By Cormac Cullen
First Steps to Creating an Online Course
You are more than likely an expert in a certain field or have extensive knowledge in a field. This is something which other people may be willing to pay for when it comes to creating and selling your courses online.
Think about the following?
What course have you previously bought online?
What did you like about it?
What made you buy it?
How to write a course?
To write an online course you firstly need the content. I have read that ‘all you need is patience and imagination. Most of all, if you love the field of your expertise, everything will come into place’. This is wishful thinking. Yes, patience and imagination help ,and of course one’s love for their field of expertise will make it that much easier – but you don’t actually need any of these. You need to be able to design a course that people want to actually buy. And if they like that course there is a really high chance they are going to buy another course from you.
There are a myriad tools out there to help you design courses. The best advice I can give you is to choose one of these tools, spend time on it, get under the hood of it to become proficient. The best way to do this is to actually start building courses. This is how I started and this is how I excelled. eventually built up my proficiency.
How long does it take to create an online course?
It depends on how much material you have that is ready-made. If you have all presentations and videos stored and want to upload content, create some quizzes, a certificate, and a landing page a week can be enough to create an online course. The rule of thumb within the industry when building a course from the ground up is that twenty minutes of finished product will take you 60 hours.
How much does it cost to create an online course?
Again depending on whether you have created the media you will use, the course creation may cost from zero (except the learning platform charges) to thousands of euros. For example, some instructors invest a lot of money in video production and high end animations, with professional sounding voice overs.
How to make an online course interactive?
The more you have in mind to interact with students while creating your content, the more the final result will be interactive. How do you want to engage your students? What kind of interactivity do you want to include? Do your research, and keep those things in mind in the planning stage. The choice of authoring tool here is really important. Some highly interactive tools include, Articulate Storyline 360, Captivate and Evolve. My own preference is Articulate Storyline 360 as this is the one I have spent more time with, though Captivate has it’s good points and Evolve allows one to create some beautiful, slickly designed courses.
How hard is it to create an online course?
Creating a course can be as hard or as easy as you want it. It depend on what goes into it and also how knowledgeable you are about the process of hosting your course, choosing an LMS, integrating it with your website and so on. Finally, when you have done all of this you have to decide on how to market your course. You can easily record and sell online speeches and workshops; you have already been doing. Turn your training into a profitable online course!
How to create a profitable online course?
If you want to create a profitable online course, the most important thing is to be able to sell a course that there is actually a demand for. This may not be any particular area that you are an expert in – as this area is so niche that the audience is just not there. However, If people see that you are solving a significant problem for them and that they will learn new skills, they will want to buy your course. A successful course always:
– Solves problems for others.
– Teaches something new.
– It helps achieve a goal.
If any of this feels in any way daunting, just reach out and I’d be happy to have a conversation and point you in the right direction – I love discussing all things eLearning!