The first natural step is to research the topic of your e-course. A great way to understand if there is a market for what you want to sell is by looking at what courses are out there and which ones are popular.

 

Research your e-course topic

The internet is a great place to research if you know where to look.

For example: Go to Udemy and similar sites like skillshare and Coursera. Search the topic of your online course and compare the sales to other programs. Remember that these sites advertise on behalf of the trainers, and they sell the courses for cheap/ at a discount. If you see a good amount of sales – thousands – it’s probably a good topic to do a course about.

Continue your research on Youtube. A lot of people go to Youtube to learn. Often, these people will buy a course to get more help achieving their goals. Go to youtube.com, and search for some terms connected to your e-course idea.

If you find channels that have a lot of followers and videos with many views, you’re onto a good one.

Look at Amazon best sellers. This can be another way to gauge interest. Are there any books about this topic that sell very well? In order to find out how well a book sells, follow this process you need to find the Amazon best seller rank (available on Amazon in the details section under each book) and then run it through the Amazon book sales calculator

You can also use tools like Google Trends and Keyword Finder to see how much interest there is in search engine searches for this topic.

After you get a good idea of what’s out there, you can use this information to narrow it down further by surveying your audience and/or clients.

Once you have decided on the exact topic and name of your e-course, move to the next step.

List your eCourse Outcomes

The first step to creating a great e-course from a coaching program is to work backward. We start with the outcomes. Now, I’m sure you’re pretty familiar with the outcomes that you achieve for your coaching clients – and there’s probably a long list of them. Here, you want to list all of them. Start by doing a brain dump. Just put them down, and don’t worry about any logical order or importance.

For example:
If you decided to call your program ‘control your stress in 30 days,’ and you’re a life coach adapting your coaching programs, you might write something like this.

Happier

More resilient when things don’t go right

Organized

Does things they enjoy 

Practices Yoga

Understands their own triggers

Have the tools for anxiety attacks

Practices daily self-care

Feels happier more often

Practices mindfulness

Stays healthier

Takes supplements

The next step is to structure them in the order of how you would logically teach them. Then, you want to fill in the blanks. For example, if the first outcomes are:

1. Understands their own triggers

2. Have the tools for anxiety attacks

•  Keeps tools handy
• Knows how to use them in their daily lives

3. More resilient when things don’t go right

4. Practices Daily Self Care using a schedule

5. Adds Yoga and Meditation to their schedule

Notice that after step 2, I  added in 2 missing steps to make it complete. Keep at it until the whole process feels complete. You might realize that you’re doing a lot in your coaching program, and perhaps, you can dial it back a little. Or break up the content into two e-courses if that makes more sense.

Once your list feels complete, break it down into Units. For example:

UNIT 1

1. Understands their own triggers

2. Have the tools for anxiety attacks

•  Keeps tools handy
• Knows how to use them in their daily lives

UNIT 2

3.  More resilient when things don’t go right.

4. Practices Daily Self Care using a schedule.

UNIT 3

5. Adds Yoga and Meditation to their schedule…

Always remember that the price you set makes a difference.
If you’re selling a low-ticket e-course – $47 to $97,  you might want to break the content down into multiple courses.

If you’re going for a program that sells at $199 to $499,  you can add more content, and perhaps, a few bonuses, too.

Tools

Once you’ve listed all the outcomes, you will need a list of the tools you teach to make these outcomes happen. For example…

1. Quiz to help them understand their own triggers

2. Checklist to help them handle anxiety attacks

3. Schedule templates, etc….

Once you have the list of tools, you need to look at the list of outcomes, units, and tools, and break each one into learning nuggets. We simply add all the details of what they need to learn.

For example:

UNIT 1
1. Understands their own triggers
– seeing triggers in others
– noticing your own (use Quiz to help them understand their own triggers)
– understanding how a trigger escalates
– 3 questions to ask yourself when you feel triggered (self-coaching)

2. Have the tools for anxiety attacks
– How to feel prepared for the next attack
– What to do when you feel it coming on (3 simple cues to remember)
– Memorising your checklist to handle anxiety attacks
– Keeping all the tools handy

3. Keeps tools handy and knows how to use them in their daily lives
– How to keep the support tools on your phone for easy access

Tools:
1. Quiz to help them understand their own triggers

2. Checklist to help them handle anxiety attacks

 

Curriculum and eCourse materials

 Once you have this list, your curriculum is practically ready. 

As you can see from the steps above, it’s easy to start visualizing your curriculum with this process. Every numbered item (example: Understands their own triggers) is the video you need to record, and every subheading (example: – seeing triggers in others) becomes a slide on your course slides.

However, there is still one step required to turn the curriculum into a complete course. 

Recording the course

You’re now ready to record the course. Create the slides based on the bullet list under each numbered section. You can use Canva for this. They have some great presentation templates. When you’re ready, export it as a pdf, or simply run it as a presentation – this will depend on how you intend to record the e-course.

Once the slides are ready, the next step is to record. I usually record my courses in Zoom or Ecamm. Zoom is great if you need to screen share and switch from full-face training to sharing documents. Ecamm is great for adding visuals onto the side of your screen as you speak.

If you’re shy or don’t want to show yourself much, you can opt to do so only in the introductory videos, and then, only use slides in the training videos. You can also opt to have your video as a small square on the side of the screen. Both Ecamm and Zoom do this.

One little word of warning: do NOT underestimate the importance of your sound quality. You can use simple slides, but the quality of your audio needs to be as good as possible. So run some tests before you jump into the recording.

Once you’ve recorded the e-course videos, you’ll want to add the intro, the outro, and any bonuses.

The intro is best recorded last. 

Use it to introduce yourself and why they should trust you – then talk about how the program works. Show them where they can find the videos and the pdfs – in fact, record this after you’ve uploaded the content to your teaching platform so that you can walk them through the various units (more on that in the next section). Keep it short.

Actually, keep all the videos short. Around 6 minutes on average. This helps people pick between binge-watching or just squeezing in a lesson when they have some time. It also makes it easier for the student to refer back to sections they want to watch again. 

You’ll also need a conclusion video that reminds them of what they can do to benefit from what they learned – how to put it into action. At the end of this video, you want to let them know where to find you online, and how they can work with you further.

Finally, record the bonus video/s. It’s important to do these last in order to avoid repetition.

 

 

Delivering the e-course – pick the right platform

Picking the right platform is not always easy. If this is your first course, you want to use a simple platform that can set you up for free or cheap.

Thinkific and Teachable

I love Teachable, however recently, they have reduced the features in their free tier. They only allow 10 students on your first free course. Thinkific, on the other hand, allows unlimited students.

You do, however, want to be prepared and sell the course on a platform that allows you to give access automatically.

For my low-ticket courses, I use ThriveCart Learn. I like it because you can buy it with a one-off license and have no additional expenses. However, if you’re new and don’t have many courses, this will be overkill. As you grow and sell more courses, it might be a nice upgrade.

Support

The next thing you want to decide is whether you will offer support and how. You can add people to a Facebook group or share an email address with them so they can contact you.

The level of support depends on the price of the program, however, it is quite common for people who create a number of low-ticket courses to add everyone to the same support group and offer help there. Only a small percentage of people will ask for support, and often, only in the first few weeks after purchasing. So, don’t be scared to offer support – it will help you sell more e-courses.

Selling your new e-course

First off – save yourself a lot of heartaches, and don’t sell a course after you’ve created it. Sell it before!

Many people fail to sell their online course, because they spend a lot of time creating something they don’t know for sure will sell. If you do your research, as explained in the first section of this blog, you’ll have a much higher chance of selling it.

However, only a test will tell you if it’s worthwhile. Ask your audience. Build a waiting list, and then, pre-sell your e-course. You can create a pre-sell campaign where you tell everyone that this is the beta version of your course that will sell for $97, but for the beta round, they only pay $37 and get to give feedback and influence the content of the program.

Although we planned the course above, you will improve it as you go along, thanks to the beta feedback.

Are you looking for content planning and technical help to create your first e-course or to upgrade an old one?

I can help.

 

I have a degree in Education and have been creating courses since 2005. (And teaching since 1997)
Let’s talk and see if your e-course idea can fly  www.stephaniefiteni.com/call

 

~ About the Author: Stephanie Fiteni  

Hi, I’m Stephanie, a Marketing Coach and Business Mentor for Coaches.

Creator of the Profitable Content Marketing Method and Host of The Profitable Online Coach Podcast.

I help coaches generate more leads and clients through their blogs, websites, and content, whilst creating smart marketing systems to repurpose content and become truly visible.

My clients get fully booked with just a handful of marketing hours per week.

I have over 20 years’ experience creating websites, writing blogs that convert and ranking websites on the first page of Google.

I’ve also managed the content team in my own marketing agency for over 10 years running inbound campaigns, organic social media marketing on all the major platforms as well as  Facebook and Google Ads for service providers and coaches.

I can teach you how to create content that will convince your audience to book your discovery calls every time.

Let’s Talk