Online courses are a great way to enrich yourself with knowledge and skills in a particular area. For entrepreneurs, it can also be a great way to educate your audience, prospective clients, and potential investors about your products, services, or anything else related to your area of specialization. In many cases, the online course itself can be a way to generate income.
Now, creating an online course is not always a walk in the park. It requires deep thought, planning, and strategy, especially when it comes to creating topics, gathering content, and delivering it to your audience. As you can learn more here, the success of your online course will also largely depend on the delivery or hosting platform you choose. This is especially the case if you’re selling the course or earning income directly from it. With that having been said, here are some tips on how to plan and create an online course.
1. Pick the Ideal Course Topic
By now, you’ve probably decided on a subject or topic around which your online course will revolve. In case you haven’t, you’ll need to ask yourself some questions to do so. What do you love? What is your passion? You already have the answer, so get out of your comfort zone and work towards generating income from it. For instance, if you love to cook or have a passion for the cooking room, you choose topics around cooking and work something out. Write recipes, blog about your cooking, or share useful kitchen tips, just to mention a few ideas. If you have a thing for interior décor or DIY remodel, you can share your ideas and create your course around this. Create a list of potential topics and proceed to the pointers below.
2. Gauge the Market Demand
Next, look along your passion line and see which among your listed ideas has a higher market demand than the others. You can take some time off and conduct market research so that you do not waste time creating content that will not have an audience. Are people talking about it? Are they asking about it? How competitive is the market for your potential course? If the market is a bit saturated, you can choose to do your content uniquely to attract a larger audience with your exemplary creation. Before you know it, you might as well be among the “best-sellers”.
3. Preach the Learning Outcomes
When creating an online course, it’s best not to be in the rush to make money. Instead, hunger for audience satisfaction. Satisfied clients will help build your credibility as they recommend your course to others over and over again. Most importantly, you’ll want to highlight the learning outcomes of your online course to anyone who’d be willing to try it out. Take your clients through the course outline and help them understand what’s in it for them when they take it. You should answer questions like: What will they be able to do or achieve at the end of the course? What skills will they come out with, and how will these skills or knowledge help them? Not only will it help attract enrollments continuously, but it will also help to ensure that only the right students enroll in the course.
4. Compile Course Content
Content is king, so they say. There could be loads and piles of information in your field of interest, but not all of it may be necessary or relevant to your course. Make learning easier and fun for your students by feeding them with only what they need to learn or what’s relevant to the topic. Conduct research in the specific subject or field so you can tell for sure what is expected of the learner by the end of the course. For best results, gather course content that answers questions that your students are likely to have – content that seals the gaps left by your competitors.
5. Choose the Appropriate Lesson Delivery Channel
Schoolwork is often associated with a lot of reading, which is monotonous. When it comes to your online course, however, you can break this monotony by coming up with something new for your students every time you want to share knowledge with them. Most importantly, how you deliver your content will matter a lot. Most adults, especially, tend to have lower concentration, making it important to deliver the lessons in a way that captures their attention most. For instance, you can use videos, activities, podcasts, and illustrations. Find a suitable, engaging, and interactive way to deliver your content, so it attracts the utmost interest from your target audience.
The list above is definitely not exhaustive on the things that need to be planned, prepared, and executed for a great online course. For instance, you will also need to consistently edit and review your course content. You’ll also need to set up your online school or use one of the available platforms like YouTube. You’ll also need to set the prices right and market your products continuously. All the same, with the above pointers in mind, creating an online course is not as complicated as many people would think.
