Now when the majority of people have to spend time indoors the only viable option seems to go online. You have probably seen a lot of invitations about moving your business online.
This article was inspired by the question from a member of the Magical Creators online membership.
As there are so many options it is easy to get overwhelmed, especially, if previously you ran all your workshops face to face.
I am going to show you how you can create a course in one day, though I have to warn you that creating a course is not the main part of the equation, you need to sell it first.
In this post I will focus on how you can put online the course that had demand in the past and all you need is to change the delivery method.
The super easy option is to create a post on Facebook, you can even use the event feature, describe all the benefits and give them a PayPal link to pay for the attendance ticket.
Deliver the course on Zoom.
Benefits:
- minimal technical skills required.
- Easy to deliver, especially if it is a one-day event.
Drawbacks:
A lot of manual work – sending out confirmation emails to people who bought the tickets.
An easy option for a digital course, consisting of several videos or PDF documents.
Choose an email marketing system that offers landing pages like Mailchimp or Aweber.
Create a sales page on their landing page with the option to buy a ticket and they will be automatically added to your list, so it requires minimum manual work.
If your course consists of a series of videos you can upload them on YouTube as unlisted videos or Vimeo (Vimeo requires to have a paid account but is more secure).
Then you put the course description in the emails together with videos and set up an automated campaign. This is especially handy when there is no particular start or end date when people can access the programme at their own pace
Benefits:
- Depending on the quantity of the material you can literally create this course in one day.
- Easy to put together.
- Easy to deliver.
- Minimal financial investment (Aweber offers to try the system for $1 for 30 days)
Drawbacks:
- May create difficulty for participants in consuming the content.
- Some of the emails can get lost in the junk folder.
To prevent this I would recommend to accompany the course with a private Facebook group where you can store the content in the units.
The simplified version
- Just a landing page (can be created on Aweber or Mailchimp if you don’t have a website)
- a Paypal link to accept the payment and
- a Facebook group to deliver the course.
Some may argue that it doesn’t look professionally but if it delivers the value and people get results who cares how it appears. (This is my personal opinion, as they says better done than perfect)
Next step which requires a little bit more investment to set up the course is to use a ready made platform.
You can use Teachable or Thinkific, you just need to follow the instructions and upload the material.
The investment is comparatively low and it looks professionally.
You can still accompany it with a Facebook private group to build a sense of community and be able to address any questions in the group.
The super tool.
Even though I haven’t used Kajabi for myself but I have helped my clients to set up courses on this platform and in my books it is a very sophisticated and easy to use system that allows you to combine email marketing, courses and membership in one place. It may seem pricey but they give you an opportunity to use the system for free for 28 days. Basically, you need to sell the course first and it will cover your expenses for the software.
As you can see creating a course is not complicated. The selling and marketing part may require some additional efforts. I will briefly cover it in my future posts.
If you need help with putting your course online you can book one of my session for a special offer price or you can join The Magical Creators Online Membership and I can help you to create your sales and marketing campaign on weekly group calls.
"Creating Clients out of the Blue"
This course was created in 1 day. It is delivered over 10 days.
Thank you! great article!
Great that you’ve found it useful
Hi Inga,
It’s probably the fifth time I am reading your post, that’s how much I am procrastinating… nevertheless the topic remains very present on my mind. I know it does not have to be perfect to be launched, but I need appropriate lighting for videoing my studio and painting process. I finally did the expense and am waiting for the material to be delivered to me.
Anyhow, I had some questions. As you said, the marketing part is not to be underestimated. Do you plan a post on that sometime soon? What is the ROI of Facebook ads? Is it a good strategy to promote a course on my Instagram account and direct it to my Facebook page should I use Facebook as a platform to deliver my course? In which way is YouTube less secure than Vimeo? If my course is on YouTube that means that anyone can watch it or is there an access code system? The more I think about it the more I am inclined to deliver my course on my website to start with. Maybe a free class as a teaser, about 40 minutes or so, then using the email list amongst others to promote the paying classes. And set up a Facebook group to accompany the course. What do you think? Thank you