Ep 155: What it's like to build an online course. Spilling all of my secrets.

If you've been thinking about creating & launching an online course, then this episode is for you! 

I've created 2 online courses and have learned a lot along the way. 

While I'm no expert, I can tell you about my experience and share the wisdom I've learned along the way

Things like:

• where to start
• my process to keep me from getting overwhelmed
• deciding on what to include
• how to choose a platform + the tools I love
• how to organize leads & clients in your CRM/Email Marketing system
• what to consider when choosing platforms
• video recording + storage tips 

Grab a notebook and pop in those pods!

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Transcript

[Chelsea Peitz]: 0:24

Thanks for joining the show. Today we're talking about how to launch your first online course. I just want to let everyone know, I am not an expert in this area. I never have claimed to be an online launch expert. There are many other people that you can go and research and even purchase their courses on how to do this. Specifically, Amy Porterfield is one of the original online digital course creators, and there's a million and one people now. I'm simply here to give you a starting point or a peek into how I launched both of my online courses. I have a totally free online course and then I have one that is paid. And I just started and really didn't know what I was doing. And so I'm just want to share some of the things that I learned along the way. I'm going to talk about the tools that I used as well. And some of the tools that I wish I would have used and some of the costs involved too. I got very overwhelmed by the volume of things. I get overwhelmed when I'm thinking, oh my gosh, so wait, I have to get this, I have to record this, now I have to do this. And so it was a lot. So for me, what I can tell you is I decided to do one thing a day. sometimes one thing a week so that I could focus on my goals. And I had sort of this 90 day plan where every week I would focus on one topic. For example, maybe week number one was focusing on the organization of the course, creating an outline, what videos I wanted to create, am I going to have any accompanying materials, meaning a download or a guide or. whatever your topic might be. Obviously, mine was around social media marketing, so I would have maybe a guide to go along with something or a worksheet. It doesn't have to be anything fancy either, but do I wanna have something that is accompanying to go with it? So I wanna talk a little bit about how to get a job in a social media company. So I wanna talk a little bit about how to get a job in a social media company. So I wanna talk a little bit about how to get a job in a social media company. the layout of the tools first that I was using. And some people like to have the tools all in place. Some people like to just dive right in on the content. I'm usually a dive right in on the content kind of person. And so I'm just gonna start with the tools because that's, I think, is kind of a good way to sort of lay out my thought process on this. So first things first, yes, you are going to have to pay for a quality online course provider. Now I went with a company that's called Kajabi. I will link that in the show notes. I'm pretty sure I probably have an affiliate code so I'll put that there as well. I believe a lot of people use something called Thinkific. I think Teachable is another one. It really doesn't matter which one you choose. You can go and you can compare them. You can even Google best online digital course platforms and I'm sure somebody has a blog that's comparing them. I know a ton of people that use Kajabi, and so that's the one that I went with. Now, I also would recommend having your CRM set up. Now, these platforms are really cool because they have the functionality to build out landing pages and sales pages and emails. And it's very robust, almost too robust because it's a lot, right? But the reason that I'm mentioning having sort of that CRM set up is I like to have an email database where people can opt in for different things to kind of lead them possibly into my course as well. So I use Flowdesk, which is a great tool. It makes very pretty sort of emails. Surprisingly, I get compliments on like how my email newsletter looks. I send one email newsletter out a month. And if I have a special promotion, I might send one more. It makes it very easy. It's drop and drag and they have templates. They also can create landing pages directly within Flowdesk also. So it doesn't matter which CRM you're gonna use. And if you don't have a CRM, the good news is, is that these platforms that you're gonna be putting your online course on, generally you can email from all of them and you can also tag them and segment people. That is one thing that I wish I would have done from the beginning. If you are able to have the time to go in there, or perhaps if you have an assistant or a virtual assistant who's going to be able to help you with these online courses, I would start right from the beginning. I would start categorizing people from the beginning, because it's really helpful when you're looking at your metrics to understand, did people come from your email? Did this person purchase multiple products? And I know that seems overwhelming at first. And so maybe you don't do it like right away, but I do think that they give you those tools. And that is something really cool that you're able to do is really organize the people that are in that course and be able to see information about them. Did they purchase an upsell? Did they go here? And you can do all of those things. I'm not even gonna get into all of those things because it's a lot. But that's really cool about these online platforms is that you can create essentially an entire funnel in there. You can email people from it. You can tag them and segment them. You can upsell them. You can put landing pages. So it gets really in-depth, and there's some really great YouTube tutorials. I will tell you that it's not cheap. It's $199 a month for me to use Kajabi. Is it worth it? I mean, I'm nodding my head as if you can see me. Um, yes, I would say it is because if you have a coaching program or if you have a course, it certainly is worth it because it organizes things, takes the head out, headache out of it. If you need to check in on has anybody actually accessed their course, but they're saying they want their money back. So I would say yes, if you're not really making much money from your course, well, maybe not. but you are going to have to most likely pay for some sort of system. And of course, it connects to a payment system as well. So that is also something you'll have to think about is, OK, how am I going to collect payments? And once you figured out where you're going to collect those payments, whether it's, you know, PayPal or another sort of system, I think Stripe is one of them as well. You're going to have to walk through those those pieces, those those step by step information to connect that payment. So you've got to. set up your payments, you've got to set up your online course, and you are going to have to pay for that. I'm sorry, your online course platform. It does have that built-in CRM. I would highly recommend that you have your own CRM as well. And you're definitely going to want some sort of drive like Google Drive. You also might want something like Vimeo. V-I-M-E-O. I kept all of the videos that I was creating going into the courses and I keep all of my videos in general in a paid Vimeo storage. It was sort of supposed to be at one point like the competitor to YouTube and it just like never became that. But that's where I house all of my videos. So also if you are creating short form vertical videos or audits for people or classes on Zoom, anything that you're recording on video. I put my stuff in there because I can share it with people. I can turn off if they can download it or not. Now, could you upload your videos to YouTube and make them unmarked? It's not unmarked, but you know what I'm saying, private or whatever. Yeah, you can't. But I like Vimeo because I can organize things in there and I'm just used to it. So I pay $13 a month. for that and which I think is pretty affordable and I can put all my videos in there. I can even do some extra, you know, editing there and I can decide, you know, who sees it, who doesn't, if it's downloadable. And I put all of my videos in there. So I save everything in there and then when I'm ready to upload them into the online course, I will do that. I record all of my videos for the online courses just right in Zoom. And I like using Zoom because I can share my screen. I can, if I'm doing a tutorial, I can share my screen and walk people through something. Also, I can just record myself directly if I'm just talking about something. And last but not least, if I have slides, which I think are really helpful, you can create your slides in good old fashioned PowerPoint or Keynote. You might also wanna check out creating your quote unquote slides in Canva to make them look. really nice and branded, and it's easy to just make them in Canva and then just present directly from Canva as well. So if you are going to be utilizing any kind of visuals, I just simply use Zoom and that's where I record my video, and then I will upload them into Vimeo. Actually, you know what you can do as well, if you are using, I think Zapier, you can automatically... connect or zap them so that anytime you have a recording in Zoom, it actually is going to go directly up into Vimeo or wherever else you have decided. And that's something I think a lot of us forget. There's a lot of really cool zaps on zappier.com and I'll put that in the show notes as well. If I want to just scroll through there and see what tools you have, because there are zaps for example, flow desk, like I talked about. There are zaps where you can connect and automate certain things. And I will tell you those automations are definitely going to be time savers for you. So if nothing else, walk away from this podcast, checking out Zapier and seeing if there's things that you can connect. So we talked about the course platform. You're gonna pay for that, right? There's a lot of stuff in there. You could probably spend hours going down a rabbit hole and learning how to do all of the things. Now, thankfully I did learn how to do all those things, but I also have an awesome assistant who I taught how to utilize it, how to upload the videos, how to put the graphics in there because you do have to put little graphics for the cover photo of each what they call module, at least in Kajabi. So you'll have your one course and you'll break it down into actual individual modules. And in each module, you can have a video or you can just have text, or you can have video and text or video and text and a download. So you can build out each one of them to your liking. Now, I would recommend that your videos are short. The nice thing about Kajabi is that you'll be able to, the person will be able to fast forward if they need to or put it on a different speed. I personally like to watch things on 1.25, sometimes 1.5, so that's always helpful. You might also want to, I think this might be in Kajabi, but if it's not in the actual, you know, platform that you have, you could even put like in the title how long it is. Once they get into the platform or into that module, they'll be able to see how long that video is. But I really like the ones that have short little snappy videos like two minutes, like less than five minutes. I will admit that since minor tutorials, a lot of minor like 10 minutes plus, which can be a long time and can feel a little bit overwhelming. So once you have created your outline, recording your videos and maybe that's like one a day. So you're like, today I'm gonna record this video module. You're not gonna do anything else to it. You're just gonna record it, okay? Save it in Vimeo, done. And so then by the end of the week, you'll have maybe those five modules done and then you can start on another week uploading those modules and making sure that everything is built out and all the settings are correct in each one of those modules. I would then also recommend a start here. I don't think I did a start here in mine. And that's kind of a nice thing to have because now you can kind of tell people the lay of the land and what to expect. And so I don't believe I had a start here module as the first video, but I've seen that in other ones and I thought that was really helpful. So I'd say that was a good one. And also, I would recommend that, you know, if you're worried about, oh, my gosh, I have these videos, but I only have five. And now that I'm looking at my outline, I have 10 or 15 more to go. And I can't, you know, get this out until it's done. you don't necessarily have to wait until you're done with all the videos and content. You can drip out like week number one is going to get sent to you or I'm going to be adding weeks as we go. You could do that if you wanted to. So don't let that hold you back. And honestly, I'm the kind of person that if I know I have a deadline and I've already opened something and I got to get something done and keep uploading videos, then I absolutely will. So I know a lot of people are nervous and they wanna have everything perfect before they launch it. I am one of those people. And eventually you just tweak and tweak and tweak and tweak and then weeks goes by and you still haven't launched it. Now, so you've got your platform, you've made your outline, you are getting started on your video creation and maybe you're doing it like a day at a time or a week at a time. Maybe you're excited and you're like, I'm gonna knock out these videos in 48 hours. Great, love that for you. Now what you're going to do is you're going to put all of that content into the online course platform. I would also recommend doing some kind of transcription so people can read it if they prefer. What I did is I made sure that I ran all of my videos through a transcription process and I used RevRev.com. Yes I had to pay for it. I think I ended up paying like 150 bucks for all my videos total, which isn't a cheap number, but I think it's relevant and important because you need to burn those closed captions in there. And so what will happen is when you record your videos, you will then go to whatever transcription service they will upload, they connect actually to Vimeo. So that service that I told you where I upload my videos. it connects right to it, which is pretty cool. And so you can select like these 10 videos, I want you to transcribe and send me the, what's called SRT file. And so they did that, I got those in there, and then I was able to download from Vimeo, the videos that had all of the closed captioning burned into it. And I was able to go then upload those into Kajabi. And then now when people are... watching that module, they can listen and or they can click the the closed caption icon and they can have that text up there too. So I do think that's nice. I'd recommend that. I would also have a transcript. That way it just gives people a lot of different ways to consume your content because you know different people have different ways of consuming and preferring and needing to go through content. Is that a must right away as you launch? Probably not, but it is something that I think is is worthwhile. So now we're at a point where we imagine that you've got the bones, you've uploaded the content, you've kind of played with the platform and you've got it ready to go. Within each platform, they're going to have like a sales page or a landing page and they will have training in the platform for that. You'll probably have to fill out a few things. and create that. Now here's one thing that I didn't know about until after I launched. I forget about the power of Etsy.com. If you haven't been on Etsy.com in a while, I will tell you that they pretty much have everything you can imagine. And if you go to Etsy.com and you type in online course launch email sequence, they have tons, tons of them. So again, you can save yourself some time because I'm not a copywriter. You can hire a copywriter. You can use the stuff that the platform gives you as a template, or you can go to Etsy. I even decided to type in the name of Thinkific or Kajabi. And you know what? They have Kajabi course and product templates. Now, again, you may not wanna go all the way in with that. You might feel like, ah, functional, not fancy, just need to get it done. But I just want to mention that because there's a lot of stuff in Etsy. Like this one that I'm looking at here, it's $18.96. It's going to give you 650 templates, which includes a 35-page course sales page, a 60-page lead magnet. So if you want something that's already created in Canva and you don't want to have to fool with it, it's going to give you a lead magnet that you can fill in your content, a 40-page course workbook, a slide deck. social media templates, module covers, a business page, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So you can, you can work smarter and not harder and think, oh my gosh, now I'm gonna have to create all this stuff in Canva. You could get those templates from Etsy and pay for them. And the way that these creators have offered it, you are allowed to use them in your materials. Obviously you're not allowed to resell them, but none of you are going to be doing that anyway. So I just want to remind you that's a really good place to go for all the things, not just core stuff. And I know your brain is spinning now and you're like, ooh. So now let's pretend you got all that done and you're ready to launch it. You got to figure out what your pricing is going to be. And you're going to have to do a little bit of market research on that. You can create like coupon codes within the platforms. You can also have affiliates. So if you have friends, family, business partners, referral partners, you can actually earn some money by having other people market your courses and they get an affiliate code and they make it easy in these courses in the back end to set up what are called affiliate codes. So that might be something you want to think about too. And then it's marketing. You got to market your course. and you can put this on your Instagram account, you can put a link in your bio. Now you can have up to five links in your bio. Make sure that you put a clear call to action and letting people know that you can take the course and what maybe the course name is or an arrow pointing down to it. Obviously you're gonna share it out on social media, you're gonna share it out on your newsletters. I would also recommend if you are presenting to make a QR code so that you can put a QR code on your slides and let people know that they can scan it and go grab your course. put it on your website, you get the idea. You might even wanna do some paid ads around your course. And so that is essentially an overview of what I did. I will say that it will take you more time than you think it will. I was like, oh, this will take me a couple of weeks. It's a lot, it is a lot and you can do it. And I did have a little bit of help once I got all of the components done. It was a lifeline to have somebody else be able to just like do the uploading stuff. Then I would recommend before you fully launch it, have a friend go through it and see if it makes sense to them. You know, we get really close to our own projects. And then we're like, oh, I don't know, I can't see them too. You know, I can't see the forest, the trees or the trees through the forest, whatever. You get it. So that's what I did. That's how I launched it. And you know what? I have not really been marketing my courses. I need to. You need to put it in your stories. I need to do a much better job of that. So my two courses, in case you're interested in taking them, I have one that is a free Instagram course. It's going to show you how to optimize your profile and also which types of accounts to use. And then my paid course is real R E E L a state school. And it's all about how the basics of creating Instagram reels and. for people specifically in the real estate marketplace. And both of those are at the link in my bio. So if you have questions about launching your course or how I might be able to help you if you have getting that up and going, feel free to send me a DM over on the gram and I can't wait to see you next time. Bye.