Beginners Guide to Creating an Online Course - Monetizing Your Knowledge For Others

Building and launching an online course can seem like the simplest thing in the world until you are smack dab in the middle of trying to figure out why your audio didn't record properly or why it's taking so long to upload all of your content over to the host platform to save! Hello everyone, its Rachel Town, creative entrepreneur! As I'm finishing the final editing to Artists Let's Make Money online course that premieres this Wednesday, I felt that it would be useful for other bloggers and content creators by sharing some useful information that I've gathered along this journey.

-This post contains affiliate links. When one of these links is clicked and you purchase something from this link I receive a small commission at no additional expense to you.

Not all platforms are the same

It's helpful to do your research on the different course hosting platforms prior to building with your marketing and sales approach in mind. Skillshare and Teachable are platforms that allow you to create courses however, their sales model is vastly different than Thinkific or Ispring. 

Sales by subscriptions - this platform utilizes an approach where you can create as many courses as you want and usually by very short snippets that equate to a total amount of time (typically about an hour overall). Basically, you will not be giving away huge quality amounts of information and be selling subscriptions. You will have to battle with the crowd that's already pulling tons of subscribers in therefore, your "students" might not even finish your course if it's not directly to the point or has multiple value propositions with. 

Skillshare - They use a sales model that will require you to not only create a course but to also sell subscriptions for your course as well as for others who create on this platform in order for you to start making money from your hard work and knowledge. If you are creating a course on something simple and can explain it in short bursts this would be a good place to do so.

Sales by courses - this is a platform that allows you to create as many courses as you would like however, you have the ultimate power whether you bundle or sell course per course.

Teachable - For $39 you can create and enroll as many students as you would like as well as include your own affiliate network to help you sell and create coupon codes. You're allowed one other collaborator with this pricing plan and many of the features of drag and drop as well as the ability to drip content are also available.

Thinkific - For $49 you will receive your own domain, full control of your learning website and where you want it to go, the ability to fully customize each course including a landing page for each and also all pre-launch abilities. It's also a drag and drop format, however, much more robust and integrated, takes about 3 power hours to stumble completely through and understand how you're going to use it after watching all the videos they have offered for help.

Ispring- If you desire to create an entire learning portal (no scraping around using different presenting materials worrying about if the format will upload with the platform) and be completely different from other bloggers and perhaps are somewhat versed in coding then this is the best option. They offer an entire risk-free software solution that has multiple components that integrate extremely well all together so that you can give your students an amazingly different experience. After the free 30 day trial, however, their prices are so expensive, unless you download everything and learn within a week and create your content the next week in order to launch and start making a few sales, this probably won't be your best solution. It is something to work towards though! Keep this option in mind for later down the road, once you get going and want to offer your loyal students a better experience!

Presenting Your Materials

When you get down to the nitty-gritty of things, you will want to somehow present to your students, not just with a talking head video the entire course. PDF notes, a powerpoint presentation in PDF form, a screen capture with your voice going over the powerpoint presentation, a live video, a podcast, additional videos of demonstrations, etc. are much better options to give your viewers who paid money for the course the best bang for their buck. You want them to walk away after they finish the course with something that they can actually use giving them as much value as possible.

A negative aspect of presentation software options is their recording ability to capture the screen in addition to narrative audio. Most complaints stem from the audio being distorted, picking up background noises even with a microphone or crashing their computer.

MS Powerpoint slides record screen option - Audio recording on this has lately been a huge issue across the board with myself included having horrible echoed playback even while utilizing a separate microphone. I do not recommend this, however, I included an alternative link for a free way to check it out through Apache open office suite which has a similar service that doesn't have the audio echo dilemma.

Screencast-o-Matic - This is a completely risk-free alternative that allows you to record your screen while also recording your audio, however, if you want to include audio from your computer such as showing a video to your students with the screen recorder then you will have to upgrade to a paid plan which is very reasonably priced around $12/annually.

Panopto Recorder - Webcasting, social learning, and multi-camera recording plus editing abilities. You can request a free trial for business purposes. I've experienced the education edition when I was in college a few years ago and it was really slow uploading the videos back to the server once recorded with minor anomalies.

Prezi - If you hate powerpoint slides as much as I do then Prezi is going to be your best friend. You won't even mind that it doesn't stream very well live nor integrates with any other software easily because just like your best friend you just cannot help but stick with them through thick or thin. Their latest installation of Prezi Next is a tiny bit easier to navigate, however, it's still a stretch. Not to mention their pricing is a bit steep, nevertheless, I love this software. I started utilizing such since 2015, I've never gone back to powerpoint slides since.

Belonging

Make sure that your students are not lost and that they feel as if they belong not only to your course but also a part of a community. Create a group discussion board or a collaborative outlet so that they can learn from you and also build with others in the same mindset. Never let anyone sit in frustration or if you have not heard from them since they enrolled. Reach out to the entire course with daily networking boost suggestions and always motivate them to participate further!