How To Create An Online Course

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Creating An Online Course Doesn't Have  To Be Difficult

We've put together a workflow guide that you can use in order to prepare, film, edit and produce your very first online course! You'll also find links to equipment we use and recommend to help make your online course execution that much easier! At the time of creating this post, we have 76,000+ students enrolled in our 30+ courses: https://www.udemy.com/u/lifeprogressionproject

Yes.. It took a LONG time to create those 30+ courses and even longer to build a student base of more than 76,000.

I'll let you in on one secret though.....

.....

(We started with just one!)

I know you're probably thinking "That's obvious", and you're right, it is. However, realizing that if you just start creating your first course, before you know it, you might find yourself down the road with 31 published courses! That being said, you don't have to create a digital publishing brand like we did with dozens of courses. There are literally thousands of Instructors out there that have successfully created just 1 or 2 courses and it changed their life because of the passive income it brought them.

With that being said, let's dive into how to plan and execute your very first online course!

STEP 1 - Identify your skills

Take a few minutes and write down (Or open up Google docs) any skills you have.

  • What skills do you currently have?
  • Are they technical skills? (Like software coding?)
  • Are they social skills? (Like public speaking?)
  • Are they creative skills? (Like painting? Or playing an instrument?)

Great! Now that you've brainstormed the skills you have; start researching which skills people are interested in the most. Rank each skill you have from 1 being people are least interested and 10 being people are most interested.

STEP 2 - Choose

Now that you have listed and identified your skills, it's almost time to pick one to create a course around, but before you do that, there's one more step. Think to yourself; is it better to create a course around a skill I have that more people are interested in? Which means there will most likely be more people to compete with when it comes time to sell my course? Or, should I pick a course that less people are interested in? Which means there will most likely be less people to compete with when it comes time to sell my course? The latter will have less competition, but that also might make it harder to sell!

Sometimes it's better to take a smaller piece of a larger pie, then a larger piece of a smaller pie.

Keyword there being 'sometimes'. There are so many different categories to choose from and each one has hundreds or thousands of sub categories, or niches. Sometimes picking the niche category with less competition is the way to go.

Again, keyword there being 'sometimes'.

Yea, that wasn't all that helpful, I know.. But I don't know the skills you have and I don't what the competition is in that category, but I do know that I can't always be there to guide you, so it's important to ask yourself those questions; smaller piece of a bigger pie? Bigger piece of a smaller pie?

Depending on your category, or the niche you're thinking about, doing the research and seeing what your competition is like can give you great insight into whether it's a good idea or not.

After you've given it some thought and decided which skill of yours is best to create a course around, lock it in!

STEP 3 - Course Outline

Open up a brand new Google Doc (Google docs are great for organization, all you need is a gmail.com account and you can get access to Google Docs. It's basically a free version of Microsoft Word and it's all online, so it autosaves and you can access it from any computer just by logging into your email account at gmail.com)

It's time to draft up your course outline!

The first thing I always do is write down the title nice and big at the top. Put it in the middle. Bold it. Make it stand out.

Next, create section headings for the main categories of your online course.

For example, if you're create a course about how to play guitar, the first section might be called 'Introduction to the course', the second section might be called 'Tuning Your Guitar', followed by a section called 'Learning Your First Guitar Notes'.

These are all sections; not lessons. The sections are just main categories in your online course. Within them, will be a series of lessons on individual points in that section. For example, in the guitar course mentioned above; in the introduction to the course section, there would be several lessons to get the students ready. These lessons could be as follows:

SECTION 1 - Introduction to the course

  • Lesson 1 - Introduction to your instructor
  • Lesson 2 - Course overview
  • Lesson 3 - Understanding the parts of your guitar
  • Lesson 4 - How to hold your guitar

Once your entire course is outlined from beginning to end as if the student would start in section 1, lesson 1 and continue until the last lesson in the last section, the next thing to do is add notes to each lesson to help you understand the main points for what will be included in that lesson. You can think of this as helpful notes to keep you on track when recording your course. This is incredibly helpful and recommended because it's a lot of work to record a course, so you don't want to waste time trying to remember what you intended to teach in each lesson.

For example:

SECTION 1 - Introduction to the course

  • Lesson 1 - Introduction to your instructor (Welcome student to course, explain my musical training background, explain why you love the guitar, express your excitement for this course and how it will help the student learn to play guitar.)
  • Lesson 2 - Course overview (Discuss each section briefly by explaining the main lessons. Discuss the skills they will learn by the end of the course and how you will get them there.)
  • Lesson 3 - Understanding the parts of your guitar (Discuss the types of guitars as well as the individual pieces of a guitar such as the fret board, strings, tuning knobs, guitar body, guitar neck, guitar head, pick guard.)
  • Lesson 4 - How to hold your guitar (Discuss various ways to properly hold your guitar to maintain proper posture - Standing, sitting, electric, classical, picking, finger picking)

Once you've completed this, you will have your entire course outlined with reminder notes! You've now made it 10 times easier to create a course for yourself! This will be your guide when recording.

STEP 4 - Recording Your Course

Depending on the type of skill you chose to create a course around, you'll need to decide how the course should be recorded.

I will link to a few pieces of software and equipment we use to create our courses as we go.

Typically there are two ways to do this:

  1. Screen capture
  2. Talking head with slides

Screen capture courses would be best suited for technical courses:

We use software on our computer to record the screen. It's called Screenflow - You can get it here on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2BPyE7I - Screenflow allows you to record your mouse movements on your computer as well as the entire computer screen. It will save the screen capture as a video that you can upload or edit later.

Recording high quality audio is very important so we use the Blurbird Yeti USB microphone. You can get it here on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2koTYNc

For editing everything together, we use adobe Premiere Pro CC. It is a subscription based editing program that is the industry standard. You can get a 12 month subscription here on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2BEihKk

If you'd like to learn how to use Premiere Pro CC, we have a course for beginners. Get access here for only $15 USD: https://www.udemy.com/learnpremierepro/?couponCode=APPEDITLPP

Talking head with slides courses would be best suited for non-technical courses:

'Talking head' refers to someone on screen talking to the camera; you can see there face, or full body for example standing and presenting information directly to the camera. From time to time, to add production value to the course which helps increase engagement, it's recommended to include slides with text information or footage to help visualize and better explain what the person on camera is talking about.

Here is a list of the equipment we use to create high quality professional looking online courses:

Panasonic GH5 camera link on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2iXqWnD

Zoom lens for the Panasonic Gh5 Camera: http://amzn.to/2zVTBgc

Or if your budget is limited, the Canon T6i that comes with a kit lens and a bunch of accessories: http://amzn.to/2BIf2Sh

A professional quality lavalier mic (wireless) that you can clip onto your shirt when you're recording (Connects directly into the Panasonic GH5, or the Canon T6i): http://amzn.to/2ktThSY

Or again, if your budget is limited, here's a wired lavalier mic for the Canon T6i that you can clip to your shirt when presenting to camera: http://amzn.to/2jlZ3Tg

A tripod to get your camera up to eye level: http://amzn.to/2j0vmtM

Or, if your budget is limited, here's a less expensive one with limited functionality: http://amzn.to/2BG4iUp

Lighting Kit (I would suggest getting a lighting kit as it will drastically improve the quality of your 'talking head' lessons: http://amzn.to/2ksYzxY

For editing everything together, as mentioned above, we use adobe Premiere Pro CC. It is a subscription based editing program that is the industry standard. You can get a 12 month subscription here on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2BH9NSV

Another option for editing is Vegas Movie Studio: http://amzn.to/2BIhM1Q or, iMovie for Mac (Found in the Appstore).

Again, if you'd like to learn how to edit with Premiere Pro, here's a $15 coupon to our beginners course: https://www.udemy.com/learnpremierepro/?couponCode=APPEDITLPP

Once you have your equipment setup, pick a location that's quiet and one with a nice background, or buy a backdrop system to use like this one: http://amzn.to/2ktL7K4 and then a white backdrop like this: http://amzn.to/2B6G8pQ or a black backdrop: http://amzn.to/2BFzB1V

Next, setup your lighting, put your camera on the tripod in front of you, setup your audio and test to make sure it's working. Have your camera in focus and exposed properly and record your in 1920x1080 (or higher) resolution as that is the standard. Your enthusiasm when presenting the course information to the camera is important! Make sure you're friendly, enthusiastic and fun!

Pro Tip: Setup blankets, towels, carpets or even clothes and place them all around in the room you will be recording in. This will remove echo in your recordings and make the audio much better. (Hard material bounces sound around, while soft material absorbs.)

With your Google doc notes on a computer near by, or a printed version of your notes, refer to them after each lesson that you record to make sure you're on track and haven't skipped anything. Once you're all done recording, you aren't actually done! You will now need to record a few minutes of you talking about the course and what it offers. This will be used as a promotional video to help sell the course. Talk about the benefits of taking the course, talk about why you're the perfect teacher to teach the course, talk about what the course offers and what the student will be able to do after completing the course. Again, be friendly, enthusiastic and fun because this is the video that will most likely help the student make the decision to if they want to buy the course or not.

If you are doing a screen capture course, I would still recommend having your Promo and first lecture include talking head content as it will increase engagement and enrolments in the course drastically!

STEP 5 - Editing Your Course

After you have successfully recorded all of the course content, you're now ready to start editing! (Although, there is no rule. If you'd rather record bits of the course, edit some, then record more, go for it!)

As mentioned above, we use the industry standard editing software called Adobe Premiere Pro. You can get a 12 month subscription here off of Amazon: http://amzn.to/2BEihKk And here's the Premiere Pro for beginners course coupon again: https://www.udemy.com/learnpremierepro/?couponCode=APPEDITLPP

Import all of your footage into your editing program and start compiling it all together. I would start by making sequences for each lesson and title them so that they match the lesson name. This will keep organization when editing. After you have cut out all the parts you don't need in the course and edited together all the great content, make sure the audio levels are high enough, include some pictures, or footage to help tell the story from time to time, or place slides with text information. The last step before exporting your final videos is to edit together the promo video for the course.

Include royalty free licensed music in your promo video (So that you are legally allowed to sell the course with the music.) We use Audiojungle to purchase our licensed music tracks: https://audiojungle.net

Pro Tip: Spend a lot of time on the promo video, include images, footage, text graphics on screen, slides and any other visual element you can to help make an engaging promotional video, the better it is, the better the course will sell.

Export all of the videos and compress them using handbrake: https://handbrake.fr (This will make the file size as small as possible without sacrificing the visual quality, which will decrease your upload time when it comes time to upload your videos.)

STEP 6 - Choose A Platform To Sell Your Courses On and Publish it!

Once you have all of your course content ready to go. You'll need to decide on a price you want to sell your course at. You'll also need to decide where to sell your course. Most people choose Udemy because they help market your course for a cut of revenue and they make the process pretty easy. They do have quality standards so if your course isn't up to par, you might be better off trying to sell it yourself off of your website using a hosting platform like Teachables, or Thinkific.

Share your newly published course link on facebook, twitter, instagram, everywhere! If you have a website, make a blog post about it, if you have a youtube channel, upload your promo video there, give it to friends, e-mail it around! The more people that see it, the higher chance it will sell!

Pro Tip: Give away free coupons to your course to friends and on Facebook coupon pages in order to get some early reviews. Be careful though, if you use Udemy for example, you aren't allowed to ask for 5 star reviews/ratings. Make sure you read the platforms terms of use!

From time to time release discount coupons as a promotion to drive more sales. Also, Facebook ads are a great way to increase sales (When done right with a proper sales funnel).

That's all!

Good luck!

-Will Bartlett

Subscribe to our Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/lifeprogressionproject

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