How To Create An Online Course In 15 Steps In 2024?

In today’s era, you can learn anything you want with just a few touches. The knowledge is available at the fingertips. 

When I created my first online course, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information available. I found it extremely hard to sort the data and arrange them in a proper format.

Excess availability of the data may lead to the failure of your online course sales. Therefore, always make a point to choose a market with more demand and fewer competitors. 

Online courses are preferred nowadays as an alternative to offline classes. Online classes tend to provide more flexibility and self-paced learning. Online courses have become essential parts of learners’ daily lives.

What’s more? Let’s jump to the steps to create an online course. 

Creating an Online Course: In A Nutshell

Creating an online course will help you share your expertise in the field you choose. It is not an easy task. You will require to dig into the details, do tons of research, connect to the audience, create the outline, work on content, shoot lecture videos, etc.  

For self-study of your learners, you will have to provide resources and materials, a workbook, etc. 

Assessments and tests are important to check whether the learner is gaining knowledge from the course and whether they are in sync with the course curriculum. 

You will have to put great effort when compiling all the content material together. The course must be created in a perfect way to avoid any errors and create a hassle-free course for the learners. 

Let us dive deep into the details of the steps. 

Steps to Create and Sell an Online Course

To create an online course, you will need to follow the following steps. 

1. Clear Your Ideas and Choose a Niche for Creating Your Online Course

You must have clear ideas about the subject or niche you want to create a course on. 

When considering the niches, you must consider giving priority to the subjects that interest you or the ones that you have a keen interest in. 

There is a large variety of niches in the market that have gained great importance in recent years, like digital marketing, programming, full-stack development, etc. 

You can make a list of niches, do market research and cut out the ones that are not the best ones according to you.

Remember to consider your passion, interests, skills, experience, and achievements while selecting the niche. 

2. Research the Market of That Niche

Once you have completed the selection of the niche, you must proceed to do in-depth research on the niche. Every niche has multiple topics and subtopics. You need to figure out the topics that you are good with and the ones you are comfortable teaching. 

Research is the main criterion that helps you create an efficient online course. Market research is one of the important aspects of the research. It helps you to understand the market and the audience. 

Understanding the audience requirement, which online courses are most likely to be sold, types of topics that attract the learners the most. 

You can also research and choose a topic that has more demand and less competition. 

Moreover, you can take the help of the tools available in the market for free, like Google Trends, Google keyword planner, Answer the public, etc. 

Above all, you need to consider keyword volume research, competition in your niche, etc. 

3. Pick a Topic to Start Your Online Course with a More Significant Marketplace and Less Competition 

Once you are done with the research, you will get an idea of which topic is best in your niche to create an online course. 

Choosing a topic may seem easy, but requires great research and hard work. You must be efficient enough to be sure about the topic you have picked.

4. Research the Audience that You Want to Target

After choosing the topic, you will need to research and understand the targeted audience. This will help you in making the content according to the requirements of the audience. 

Online courses that serve the learning needs of the audience always gain the upper hand in reaching a large group. 

Content made according to the audience’s needs has a higher chance of success.

5. Start With the Research on the Selected Topic for the Course

After gaining insights into audience requirements, researching the topics and jotting down the important subtopics is the most important task to be done. 

Next, you will have to create a list of topics and sub-topics that will have to be covered in the video lectures. Gathering proper content will help you in producing better quality courses.  

6. Create Your Course Outline According to the Targeted Audience

Creating an outline is one of the most crucial parts of starting the process. The outline gives you a sense of direction while working on your content creation. It is a roadmap for your journey. 

When I first created my course, the outline helped me to sort most of the content in a proper format. Once the proper outline is created, the speed of the workflow increases, and the chances of errors taking place reduce. 

7. Create the Course Content

You will find creating the rest of the course content easier if you have the outline ready. This part includes most of the brainstorming after the research. 

You will have to consider answering questions such as:

• What will keep the audience engaged with the course?
• How will you access the performance of learners?
• What makes the course curriculum stand out in the market?
• What is the percentage satisfaction of the learners?
• Why will the audience choose you over other course providers?
• What resources will you offer in the course?
• How will you prepare quizzes that will appear at the end of every section?

After gathering all the above answers and creating content that will satisfy the hunger of the audience to learn, you can proceed to the next step. 

8. Include Engaging Content with Exciting Assignments, Daily Goals, Quizzes, Tests, Workbooks, etc.

To create an efficient course, the learners must be provided with some self-study materials and assignments. The course also requires quizzes, tests, etc to access the learners and their learning process.

This content helps to keep the learners hooked to the course and engages them in the learning process. The course curriculum is incomplete without the assessments and quizzes. They help to track the learner’s growth and accomplishments. 

9. Record the Video Content and Edit Your Recording

The most important part of creating a course is recording the video lectures. The lectures must deliver the content to the audience in a very engaging and fun way. 

You must always remember to create appealing video lectures that are easy to understand.

It is great to include information that can be processed quickly. 

While creating the video, talk to the audience as if conveying the lectures one-on-one. This improves the quality of conveying and learning. 

As soon as the video lectures are recorded, you must edit the recording and remove the unnecessary information and content.

10. Club Together all the Content and Create a Proper System

The created content will be required to be put together in the proper format to deliver an error-free, engaging course.

Once all the content is ready, clubbing all the content together won’t require much of your time. 

11. Access Your Course from the Audience’s POV or by Gathering the Audience to Provide you Feedback for Your Course

You can contact some of your targeted audience, provide them with some of your course content and gather their feedback.

Besides, you may survey by providing a short part of your course for free. The survey conducted, the feedback gathered, and the re-analysis of your survey will help you in improving your content to some extent. 

After reanalyzing your online course, you will require to make some changes that will help to improve your content and the content delivery. Once the changes are made, you can proceed to the next step.

12. Price Your Content According to the Market

Make sure to strategize the price of your course according to the market. You might need to take a look at the competitor’s prices and offerings. 

Remember not to underprice or overprice your online course. Underpricing may degrade the value of your course and won’t be able to justify your efforts. On the other hand, overpricing may cause you to lose leads. 

There is no rule to set the pricing you are free to offer your course at a price you find more suitable and affordable. 

13. Pre-advertise Your Course, or Choose a Platform to Share Your Course

To gather an audience and create awareness about your course, you must work on pre-advertising your course. This will also help you in the branding process of your online course.

If you want to publish your course on a certain platform, you will need to apply for the same and wait for confirmation. 

14. Launch Your Course

After you are done with all the required marketing and the rest of the process, you will need to Launch your course. 

Fix a time and date to launch your course. Try creating hype on social media to gather an audience for your live launch. Be it an online launch or an offline campaign launch, remember to plan it. Inviting chief guests may help you boost the event. 

15. Work on Marketing and Advertising for the Course 

The final part of the deal is to hack the marketing strategy. The strategic marketing of your online course may help you to generate more sales. 

Advertising and marketing are important aspects when it comes to converting leads into buyers. 

If you are investing your time and efforts to create an online course for no one to buy, then you can surely skip this part.

Marketing your product will increase your reach and create a place for you in the marketplace. 

You can use the following to market your course:

1. Online communication platforms
2. Social media
3. Online forums
4. Webinar
5. Podcats
6. Collaborate with like-minded people
7. Paid ads
8. Blogs
9. Youtube
10. Referrals
11. Influencers, etc.

These mediums can also be used for pre-advertising as well.

Benefits Of Creating An Online Course

Here are some potential benefits of creating an online course:

• Reach a wider audience – By putting your course online, you can reach students globally rather than just locally. This expands your potential customer base.
• Flexibility for students – Online courses allow students to access the material independently, going at their own pace. This flexibility can be appealing to many.
• Passive income potential – After creating the course, income can continue to come in passively as new students enroll. This can provide ongoing revenue.
• Building authority – Creating a course can help build your brand and establish you as an authority in your niche. This can lead to other business opportunities.
• Scalability – Enrolling new students in an online course over time is easy. This makes it very scalable compared to in-person teaching.
• Leverage prerecorded content – The course can reuse prerecorded material like videos, avoiding the need to repeat lectures.
• Easy to update and refine – You can continuously update and improve an online course over time based on student feedback.
• Global reach – Online courses allow you to reach an international audience since location is not a barrier.
• Multiple revenue streams – You can potentially generate revenue through course enrollment fees, upsells, sponsorships, etc.

Mistakes To Avoid When Creating An Online Course

If you’re making an online course for the first time, you will most likely make a few easily avoidable mistakes. Here we have identified those mistakes so that you can avoid them when creating an online course:

• Creating Lengthy Video Lessons: The attention span of students is getting lower. That’s why video courses should not have video lessons longer than 20 minutes. It is best to create short video lessons explaining the concept in a short and crisp way so that your students can easily understand them without getting bored.
• Stressing Yourself: Most of the time, people stress themselves out when doing something for the first time, thinking that everything should be perfect; otherwise, it will help. If you are chasing perfection when creating an online course, then your course will never go live because there will be some errors that you will try to rectify repeatedly and waste your important time.
• Not inviting friends & family to try your course: You have successfully created your course; before you take it online, you should test it out by providing free access to your friends and family. They will give you honest feedback about your course, and if there is an issue with it, you can rectify it before it goes online.

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• Learn Accents & Dialects

Final Verdict: How To Create An Online Course (2024)

That’s all with the Online Course creation. The process won’t be quick and easy. You will need to invest your time, effort, and dollars while creating the course. But with patience, in the end, all those hustles would be worth it. 

I hope that the article has helped you solve your problem and provided you with a direction to work on it. Remember to add value to your product to make it a success.  

How was your experience while making the online course?

Frequently Asked Question