Indeed, establishing an educational community represents the most effective strategy for enhancing participant engagement. This approach delivers multiple benefits:
Consider maintaining a dedicated community space for program graduates. These advanced discussions typically focus on specialized skill development within particular domains.
This environment provides an excellent opportunity to maintain your expert presence by addressing complex questions. Additionally, these established communities create natural channels for introducing supplementary educational offerings.
While many educational communities utilize Facebook as their foundation, consider exploring purpose-built platforms for community development.
Another valuable engagement approach involves systematic feedback collection. Gather participant insights at the program midpoint to identify potential challenges, followed by comprehensive evaluation upon completion.
The concluding assessment provides particularly valuable insights. At this stage, participants have thoroughly processed their educational journey and typically offer more candid and comprehensive feedback.
The most straightforward feedback methodology involves creating structured surveys. These evaluation tools can be seamlessly integrated within specific course modules or distributed through direct email communication.
This is a survey that one of my clients sends out to his students on course completion
Without feedback, how are you supposed to grow? Of course, you’ll receive comments you don’t want to hear sometimes, and there will be that odd criticism from time to time. However, it’s a vital part of the course creation process and will help make your course better in the long run.
Now that your first online course is ready, you can prepare it for selling. There are a few things that you need to do before your students can enroll in your course.
The first step is to get your course online, and for that, you’ll need an online course platform. There are several great options that you can choose from, but the two platforms that we recommend are Kajabi and Thinkific.
Both platforms allow you to get your course up and running pretty quickly without having to code or do any techy stuff.
Kajabi is an all-in-one platform that lets you do everything from a single platform – you can host your courses, create a website, host a blog, do email marketing, build funnels, etc. It’s a great option if you want to keep things simple and don’t want to patch together multiple tools to run your business.
On the other hand, Thinkific is a standalone course platform. It allows you to host and deliver your online courses and get some basic payment processing and selling tools. But they don’t include tools for sales funnels and email marketing. So it’s a great option if you have an existing website or funnels.
As we said earlier, there are many platforms for selling online courses. You can even sell through online course marketplaces, but we don’t recommend doing that.
Finding it challenging to select the ideal online course platform? Feeling overwhelmed by the variety of choices available? Simply respond to a few quick questions, and we’ll recommend the perfect platform that matches your specific needs.
Numerous educators wrestle with determining appropriate pricing for their online courses, so allow me to provide strategies to nail your pricing strategy:
Regardless of other factors, we suggest that you set your course price at a minimum of $100.
Determining your course price presents challenges, as excessive pricing might result in minimal purchases, while underpricing could cause participants to doubt the effectiveness of your educational materials.
Regrettably, most educators choose the second option. They reduce prices hoping to attract larger enrollment numbers. The issue with this approach is that while you’ll increase total sales, you’ll simultaneously diminish your potential revenue.
An excellent approach to pricing involves identifying the challenge your course resolves for participants and calculating its actual worth to them. Viewing pricing from this perspective helps you recognize your course’s genuine value, allowing you to establish premium rates with appropriate value communication.
Additionally, you can incorporate complementary materials to enhance the perceived worth of your educational offering.
It’s certainly no coincidence that numerous successful course creators utilize bonus offerings to market their online courses. For instance, examine this collection of additional resources that Amy Porterfield provides with her signature program – Digital Course Academy:
You aren’t required to develop such a comprehensive bonus package, but including even a single exceptionally valuable extra significantly enhances your course offering.
Your sales page represents your opportunity to communicate your online course’s benefits to prospective students and inspire them to purchase. It must capture interest, convince effectively, and deliver essential information simultaneously.
If your sales page isn’t optimized for conversion performance, can it truly be considered an effective sales page?
The essential elements for creating a highly effective sales page include several key components:
Enchanting Marketing features one of the most sophisticated sales pages we’ve encountered. Their course page effectively addresses all essential elements and serves as an outstanding reference when designing your own.
They perfected their headline and supporting subheading, prompting reader curiosity, and as visitors scroll further, they encounter creator credentials, comprehensive course information, specific problems addressed, and testimonials from previous participants.
An effective sales page significantly enhances your conversion rates, so investing time in developing an engaging presentation for your online course proves worthwhile.
We won’t address online course promotion strategies here as that extends beyond this guide’s focus. However, we offer a dedicated resource where we thoroughly explore effective course marketing approaches.
We trust this comprehensive guide has provided you with all necessary insights and tools required to develop a profitable online educational offering.
Creating courses involves numerous interconnected elements, potentially requiring several weeks or even months to complete properly. Therefore, approaching it with project management principles proves essential—dividing work into manageable tasks with specific milestones and establishing deadlines for each component.
Additionally, keep this guide and our referenced resources accessible throughout your journey as they will provide valuable direction during the development process.
If you have any inquiries regarding online course creation, please share them in the comments section below, and we’ll provide our most helpful response possible 🙂
Daniel NicFounder, SellingOnliceCoursesGuide.comis an entrepreneur and digital education specialist who founded sellingonlinecoursesguide.com, a platform dedicated to helping creators and educators successfully navigate the online course marketplace. Through his website, he shares insights and strategies for developing, marketing, and monetizing online educational content. His work focuses on empowering course creators to build sustainable online businesses while effectively sharing their knowledge with students worldwide.
Daniel Nic is an entrepreneur and digital education specialist who founded sellingonlinecoursesguide.com, a platform dedicated to helping creators and educators successfully navigate the online course marketplace. Through his website, he shares insights and strategies for developing, marketing, and monetizing online educational content. His work focuses on empowering course creators to build sustainable online businesses while effectively sharing their knowledge with students worldwide.
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