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Do you want to start your own online business soon? This is a dream for almost everyone since as an entrepreneur, you can work anytime and anywhere you want. Apart from the convenience, it has super low startup capital, making it a perfect venture of newbies who are short in cash. If you want to start your own business today, consider creating and selling online courses. Start creating your own course curriculum now! Why wait? You can start a new passive side hustle, and at the same time share your expertise with your target audience.
Many people are still feeling the results of the crisis. So many people lost their businesses and jobs! How do you get through that?!
It takes a lot of bravery and passion to get through this major challenge, but where do you start?
My advice–use the wonders of the internet to earn extra cash. There has never been a better, better time to put up an online course business.
You can even create an online course about creating and selling online courses to help people out.
Start your journey as an online course creator now!
There are plenty of things you need to do and learn when creating online courses. It’s more than just selecting the best topics, implementing a good marketing strategy, targeting a specific audience, and producing compelling content.
Your journey as a newbie to an accomplished course creator and entrepreneur is a lengthy, but it will be loads of fun.
Right now, you are a beginner who probably has never done a single course curriculum in your entire life. What you need to do now is embark on a journey towards success.
Figure out how you can bridge the gap between that newbie life and successful online course creator career. By goal-setting, you can better understand what goes inside that gap, and the entire process of putting everything together.
Going through that journey has a lot of ups and downs. But it will be well worth it.
I often refer to it as a roller coaster ride.
How to Create a Course Curriculum? What is a course curriculum? What does a course curriculum look like?
A course curriculum is a collection of learning resources and lessons that are taught by a teacher or an expert in a specific field.
If you are a newbie online course creator, the word “course curriculum” itself may sound intimidating and complex.
It isn’t really. It is really just taking your expertise and putting into a plan that you can teach your students.
After a few weeks, that simple outline can evolve into a course curriculum that you can upload to your own website, or to Thinkific.
Getting into this final stage may take a long, long time, most especially if you have zero idea how to make an online course outline. However, I do teach my students how to create and get a simple profitable course up and running in 8 weeks or less.
You want to be making money right away, right?
Check out the Simple Profit Online Course here.
Well, let me tell you this. Even the most comprehensive curriculum and course content plan start with a simple outline. Feel free to use your post-its, or open a basic word document to bullet point your ideas.
Learn from the mistakes of other online course creators!
My journey as an online course creator wasn’t smooth.
Just like me, you may run into some snags as you go along. No matter how hard you try to achieve the “perfect” course, you won’t accomplish it because there is no such thing.
I am a big believer in taking imperfect action and getting your course out to market.
I teach this in my Simple Profit Online Course – you literally can get to market and bet profitable in 8 weeks. Check it out here.
Develop a positive mindset to get good results.
Want to learn how to develop the right mindset to achieve your ultimate goals in life? Click here.
Taking a huge, productive jump from the newcomer stage to a professional online course creator stage may take time, yet if done correctly, it can be fulfilling and financially rewarding.
1. Failure to Determine What Your Target Audience Needs
This is one of the biggest mistakes a newbie online course creator can make. We all know that every strategy may or may not work, but don’t take any huge step without doing any research.
Your target audience has unspoken challenges and needs that should be addressed.
How will you know that without doing proper market research? Market research can tell you what must go into that online course for it to be successful.
Stalk your target market now. Click here to explore the benefits of market research.
2. Not Asking for Client Feedback
Bad or good feedback is still feedback. Don’t turn your back away from this kind of information even after you launch your online course to the public.
Whether you ask for it or not, students will give it to you anyway. They may post it as a comment on your official Facebook page, or send it to you via email.
This feedback can help you improve your course curriculum and the overall online course experience.
3. Not Pricing the Online Course Appropriately
You don’t want to set a price point that is too low or too high.
If it’s too high, no one may buy it. On the other hand, setting a low price will limit your income opportunity.
This may provide you with fewer sales since the perceived value of your online course will be much lower.
People might see your course curriculum as something that is not worth spending money on.
Make sure you get the pricing right. Do you want to change the price of your online course after its launch? Whatever your reason is, communicate it to your audience clearly.
4. Failure to Create “Bite-Sized” Content
The most successful online courses have bite-sized content that cater to ever-shrinking attention spans.
If you are thinking of including an hour-long video to your course, then think again.
Plenty of people no longer dedicate several hours to online learning. They want everything to be “bite-sized”–taking courses in shorter periods and during minute-long breaks.
Sometimes, students even study while standing in line, going for a walk, and while on a boring commute. Think about this when putting together a course curriculum. Divide the course into small segments for easier, faster consumption.
5. Including Too Much Non-Essential Details
You need to understand that not all potential students can commit to several weeks of online learning just to gain a new skill.
Everyone’s so busy with day to day other responsibilities. Just like what I said above, everything must be incorporated in smaller segments and without any non-essential information.
Micro-courses are a thing now! If you want to create a more in-depth version, you can always do so for those students who want a more comprehensive option.
6. Selling the Course Even Before Finishing It
Several creators suggest that you must start selling your course even before you create or finish it to gather momentum and generate more sales.
Do you think this is a good idea?
It is brilliant because you can sell it to a small group of people and teach it live. You can get feedback & they get more in-depth support!
I will teach you exactly how to do this in my Simple Profit Online Course. Check it out here.
Excited to create your own course curriculum? So many things can happen in your online course journey! Remember these important guidelines.
So, what do you need to do to avoid any pitfalls as you get started?
Focus not only on your current to-do list as a beginner but also to the end results. Creating a course curriculum from scratch takes a bit, so keep your eyes on the prize.
Apart from learning from the common mistakes of other online course creators, here are other things you need to keep in mind when putting together the best course curriculum.
1. Decide on your goals.
What is your motivation in creating and selling an online course? Sure, we can think of it as a potential source of income, but is money the only driving force towards its completion?
Actually, no.
You may be surprised to know that while an effective course curriculum can be financially fruitful, many people also want more time freedom to pursue other passions.
2. Establish a clear timeframe.
Designing a course curriculum takes time. Set aside some uninterrupted time to make this happen.
How long will it take you to create your course curriculum? That will depend on your other obligations like family time and a full-time job, or if you are planning to create a course from scratch (or is redesigning an existing one).
Coming up with a realistic timeframe will help you ensure success. This includes deadlines and records of your progress.
3. See to it that your objectives are aligned with your modules.
Your modules, from assignments and activities to assessments and other learning materials, must align well with your objectives.
Proper alignment happens when the online course curriculum helps students meet the learning objectives.
It’s so important to create clear, measurable objectives that flawlessly outline what is expected of every learner.
Objectives communicate learning expectations to people, and make it easy to align the entire online course.
4. How to improve your course curriculum? Analyze the competition.
This is one of the most exciting parts for me! There are thousands of other course creators out there, and you can find them in tons of other places. Have you tried looking around Udemy or SkillShare? Around how many competitors do you have?
Take note of the other powerful, influential competitors out there. Analyze their strategy and content first. Ask yourself how can you set yourself apart from the rest? It can be something super small…
I teach how to set yourself apart using your Personal Brand Authority and Influencer Footprint inside my Simple Profit Online Course – you can check it out here (you won’t be disappointed because you will be up and running and profitable in a few short weeks)
5. How do you want to share your knowledge?
In what way do you want to present your course curriculum? How much plain text do you want to include? Huge blocks of text can disappoint students, and it will be a lot harder to incorporate your ideas.
You don’t want to bore your learners. Audio and video files are also wonderful ideas.
Recording a video is a great way to explain things and communicate step-by-step actions. To make it even more compelling, adding graphics is also highly recommended.
It is a fantastic approach to make things even more exciting, encouraging, and inspiring for your students.
6. Evaluate, evaluate, and evaluate.
Now that you’re done with your online course and your online curriculum, you may want to know how you have done. You’ll never know if you don’t evaluate everything.
To fully assess every detail in your online course, remember to set the objectives right from the very beginning. These are some of the most important metrics.
- Number of Participants
- Dollars Earned
- Social Media Page Subscribers
- Blog Views
- Number of People Who Want to Continue the Online Course
7. Provide learners something to take away from your course curriculum.
When people take online courses, they want people to get something important from it.
Giving them resources or learning materials that they can easily turn back to after completing the online course will help a lot.
These resources can be in the form of checklists or worksheets, helping them review or remember the most important points of your course.
8. Always involve your students.
Online courses must not only require students to view videos and read written materials. They must be able to demonstrate their learning and understanding of the content.
As an online course creator, you must incorporate interesting activities that can connect the course curriculum to real-life situations.
These activities may range from coming up with problem-based scenarios and scrutinizing case studies, in which students can address the problems, and produce effective solutions to address the gaps.
Do you want to be a successful online course creator like me? You will be amazed by how fulfilling and financially rewarding this venture can be!
If done properly, online course creation can be a fulfilling and financially rewarding venture.
Do you think you can do it?
For those who are so busy with family time and with their full-time jobs, it’s perfectly fine to consider it as a passive side hustle first.
From there, you can learn more things about the business, and who knows?! You might experience “full-time success” soon. I’m sure you’ll love it!
1. Online courses are easy to manage and convenient!
Learning is becoming more and more accessible for many people. As a knowledgeable individual in a specific field, you always have that chance to create something valuable and helpful.
Create an online course curriculum from scratch, and then sell it to your blog.
The key here is to create a wonderful learning experience for your target audience in just a few convenient clicks.
2. You can enjoy a flexible schedule as an online course creator.
This job is totally not a 9 to 5 job, so you can work anytime and anywhere you want. Basically, you set up your own schedule, and meet your own deadlines.
If you are starting your course curriculum part-time, you can try working only on weekends.
Take it one step at a time. I know how hard it is to juggle so many things all at the same time.
One of the best things about this is you can be your own boss.
3. Online course creation can be a source of stable, recurring income.
If you get the right results, you can earn a stable, predictable income. This will allow you to escape that dead end 9 to 5 job, and a crazy freelancing routine (who doesn’t get tired of looking for new clients each month?!).
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Thank you Angela, I’m working on a course now and I understan bite size is really important. I had it all together as I taught in person and now that I’m bringing it online, I’ve learned to shorten it in bites. I appreciate your tips here!