Create an Online Course: From Launch to Success, Teach with Confidence

1. Welcome to the Course!: Hey there, my name is Lauren and I'm so excited that you are here and that you chose me to help you on this journey. Here's a quick background about myself. I have started and grown at multiple online businesses from scratch in various niches. I've grown Pinterest accounts, YouTube accounts, email lists, you name it to over 100,000 subscribers and followers. I've also started a podcast. I have created many successful courses, e-books, online programs, and other products, have also earned a full-time income. This allowed me to quit my full-time job. I've traveled the world and work from cafes from South America to Europe, to Asia, to Africa, all while working on my online business. And just so you know that I'm not some internet unicorn, I actually used to be a tax accountant before I started exploring the online business world. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I first started. So it's totally okay if you are brand new to this, I'm going to walk you through everything step-by-step in this class. Now, this course is gonna be perfect for you if you want to create your first online course, even if you have no teaching or course experience. I've created multiple courses for a few different websites now on different platforms and with different selling and promotional methods. I'm going to walk you through how to create your first online course, step-by-step. In this class, you are going to learn how to generate topics and ideas for your course. Identify your target market so you know who you're offering your course to. Plan and outline your content including title, headlines, keywords, and cover. Teach competently and in a way that is easy on us and builds trust with your students. Decide where to host and sell your course and create a landing page if it's applicable. Share this course with your audience and create content to promote it, get feedback, reviews and so much more. As you can see, we have a lot to cover. So let's get started. 2. Why Create a Course?: Hey there, I'm really excited for us to get started. I really love creating courses, so I'm excited to teach you how to share my best tips to make this as smooth and successful as possible. But before we dive in, I want to ask you something. Why are you here? And what I mean by that is, why do you want to create an online course? I'd like to start out some of my courses with this y because I think it's really important and it will help you stay focused and make sure that your content is on point. It's important to give this some thought to identify your purpose and let it stick with you throughout this process. Because rule number one for creating any kind of content, including what you're teaching in this course, is to create content with the purpose. No one wants to listen to your word vomit, even if you have a way with words, If it doesn't ultimately serve a purpose for them. And we really want to focus on the purpose and the goals for them, your audience, your students. Because your purpose could simply be to make money. But that alone is not going to sell your course or make people like it, or make them love it so much that they want more and they want to leave you reviews without asking. That's what we're aiming for here. If you want those things that you need to focus on what is in it for them and always putting that value first. But let's take it back to you for just a second. Why are you creating an online course? Here are a few good reasons why you might want to embark on this journey. Number one, you want to create a paid product for your audience. Number two, you want a way to reach your audience on a deeper level. Number three, you just want to create a course to use as a lead magnet or for some other purpose. Number four, you aren't quite sure yet, but you want to explore the potential for your business. All of these are great reasons. I have created more than ten courses across three different websites and businesses. I've also created free courses for my e-mail list. And whatever your reason is, I am glad that you're here. And now that we've talked about you for a second, let's focus on what's really important, the means to the end, satisfying your audience. Throughout this course, remember to always keep your audience in mind. First and foremost, what do they want? What do they need? Whatever it is that you're teaching, you're likely solving some problem that your audience has in one way or another. Focus on that problem and solving those needs throughout this entire creation process. Now, I'll dive a little bit deeper into that perspective later on in this course. For now, I just want to set the tone a little bit before we get started. In the next lesson, I'll share some tips with you on how to set proper goals so that you can create your course as quickly and efficiently as possible. 3. Set Goals and Deadlines: Hey, there, do you want to know what the worst part about this process is? Just how long it can take. I've seen my students take as long as six months to create one course. And I've also seen some students do it in less than a month. I can tell you one thing for sure. With every course that you create, you will speed up this process. With experience that you are going to learn how to get in the groove. You're going to learn what to focus on, where to eliminate time, and you'll get faster with each course that you produce. I think it took me about three months to create my first course when I really had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Now, if I really set my mind to it, I can put one out in just three weeks. And that is my goal for you in this class to show you how this process can be done quickly and successfully with a minimal amount of procrastination and wasted time along the way. Okay, so let's get back to you. You have ideas, you want to put them out there. But the problem is that we often get hung up in the setup, the creation process, and the overwhelm and the doubt that maybe nobody is going to want this thing that I'm creating any way. Welcome to product creation. This is called impostor syndrome. If you really want to label it and it's totally normal, confidence is going to come with time and experience and this will get better, I promise. Until then, the best way to combat these feelings is just to stay busy and keep moving forward. One of my biggest productivity tips for getting work done faster is just to eat, live, and breathe until the work is done. I'm personally not one to take money breaks during the process. I put my head down and I don't lift it until it's done. That way. There really isn't any time for procrastination. I even simplify my meals during this time and reduce any other activity that just serves as a distraction, including my personal life and some relationships. Now I don't want to give you any good, bad advice here, but what I really mean is just that you need to prioritize this above all else, if you can. In addition to that, sometimes it can be really helpful to set goals. Now I'll be honest that I'm not really a big goals that are myself, but that's because I'm pretty disciplined when it comes to getting things done for my business. Maybe it's the type a inner accountant in me. I don't know. But I do think that setting some basic goals can really help to go a long way. These goals can be flexible and subject to change as long as you respect them and prioritize them appropriately. E.g. if you set a goal to create your course and one month, and then create a plan with smaller goals each week to help you get there on time. You can absolutely do that and I've seen my students do it. But if you set the same goal for three months and create a plan with smaller goals to help you get there in that time. Same task will take you three months is called Parkinson's law. Work expands to fill the time that we allot for it to take. So here's what you need to do. Set goals with deadlines to complete a task. Break this down into smaller subtasks with additional deadlines if necessary. Set daily and weekly goals on which parts of this process you want to complete and when. And don't be afraid to be aggressive with your timelines. It's totally okay if you don't make those initial deadlines, as long as you are working hard on it and you're prioritizing, you're going to get this work done faster. Now one other thing I want to say here, something that helps me out a lot when I create my courses is to do my work in batches. So my course creation process is taken in steps. First, I do the research and the planning, which includes my title, headline and the outline for my course. Then I script out my entire course. Now, I'll talk more about this later, whether or not you might want to script it or not. But even if you don't, you could replace this step with creating presentations or whatever their style that your course is going to be in. Then I record my entire course from start to finish. Then I edit my entire course from start to finish. Then I upload the content and I work on all of my thumbnails. Then I create the landing page, work on my descriptions, pricing, images and other marketing related aspects of my course. I found that this is the best way to stay on track and to set those goals for your content. Now try not to get too distracted and start jumping around on your tasks. It will help you finish a lot quicker, I promise. Okay, That's really yet, that is my big planning and goal speech. Just keep it simple. 4. Identify Your Target Market: Hey there, it's important to try to identify who you're trying to reach with your content before you start creating your course. The worst thing that you can do is put some basic generic content out there for the masses. The competition will be sky high and your course won't stand out in any way. I want to ask you, who are you trying to reach with your course? Just think about it for a second. Is that women, mothers, young mothers, single young mothers, working young mothers, working young mothers with the pug. Nope, that's a step too far. It's too narrow, but I do think that you get the idea here. Now let's take this a step further and answer this question for me or for yourself rather, who is your ideal customer? Because really narrowing in on who this person is and what they're actually feeling, that is going to be the secret sauce to your success. Think about this person. How old are they? Are they working or they money conscious and on a budget? What problems are they struggling with when it comes to the topic you're talking about? What obstacles are they facing when trying to achieve their goals? E.g. young couples with a new puppy, maybe they are 25 to 40 years old, financially independent, perhaps with a kid or two. They don't have enough patients, they don't have enough time. They probably have a full-time job already. They've been taught the wrong methods or they've tried puppy training school and it just isn't working out for them. Their dog is too old. It's a rescue dog. This is important to know that so that you can focus your content communication and your marketing on this particular person. When you buy a product or read an article, you generally trust it more when you know that it was written specifically with you in mind. When you're reading an article or watching a video on how to train your dog, you're likely going to be more likely to seek out the ones that are training about the same type of dog that you have, right? So whether that is hair, dieting, relationship advice, et cetera, you're going to want information from the people that you can relate to as much as possible. Now, it's okay if you don't know this right away. Sometimes we just have to guess until we get to know our audience a little bit better. But it's helpful to try to have this in mind from the beginning and you're generally going to be more successful faster if you can. So either way, just think about it. Now, I didn't know this right away and I took the opposite approach, throw everything up at the wall and see what sticks. It worked eventually. But it took me one fail blog and a few months of trial and error in the red to figure it out. Thinking about what I've talked about in this lesson will help you create the right content in the right voice for your audience. It will also help you be more relatable to your audience, which is something that we're going to talk about a little bit later on in this course. Next, let's talk about how to generate some ideas for your course. 5. Course Topics: Define the Problem: Hey, there, I have another question for you. What is your course about? I'm guessing that you already have some general ideas and that's why you're taking a course on how to create a course. But a general idea isn't going to cut it here. I touched on some of the reasons why already identifying the people in your audience, what they're interested in, what their needs are, and being relatable. It's important that you narrow down your topic to some extent. We don't want to market our courses to the masses, remember? So let's talk about how to generate some ideas and then narrow down your topic. Let's say that your niche is in health and fitness. It's not gonna be enough to teach someone how to be healthy or even how to lose weight. We need some unique selling points here. Are we talking about diet or exercise? Let's say for the sake of this example that we're talking about dieting. Well, what kind of a diet? Keto, vegetarian, vegan, low-carb. No carb. These are all still pretty high level. So let's look at this a different way. I have another really important question to ask you right now. It's going to define how you approach the rest of this course and how you structure your course content. What is the problem that you're trying to solve with this course? Now continuing our example, the obvious problem is that someone is trying to lose weight. But you have to ask yourself at yet another question, why haven't they been able to lose this weight? Perhaps it's motivation and or discipline. Most people struggle to stay in their diets and to have the discipline not to cheat on them. And the reason why, for many people is that they simply don't get results quickly enough or for long enough. So how can I solve that problem? Well, I can offer a weight-loss program that focuses on getting my client's results quickly to maximize that motivation and therefore weight-loss. And then from there you have to apply about what we talked about in the previous lesson and identifying your specific people. In this case, I'm going to focus this fast weight-loss program on women ages 35 to 65. Women that have tried multiple diets already that have failed them. And perhaps women that are very overweight, over 200 pounds that don't have the time to workout or the desire because it's just too difficult at this stage. Dieting is tough enough without adding a rigorous workout regimen on top of that. Now I didn't just split this off the top of my head. That happens to be the exact audience that I had on a previous website and I did indeed so fast weight-loss program that was very successful. I will admit that I didn't know who exactly I was selling this to from the very beginning. Some of the narrowing down and identifying the customer came over time from feedback and emails that website content surveys. So it's okay if you don't know all of this right away, I would expect that many of you probably don't, unless you already have a large audience that you know pretty well. If that's the case. Well, congrats to you. But I wanted to paint the picture for use that you can see what this process looks like and think about it as you narrow down your ideas and you start structuring your content. So here is one more example. If you're teaching a course on SEO or search engine optimization, you aren't just teaching people how to optimize their content for websites in traffic, you're helping people who are struggling to get traffic to their websites. Perhaps are struggling to sell their products, are struggling to get people to sign up for their email list. People who are confused and overwhelmed about existing and conflicting information they found on SEO. These are all related problems to your main topic of SEO. And you want to keep these in mind when you're creating your course. Now, you probably won't be able to solve all of these problems with one course unless you do create a huge course that you turned a lot of money for, which some people absolutely do. But what I want you to think about here is that you really want to think about your main problem that you're trying to solve first, in our previous example, that would be someone struggling with motivation and, or a discipline to stick to their diet and finally, lose that weight. The fact that they hate working out or don't have time for it, or they suck at cooking healthy food, or they don't know how. These are all secondary problems that are related, but perhaps not as important as that main problem. But I do want you to go ahead and identify those secondary problems as well right now, because we're going to use them later on when we're writing the content for your course and working on the marketing side of things. So write these down because I promised you that it is really important. Then in the next lesson, let's talk more about breaking down these different problems, finding a solution and identifying your customer journey. 6. Customer Journey: Hey there. So now that you've defined your main problem of your content, let's break down that solution. I have yet another question for you. How many steps does it take to solve this problem? What is the journey look like from start to finish? And not like an experienced expert like yourself would approach this, but someone who is perhaps brand new to this or whatever skill level that your audience is expected to be at before they have this problem figured out. It's important to think about that because we often fall into this trap of thinking about the perspective from our own rather than our audiences. Now, I'll dive deeper into that in our later lesson on AB perspectives later on in the course. For now, just be aware of it. So circling back to how we solve this problem, can you solve it entirely with one course, or should you break this down into two or three courses? Multiple courses could mean multiple related topics, or they could be split up based on skill level, beginners, intermediate, advanced, e.g. if you're teaching a course on SEO, you could divide this up into three different courses. You could have SEO 1.0, a CO2, 0.0, and SEO three-point. Oh, that's pretty basic. You probably don't want to call them that, but you do get the idea. Or it could also be that you're taking people throughout your courses on a journey. They take a course on fast weight-loss and then you have another follow-up course on how to maintain your results or fitness course that offers them supplementary workouts when they're ready to add exercise back into their weight-loss program. In my case, I saw courses on online business and marketing. And I also take my students on a journey from just getting started. So creating a website and starting an online business, to building an audience and an email list to creating and selling products. So think about this customer journey and how it applies to number one, this course and how they will work towards solving that problem. Number two, the overall journey and whether this will spill over into additional courses. Now at this point, I think that it doesn't hurt to think about the ultimate goal that you want someone to reach by the end of your course. What do you want them to accomplish? Go ahead and write this down as well, because we're going to use this in our next lesson when we come up with a name and a headline for your course. 7. Basic Keyword Research: Hey, let's talk about the importance of keywords. First of all, keyword, keyword research may or may not be really important for your course. It really depends on how you plan to market your course and bring traffic to it. Now if you already have an audience Congrats, that's one of the hardest parts about running an online business. In that case, you may or may not need to do keyword research because you already have an audience of people to share or sell your course too. But if you're planning to offer your course on a marketplace type of platform like this. Keywords are really important. It's how people find your course. And even if you aren't offering it on one of these platforms, and you're just selling it on your own. Keywords should still be a consideration if you want your course to be able to be found in search results. But keyword research isn't gonna be nearly as important here as it is for writing content. So not going to really take a deep dive here. In fact, sometimes keyword research just merely means guessing at what your audience might be searching for. That is because you can use keyword research tools to see what people are typing into search engines to look for content. But course platforms don't always divulge that data or make it available to course creators. In the case of putting a course on one of these types of platforms, you kinda have to guess at it. So anyway, let's talk about some ways to do some basic keyword research just to give you some additional ideas for the title and headline of your course. Now that you've brainstormed some topics, let's turn those topics into keywords. Now, using a keyword research tool will help you figure out which keywords are more competitive or easier to rank for and suggest alternative keywords that will be easier to rank for. They also do a whole lot more than that outside the purposes of creating a course and what we're looking at now. But if you're looking for ways to market your course, creating content related to your course and the topics it's on can also be really helpful. A keyword research tool can also be find related keywords that are helpful to include in your content. And also show you things like which competitor articles are currently ranking for specific keywords. Again, that's diving deeper into the content and marketing side of your product, which I will discuss later on in this course. For now, let's just focus on looking for some basic keywords just to get some ideas for the title and headline of your course. Now, the key with basic keyword research is to find keywords that aren't too competitive, but also aren't so obscure that known searching for them. The highest difficulty keywords will also have the highest volume of searches and the highest level of competition. Now I don't want to discourage you from trying to use keywords like these. And like I said, if you already have an audience, anyway, this might not matter as much. But going after some less competitive keywords is also a good way to narrow down your topic just a little bit more. E.g. indoor house plants is a really popular and very competitive keyword. Consider instead starting out with some low to medium difficulty keywords. When you view related keyword ideas, you can see that indoor house plant vines and indoor house plant pests have fewer searches, but much easier difficulty scores. These are often keywords or phrases that have more words in them and they're called medium or long tail keywords. The key is to find a balance here. And if you are creating content to market your course, you'd want to create a variety of articles with various and somewhat related keywords. Now there's no perfect strategy here and you want to find a balance between what the data is showing you and what keywords and phrases are important for your audience. Sometimes your articles or your course title will never have any chance of ranking in search. And that's okay if you already have an audience or people that you want to share your course width, or you have other reasons for creating your course. Now, keyword research tools can be pretty expensive, especially for the best ones that give you the most data. But there are some free options out there and I'm going to include those free to check out in the resources area linked to below this video. Now after you've done a little bit of keyword research, it's important to come up with a title and headline for your course, which is what we're going to cover next. 8. Hosting Your Course: Hey, there, I initially had this lesson later on in the course, but I realized that it's pretty important to know some of this information upfront before you start planning out your course. Because where you will host your course will determine a lot of things, including how long your course might be and what your title and headline will be. A lot of the other factors to consider will come up later on in the course when we talk about uploading your course and marketing it. But I'll cover what's important to think about upfront right now. Have you thought about where you're going to host or share your course? When you create a course, you need somewhere to upload those videos. A software that allows people to sign up and create logins to access that content. Now you really have two main options when it comes to hosting and sharing your course. Number one is to share it on a marketplace or educational platform. These types of platforms are great because they are structured somewhat like a marketplace or search engine and that they have a user base of people already in place. And then you get access to that when you publish your course. This means that you don't have to build your own audience and drive your own traffic to your course if you don't want to. Although it can still help your growth on the platform for sure. It's really great, but the biggest disadvantage is that you don't have much control over how your course is sold or how much you charge for it. You can't create custom landing pages. You have limited options for coupons and discounts. Sometimes no options at all depending on the platform. And you're usually having to set your course price based on low prices or other courses on the platform. Some pros and cons here for sure. Now option two is to host and share it on a platform that provides the software for you to be able to create your own sales page, upload your course, and have a membership area where users can log in and access your course. You can design your sales page exactly how you want it to increase sales. And you can price your course at whatever you want. But there's no existing user base for platforms like these. That means that you have to drive 100% of the traffic yourself through SEO, social media, paid ads, or whatever other traffic source that you choose. This is the route that many bloggers and online business owners go when they already have these traffic channels setup or already have an audience in place. I'll link the best platforms for this in my resources guide for this course below this video. And know that when you sell your courses on your own, you'll often have to pay for software to host your course. So as you can see, there are some really big pros and cons to both approaches. And I've personally done both. I started out with option two and created my own courses and my own traffic channels. And I've had really great success with this. I touched $200-300 for each of my business courses because they are in a niche where the average course price is already pretty high. I actually charged around $40 for each of my weight-loss programs because the average market price in that niche is a lot lower and the competition is a lot higher. So I've learned a lot through selling my own courses myself on those websites. But after some time, I did grow tired of the effort required to drive my own traffic and keep up with social media channels. So I started a new website and built courses to sell on platforms like this. Because I wanted to diversify what I was doing and just expand my reach. So to sum this up, but you can be successful at no matter which route you go. And you can also combine both of these approaches and offer your courses on marketplace platforms, but also creates traffic channels to drive your own traffic to those courses on those platforms. So you really have a few different options here. There is definitely a lot more potential when you put in the effort to build your own traffic channels and audience. But it takes a lot more time and it's often a lot harder. So it really just depends on how much effort you want to put into this and really which way you want to go. So think about this throughout this course as you're starting to plan and build your course. And what we will revisit this a bit later on in the course when we start to talk about finalizing things and when we start to talk about marketing, for now, let's move on to talking about your course name and headline in the next lesson. 9. Course Name and Headline: Okay, Now that you've done some basic keyword research into your topics, and hopefully you've narrowed down some of those topics. It's time to come up with a title and headline for your course. This step is really important and it's one that a lot of people underestimate. But this is a big opportunity to write a clear statement that speaks directly to the person that you're trying to offer this course to. It's your first chance to let them know that they are in the right place and this is exactly what they're looking for. Now let me distinguish a bit between the title and the headline. Because sometimes these are one and the same. It depends on where and how you're sharing your course. E.g. if you're selling your course on your own, you probably want to have a short catchy title for your course. Then also a headline to explain what the course is about or who it's for. But if you're sharing your course on the larger search platform, people tend to combine those two and include as many words as possible for keyword purposes. Let's look at my email marketing course as an example. My title is building an email list, e-mail marketing strategies to build and grow your audience. Now if I was selling that course on my own, outside of a platform like this, I would never call it build an e-mail list. Well, that's descriptive. It's also very generic. I would probably call it something more like this. Email marketing Made Easy or e-mail list accelerator or six-figure list building strategies. That's more of the style of my other courses that I've sold on my own, on my other website and not on a platform like this. Remember that it's not imperative that you finalize your title and your headline right now. You may find more inspiration for this as you start creating the content for your course. But it can also help you with the direction of your content in some cases. So I think it's a good idea to at least start thinking about this and perhaps come up with two to three working titles that you can choose from later or expand upon later. Here are a few things to consider when you're coming up with your title and or your headline. Remember that you want to utilize as much space as possible here. So even if you have a shorter title, you need to come up with a headline or short description that will provide some detail about your course. Ideally, your course title and or headline should accomplish the following. Number one, be descriptive of what your course is about. Obviously, someone should know exactly what it's about by the title alone number to let them know what they will accomplish with this course. So whether it is to help them build an audience and email list or to help them lose weight. Think about that problem that you're solving and ideally identify it in the title or the headlines somewhere. When you're talking about what they're going to accomplish. One other marketing tip is to add a time limit if it's applicable. It's another really great way to make your title standout and identify expected results from the get-go. E.g. lose 20 pounds in a month, go to savings of $10,000 in one year. Now this will apply to everyone, but it can be a really great way to present that problem and a time focus solution. If you're able to, then number three, let them know exactly who this course is for. If there are any other identifying factors about your audience, like their age, gender, experience level with the topic, or any other demographics. That can be really helpful to let your audience know that this is for them and that they are in the right place. E.g. including that this program is for women looking to lose weight fast or beginners looking to build their first e-mail list. Ok, Now that's a lot of information to put into your title and your headline, right? How do we put all of this in there? Unfortunately, we can't see everything that we want to say here. You really have to prioritize what you want to say and call out what's most important. Now, number one is obligatory. It needs to be very apparent what your course is about that is non-negotiable. Number two and number three aren't as important and you may choose to only prioritize one of these. That's also perfectly fine. I personally think that making sure that the problem at hand is clear is the most important. But you may also accomplish that with the headline. So that's okay too. Now I know that this is a lot to put into your title here. And again, what I really mean this title plus headline, it depends on the platform, but some courses are displayed with a short main title and then a longer headline. This could also be the difference between what you put into your course image and the longer title that says splayed underneath it. Okay, Here's an example. Let's say that my course is called the e-mail marketing Made Easy. I've already identified that my course is about email marketing, and it's probably for beginners because of the easy part. Now, if I wanted to target more advanced individuals, I'd probably go with something like six-figure list building strategies or something along those lines. I've already identified at number one, what my course is about, and number two, who it's for just in that short title. Plus I'm gonna give myself bonus points here for using alliteration with e-mail marketing Made Easy. That's always a good way to make your title a bit catchier and easier to remember. But you all my title is not complete here. I'm also going to add a headline the further clarify what my course is about and who it's for like this. So the five-step system for beginners looking to grow and e-mail list in the audience of supportive fans. Or the more advanced title. Build a passive e-mail sales funnel to generate sales on autopilot. This is another really great way to add a unique identifier to my title and let them know what they can expect to accomplish from this course. Now, there are a lot of buzzwords or power words that you can use to beef up your title a little bit. And you can use phrases like strategy, system, proven plan, complete blueprint. I like to use a thesaurus to help me generate some ideas here, especially if I want to add a little alliteration to my title and I'm looking for words that start with a specific letter. Remember to use your keywords in the title where you can. And if you're offering your course on a platform that is driving the traffic for you. So going back to my email marketing example, my e-mail course is titled builds an e-mail list, e-mail marketing strategies to build and grow your audience. I purposely included the keywords, builds an email list and email marketing strategies in my title. Again, just come up with two to three Working Titles and ideas and write those down. You can revisit this and finalize that later on. Now in the next lesson, we're going to start planning out your course and we're going to start here with a length and structure of it. 10. Length, Structure, and Style: Hey there, We're getting closer to the meat and bones of this, I promise. These earlier steps of planning and research are really important because if you have a really clear idea of where you're going and what you're doing. You'll be able to get the actual writing and recording done so much faster and so much better. So let's talk about the length and structure of your course. Now there's a general rule of thumb that is often true but sometimes not true at all. And that is that length implies strength. It generally does. And people want to know that they got their money's worth in time is worth out of something. If you don't provide enough information or your courses aren't long enough, or it's something that people paid for, they might be a bit resentful about it. But on the flip side, if you add too much fluff just to hit a certain amount of time or some arbitrary number. People aren't going to appreciate that either. So when it comes to course length, how you're offering your course does matter to some extent. If you're marketing and selling your course yourself and you have a higher price tag, you might want to consider making sure that your courses at least over 2 h long. So that people do feel like they're getting a lot of value for their money. But if you are sharing your course on a marketplace or search platform like this, you'll notice that most courses are somewhere between 45 min and an hour-and-a-half. I think that this is a pretty good length to aim for. And while I'm talking about aiming to shoot for a certain length, this can really be hard to estimate when you're planning out your course content. Now I've done enough of them now that I can actually estimate a rough time just based on the length of my videos, which are usually not always about two to 3 min long. You can also do some research into similar courses to see how long other peoples are. But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter that much. Because some courses are going to sell for $15 and be 3 h long and some courses are selling for $300 that are also 3 h long. So don't worry too much about it at this stage because you won't really know how long this is going to be until you're finished with it. I personally never thought that much about length from the beginning. I simply include what I feel is necessary and helpful for my students success in the course. And that usually lands me somewhere in the right place. And remember that you can always add content later on if you need to. You should really focus more on delivering the right amount of value here. So think about what you feel is the right amount of value for a course like this. Now we're almost at the point where we're going to write that outline. And you'll be able to narrow this down a little bit more than. So at this point, you should start making some notes about what you want to include in this course. Start listing out things that you think are important for success in your class. Remember what I mentioned before? You are the expert here. You're teaching to a beginner. So make sure that you break this down into digestible and action oriented steps for them. So start thinking about your overall structure of your course right now. What will you be sharing in your course? Will you be sharing any photos or any other supplemental videos to help you illustrate points or educate? Will you be sharing stock photos or screenshots? Will you include any supplemental material? E.g. when I created my weight-loss program, which also had video material and with structured very much like a course. I included downloadable diet books and printable workout cards. It was just another really great thing that I could use to market on my sales page. And that made my course a little bit more unique and desirable. Supplemental material could be checklists, printable guides, log books, journals, any other kind of worksheets. You should also start thinking about the structure in terms of the division and delivery of the information that you're going to share. Are you going to create a multi-step system to help them achieve success? What kind of sections we use to divide your course into? These are all pretty high-level questions, but you should think about it now because you're going to start to write the outline for your course pretty soon. And it's important to put all these thoughts to paper. Now the last thing I want to talk about here is that your teaching style, or perhaps your presentation style is a better way to put it. How will you present the information in your course? Will you have your face on camera? I know that this can be a pretty scary thing for some people. I had absolutely no camera experience whatsoever or even really any public speaking experience before I created my first course. And it was tough. I definitely had to push through some big mental barriers and boundaries to get this done. And really just to get out of my comfort zone, the first few courses that I created did not have my face on them at all. You see now, instead I actually taught with PowerPoint type of presentations and screenshots and video tutorials using just my voice. Now, some of the courses that I sell for a different business of mine actually still are in this format today. If you want to start out that way, that is totally fine and it can be a good way just to get your feet wet and to get comfortable. Just make sure that you do create really nice presentations if you go this route. The other method is to create a course in the style that I'm presenting to you right now. I will show you how to do this throughout this course. Or you could also do some combination of these two things. So you can always record an introduction video or even an introduction and conclusion part of every video that just shows your face on it, but then present the main points with a presentation. But I will say that having but I will say that having your face on camera makes you more trustworthy. And if you do it well, it can make people feel like your courses also higher-quality. You'll also notice that I'm not actually in front of the camera 100% of the time. Well, actually I am, but I do add animations and other graphics to my lessons just to illustrate important points and really just to add variety to my presentation. You don't want people to get bored here obviously. So it's important to hold their attention. But I do encourage you to do it in this style that I'm talking about right now. If you think that you can, It took me some time and experience to work my way up to presenting with my face on camera. So I get it. It's totally up to you and I encourage you to do whatever you feel comfortable with here. 11. Create Your Course Outline: Hey there, or you finally ready to start putting some real work in this course. The first step in making your course come alive is creating an outline. And this is something that has helped me tremendously with any and all products I've ever created, from eBooks to online programs and my courses, even the articles that I write on my websites. I also start out without lines. It really just helps you make sure that your end product is organized and that it includes everything that you want to say. Ideally without going off on too many tangents or including anything that isn't really important or relevant. Now you can organize your outline in whatever way that you like. But here's my suggestion on the items that you should include your title and or headline at the top. Your individual modules or sections. If it's applicable, you can break down or organize your information however you want. Some course platforms, structures that you can create different sections and put lessons within those sections. E.g. a. Welcome area and introduction area where you might have a few lessons welcoming people to the course, explaining what the goals are and providing any resources for them. No matter what, just makes sure to keep the content organized and easy to follow for someone going through your course, especially if it's a longer course, make sure to put a placeholder in your outline for an introduction and a conclusion. Here are a few lessons that I like to include in a lot of my courses. Lesson, welcoming someone to the course and saying thank you to them for trusting you to help them on this journey. I wasn't going over the expectations in this class and how they should go through this class. Should they take notes? Are there any points that they need to stop and accomplish something before starting again? This may or may not apply to your course, but if your course is quite long or a bit complex at times, it can be helpful. I've had students in the past, I feel like they get to a crossroads during my course where they have to do multiple things at once. And they find it hard to prioritize those tasks. So sometimes I cover things like that upfront. If I expect that issue or if I know that it exists, you can create a lesson on the goals that you want them to accomplish, or one to help them set up their goals. You can also create a lesson on any resources that they might need throughout your course. These are all introductory lessons that help them get started and I tried to group them into the first section of my course. Now, this might depend on the platform that you're using. When I'm wrapping up my courses, I always like to include a last section that includes a summary and perhaps the next steps for them. I love to summarize my courses with a lesson on the key takeaways from the class. I think that this is a good reminder of what my students should focus on going forward. It's also a great way to highlight the most important aspects in action points from your course to help them to take action. Now, I also like to provide a lesson or even a couple of lessons on the next steps. So this could be a way to tell my students about the other courses that I have on related topics that they can take Next to continue their journey. E.g. at the end of this course, I will discuss the marketing of your course and how email funnels can be a great way to sell your course. But this course obviously isn't about email marketing. It's already long enough as it is. But I do have another entire course on email marketing that you can check out when you're ready to start building your audience and send emails about your course to them. So I'd like to end my courses with some thoughts and ideas for the next steps to let them know what the possible next steps are and how they can take them. Remember that this is a journey that you're taking them on, right? Okay, so that is the beginning and the end. The middle part is really going to be up to you because that's gonna be more closely related to exactly what you're teaching. When you're working on your outline, start with a major headlines and sections that you want to have. Then start drilling down on the main points that you want to cover in each section. This is one you can start adding subheadings within each section. I also add colors to my outline because I'm pretty type a and I like to keep mine organized and looking really nice. And that's pretty much it. Y'all, your outline can be subject to change. So nums when you start writing, you'll realize other things that you want to include or you'll rearrange certain lesson titles and whatnot. That's why I personally start writing straight from my outline. This is as simple as starting to add bullet points and important points that you want to cover within each lesson. You can make notes when you want to add placeholders for images or other supplemental information or materials. Now, whenever you do this, I recommend making a copy of your main outline with your sections and lesson titles. So that way you always have a high level overview of what you're saying is that you can refer back to it later. Then you want to work from that copy when you start filling it in with more information. Now if you want to create presentations for your lessons, you can start out writing your individual slides if you want to. Or you can actually script out your entire course, which is what I'm going to talk about in the next lesson. To script or not to script. That is the question. 12. To Script or Not to Script: Hey, there, Let's talk about whether or not you should be scripting your course. By script, I literally mean it's scripting out every single word that you're going to say. It might sound like a lot, but it's actually pretty great way to make sure that you say everything that you want to say and you don't leave anything out. It can also help you avoid the inevitable, ums and pauses when you forget to say what you wanted to say or you're trying to think of something else to say. But it's not for everybody and it's not for every course. I will tell you that this course that you're watching right now is completely scripted as all of my courses on this platform are. I've personally found that it works out much better for me and I think that a lot of my courses turn out better because of it. I've also found that it worked out a lot better when I was recording episodes for my podcast. But my previous four or five other courses, they sell on other platforms. None of those are scripted. So let me go over some of the pros and cons here and help you decide what might be right for you. First, let's talk about not scripting, since that's how I first started. I think that this makes the most sense when you have a presentation style course and you don't have your face on camera. That's because your most important talking points are already on the slides for you. You already have your prompts. So it's a lot easier to teach with those cues. It can also sound a lot better because you're speaking more naturally and not reading from a script. It unfortunately probably doesn't save you a whole lot of time because the slides themselves will also take you quite a bit of time to create, but that's okay. Okay, now, let's talk about scripting. I think this makes the most sense if you're planning to talk right into the camera, like I'm doing right now. I wasn't planning on scripting out the entirety of my courses, but let me tell you something. The moment that that camera button is pressed on, every single thought I had in my head flew right out. It's a lot harder to talk into the camera in a natural and conversational way with absolutely no talking points are clues or cues. If you want to go ahead and try it, may the force be with you. It did not work out for me. And like I said, perhaps the biggest pro to scripting out your courses is that you tend to eliminate the ums and mistakes and other pauses. You've written what you want to say ahead of time and you already know that it flows very nicely. It can also mean that you say things in a much better way because you've had the time to write it out exactly as you want to say it. But a downside of this is that you can also easily sound very scripted. I've tried to include a few jokes here and there, but I really don't think that I come out as funny when I'm scripted. Or maybe there's just not that funny anyway. But it's just not quite as natural or conversational as you can imagine. But still, even despite that, I found that it's the only way for me to personally go with the kind of courses that I record that you're seeing right now. The other thing is when you, whether you script or not, but especially if you script, you'll need to overemphasize everything that you say when you present it. So this is the really weird thing about being on camera is that we tend to sound way more monotone that when we actually speak outside of the camera, It's super weird, but it's 100% true. I found that to be the case even with my podcast episodes as well. And know that my business partner actually used to shout some times when he would create his YouTube videos because it was the only way for him to really sound positive and entertaining through the camera. I know that when my brother records his videos, they actually started sweating with the emphasis whenever he's recording. So just keep all of this, all of this in mind when you are recording. It's even more important if you're scripting your content because it's already going to sound a bit less natural than when you're just speaking from your mind. Now it's time to work on the content portion of your course. Now if you are scripting, that means starting to write out a script for every single lesson. If you're not scripting, that means that it's time to create those presentations or whatever other source material that you're going to use to present each lesson. Before we get too far along in this process, makes sure to watch next couple of lessons because I'm going to share some tips with you on how to find the right voice when you record how to be competent, because of lack of competence, can create mental blocks and procrastination during this process. I'll also talk about imposter syndrome and a really important perspective that you should consider using when you're speaking to your students. All of that is up next before we actually start recording your course. 13. Evergreen Course Content: Hey there something else I wanted to cover related to the course content before you start recording is to think about keeping your course content as evergreen as possible. What I mean by this is simply structuring it in a way that it won't have to be updated very often. This is gonna be a lot more important in some niches than others. E.g. if things change pretty often in the online business, financial and health fields, anything related to technology as well, things like online gaming. One thing I've learned from creating several courses is that updating them is a pain. It's time-consuming and annoying, especially when you rather spend your time creating new content or new courses. When I first started, I used to have a long in-depth tutorials on different software and social media. But software and algorithms change often aren't over time. As I had to make a lot of updates to my courses that there is really a right way or wrong way to do this. One major change I've made is that I talk more about the process and a strategy in my courses now and I link supplemental resources to my courses for my students to check out my specific recommendations. I used to talk about those specific recommendations right in my video. But then want to software increase their price or removed a free trial or free plan, or just redesign their platform. My video would be completely outdated. There's nothing worse than outdated content as a course creator, people could leave you bad reviews. They might not buy your other additional courses. Or in my case, I simply just perceived too many customer service emails more than I would like. That's why throughout my courses, you'll often hear me referring back to my Resources Guide on my website. That's the one location that I have for all of my recommendations and I change it anytime my recommendations change. But I don't have to then update every single one of my videos that it refers to as well. The second major changes I've made since those early days that I tried to avoid using specific dates in my lessons. So whether that is in what I'm saying to you, or even the screenshots or graphics that I share. I think this also matters in some niches more than others. But having reminder that content is a few years old could also make your students feel like the course is a bit dated. Now forget the fact that the information may still be completely relevant and useful. It's just honestly, it's similar to when people are reading articles on Google. No one wants to read an article written five years ago when they have the option to read an article written within the past year, everyone wants the most updated and relevant information as possible. So you want your content to look and feel like this as well. Avoid mentioning specific dates when you can and instead just speak in general terms. Perhaps say that you've been doing something for years, but that but you don't generally need to be more specific than that or specify the exact year that you started something. Now, unless this actually matters in your particular niche or topic, if it is relevant and important, make sure that you do share it. I'm sure that those cases exist as well, but just always keep these things in mind. Try to keep your content as up-to-date as possible. And having that in mind from the beginning will help you make sure that you have to update the least amount of times as possible in the future. 14. Teach with Confidence: Hey there, I hope that you're getting excited as you're starting to create the bulk content of your course. I want to share a few perspective tips for you here, delta creation process and hopefully just make it a little bit easier. Remember how I mentioned before that my first course took me about three months and now I pump up courses in about three weeks. Well, do you know what the main factor in this quick turnaround time is? I mean, one of course is that I already know what I'm doing. I don't have to make as many decisions about how I'm going to present the information, stylet and all of that. But another major factor is simply confidence. I know what I'm teaching well and I know how to teach it. My students have already had a lot of success and I don't have as much fear about presenting as I used to. I used to have imposter syndrome pretty bad. I'm sure you've heard of it, but in case you haven't, it's simply a term to identify the feeling of uncertainty and doubt that surrounds creators. You aren't sure if people are going to like it. You weren't sure if you're going to sound good or if you're going to look good, you weren't sure if anyone is going to buy this and maybe you're just wasting your time, you don't know what really makes you qualified to teach others or teach others how to do something. I'm sure you feel some or all of these to some extent, even if you aren't 100% conscious of it. I think everyone feels that he is to some extent. Otherwise you're just a robot. And I don't honestly also don't think that this ever completely goes away even after I found a lot of success and had tens of thousands of people in my audience begging me to start a podcast. I still had so much trepidation about starting. I've never honestly been a natural on camera or microphone and it takes a lot of work for me to get into that headspace. But I did it because it was what my audience wanted and needed from me. One of the biggest ways to defeat impostor syndrome or to push it out of your mind, is simply to have the confidence that you can do this and be successful. And sometimes it's only does come after you actually find that success. That certainly helps a lot. And I guess that's what they mean when they say fake it till you make it right for now, all I can tell you is that you need to do your best to be confident. Derive that competence from the fact that anyone can do this. All of you are doing, you are doing here is sharing your thoughts and experiences and opinions with others. That's it. Don't try to sound like an expert or a professional or someone who already has everything figured out. Be honest with your audience about your experiences and your struggles, and speak and share this information as naturally as you can, just be honest. It's also what it's going to set you aside from everyone else teaching courses on similar topics. No one can share your experiences and your story. They are yours and yours alone. So just be honest and be yourself. It also makes this so much easier to do to put yourself out there and this way and record these lessons. You don't have to pretend to be anybody else. So what if you mess up or you make mistakes? You can always update your course later on. You aren't perfect and people don't want to learn from perfect people. They want to learn from someone real. This is what is going to help you build trust with your students and make them want to learn from you. It's also is going to help them make them feel like what they're trying to do is attainable. Now this is what I call an AB perspective, and I'm going to dive deeper into that in the next lesson. 15. A/B Perspective: Okay, So this is actually a bonus lesson straight from my content writing class. That was where he first started talking about this concepts. But I've actually included it in almost all of my courses just because it's so applicable in so many aspects of business. From writing to speaking, to marketing and all forms of communication in your business. Okay, So this is one of my biggest marketing secrets that I want to share with you right now. It's something that I discovered on my journey towards connecting better with my audience, marketing better and selling butter. It's a concept that I call the AB perspective. I'm going to illustrate this first with an example of how it applies to weight-loss because that's a niche that I have personal experience in. So your clients and your readers are at a point a, they haven't fixed their problems yet. There's still trying to lose weight and they're not succeeding. They often don't know why they can't succeed or don't understand the full picture. They're overweight. You are at a point B, you have fixed your problems. You've lost the weight and you've succeeded. You also most likely know why you succeeded and you do understand the full picture. You were no longer overweight. Now you can share before and after photos of yourself and some people are going to find that very inspirational. And often it's necessary for credibility. But it will do little more than just give them some brief inspiration that will probably wear off pretty quickly. It's not super relatable because they're still overweight. They can imagine what that might feel like when they've reached that goal, but they can't truly feel anything about it. So what are they feeling? Well, chances are that you know this because you've been in their shoes in the past. What did you feel when you were overweight and nothing was working? That is the point, a perspective. If you can share those personal thoughts, opinions, feelings, stories, struggles, and experiences in that point, a perspective as it applies to them. That is what is really going to hook them. You are connecting to how they feel right now and showing them the path out towards the point b perspective. Try to put things into this point a perspective as much as possible. This applies to so many aspects of your business communications, including your articles, your other content, your emails, your products, your sales pages. And honestly, really every other place where marketing applies, relate ability is everything is so important that you are relatable in your courses. People need that motivation and inspiration, but they also need to know that what they are trying to do is attainable. And the more relatable that you can be, the more that they are going to be able to feel that what they're trying to accomplish is within their reach. 16. Record Course Lessons: Okay, Now that I have hopefully set the stage a bit for how to structure your course and provided some tips and things for you to keep in mind on how to present and speak. Its time. It is time to actually record. I'll admit that this is my least favorite part about creating courses. Even when I scraped my courses, I still make a lot of mistakes when recording. I talked too fast, I stumble over my words and I have to start again. Talking in front of the camera is a weirdly nerve wracking feeling, even when there's actually no one behind the camera. In this lesson, I'm going to give you some tips on recording and I'll talk about what kind of equipment that you should consider for when you're recording. Now let's talk about that equipment first. If you're planning on creating multiple courses or at some point getting into YouTube or podcasting. One thing that you can and should invest in is a good microphone. Now the one that I have is $120 or 130 from Amazon, probably a bit more than you want to spend if you aren't sure how serious you are. But you can also get a great microphone for 40 or 50 bucks to if that's within your budget, I will link my microphone and a couple of other cheaper alternatives in the resources guide for the course, which is linked below this video. In that guide, you're going to find all the resources, software, equipment, and everything that I recommend in this course. And a lot of what I'll talk about in this lesson. Now, if a good quality microphone isn't in your budget, that's totally okay too. First several courses that I created were all recorded with my Apple headphones. And to be honest, they work just fine. Now the audio quality definitely wasn't as great. But if your content is really great, people probably won't mind. But I will say that I needed a better microphone now anyway, because my apartment ceiling is very high and it echoes very badly. This is also why I keep my microphone so close to my face rather than speaking backwards like this. Now a good microphone like this one that helps me to eliminate background noise and echoes. Another important factor in deciding whether or not you need any external equipment is how you record your lessons. So I think it's a cheaper pair of plug-in headphones works better. You're only doing voiceovers like presentations because people don't see your face anyway, when you're presenting, like I am now, obviously plug-in headphones just wouldn't look as great. The other thing is, it probably wouldn't work logistically because you'd have to be too far away from your recording advice and device unless you have a microphone ahead of you. So that brings us to the second piece of necessary equipment, which is what you're recording on. Now if you're doing a voice-over presentations tau, your computer or laptop is probably going to be just fine. I used to use my Apple headphones with my laptop screen recorder and it works just great. But if you're recording your face just like I am, your computer probably isn't going to cut it because the front camera or webcam might not be good enough. Maybe you can try it, but what I just use is my iPhone. I actually had this microphone plugged directly into my phone on a really long cable attached through a ring light holder that I bought on Amazon verse 12 bucks. It works really great for me because I can adjust the height of where I need my camera. And the fact that it's a ring light means they also have extra lighting if I need it. Now I use the front-facing camera on my iPhone 11. And while it's not as good as the camera on the back, I also need it set up this way because I use my phone as a teleprompter, my phone screen. I script out my entire course and then I put those scripts into a free teleprompter app on my phone, set the text large enough to read it and displays on the left side, right next to the camera. I'm actually looking just barely to the right of my camera. But you can't tell because the Texas so close to the camera anyway. Now if you have a DSLR camera or a better video recording device, you'll want to use that because it's probably better than a front-facing iPhone camera. Now, that's what my brother uses a DSLR because he has that equipment already as a photographer and videographer. But most phone cameras these days are actually pretty great if you have a newer phone. Now, another key factor to good camera quality, regardless of what device that you use, is good lighting. If you're lighting isn't great, your video quality also is not gonna be very good. That brings us to our staging setup. I will tell you right now that this is not as glamorous as everyone makes it look. The most important part about your recording setup is your lighting. It impacts your video quality so much. So if you have great lighting, especially natural lighting, which is always best, you can usually get away with recording on a smartphone. Now, another downside of my apartment and why I'm recording in this particular spot is because I'm in front of a huge window. So I have light on one side of my face. I don't have great natural lighting in this apartment despite having huge windows because there are buildings outside that unfortunately block the sunlight. All of my other courses were actually recorded it in my living room, but it just wasn't ever as bright as I want it to be. So I decided to change it up in this course because my lighting is actually a little bit better in my bedroom. And the number one most important thing is to aim for great lighting and then try to move your furniture to everything else around that spot. So e.g. this is my kitchen table and my bed is right here next to me. Am I working desk is actually right there behind me, but I had to rearrange a bunch of furniture in here and bring in another table into my bedroom just to make this work. Rearranging plants around. You can also help just to make things look great. Now if you don't have good lighting, you can also purchase some lighting equipment pretty inexpensively from Amazon. I will link the cheap ring light that I use and the teleprompter app and everything else that I recommended in the resources guides that you can make sure check that out. I'll also link the software that I use to record videos on my computer. It's free to record, and I'll provide free options for both Windows and Mac. Now let's talk about a few recording tips before I wrap this lesson up. So whether I'm recording with scripts or not, I always try to go over my lessons first before I'm recording. I read over the scripts or the presentations I've created to make sure that I've got the right flow and they won't forget anything when I'm recording. When you're actually recording, Don't worry about it getting everything perfect in one go. I used to try to record my entire lesson or presentation in one go without any mistakes. And sometimes it would take me several times to do this. Now that I have more experience if I make a mistake when I'm doing voiceover presentations or even scripting like this. I just paused and then I keep going and then I edit that out during the edit process, editing process, it's not quite that easy when you're reading from a teleprompter app because the teleprompter just keep scrolling. If you mess up, I usually have to try to say a sentence again if I mess it up, but if I mess up a lot, I usually have to stop the recording. But if I've already made it a couple of minutes in, I just start recording where I left off and then I mash up those two videos together when I met when I'm editing. I'll also talk more about that in the lesson on editing your videos. But you get the idea. Don't try to be perfect here. It'll just waste more time. Another tip is to do as much recording as you can in one go and try to knock it out over consecutive days or even one day, if you can. It takes a bit to set up all this equipment and find a place that is quiet or a place that looks good in your apartment. My setup here certainly isn't ideal, but my apartment isn't isn't that large and this is the best I can do. Well, and moving here, it can take a few tries to really get this right and to get into your zone, it will save you a lot of time if you block out a few hours for this each day and just tackle it until it's done. Also makes sure to listen to your videos even a little bit after you record, just to make sure that they sound okay and that you have the right tone of voice. And that brings me back to what I mentioned before about the over-emphasis. You would be shocked at how much you have to emphasize and how big you have to smile. Justice seem like a normal, non-zero Killer, kind of human on-camera. Smile and over-emphasize on the camera. Trust me, even if you're doing a voiceover presentation, you will sound very monotone if you don't. The last thing that I want to leave you on is this. Don't worry too much about looking perfect on camera. I do wish that I had a better setup here. I look like I have dinosaur arms because of the height of my table. But it would look Mega tacky if I put a big box on my microphone to raise it up to my full height. I have to make my microphone right in front my face or else it echoes too badly. But honestly, I'm not a professional videographer, even with years of experience creating courses. And that's part of my point. You don't have to be. I have taught myself how to record and edit just like you're doing now. But I'm not the most professional still. And that's okay. You don't have to be and you can always improve your video's over time. I didn't start out adding cool graphics and animations to my videos. I didn't know how to do that. I just learned that in the last few months when I started working on this latest round of courses. For years, I just did voiceover presentation style and many people still do that. But over time, I did invest more time into learning new skills in this industry. So forget perfection, but do put in some effort for a nice setup, whether that is on camera or on your presentations. And don't forget that we can always clean up any mistakes in our editing process, which is what we're going to talk about in the next lesson. 17. Edit Course Videos: Hey, there, you made it. I know that every time I reached this part of the process, even now, I let out a huge breath of relief. The hard part is done. The recording is definitely my least favorite part of this. And when I reach the editing process, I really just feel like I'm in the homestretch. You edit and you finalize and then you publish. But even though we are in the homestretch, the editing is actually the longest part of the process. So unless you're awesome at recording videos, it's gonna take you a lot longer to edit a video than it will to record it. You have to go through every word and every sentence and stop and start and remove your mistakes, your pauses, your arms, et cetera. But despite that, I do still find this part of the process more enjoyable than recording personally. So let's talk in this video about how to edit your videos. Now, if you have a presentation voice-over style, this is probably gonna be a lot easier and faster. You probably won't be adding any graphics or animations are not many. You really just have to edit out your mistakes. Now. You don't have to edit out every single arm and perhaps depends on how many ohms that you say. And maybe it's not. Right. I have a bad habit of saying, right. To somehow confirm my thoughts on camera, It's my audience. Somebody will use filler words like like my business partner had a really bad habit of that and I would have to edit it so many times out of his videos. So pay attention to these, the overuse of these filler words and try to work on saying them a little bit less or it just editing them out. And you don't have to add up every single ones. Sometimes it can help you. So I'm just a little bit more natural if you leave some in. So if you're editing a voiceover presentation, that's probably all you really have to worry about along with any other obvious speaking mistakes. But if you're editing a video like this and you want to add some additional graphics or anything else to this video, this is probably going to take you a lot longer. One thing that I personally do to speed up this process is to use the same graphics and animations in most of my videos. I use the same brand, colors, fonts, transitions. I have all of these graphics animation is actually just saved in the software so I can quickly click them to add them to my videos. Now my brother is amazing and video editing. He's created some pretty spectacular videos. Look a lot better than mine. And he can create a lot more advanced graphics animations than I can. But I've personally found that this is what works for me and it gives me professional looking videos without spending weeks learning more advanced software or spending weeks more in the editing process. Now perhaps that will be the next stage from me at some point, I don't know. I really can't teach you right now how to use the exact software that I use and add all of these different graphics animations because it would take hours. That would be an entirely separate course on its own. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to link the software that I use to edit my videos in my resources guide linked below this video. I'm also going to link some YouTube videos for you to watch to help you just get the ropes of your video editing software. Because that's honestly how I learned to do this. I honestly just watched two or three videos on this software before I started playing around with it and actually just editing my first video. Now the software that I use to edit my videos does cost money. It was recommended to me by another friend who also does courses, and I find it super easy to use. There's definitely a lot smaller of a learning curve for the software that I use compared to a bigger software like Adobe Premiere Pro, which has more customization, but it's a lot harder to use. So it's still capable of helping you create some awesome videos. Before I use this particular software, actually just use free software. So I'm going to link what I use now as well as some free alternatives in that Resources Guide. And remember you all, if you don't have any video editing experience whatsoever, there is gonna be a small learning curve here, but that's okay. Just have some patients with it when you're first getting started and play around with it until you get the hang of it. It took me twice as long to edit my first few videos when I was first learning how to use this software. But now I can fly through it because I know it very well. So do put in that time to learn it in the beginning. And note that it will get much easier and much faster over time. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about creating thumbnails for your videos and some other images for your course. Some of this is also going to be helpful for when you're editing. So make sure to move on to that next lesson before getting too far into the editing process. 18. Course Cover and Other Images: Okay, let's talk about how to create images for your course. In the very least, you are going to need a cover image to showcase your course. Thumbnails for each video that showed up before a lesson is played. Now this isn't always 100% necessary depending on what platform that you're uploading your course to. And also you're going to need some images to use in your lessons, most likely depending on how your editing. All of the graphics and images that you see in my videos were created and then add it to my video editing software. So let's talk about those first. Since we've been, since we've been discussing how to edit your videos. Now I use Canva to create my images, but I do use the pro version because it allows you to save images without a background or rather a transparent background it's called. Now this is necessary for the types of images that you're going to create for your lessons. But if you don't want to keep paying for the pro version, you can always send up for a free trial and maybe pay for a month or two. It's a low price and then just cancel it when you're finished with your course. I've personally been paying for the service for years because I use it almost every single day in many aspects of my business. The pro version also gives you access to over 75 million images, graphics, audio clips, video clips and so much more. So I will link a free trial for that pro version in my resources guide. The free version is also really great. It just doesn't provide some of the extras that I personally feel are necessary to have the best graphics in your videos. And Canva is also what I used to create the thumbnails for my videos. And these don't need a transparent background, so the free version is just fine. I think thumbnails look really nice and professional and I have them in all my courses. Now, they're usually very simple and just have the title of my lesson on them. Then lastly, let's talk about your cover image. This is also going to be your class project for this class because this is the best representation of your course that you can share. So please do upload a copy of your course covered to the class projects. Once you're done with it, I'd be super happy to critique it and give you just some personal feedback on it. So these are my cover images for my courses as of the time that I'm recording this lesson, they may or may not still look like this because I do change them from time to time to see if any of these changes provides for additional clicks or conversions. And you can see that I kept mine all very similar and with the same theme. This is another iteration of the same courses that I've used as well. I personally prefer how these look a bit better when they're all side-by-side next to each other because they're a bit different. But I prefer this individual design better at my courses are usually being found individually due to search terms on the platform. So that's why I'm using this design for now. Now, your cover images are obviously really important, especially if you're offering your course up on a platform like this. Because your cover image is going to need to stand out among a sea of other cover images. I personally like to use my face on mine because my face is also in my lessons. I think that it makes them more personal and unique. Some of the other courses images just look a bit generic and too much like stock photos in my opinion, it's just not personally my desired look, but everyone has their own style. So I encourage you to find and design your own. Now when I'm designing my covers, I generally create multiple versions of one cover and then I decide which one I like best or actually test out different versions. As I explained before, the design of your cover is going to boil down to your personal style and preferences. A highly recommend scanning through other covers in your niche to get ideas about what other successful people are doing. Or just to generally get some inspiration and ideas when you design your own. I also create all of my cover images and Canada as well. So do not forget to upload yours when you're finished and you can even share a couple of you aren't sure which designed to go with and I'd be super happy to give you some feedback on it. You can also use Canva to create any other images or anything else you might need for your sales page, your website, your logo, and honestly so many more things. So I'll link that free trial in my resources guide. In the next lesson, we'll talk about just that every source has guide or any other supplemental material or resources that you want to include in your course. 19. Links and Other Resources: Hey there, We're starting to wrap things up with your course now, by this point, hopefully you're working through creating, recording, and editing your lessons. In this lesson, I want to talk about adding links and resources and other supplemental materials to your course. Sometimes you might want to share additional content or resources. E.g. some health focus creators recommend certain supplements to their students. Some plant enthusiasts might have certain tools that they discuss or want to recommend to their audience as well. In my case, I recommend certain software and other resources that I use that can be really helpful for my students to also have the same success and to keep my content as evergreen as possible. Like I mentioned earlier on in the course, I generally avoid sharing these specific recommendations within my videos themselves. On purpose, my recommendations are subject to change and I've been doing this long enough to know that they will change. At some point, I try to find free options for my students whenever possible, and cost-effective, cost-effective options when free options don't exist. But sometimes software company has removed their free plan or they increase their prices, or they changed their features substantially. Sometimes there's just a newer or more cost-effective competitor that enters the market and a switch to them because they're cheaper and or better. I strive to only recommend what I personally use or have used and what I think is best for my audience. And those recommendations do change from time to time. So rather than having to update to every single video when something like this changes, I like to change my recommendations on my linked resources. So that way I just have one place and one easy update. So long story short, if you want to include supplemental resources within your course, consider compiling a list of resources, adding it to your website, and then linking that resource list in your course whenever you talk about it, sometimes you can include links to products or recommendations directly below your video, but that does depend on what platform that you're using when you're offering your courses on bigger marketplace platforms like this, you're generally quite limited on how and where you can share links because the marketplace wants to keep users on their platform as much as possible. But for my courses that I sell outside of marketplaces, I do link my resources directly below the video. So take a look at my resources guide for this class when you get a chance, just so you can get an idea of what you can do here. Now let's talk about other kinds of resources. Sometimes it's nice to include other helpful resources for your students to help them achieve success faster. E.g. you can create worksheets or planners to supplement the material in your course. Now most people probably aren't going to sit here and download these and fill them out. But I have actually had some students do this before. If anything, it's a good idea to do this because it raises the perceived value of your course and it can really give you a good marketing point on your sales page for your course. Now, one specific example here is that I had a cheat sheet that I created for my weight-loss program. So this weight-loss program in it, the diet was pretty restrictive and it was discussed in a larger e-book. So I created a separate cheatsheet and included a full list of food ingredients that were approved or not approved for this diet. I've also created a workout cards to supplement a yoga program. People like bonuses like these because they can be easily accessed on a phone when they need them. In my content creating course, I included a downloadable Excel template for content pointing that my students can use to plan out their article content. So adding any extra bonuses or supplemental material is totally optional, but can be really helpful. I just think that's a really easy way to go the extra mile and raise that perceived value because that never hurts. In the next lesson, let's talk about uploading and finalizing your content. 20. Host and Upload Your Course: Hey, it's time to decide where you're going to host your courses that you can start uploading your content and get everything published and ready to go. So I already mentioned the pros and cons of marketplace platforms versus selling your own early on, earlier on in this course. So hopefully you already have an idea of which way you want to go. By the way you can also do both. You can actually host your course with a software that provides sales pages, checkout pages, and handles the entire membership area. You can also offer it your course on a platform that will drive additional traffic to it. I have seen some people do this, but do be careful about how you price your course. So some people sell their courses for more money on their own websites with their own platforms and then less on these marketplaces. But you could anger some customers this way if they find out that your courses are available for cheaper elsewhere. So either way decided wary that you want to share your course and then it's gonna be time to start uploading your content. Now, this can take awhile because video files tend to be pretty large. So while you're waiting, you can also write out a short description of your course and what people can really expect to learn in it. So create a few bullet points on what they will learn and you can add this to your course description later on. Remember that this is another chance to advertise those keywords that you chose earlier. And it's another great way to help your course get found in search. So after your content is finished, uploading and make sure to upload your thumbnails to each lesson. It's now time to fill out any other information about your course, including your title, your headline, your description, your learning objectives, and any other necessary information that your course requires. Makes sure to add your cover image and upload any other links or necessary resources. Once you have everything uploaded is timed to hit that publish or submit button and make your course live. Congrats to all, this is a really great feeling. I know that I personally still get super excited every time I finish a course. It's just such a great sense of accomplishment and it can be a really good feeling knowing that you've invested time into creating something awesome for others that will also hopefully help you out financially as well. So once your courses published, make sure to watch a few lessons just to make sure everything looks good. Check it over, just make sure everything is in the right place. Now it's time to get visitors to your course, and that's what we're going to start talking about in the next lesson. 21. Create a Landing Page : Hey, there is time to start thinking about how you're going to advertise and promote your course. One option that you have is to create a landing page for your course. A page that you can share with your audience that you can also link to your website. Or landing page is really just a high converting page that you can send traffic to. So if you're hosting your course on a marketplace platform like this, you definitely don't have to create a landing page and you might not want to. It's really not necessary because you probably just want to direct traffic straight to this platform. But if you were to sell your course on your own, then you do want to create a landing page or a sales page where you can explain more about the course and design it in a way that might convert a bit better. So there's definitely a lot more customizability when it comes to creating landing pages or sales pages. This page is generally going to be created and designed using whatever software that you're using to host your course. But you can also create your own landing page on your website and then simply link the Checkout button to a marketplace platform like this or your course is hosted and can be accessed. So there are definitely a number of different ways that you can do this here and that you can build this landing page just depending on how you're selling it. So my recommendations on the various ways that you can do this are located in my resources guide it linked below this video. You can figure out which option is best for you or whether or not you even want to create a landing page in the first place. But if you are building a landing page and you're going to link your checkout buttons to a marketplace platform like this, then the easiest option is just gonna be to create a landing page on your website, just using whatever theme or software that you already have. And you'll need to make sure that you have a good and customizable theme for this one that allows you to create columns, place elements exactly where you want them, add images where you want them, et cetera. Now the second option is if you're going to sell your course on your own, then you would use whatever sales page builder comes with a software that you're using to host and sell your course. As I mentioned earlier in this course, this software usually isn't free. It definitely costs money to make money usually. But hopefully you can make enough sales that it pays for itself and it's still very necessary when you're selling on your own. You need a platform that's going to host your courses, manage your logins, your access, handle your sales transactions. And lastly, you'll want to quickly cover what you should include in your landing page if you're gonna build one. Here is the basic setup. Number one is you're going to start with a big bold title or headline. This could be your course title or headline, or you could just also rephrase as a question. Are you ready to, are you struggling with? And then mentioned the problem that they are going to overcome with your course. Introduce yourself and your background and why you're qualified to help them. From here, you can talk a little bit more about the problem. Briefly acknowledge some of the most common ways to tackle the problem that they've likely heard before and probably haven't been working out for them. Or some of the common complaints or problems along the way. Then you can briefly explain why your approach is different. A couple other things I like to add here, our a brief peek inside. This can be screenshots of whatever is inside your course, or just an organized listing of exactly what they'll get. You can list the main sections or modules included in your course or even include a full course curriculum. If you're selling your courses on your own, adding some kind of bonus is always a good idea to incentivize people to purchase. But that's usually only possible if you're selling on your own. Now, you can customize this page in any way that you want and you should certainly add some more info than I've used in my example. But these are all the most basic and important items that I make sure to include on my sales pages. Again, it makes sure to check out those resources because I'm going to provide some links to my recommendations on how to set all this up and also this sample landing page for you to check out. Now, in the next lesson, we're going to talk more about promoting this landing page. 22. Promotion and Marketing: Hey there. So now that you've finished your course and your landing page, if that's applicable to you, it's time to think about getting people to it. How do you get people in the door? And how do you get more eyeballs on your course? Honestly, this is can be one of the hardest parts about running a business, just getting people in the door. But maybe if you're here, you already have that. And if so props to you. This lesson actually isn't gonna be necessarily about driving traffic specifically, because that's an entire several courses on its own depending on what your platform is. But I do want to talk about the type of content that you can create on any platform to drum up curiosity and interest in your course. I call it product focused content, or you could also call it sales focus content, self-centered content. It's really just content designed around educating people more about the problem that they are struggling with. The problem that is also solved in your course. Of course, one of the best ways to sell this course and degenerate that curiosity and interest is to create content about that very subject. Content that draws in targeted people and then presents a solution to them. Now this could be in the form of website articles, YouTube videos, instagram Stories, TikTok videos, podcasts, episodes, et cetera, et cetera. Let's say that we have built a course on how to build your email list. So if this is the case, you can create content about how to build your email list for beginners. Why your e-mail list isn't growing quickly. The five most common mistakes people make when building an email list, or the top five lists, buildings, strategies for beginners and so on and so on. These are all related to the main subject of the course. And the aim of all of them is to, number one, educate your audience more about the problem. So if you can present this in a new light or give them any kind of a-ha moment. But we more likely to trust you and want to learn from you. Now one question I often get here is, how do I know how much content to give away for free? Now obviously, you don't want to give away your biggest secrets in this free content. But you do want to give them enough value that they're going to want more. So a good rule of thumb that I like to use is tell them what to do, but don't tell them exactly how to do it. So this is gonna be more of a high-level overview and your actual course is gonna get into the details on how to implement those strategies, obviously in an organized step-by-step plan. Okay, The second aim is to build trust with them. The best way to do this as providing as much free value as possible upfront. It will make them feel like you're really going to overdeliver and you're paid content and they're going to want to learn more from you. Then the third reason that we create product focus content is of course, to introduce the course the product. So include a small call to action throughout your content, and especially at the end to let them know where and how they can learn more. Don't be overly salesy here, but do try to pique their curiosity. And the more related this content is two-year course, the more targeted those individuals are going to be in, the more likely that they're going to want to buy your course. Aside from that, share your course with your friends and your family if it applies to them. If it doesn't and you'd rather keep that separate from your personal life. I do get that as well. So you can share it with your existing audience if you have one, and if you do have one, you can also include a launch discount if it's applicable to how you're selling your course. To try to also look for some online communities that you can share it with. And this will hopefully help you get some initial traction and your first bit of feedback and reviews. And that's what we're gonna be talking about soon. 23. Email Sales Funnel: Hey, there. So let's continue this discussion about marketing strategies. One of the best ways to effectively sell your course to your audience is with an email list. Your email list is full of engaged and hopefully targeted individuals, people that are already interested in the topic that your course is about. I have an entire course on building an email list and email marketing. So if this is a route that you want to go down and please do check out that other course. It will teach you how to create a lead magnet to get subscribers to your list. And most importantly, how to make sure that they are the right people. People that are actually interested in this specific topic that you're teaching about. Otherwise, there's not much point. It will also teach you exactly what descend to the subscribers to start building trust in a relationship with them and to eventually sell to them. Now an email funnel is simply a series of emails designed to accomplish something. Often selling something, but sometimes just designed to provide some extra value to start building that better relationship with your audience. With an e-mail sales funnel, you can create a series of emails designed to do what we discussed in the last lesson. Number one, to educate them about that problem, of course, you can put some of that product focus content that you created in the last lesson right in front of them. Number two is to start building that trust with them. It's a place that you can start delivering extra value in a more personal way. That's also very targeted to that problem that you're trying to solve. And then number three, of course, is to introduce that product. You can create a more personal space to tell them more about your course, why you think it's right for them. And also answer any common questions that people have or ask them if they have any questions. E-mail list is one of the best ways to build trust with your audience, generate more sales, and also learn more about them, that you can help them better in the future. I have created these funnels for many different courses and e-books and online programs for multiple websites that I've owned with great success. So in the very least, if you're driving your own traffic to your course or website, you should start building an email list and getting subscribers. It will open up the door to so many other opportunities in your business for promoting content and projects and other projects or even businesses that you're working on. So do check out my other course on email marketing. If this is a path that you want to go down. 24. Get Feedback and Reviews: Okay, Now that you've launched your course, how do you help it grow and succeed? One of the first steps to do this is to get some initial feedback and reviews. Now if you have an existing audience, just send out an e-mail or some other form of communication to specifically ask for that feedback or review is a great place to start. You can also ask for feedback privately so that you can make any necessary changes to your course if it's missing anything obvious. Now another way to get feedback, and I need feedback, not reviews is through surveys. Now, this may or may not be an option depending on how you sell your course and what kind of access you have to each of your students, how you can contact them and what you can send them. Some marketplaces restrict this a bit. But when it is possible, surveys are a really great way to get an idea of how your course has performed and what improvements, if any, you need to make. So if people say it was great, but I wish it had this, then you can simply add that missing information to increase sales and make your customers happier. Remember to keep your questions short and easy to answer to increase responses, I usually use multiple-choice questions based on responses that I think they might select. But I also usually include a choice that says other, please explain if they want to share more. So these are some of the common questions that I ask. Have you built your e-mail list yet or have you reached your goal weight yet? This is a good place to ask whether or not they've done the thing that they were supposed to accomplish with your product, whether they have actually solve that problem or not. Then I like to ask why or why not and leave this as an open answers so that they can explain. This is a really great place to find out what is still holding them back. Because sometimes it's a problem with your product that you can fix or help them overcome. You can ask them how your product compared to other similar products that they have taken. I'd like to ask this one just to get a general idea of how well they liked the product compared to others. Then lastly, you can ask them, what are they most interested in next? Now that they have solved this problem or made it through this step, what is next? This is how you can get additional ideas for additional products or content. Now when it comes to asking people to take this survey, remember that their time is very valuable. So I sent out my surveys after a period of time. So they have long enough to work through the course and actually get some results. And then I send them via e-mail, usually a short line, like take this short two-minute surveys that people know that it's a small ask of their time. Remember to say thank you for their time and let them know that you really appreciate the feedback and it will help you to deliver the best content to them. Mini-survey software companies provide a free version like Survey Monkey or type form. Now you're usually limited into what kinds of questions you can ask and how many responses do you can receive? But there are honestly usually plenty sufficient enough for these basic questions that I'm outlining right now. Then lastly, let's talk about reviews and testimonials which are slightly different, but oh, so, so, so important. If you are offering your courses on a larger platform, reviews are really important. Now if you're selling on your own, this might not be as important because you aren't gonna have those five-star comparisons. But even in that case, testimonials and personal reviews of your course are still so important because it is what builds trust out there and encourages other people to take that leaf, that leap of faith when they don't really know you yet. So here are a few different ways that you can get reviews and testimonials for your course. Number one, if you're selling your course on your own, you can offer your audience and extra bonus. Do you have an extra small PDF that is somewhat related to your course that you could offer. Or maybe it's just some kind of small Principal Planner or something like that. Offering this in exchange for a review or testimonial will help to entice people to spend their time to do it. You can also offer them a discount on another course you have or in any other product if you have one that's worked out well for me in the past. Now, number two, another option, but one that I'm not condoning here because it's generally frowned upon in the least and prohibited at most, is to offer them the course for free in exchange for a review. This is a good way to get unauthentic and incentivised reviews. And I just think that is generally bad business. It's often also against platform policies. Many of the larger platforms are pretty good at detecting people that cheat the system. You wouldn't want to rely on reviews on other products in this way that you wish to buy. So let's focus on putting some good karma out there in the world. Then number three, the last option is to ask family and friends to help out. And you have to be careful with this route too, especially if you're still trying to offer this to someone for free in exchange for a review. This route is okay, but only if you're getting honest and authentic purchases and reviews for your content. Then the fourth option is just to ask and ask. Often, put a note at the end of your course that asked for a review. If it's possible, send them an e-mail follow-up or a message a few days later, or even a couple of weeks later, depending on how long your courses. You don't want to wait too long because there'll be less likely to do it. And at the end of the day, they're honestly isn't a whole lot that you can do here except to create the best content possible that it's designed to really help people. And the reviews should come in naturally. But you definitely don't want to wait around and hope that they do come in as well. Take action here when you can. 25. Track Your Progress: Hey there, We're almost to the end. Once you set everything up that we've discussed so far, your course, your promotional strategies. You don't necessarily just want to let it be and hope that your core sells itself. You should pay attention to the data and analytics are available to you to see how many people are taking your course, what kind of feedback they're leaving, how well your keywords are working. So how has your course performing against competitors? Are people watching your entire course or are they dropping off somewhere along the way? Is there a specific drop-off period where you notice that you're losing people. And of course, our people actually getting results from your course. Are there any improvements that you can make to help people get even more results or results faster. Remember that you can also change things like your cover images, your title is your headlines to see if they improve any sales at all. You can edit your emails to see if you get more opens or more clicks. So your goal should be to create the best, most value packed course possible, because that's how to get people to watch every minute, love It's leave reviews and want to take every other course that you offer. Also learned from this experience that your next course and you create, you can do it faster and maybe even make it better for your audience. So just make sure that you're paying attention to every piece of data and analytics that are available to you to assess your performance over time. 26. Key Takeaways: Alright, y'all, we have reached the end of this class and we have covered so much. I hope that I have been able to give you a ton of insight on how to create a successful course from scratch. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'm so excited to see what you come up with and I hope that you'll share the finished product with me, especially that cover image. Don't forget to upload that for your class project. Now I just want to take a moment just to cover a few key takeaways from this course to wrap things up. Number one, remember your goals and your reasons why you are creating this course to help make sure that you deliver the most relevant and valuable content possible. Number to set goals and deadlines along the way to help you finish this project as efficiently as possible. Number three, identify your target market so you know exactly who you're creating this for and sharing it with. Number four, remember how important your title, headline and cover our keywords help you get found and covers help you sell. Number Five, talk in the AB perspective whenever possible or applicable to focus on that relate to your audience. Number six, evaluate carefully how and where you'll share and promote your course. Then number seven, lastly, congratulate yourself on this accomplishment because it's a big deal. It can be a bit scary and definitely invoke some feelings of imposter syndrome. But you will be so glad that you did this and your audience will thank you for it. This process will honestly gets so much easier and more comfortable with every course that you create. Alright? I just want to say a big thank you so much for being here and choosing me to help you on this journey. If you like this course, please consider taking a moment to leave me a review. I really appreciate it from one small business owner to the next. Makes sure to check out to all of my other courses on all things online business and marketing. And I will see you in the next one.