Online courses are a great way to add top-line revenue to your business without weighing the overheads and costs down. I love how sharing valuable knowledge is not just something that WILL help your customers, but also put some $$ in your pocket. Today, I want to share how you can create your first online course as a small business owner in an afternoon. Thanks to Thinkific!
Decide what to talk about
As a traditional business owner, I’m sure getting to where you are took you YEARS of learning and experience. Imagine: what if you could save someone 2-5 years of experience by distilling what you know in an easy-to-understand format?
For example, if Esme from Esme Parish Silver were to create a course after 37 years as an antique trader, she could talk about:
- How to find good silver to buy
- How to evaluate silver
- What silver pieces are worth investing in
And these are just 3 simple topics off the top of my head. I’m sure she could actually teach about many, many more.
This step should be almost instant. Because you’ve been doing what you know for years.
Set up your first course
Now let me set some realistic expectations. Your first course won’t sell out and make you a gazillionaire. I know, I know, I’m supposed to hype you up and tell you we’re all going to be billionaires… sorry, that ain’t me!
Your first course will be the “training” to understand if you have the potential to scale in the online course space, hone your technical and video skills, and grow your customer base.
So your first course has a single goal: prove that people care about learning what you can teach – before you go crazy and spend $10,000 on camera equipment and custom-developed websites.
I recommend Thinkific to set up your first course for many reasons.
- It takes less than an hour to go from “Create Account” to accepting signups for your course.
- All the payments, security, account management are taken care of.
- Lots of integrations available for when it’s time to get serious
- Supportive community & customer service department
The actual steps to set up your first course
Head to Thinkific. This link will give you a 30-day free trial which is exactly 29 more days than you need to push your first course out!
Create your first course, add in the content, and set the price as free.
Connect your Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign account.
Add a photo to your course at the “Settings” tab.
Connect Google Analytics via the APPS marketplace so you can track website traffic.
Now: you’re ready to send the free course to 20 friends. Don’t skip this step because “I’m shy”. Get over it. Don’t be afraid to blush – be afraid to never change instead.
After your friends have given you super excited feedback about the course, it’s time to spend 2h making the course landing page 20% prettier.
Why 20% and not 200%? Well, again, because I’m your realistic traditional business consultant and I’m not here to lie.
SO, after you’ve played around with the course landing page, you’re now ready to share the free course link on to the internet.
Send it to your customers. Send it to your email list. Share it in as many Facebook groups as you’re allowed to. Be excited about sharing your passion with people who could be your next friend, customer, neighbour!
Then, send it to me because if this article inspired you to set it up, I want to be the first to send you my congratulations. You can do this!!
Curious to try? Click here to get a 30-day free trial of the Pro+ Growth plan which has all the features you will need for your first course, and more!
