How can I make an online course?

You’ve picked a great skill to learn. Online courses are trending these days, and you don’t need a pile of cash to get one up and running.

With more and more online courses, the e-learning industry is becoming stronger for teachers as well. There are many online resources you can use to make a course. And once you’ve made it, factors like your niche, research of your target audience, effort, and time will determine how successful the course is.

Here’s how you can create online courses in six steps:

Step 1: Select the topic for the course. Pretty self-explanatory.

Step 2: Identify your target audience.

Step 3: Create CLOs (Course Learning Outcomes). Don’t forget to use CLOs as the unique selling point for your course. Try your best to be unique and specific. An outcome is good when it’s about doing something difficult with the knowledge in the course. For instance, “Learn to Speak Japanese” is too generic and just about learning, not a learning outcome. “Speak Fluent Japanese With Native Speakers in 6 Months” is far more specific and about doing something with the knowledge you teach.

Step 4: Create the basic course content. You can use any Word Processing software for the text. Later you can convert into pdf or any other web format. You can go with just text and images, but personally I think at least audio, ideally video, is the most appealing format and will get you more students.

Step 5: Assuming your course content is engaging, and you have added sufficient visualizations/video content as well, or have made the entire course in video format (seriously, video content always works the best), you can then do editing and proofreading.

Step 6: Share your course as a demo with people whom you trust to give an honest opinion. Collect their feedback and make changes as per their suggestions. This part shouldn’t take long, so don’t linger on it. Now, your content is ready. Start promoting the course and make it available at online platforms. I recommend selling on your website, not just on third-party platforms like Udemy. Even if you aren’t selling the course, and it’s not for business at all, you’re in better control of your promotion by having your own website to help draw traffic.

You can consider the above steps a check-list whenever you plan to create a new course. As you have not asked about selling, I’ll leave that aspect alone for now. Of course, I can help you with that, if you are making an online course for business purposes and intend to make money off what you teach.

There are many websites, apps, online platforms, etc. where you can sell the courses you create. But it’s important you do it the right way, or you won’t get any sales.

In case you are planning to create online courses for commercial purposes, as you want to make money with them, then I recommend using a specialized method for course development. A method like Perfect Product Creation (PPC) can help create a digital product, like an online course, that practically sells itself.  It also just shows you how to make a great product, so that more people will sign up for your course if it’s free.

Please feel free to reply to me if you have any questions.

Good Luck!

Thanks,

Cleo