Nowadays more and more people are thinking about creating and selling their own online courses. They have realized that they can achieve several goals with an online course.
What you need to know before you start creating an online course
Anyone who can teach and also explain, or who wants to learn, can create an online course. Today you don't need so much equipment that you don't already have. You need a computer and a camera. But you can use the camera that is already built into your smartphone. The quality of the camera is often better than that of small, inexpensive video cameras. It is exactly the same with a photo camera. Of course, there is always a better way, but the possibilities offered by your smartphone are quite sufficient for the beginning.
However, if you do not yet have lightboxes, you should definitely invest in them. No matter how good your camera is, without light, your photos or videos will not look professional.
Finally, you also need a website. Because from some location on the Internet, you need to sell your product, that is, your online course. Here it is imperative that you invest in your own domain and web hosting. Nothing looks less professional than using a subdomain of a large website. What impression does your customer get from you if you are not willing to invest 20 EUR a year for domain and hosting? In any case, he does not believe that you stand behind your product and is thus very likely not willing to invest in your product.
Once your website is online, you should fill it with content. Because a website with many visitors and buyers can be filled with good, unique content (Content Marketing). This approach and a sound knowledge of your topic will help you to build your own brand and thus become known.
For this it is important that you only devote yourself to a topic that you enjoy. Those who reluctantly create their course demonstrate this unconsciously in their teaching material.
The most important prerequisites for the creation of an online course
1. find the right topic for the online course
You do not have to invest much time to find the right topic. It should definitely be a topic that interests you and that you enjoy. You can only make something good, which you also like to do.
2. enter your desired topic on Google This way you can quickly see which topics are already available. A search term analysis also shows what is being searched for. In order to prevail against existing websites, you have to be faster, better and friendlier - and possibly have a longer breath.
3. search engines are not the only source of traffic for you. You can find out which problems should be solved by talking to customers.
Testing the market
Once you have found your niche and have the required knowledge and skills to teach and solve problems, you are ready to go.
Before you now try to create a perfect rate, you can first test the market. Start with three to five lessons on your topic. These are quickly done. You can also work on the quality afterwards. First try to find out how the topic and the offer is perceived by the target group. Get feedback from family and friends and ask for points of criticism. Improving always works. Only those who don't start at all have nothing to show for it.
Now that the first hurdle has been overcome, you can expand and develop the content. Thus a complete course is created.
Start small - become big
Start with a small online course. You don't have to pack the whole topic of the course into a course of several hours. At the beginning short videos are sufficient. This will give you a feeling for the creation of your course. It is recommendable to create a small course first, which is offered free of charge. This way you can convince your participants of yourself. The participants will get to know and appreciate you and will be enthusiastic about you. And if something does not go so well, you can hope for feedback from your participants and improve the course.
Set online courses on different platforms
Your online courses must of course first be offered on your own website. But to make them better known and to attract more participants, you can market the courses on Udemy, Lecturio, Groupon and other e-learning platforms.
Conclusion
Creating an online course is neither easy nor "just done". It must be well planned in order to achieve a good result. If you are aware of the hurdles you are facing, no one is insurmountable. You just have to know them. Besides: the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You can always make improvements later.
