10 Steps to Create an Online Course That SELLS (Step-by-Step Tutorial)

everyone has something valuable to teach others today i'm going to show you how to make an online course that makes money and an impact right now our ability to deliver high quality education to anyone with an internet connection has never been better and with student loan debt and college tuition rising to disturbingly high levels alternative learning pathways have never been more important according to forbes the e-learning industry will be worth 331 billion dollars by 2025. even back in 2017 e-learning made 46 billion dollars in a single year and thrown the fact that people are beginning to realize the benefits of learning from the comfort of their own home at their own pace and convenience and you'll recognize the time to make an online course is right now but let's face it the thought of actually making an online course can feel absolutely overwhelming and the truth is most would-be course creators never get past the dreaming stage and that's exactly why we're making this video to show you how to make an online course the right way with a simple step-by-step process that will set you up for success one of the major benefits of online courses is that you create them once and can sell them endless amounts of times so after you've made back your initial investment you'll be enjoying high margins because your only ongoing costs are marketing and customer support now no matter what type of course you're creating right from the beginning it's important that you understand this all successful online courses help students solve a valuable problem and offer them a transformation your ultimate goal is to arm people with the process habits and knowledge they need to improve a particular area of their life and overcome an obstacle now one of the most common things that aspiring course creators struggle with is believing there are already a lot of courses out there in their area of expertise but the reality is what makes a course unique isn't the topic it's the methodologies and the perspective that the instructor brings and that's a motivating thought because your experience and your approach are your greatest advantages two different fitness instructors will create entirely different courses so don't worry about other people's expertise just dig into your own another crucial thing to understand is that all online courses at their core follow the same five steps sales cycle and this is so important to internalize because when each step is executed properly you can create a sustainable growth engine first you have your course which is your digital product where you offer the value of your expertise then we have the registration and this is the actual sale where your marketing efforts have attracted people to enroll in your course next we have the transformation where your students become better than they were when they started this is when their obstacle is behind them and when they've gained new knowledge and skills that are going to benefit their future after that we have testimonials where past students rave about the quality of your course and the benefits it gave them thereby inspiring and influencing others lastly we have referrals where people who have seen and heard those inspiring testimonials from either their friends or strangers ultimately decide it's time to enroll in your course now before getting into the specifics of how to make your own online course let's first talk about the basic types of courses that you could sell firstly we have mini courses and these are beginner level often taking a learner an hour two to complete sometimes these mini courses are given away for free but if they are sold they're generally done so at a lower price point if given away for free these mini courses often become a marketing tool taking the form of an email course that is used as a lead magnet to drum up business for other digital products or services next we have multi-day courses and these are intermediate level and multi-day courses often use pre-recorded video and other supplementary materials like checklists these often fall in the price range of 250 to 2 000 lastly we have a master class and these are advanced level multi-week courses that offer learners a complete system for success these are generally sold to professionals and as a result they have a higher price point between the range of 500 to 3 000 if this is your first time creating an online course you probably don't want to start with a master class just like most directors start off with short films before moving on to features you maybe don't want to begin with your magnum opus start off small test the market walk then run the first step of making your online course is choosing a topic make sure your topic meets these three criteria your topic must be something that you're an expert in people are more discerning than ever when it comes to investing in digital informational products so make sure you can offer your students something of genuine value it must be something that you're passionate about making a course is definitely a commitment and your passion for the topic is what's going to motivate you to keep going it must be a topic that's in high demand and to be clear i mean validated by data and objective strangers asking your friends and family if your idea is good just doesn't count the biggest risk that entrepreneurs face is creating something that no one wants so in a little bit i'm going to show you how to conduct research to really get this part right so while you might be tempted to jump right into course creation that's not the best approach there are a few things you should do first to set yourself up for success and the first is conduct user research our goal in conducting user research is twofold understanding our ideal customer's pain points and gaining insight into the end state they would like to achieve after their transformation to do this start by searching at your topic on google trends this will give you insight into whether your topic is increasing in interest or declining next head over to ubersuggest and type in your topic this will give you good insight into how many people are searching for the term what the age range is of the searchers and also how much competition there is in the space next head over to quora and take a look for a question that relates to your topic this will give you a better idea of what people are looking for in a course why they need it and what problems they're trying to solve after that look for a few hashtags in your niche on social media to find a few people who might be your ideal learner once you've done that reach out to them and ask them if they'd be willing to participate in a user research meeting you can say something like hi i'm creating a course on blank and want to make sure it's incredibly valuable for learners i'm wondering if you would be willing to give me 15 minutes of your time for a short video call where i can find out how my course might be able to help people just like you reach their goals if you're interested i'd love to give you the course for free once i'm done to show you my appreciation once you've set up a few video calls make sure to take the time to study these ideal learners social media profiles to learn more about them in preparation for the meeting at the meeting make sure to ask these questions and to document their answers what are the problems that i can help you solve what are the challenges that you encounter in the learning process that i can help you overcome what would your goals be in taking this course if you were to complete the course what is the outcome you'd hope to get what is your ideal end state you can learn a lot from that natural interaction of interviewing someone and sometimes gain a lot of information that they wouldn't really think about writing down make sure to conduct interviews with at least 10 people once you're done this creating a quick google survey with the same questions is a really good idea that way you can widen your sample size to make sure it's significant between interviewing people and sending out surveys you'll want to make sure that you have answers from at least 30 people now that you have insight into what your learner's problems goals and challenges are it's time to ensure that they'll actually buy your course this is what the author of the lean startup would call building your minimum viable product an mvp is a product with just enough features that you release to the public to validate your assumptions i'm going to discuss two minimum viable product ideas that will help establish you as an authority and make you profit in the process the first strategy is creating a mini course and as we spoke about before these courses take less than two hours to complete as a result they're on hyper-specific topics much narrower than the larger course you'll eventually create for example if you were looking to eventually create a course that would show learners how to speak spanish fluently a great mini-course idea would be phrases and vocabulary for ordering food at a restaurant sometimes packaged as an email course mini courses are a great way to establish your authority and build an audience for a topic if someone actually invests in your mini course it's a pretty good sign that they might be willing to invest in your multi-day course later down the line alternatively you can offer your mini course for free as a lead magnet capturing the emails of people you'll sell your online course to later if you're doing this these people should be entered into an email sales sequence where they're directed to the pre-sale page for your actual online course we'll talk more about pre-selling in the next section to create a mini course you can simply repurpose your old content or choose a bite-sized topic that you know like the back of your hand the second strategy is creating a free webinar with an upsell and this is an incredibly powerful strategy basically this live streamed rsvp only digital event will allow you to do five things test your topic gain feedback on your value proposition to perfect it prototype your course in a condensed format learn about your audience and of course make some sales from your high margin upsell you see webinars can be incredibly effective with the average conversion rate hovering around twenty percent so after you spend the first eighty percent of your webinar delivering free value you'll want to ask them these questions one did you find this valuable two do you want to learn something else this is where you start selling one-to-one consulting or a one-day livestream course if the attendees act now or in the next set number of days they'll gain access to a special promotional price using this urgency can really help to drive conversions and if people start buying well that's a good indication that there's a market for your course whether you do a mini course or run a webinar make sure to take note of the people who actually convert are they different than the people you thought would buy if so you may want to consider framing your marketing differently the next thing i want to talk about might surprise you but you can actually sell the course before it's finished it's called pre-selling of course you need to actually finish the course to deliver on the promise you made your learners but pre-selling is a powerful strategy for a few reasons one it helps you stress test your concept two it allows you to tailor-make the content to learners as they're going through it allowing you to create a better quality course and three it helps with cash flow this is a strategy that software companies have been using for decades called a beta release the goal of pre-selling your course is to get that course in the hands of customers earlier thus receiving feedback and validating market demand faster you do this by offering the first round of learners a significantly reduced price to get them in the door start by creating a landing page that sells based on the curriculum and transformation that your course will provide as a copywriting pro tip use the challenges goals and language that you gathered from your ideal customers during your research phase this will make your leads feel like you're reading their mind there are several platforms that you can use to build your sales page but shopify is easily the most powerful and that's because it makes designing your site and processing payments super easy it's also really simple to integrate with your preferred e-learning platform which we'll talk about more later it's really worth repeating here that once you launch your pre-sale page and make a few sales it needs to be your top priority to finish your course you need to remain ethical and you really don't want to break a promise to your customers now let's talk about designing your course's content when outlining your content it's actually easiest to start with your learner's intended end state and work backwards from there for example if someone was looking to learn to become a cinematographer their intended end state is to be able to confidently lead lighting and camera departments on a film set so how do we help that learner make that transformation here are some of the things they would need to learn to get there lighting framing camera motion camera angles composition types of cameras lens choice depth of field color focus exposure and filtration so basically we've just created an outline for our course curriculum once we've done this we'll need to take the sections sometimes called modules or chapters and break them down into subsections continuing with our cinematographer example our lighting section might break down into things like lighting fundamentals lighting terminology and lighting techniques after that you'll need to plan out your content formats video content is great for portraying ideas simply and time effectively screencasts and walkthroughs are ideal for processes where students need to see the exact steps text content is best for explaining concepts in more detail giving step-by-step info and linking to other resources around the web downloadable content is best for cheat sheets glossaries templates and other tools that set learners up for success lastly we have worksheets which are great for helping learners internalize concepts when creating educational content it's important that it remains focused and actionable you don't want to overwhelm people with too much information make sure that it feels digestible as a best practice keep your videos below 10 minutes in length shorter videos in succession will help your learner feel like they're making progress which will really help to keep them motivated as a pro tip make sure to use multiple content formats it really helps to keep learners engaged earlier in this video we gave you some different price ranges that vary based on the type of course you're creating these price ranges were pretty wide and it's important to remember that your pricing strategy will be affected by a variety of factors including your niche your marketing your course topic and your authority as a course creator however one thing is for certain pricing your course too low is a really bad idea because you'll still need to spend money on marketing to get traffic and sales let me put it to you this way let's say your goal was to make 100 000 from your course if you priced your course at seven hundred dollars you would need to make 142 sales to get there assuming a one percent conversion rate you need to bring in traffic of 14 200 people a lot of people rationalized pricing their courses lower because they believe they'll be able to make more sales a big beginner's mistake that a lot of people make is believing that by pricing their course low they'll be able to make more sales so if you priced your course at 50 and you still wanted to make 100 grand you would need to make 2 000 sales assuming a 1 conversion rate that would mean you would need to bring 200 000 people to your site so after we do the math what really sounds more doable also take into account the customers that shop at the lowest price point are probably not the ones you want remember this the pricing of your course all comes down to the value of the outcome that your course helps students achieve as a place to start take a look at competing courses and find out what your competitors are charging then figure out how you can make your course more unique and more valuable then charge slightly more for it this pricing strategy can be used to communicate that your course is better when it comes to picking a platform for your online course it's easy to get overwhelmed with options and features remember to keep it simple there are three basic types of online course platforms first we have standalone online course platforms like teachable and thinkific these platforms give you a ton of control over your content and data and depending on your needs and budget you really can't go wrong with either they're also really easy to integrate with shopify then we have all-in-one solutions like kajabi this puts your marketing tools website builder and content delivery platform under one roof sure it's a bit pricier but if you're looking for one system approach this is it then we have online course marketplaces like udemy a major benefit of online course marketplaces is that you'll gain access to a large built-in audience but one major con is that you'll have less control over your pricing and data choose your platform carefully but don't succumb to analysis paralysis ultimately it will be your course and your marketing that are going to be your competitive advantage not your platform also you can always switch platforms later can make all the difference in the world for how successful your course is it's really important that you treat your course like a product launch because that's exactly what it is the build it and they will come attitude just doesn't apply to the world of online courses here are two of the most important things that you need to do collect emails early and often your email list will become one of the most valuable assets in your business because it will allow you to continuously market to leads it will also allow you to upsell past customers with new courses later on collect customer testimonials as we spoke about before testimonials are vital for creating a sustainable growth engine building trust and more always ask past customers for testimonials in written or video formats on their transformation then use these testimonials throughout your marketing material let's face it marketing is a massive topic and each discipline really needs its own video to do it justice so make sure to subscribe to our channel because we're going to be doing some marketing deep dives we're going to be giving you some really powerful actionable knowledge for free that being said here are some simple ideas to get you started run a weekly webinar as we spoke about earlier webinars are a really effective way to attract leads they're low cost and with their high conversion rates they're low risk and high reward next we have email courses we touched on mini courses earlier on this video but they're also a great way to generate leads make sure that when someone signs up for your mini course they're also entered in an email drip campaign that sells them your main course offering discounts to increase conversion rates become a guest on a podcast this can be a great way to increase your authority and reach new customers social media marketing to really succeed here identify the channels that work best for your audience and focus on them while it can be really tempting to try and be everywhere all at once this will really water down your results run paid ads running paid ads is a powerful way to reach new customers luckily we have a few videos that will help you do just that so i'm going to post those links below in the description seo search engine optimization is a vital component of any marketing strategy increasing your ability to be discovered to make this super simple i'm going to post a link below to our video search engine optimization for beginners content marketing when done correctly creating educational content can significantly increase your authority on a subject and also create a healthy pipeline of leads alright so let's head on a field trip we're going to meet our good friend gwen elliott who is an expert course creator she's created over 50 successful online courses on topics ranging from nutrition to angel investing to growing small businesses on shopify her courses have reached over 500 000 students and i'm so excited for the valuable knowledge she's going to share today hey everyone i'm here with gwen elliott and i'm so excited to talk to her about how to start an online course gwen can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself sure hello everyone i'm gwen and i'm an online course producer and a learning designer i work full time at shopify building courses for shopify compass and i have a side business where i help authors and experts turn their knowledge into profitable online courses so i basically eat sleep and breathe courses so i'm so excited to be here today to talk all about them so when someone's starting an online course what are some of like the biggest traps that typical first-time course creators fall into one of the biggest mistakes i see smart course creators make is not being clear on who their ideal learner is sometimes the people that follow you on instagram are not necessarily the people that are going to buy a premium course that you create so i really encourage you to do the work to figure out what do people really want to learn from you so we just got to be clear on who you want to market a course to and what they want to learn from you often online course creators think the place to start is by picking up a camera and starting to shoot what do you have to say about that we want to create the minimum viable product when you pick up a camera when you you know hire a team to help you make a beautiful course we actually don't know if it's going to work yet so we want to make sure we do this in a way where you don't blow out the budget when you're first starting so i am a huge fan of once you figure out your ideal target customer running your course live or doing pre-sales before you actually build the whole course and then realize it's not quite right so what are some of the best practices for creating a minimum viable product so what i recommend people do once you figure out your ideal learner is to create a course outline so to me a course outline is similar to a book outline for a book it's essential we want to know what is the ideal results that students will get when they take your course how will you assess if they're actually learning what you want them to learn and then you design the actual program so what are some best practices for making a course that is actually profitable yes okay so in this online course world i feel like profitable online course is like just buzzwords but it's actually quite simple first of all we need to know the budget so in terms of profitable set your budget number two set your goals what feels like a reasonable goal for your first launch take a look at your audience how much might you be willing to spend on advertising or do you just want to you know test if this is a good idea and the third way to have a profitable course is to charge your worth like charge what you want set your budget set your goals charge your worth do you have any best practices when it comes to picking a topic a lot of first-time course creators i feel like can be pretty overwhelmed when it comes to picking a topic overwhelm is the word like the buzzword of courses seriously that's the number one challenge i feel that people have when they go to create a course because it is overwhelming there's video there's creating a curriculum there's marketing there's teaching it's overwhelming i understand so to me you got to get really clear what is the problem that you can solve better than other people take a look at what's out there and try and figure out what is a unique problem you can solve or can you do it in a little bit of a different way than some of the other people out there in the space so that's kind of a first step i would take to as a best practice for getting started awesome so i think a lot of first-time course creators might struggle with the idea that they won't be seen as credible due to this big segment of gurus out there what are some best practices for increasing trust with potential customers so many world-class credible people are so hesitant to create a course because of some of the online gurus you probably get ads for them to you know make a million dollars in like seven days that are kind of discrediting the industry a little bit to me if you're creating a course you have to convey trust whether you're selling a physical product or a digital product so when i go to buy a course here are some of the way the things i look for to see if it's credible number one i love to see if there's a course trailer on the sales page that indicates to me the course has already been thought out they're investing money and time into doing a trailer a trailer's just a short like 60 to 90 second video introducing the instructor sharing what's in the course number two testimonials for the course another thing i love to see an outline of the curriculum are there modules on there lessons worksheets like what's actually in the course a money-back guarantee kind of policy signs of life are really good on the page the pop-up that shows that someone just bought the course it's showing there's energy to it a chat bot where you can talk to someone those are a few that indicate to me that this course is like a living breathing thing and not just something they're trying to sell what types of people could benefit from starting an online course honestly there's so much opportunity i feel like anyone can teach a course in any industry it this is a limitless field now what do you say to people who think they might not have what it takes to start an online course you can teach somebody who you're 10 steps in front of so when i was in my early days of starting my business i would buy courses from people who were a hundred or like a thousand steps ahead of me so people who had million dollar businesses when i barely made a dollar that was a mistake on my behalf i wish i had of got a course from someone who is just 10 steps ahead they remember the days of choosing an email service provider and how do you run facebook ads so you really have to acknowledge where you are in your space and say okay who am i 10 steps ahead of who can i help who are like close to me so please do not get discouraged there's an audience for you out there don't doubt yourself before you even get started now when it comes to marketing an online course what are some commonalities you see between successful course creators don't follow the blueprints of marketing courses online you've really got to look at your business and figure out where are my people but the way i find successful people marketing and selling premium online courses so courses that cost like a thousand dollars or more is through webinars so you funnel people into a live webinar that's free usually and you teach a portion of the course and at the end of that webinar you pitch the full course i genuinely think this is a great idea because you get to learn from the instructor in that live interaction and see do i like this person's vibe or am i getting any value from it before i buy a 2 000 course so highly recommend webinars email marketing and just figure out who your ideal customers are and where they live online or in person so would you say it makes sense to sort of narrow your focus when it comes to your marketing efforts or test a bunch of different platforms pick the the mediums that you're most comfortable in so if you are incredible at video get on instagram live i had somebody i worked with sold out her course strictly through her ability to be on camera all through instagram no paid ads um or so yeah it's all about like what are your strengths and i would choose like two or three channels and just go hard on those versus trying to be everywhere all the time so for someone just looking to dip their toes into the e-learning industry what would you say are the fastest growing niches i honestly feel like business courses people want those people want in the beauty industry it's absolutely massive the e-learning industry is a 325 billion dollar industry uh forbes reported that by 2025 it's going to be that big but it's going to continue to grow it's limitless so truthfully there's opportunity in any niche so the truth is just take a look at your industry do some research see what's going on in there if there's no courses in your niche you got a huge huge opportunity to dominate so no matter what industry you're in don't don't get deterred if you don't see a course maybe it's you that needs to step up and launch yours can you tell me about some really common mistakes that first-time course creators make yes so there's something called the twin sins of instructional design and what this is is when you have too much content coverage and you also don't go deep enough into the content to really help people get results so i find that people who are world class experts they have so much knowledge they want to teach they want to teach 20 years of experience in one course testimonials are obviously a vital part of the sales process are there any best practices for collecting testimonials and is incentivizing them in any way a good idea i've never incentivized somebody to give me a testimonial i mean to me you ask them to give you a testimonial if they say no that's cool so to me a best practice is it would be phenomenal if you could get a video testimonial from your student the reason why is video is such a great way to convey trust you can't fake a student with a video testimonial also you get the their energy and excitement for you another great thing about video testimonials is you can just use the text and use it in different places like facebook ads or on linkedin when you're asking for a testimonial you really want to convey results so asking them where they started before what are the results how did their life genuinely change after they took your course is really important so how do you go about pricing of course so it is the wild west of course pricing this industry is beyond bizarre when it comes to pricing so if you're confused you're not alone the way i go about pricing is for courses about courses two thousand dollars two thousand us dollars is the amount that people tend to charge so the short answer is there's no perfect formula to price your course i do some research i gut check with myself because you want to make sure you feel valued so there's that gut check excitement factor as well as the market research that helps me figure out the pricing now if you could talk to your past self starting your first online course what would you say so if i could talk to my past self i've been in this industry almost 10 years the number one piece of advice i give myself is launch and learn you can't really learn much if the course has been in your head for years the good thing about courses and the bad thing is they're never really done given the digital environment we're in and how people consume media how important is it to include video in your online course i am a huge fan of video courses first of all video is one of the most engaging mediums especially at shopify our merchants have indicated they want to learn through us through video and also video conveys a premium feel i would pay more for a video course than i would for an email course so the short answer is video is very important highly recommend it how do you feel about using mini courses to test a course idea it takes a lot of work to make a course i am a huge fan of going out with your you know big course um because it just takes so much work to market it to build it anyway unless you're you're planning on making an academy with a lot of smaller courses i would focus on your flagship your signature course instead of like smaller mini courses cool so thanks so much for joining us today and giving us so much valuable insight uh where can the audience go to learn more about you yes i would highly encourage you to follow me on instagram gwen elliott 2l1t because i love to share free tips on course creation there but i also recommend you sign up for shopifycompass.com we share a ton of free courses there including marketing courses that you can use to market your course so hopefully you can sign up for some of those now thanks so much for watching i've been your host tyler and this has been learn with shopify remember to like comment and subscribe we're a channel for small business owners with big plans [Music] you

Channel: Learn With Shopify

Views: 69,342

Keywords: learn with shopify, how to make money with online courses, how to make an online course, how to create an online course, online course creation for beginners, how to get started with online courses, how to create an online course that sells, how to pre sell an online course, how to create and sell an online course, how to sell an online video course, how to make money online 2020, how to create an online course step by step, online course creation, online course, sales funnel

Id: zX8RKRhVovw

Length: 33min 17sec (1997 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020