Overwhelmed by the thought of making a course? You’re certainly not alone There’s so much to do, so much to learn and SO much technology to choose from. Depending on how you decide to create your course, you could end up with having to consider recording and editing videos, how to structure a course, what content to include, how to host your courses, how to take payment, how to answer student questions, how to handle customer service, sales funnels, sales page copy-writing and more. Phew!
Here’s a tip: Keep it as simple as you possibly can. All you need is some good, relevant content in your course, a way to deliver it, a way to take payment and a way to reach your audience. If you look closely, you’ll see that many of the tools out there are to automate a system that is already up and running. If you automate too early, you’ll spend time and money setting up a system that isn’t very efficient. That will cost you time and effort in the long-run.
You really don’t need much automation to begin with. In fact the personal touch will probably work a lot better because when your students have problems or feedback you’ll be right there ready to help them or to add that extra missing piece to your course. The only automation you definitely do need is just need a way of taking payment and delivering the course when you’re not around (ie asleep!) The rest of the clever techie stuff can come later.
After all, it’s better to have a simple system that that works well and that starts making you some money than an expensive, complex one that you never get around to launching.
And while we’re on the subject of keeping things simple… don’t obsess about tiny details of making an online course.
What’s most important is helping other people – providing useful, relevant information, answering questions and supporting people. In comparison, having a perfect website or logo is a long way down the priority list. And you’ll never have the perfect website or logo anyway! So focus on getting the right content out to the people who need it now. The rest of the small stuff can be tweaked later.
After all, the only way to learn how all this works is to do it.
By the way, the easiest way to get a course finished and for sale is to use one of my done-for-you courses. Just saying. 🙂
After making many courses, I agree with the keep it simple approach. Bite sized chunks.
Good to know you’ve had the same experience, Jacqui. Thanks for commenting! Bite sized chunks is a great idea.
Best advice the perfectionist in me ever got was “functional is good enough”. Fire it off and fix it later – especially easy for online stuff as changes show up for any new viewers and for repeat visitors
Fire it off and fix it later – love it!
“What’s most important is helping other people – providing useful, relevant information, answering questions and supporting people.”
Great reassurance of what the real priority should be! People have any number of educational options to choose from these days, but they choose to learn from you because of what you personally have to give them, not because of your delivery method.
Thanks Kris!