Online education has become increasingly popular as the analog world accelerates on its path to complete digitization, trying to keep up with consumer behavior. It’s overly trite but true to state that online courses offer a flexible and uber convenient way to learn skills or enhance existing ones.
Software is eating the world, and digital is blowing up education.
If you have some knowledge or just a new/different perspective on a topic - and you like the idea of teaching/training others, creating an online course can be an excellent way to not only share your knowledge, be seen as an expert and create a brand for yourself but also earn a pretty good income.
"Online education is expected to hit $40.95 billion by 2029.”
Online education and the e-learning industry are growing by leaps and bounds. It is expected to touch $40.95 billion by 2029. The presence of some incredible online course creation platforms, including the latest AI course creator, has been one of the biggest boosts to this industry.
Most of these tools come with course creation templates that make the work of the instructor extremely easy. Not to forget, the material is ready within hours or days.
So, let's see how to create an insightful online course. We'll start by exploring the crucial aspects.
How to Create an Online Course? Step-by-Step Guide
In this guide, we’ll help you learn why and how to create an online course and guide you through the entire process, from idea to launch.
Why an “Online” Course Anyway?
2 words - anywhere and anytime.
Online courses are a form of e-learning that allows students to learn anywhere and at any time. They are typically delivered through a learning management system (LMS) and can include various types of content, such as videos, text, audio, and interactive elements.
Online courses are ideal for people who want to learn new skills or advance their careers but either don’t want to attend traditional classrooms or just cannot due to various constraints.
Okay, so what the fastest and easiest way to create a course?
To make sure you have fun with this process, I want you to take on nine personas when looking at what it takes to start and complete your course.
You will start out as a hunter, then play roles like a builder, and finally to gardner.
Let’s go.
Step #1 Be a Hunter: Find Your Course Topic and Niche
The first step in creating an online course is to come up with online course ideas - choosing a topic and a niche.
You need to identify a subject on which you have expertise and passion. This could be anything from cooking to coding, writing to public speaking, or digital marketing to photography.
Once you have identified your topic, you need to narrow down your niche. For example, if you're interested in digital marketing, you could focus on social media marketing, email marketing, or SEO.
To determine the viability of your course topic and niche, you need to conduct thorough research. Look for online courses that cover similar topics and analyze their content and delivery methods.
You should also research the demand for the topic by researching online forums, social media groups, and industry publications. This will help you determine if there is a market for your course and how you can differentiate it from existing ones.
💡TIP: Want to speed this up by 100X? Use our research tool for topic data in Eurekaa.io
Step #2 Be a Detective: Research Your Target Audience
Once you have identified your course topic and niche, you need to research your target audience. Understanding your audience is essential to creating a course that resonates with them.
Start by creating an avatar of your ideal student. This should include demographic information such as age, gender, education level, and income, as well as their interests, pain points, and goals. It could also be very general, like a high-school or college student, an adult learner, or starting states like beginner, intermediate, or advanced.
To gather more information about your target audience, you can conduct surveys, interviews, or focus groups. You can also analyze the data from your website analytics, social media insights, or email marketing campaigns.
By doing this, you will be able to identify their learning preferences, such as their preferred learning style, the amount of time they can dedicate to learning, and their expectations from an online course.
Step #3 Be a Builder: Create Your Course Content
Once you have identified your topic, niche, and target audience, you can start creating your course content.
You can include various types of content in your course, such as videos, slideshows, quizzes, and interactive activities. The key is to create engaging, informative, and actionable content.
Start by creating a course outline that includes the learning objectives, topics covered, and the sequence of lessons. This will help you organize your content and ensure that it meets the learning goals of your students.
Here is a great format template you can use. Keep it simple.
You can then start creating the individual lessons. When creating your lessons, try to use various formats and incorporate interactive elements such as quizzes, polls, and discussions.
💡TIP: Create a detailed course outline in seconds with just a topic title with Eurekaa.io
Step #4 Producer Director: Choose the Format and Record Your Course Content
Producer directors (known as PD’s) do two jobs at once: creating and producing the content.
That’s you!
Your course format will depend on your topic, niche, and learning objectives. You can choose from various formats, such as video-based courses, text-based courses, audio-based courses, or a combination of these formats. Note that it's pretty easy to transform one format to another, like video to audio, and create transcripts from either. Once you publish your course, you can also offer transcript downloads.
Choose a format you think is appropriate for your audience. Video-only based courses are ideal for topics that require visual demonstrations, such as cooking, yoga, or art. Text-based courses are suitable for topics that require in-depth explanations, such as software programming or academic subjects.
Audio-based courses are ideal for topics that require auditory learning, such as language learning or public speaking.
Once you have created your course content, you need to record it. This involves choosing the right equipment, such as a microphone, camera, and screen recording software. You can also consider outsourcing this task to a videographer but there are bundles curated for this on Amazon. Here is an inexpensive option with great reviews.
🪤 TRAP WARNING: Do NOT waste time getting the perfect equipment or perfect video.
Do not delay. Start small and get going! You can always upgrade later.
When recording your course content, just make sure to use a quiet and well-lit space and maybe a teleprompter or script to ensure that you cover all the essential points.
After recording your content, you need to edit and produce it. This involves adding titles, captions, and transitions, as well as optimizing the video or audio quality.
Step #6 Be Stage Manager: Pick Your Platform
Once you have recorded and produced your course content, you need to choose a platform to host and distribute it. There are a ton of options available. If you want to sell your course on your own, consider platforms like Thinkific, Teachable, Kajabi, or Learnworlds.com. If you want a marketplace to sell your courses for you, try Udemy, Skillshare, and others.
💡TIP: See what course topics are selling across all the largest marketplaces with Eurekaa.io
Each platform has pros and cons, and you should choose the one that best suits your needs and goals.
If you're just starting, platforms like Udemy and Coursera can provide you with a ready-made audience and a built-in marketing system. However, they may take a percentage of your earnings and limit your creative control. If you want more control over your course, you can consider hosting it on your website using a learning management system (LMS) plugin.
Step #7 Be a Scientist: Launch Your Course and Get Feedback
It's time to launch your course once you are ready to market it. Launching your course involves making it available to your target audience and collecting feedback. You can launch your course in various ways, such as a soft launch to a select group of students or a full launch to the public.
Consider this a grand experiment. You just want feedback so you can learn what's working and what’s not. Collect feedback from your students and use it to improve your course.
You can do this by sending out surveys, conducting interviews, or hosting focus groups. This will help you identify areas for improvement and make necessary changes before the next launch.
Step #8 Be a Promoter: Marketing Your Course
Ok, if you’re not the outgoing type, remember you're just playing a role in service to your project- and this may be one of the mot important roles you play.
Once you have created and uploaded your course, you need to market and promote it to your target audience. This involves using various marketing tactics, such as social media, email, content, and paid advertising.
Start by creating a landing page for your course that includes a compelling headline, a clear description of the benefits, and a call-to-action (CTA). You can also create a promotional video that explains the course and its value proposition.
Once you have created your marketing materials, you can start promoting them on various channels, such as social media, email, or paid advertising.
Step #9 Be a Gardner: Update and Improve Your Course
Once you have launched your course and collected feedback, you need to update and improve it regularly.
Cultivate, rip out the weeds, plant, and grow!
This involves changing or adding new content and maybe improving the delivery methods. By doing this, you will be able to keep your course relevant and up-to-date and retain your students.
To update and improve your course, you need to monitor and act on your students' feedback regularly.
You can also use analytics tools to track your course's performance, such as completion rates, engagement rates, and student feedback. This will help you identify areas for improvement and make necessary changes.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Creating an Online Course
Creating an online course can be challenging, and you need to avoid various mistakes. One of the most common mistakes is creating a course that is too broad or too narrow.
“A common mistake is creating a course that is too broad or too narrow.”
You need to strike a balance between covering enough content and keeping it focused. Other mistakes include not researching your audience, not varying formats, and not promoting your course.
Tools and Resources We Recommend for Creating an Online Course
There are various tools and resources are available to help you create an online course. These include video editing software and or screen recording software, learning management systems, and marketing automation tools. You can also consider outsourcing tasks such as video production, course design, or marketing.
Editing your video or audio
For a twofer on the video/audio editing side, we recommend Descript. Just upload your video and edit it like a word processor. Need audio? Just export in that or any format including your transcript. Easy peasy
Validating your topic idea - and creating your content
Eurekaa contains the largest searchable online course database in the world. It is also a unique analytics tool that includes an AI-assistant, Lesson Architect™, for content gap analysis and course or book outline creation.
It is an end-to-end online software that facilitates seamless content creation, fed by data points from the world’s popular online e-learning platforms.
All the steps we mentioned above can be done within seconds in Eurekaa by entering a single topic idea.
For example, if you need to research a topic, title, chapters, etc., the tool will mine the data from 200,000 courses from over 11 learning platforms with 400K+ categories with a simple click, saving you time and energy.
Or, if you need to know which topics are trending on Google or which are the best-selling online courses, Eurekaa will give you the answers instantly.
Compare courses, get the opportunity score, use the Rank Feature to understand the search volumes for your topic keywords, and plan and edit your content easily to create professional courses with Eurekaa, our AI-powered course creation software.