How to Create Your First Online Course in 5 Easy Steps

Creating an online course allows entrepreneurs, within any niche, to deliver their unique perspective and teaching style in a way that makes money, delivers value, and scales endlessly.

Of the 1,000 creators the Tilt surveyed, 39% cited online courses as a source of income. For good reason: courses are one of the most profitable digital products for creators to sell. With the e-learning industry expected to grow to $325 billion by 2025 (from $107 billion in 2015), there’s no better time to create a course for your audience.

Online courses are most successful when they solve pain points and deliver a transformative experience.

This article is designed to help you create a minimum viable product. A minimum viable product is the earliest version of a product with enough value to attract early customers and validate the idea. With this approach, entrepreneurs are able to receive feedback in the early stages and improve the product for students.

By the end of this article, you will have all of the information necessary to create your first online course in the following five steps:

1. Choose a Topic & Type of Course
2. Establish Outline & Learning Outcomes
3. Create Course Content & Deliverables
4. Determine Delivery Structure & Pricing
5. Plan Course Launch & Sell

As you move through this process, avoid falling into traps of perfectionism. You can improve the course with time. For now, focus on offering the highest quality information with the least amount of initial time investment. Once you have a minimum viable product, you can test the response and tweak both your course materials and the marketing as necessary.

1. Choose a Topic & Type of Course

When choosing a course topic, interact with the community your course intends to serve — you will learn what topics are in high demand, as well as the best type of course to deliver and how.

As you brainstorm topics, reflect on the following questions:

• What knowledge do I have that others are yearning for?
• How does my business solve pain points for users?
• What comes naturally to me that others struggle with?
• How can my knowledge/talents/passion catalyze joy for others?

No matter how much you do or do not know, there is someone else seeking the information you already possess.

Across niches, creators are building successful businesses around the courses they sell. There are various approaches to creating a course; don’t be afraid to innovate in order to deliver an experience you know your audience will love.

Types of Online Courses

Once you have an idea for your product, the next step is to determine what type of course you want to create. Ultimately, this comes down to how you will structure and deliver your course.

Common types of courses include:

• eLearning courses (often interactive)
• Drip feed courses (distributed by email on a schedule)
• Webinars & workshops
• Live courses

eLearning Courses

eLearning is an umbrella term for online courses; they often include an interactive or assessment component. These courses can be formal (to gain certification or college credit) or informal (to learn a new skill or hobby).

eLearning courses are generally organized into modules, which act as organizing chapters for the content. Each module includes lessons that break the topic down further to cover it in-depth.

Lessons often have a video, additional text information or the transcript for the video, and quizzes or downloadable worksheets for integrating what the student has learned.

In professional certification courses and formal education classes, it is common to include quizzes or assessments at the end of each lesson or module. Informal classes generally include worksheets, calls-to-action, and encourage community participation.

eLearning courses often include a student-only online community, as well as lifetime access to future updates of the course.

Drip Feed Courses

Drip feed courses deliver each chapter of the course on a set schedule. The content is delivered by email and often includes video, text, and worksheets or calls-to-action.

This type of course encourages student engagement by delivering the course on a predictable schedule and only sharing the information they need to learn that week (day, month).

Drip feed courses are ideal for generating passive income. Once purchased, the automatic delivery of the course allows the student to be guided through a course without manual input from the creator. This type of course can also be used as a lead magnet to collect email addresses in exchange for the value being offered.

Simple Green Smoothies utilizes a drip feed course to promote its 10-Day Green Smoothie Challenge. This is a great example of an opt-in offer that appeals directly to the pain points of the visitor: “how do I easily improve my health?” Simple Green Smoothies offers an easy solution and free email course, including recipes, to jumpstart the healthy habit. Coined as a challenge, people are motivated to participate and Simple Green Smoothies is able to grow its email list. This allows the company to sell its meal plans and recipe books directly to the people that have already shown interest. In doing so, Simple Green Smoothies has created an efficient sales funnel.

Webinars & Workshops

Webinars and workshops are presented in real-time. Generally hosted on a video communications platform (such as Zoom), live courses either instruct or involve the audience.

Webinars are perfect for live courses or master classes — wherein the teacher instructs a small group, giving attention to each individual. This type of course is also ideal for on-going instructional groups, such as poetry workshops or wine and painting clubs.

Live Courses

Live courses are offered at a specific time of year. The creator opens the doors to purchase the course, the participants complete the course as a group in a set timeframe, and the course is (usually) not available until the next time it’s launched — often yearly or biannually.

This type of course is ideal for helping people stay engaged and accountable. It requires more from the creator, because live courses provide a range of offerings, including (but not limited to):

• Weekly or monthly workshops with the creator
• Lifetime access to future workshops
• Downloadable workbook for deeper learning
• Access to a community of current participants

Live courses create opportunities for creators to actively engage with participants, helping to guide the intended transformation.

There are hundreds of variations on the types of courses you can create. But the four models above outline the most common ways to build and deliver a course.

Average Time Investment: 2 Hours for Research & Brainstorming

2. Establish Outline & Learning Outcomes

Break your topic down into chapters or modules. Each section should teach one skill or aspect of the course. Overall, determine the ‘Point A’, where students begin, and the ‘Point B’ that your course leads them  to by transforming their knowledge, perspective, or skill set.

During this step, you will also begin to develop your own teaching style. In all likelihood, the information you’re sharing can be found somewhere else. But the audience who buys your course wants to learn from you.

Therefore, remember to incorporate your personality, quarks, and community insight. Your information should focus on the student — but who you are and how you teach is the special sauce that creates superfans.

Create an Outline

The type of course you create will affect how you outline the course. eLearning and Live courses generally organize the topic into modules then lessons. For example:

Topic: Writing a Memoir

Example Modules:

• Interviewing yourself
• Determining the core narrative
• How to integrate facts into prose
• Three acts & the hero’s journey
• Outlines don’t need to be scary
• Writing the first chapter
• Writing the next chapter, and the next one…
• Bonus: The many paths to publishing

Example Lessons for Module: Interviewing yourself

• What’s your story? (A writing exercise)
• Press record: getting to know yourself
• The importance of morning pages
• Preparing to face the inner critic
• What’s your boon? The gift from the grit?

Drip-feed courses can be broken down into modules and lessons as well. However, drip-feed courses often organize the main topic into digestible chapters. Each chapter teaches one aspect of the overall topic and is delivered by email.

Webinars and workshops have the most unique and varied structures. A creator can offer a series of webinars, a single workshop on a specific subject, or host a membership program for on-going classes. Workshops can also be offered as part of a Live course or used to generate leads for a larger course.

With your structure in mind, map out each skill the student will need to learn to gain the knowledge and transformation they’re seeking.

Consider what additional resources they will need along the way: blog posts, worksheets, quizzes, calls-to-action, etc. You might also include bonuses, which entice potential customers and provide additional, highly relevant information.

Establish Learning Outcomes

Before you move on, write down three to five learning outcomes for your course. These are meant to clearly define the skills students will acquire by taking the course. This exercise is helpful for gaining clarity and identifying value propositions (why someone would want to buy the course).

Questions for identifying learning outcomes include:

• When a student takes the course, what is the Point A they are starting from and the Point B my course leads them to? Why do they take this journey?

• What transformation does my course seek to create and what is necessary to ensure that transformation takes place?

• Who is my course for and why would they want to purchase it? What pain points am I solving? How does my course improve their life?

With your answers in mind, write a list of learning outcomes. The strongest learning outcomes begin with a measurable verb, as outlined by Bloom’s Taxonomy.

For a jumping-off point, use the phrase, “By the end of this course, you will have the skills to…” Continuing with our example, the learning outcomes for a course on Writing Memoir might include:

• Confidently translate life experiences into engaging prose.
• Construct a narrative outline of your book.
• Employ tools for overcoming writer’s block.
• Compose the first draft of your memoir!

While this step requires a lot of brainstorming and decision-making, it sets the course creator up for success moving forward.

Next, we will create the course content and deliverables. A strong outline will allow the creator to move more swiftly through the next step.

Returning to the Goal: Minimum Viable ProductAs you create your outline and learning outcomes, determine what aspects are essential to delivering the course results. In other words, figure out the structural information that students need immediately, as well as the topics and chapters that can be added later. You do not need to create the most advanced version of your course right away. With this approach, you’re allowing yourself to fully flesh out your ideas without creating the course in its entirety before selling it and proving the concept. Indeed, consider pausing here to create a landing page from what you know. Then use that landing page to pre-sell the course or collect email addresses before launch. There are various platforms that allow you to create a free landing page (i.e. Mailchimp). Allow yourself to create a product that delivers on its value proposition while investing the least amount of time possible. When you release new content, current students will appreciate the additional information. Importantly, you will have ensured the product is wanted before spending time creating all of the materials.

Average Time Investment: 5-15 Hours (Dependent on Course Size)

3. Create Course Content & Deliverables

Now it’s time to get down to the knitty-gritty. To create the most engaging course possible, this step generally includes writing, filming, and editing videos.

Ultimately, consider how to present your information in the way that will be most appealing to your audience. It’s also important to create course materials with different learning styles in mind, including:

• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinesthetic
• Reading/writing

On average, course creators will want to incorporate two or more of the major learning styles, if not all of them. This ensures that people of various learning styles have the opportunity to fully absorb the content.

Filming & Editing Videos

There are various ways to include video content with a course. The two most common and low-tech ways are:

• Film yourself presenting information.
• Use visuals, screen-recordings, or a powerpoint with voice-over.

Oftentimes, creators will use a mix of both. They might present information on-screen, then cut to a screen-recording with voice-over to explain the details.

Equipment

Unless you already have a camera, a smartphone is perfectly adequate for filming. Purchasing a camera is a worthwhile investment in the future. But the quality of information you capture will always matter more than production value.

The same is true of editing softwares for videos. Unless you already own software, stick with a free option:

• iMovie is an easy-to-use editing software included on Mac computers.
• Lightworks works with all the major operating systems.

Video editors often recommend investing in an external hard drive. This prevents you from needing a computer with significant RAM or disk space. It also protects your work.

Worksheets, Assessments & Calls-to-Action

Another part of creating your course is making additional materials for deeper learning. This can take many forms, from quizzes and worksheets to ebooks and spreadsheets. This can also include calls-to-action, also known as homework.

For each lesson, consider what other resources you can provide and what students need to learn in order to progress.

Deliverables often come in the form of PDFs. Adobe Acrobat comes with a free trial but requires monthly fees thereafter. Canva is a free alternative that makes it easy to design any graphic with little-to-no experience. It also offers an array of free templates to help you get started.

Deliverables and calls-to-action allow students to apply what they’ve learned. This helps students absorb the information and encourages engagement with the material.

Average Time Investment: 40 - 120 Hours (The Bulk of the Work)

4. Determine Delivery Structure & Pricing

Once your course is complete, how will you deliver it to your audience? The type of course you create often helps to determine the delivery method. There are a plethora of options and platforms you can use to sell, including marketplaces, course builders, and ecommerce platforms. SendOwl makes it easy for content entrepreneurs to sell their digital products anywhere online. Here’s how.

How to Create an Online Course with SendOwl

SendOwl can be used to create and automatically deliver any type of online course. With a full suite of tools for creators, SendOwl makes it possible to securely and automatically deliver digital goods. Sell directly to your audience or via your website and share new lessons daily, weekly, or monthly using payment links and checkout buttons. It’s also highly affordable and requires the least amount of technical know-how.

Sell Access to Your eLearning Course

Start by creating a members-only area of your website. You can use password-protected pages or create membership accounts for users to log in.

Integrate SendOwl payment links or embed checkout buttons with your website. Once a student purchases your course, they will automatically receive an email with the information needed to access the content. You can set up payment gateways for Stripe or PayPal to automate payment processing.

Wordpress users can even integrate SendOwl with various membership plugins, including Wishlist Member, s2Member Pro, and MemberMouse.

Deliver Your Course on Schedule (Drip Feed)

Drip feed courses are shared by email on a set schedule. When a student purchases the course, they automatically receive the first email that you have customized. This email generally introduces the course details, as well as what to expect and when.

When creating a drip feed course with SendOwl, you can create an email sequence to be delivered on a predetermined schedule. Once a student purchases the course, they will automatically receive each new section by email on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

This is a great way to keep students engaged in the material without needing to manually deliver the content. It also allows students to work at their own pace, while encouraging them to complete the course on a timeline.

Additionally, these courses can be sold anywhere online with SendOwl. You can even create a shoppable one-pager for your link-in-bio across social media platforms, allowing you to send traffic directly to checkout.

Host a Live Course or On-going Class

Finally, a live course or on-going class can be sold as a drip feed course (as outlined above) or on a subscription basis. Subscriptions allow you to provide students with access to any of the digital files you host with SendOwl — including videos, worksheets, quizzes, and more.

This model allows you to charge a recurring monthly subscription fee. Once a student purchases a subscription to the course, automatically deliver all of the information needed to access the materials — whether that’s a Zoom link, members-only Discord group, how-to content, or other deliverables.

How to Price Your Online Course

When figuring out how to price your online course, consider where the course fits into your business. Online courses fit into business models in a few different ways:

• Lead generation. Generate newsletter subscriptions by using your online course as a free opt-in offer (also known as a lead magnet). Collect emails in exchange for access.

• Passive income. Many creators sell multiple courses that can be purchased at any time and are self-directed by the student. This allows the creator to receive passive income from the course. These courses range from a few bucks to hundreds of dollars.

• Main product & stream of income. Courses with highly valuable skills, and those offered live, often cost more and make up a larger percentage of the creator’s annual revenue. These courses range from a few hundred dollars to thousands.

• Memberships & subscriptions. Billed monthly, this model allows creators to continually create new valuable content or offer community benefits alongside course information. Since creators charge a monthly fee for access, prices vary greatly ($5 to $150 a month or more) depending on what’s included and the value of the knowledge.

With the knowledge of where your course fits in your overall business model, what other factors do you need to consider when pricing a course?

Content Value

Do not undervalue, and therefore underprice, your knowledge. This is a challenge for many creators. To avoid this, research your competition, review accredited courses on the subject, and use the Google Keyword Planner to see how valuable the topic is to advertisers (which translates to customer demand).

Use this to determine where your course fits within the market, rather than as a way to choose your pricing.

Miranda researches her competition and discovers someone selling a course on the same topic as her own. The competition is charging $600 and claims to teach the student everything they need to know. But when Miranda looks at what the course includes, she becomes confident that her course is offering far more value and aiding students in unique ways. Miranda leverages this knowledge when marketing — not by pointing out the competition, but by focusing on what her course offers that goes above and beyond. Before, she was struggling to charge $400 for the course. But having reviewed competitors who charge much less and far more, she realizes that her course has enough value (and herself enough credibility) to charge $1000 per student.

Use research to help form a more complete understanding of how to price your course.

In the example above, Miranda might have realized the exact opposite: that her course was more of an introduction to the topic, rather than a walkthrough. She may have decided to charge less or even turn the course into a lead magnet for collecting emails.

Either way, she used her research of the competition to inform her pricing, rather than determine it. This is important because, more often than not, competing on price will hurt your bottom line and depreciate the value of your product.

Established Credibility

How easy or difficult will it be for you to sell your course to the audience you already have? If you’ve established significant credibility in your niche, you may be in a position to command premium pricing.

Seth Godin is a prime example of this. For over a decade, he has built his brand around daily blogging and selling short, highly useful books on entrepreneurship. But Seth also hosts an intensive course called the altMBA. This 31-day guided course requires potential students to apply and be accepted into the program. It also costs $4,450. Why does this work? Seth has tremendous credibility in the business world. He has continually created and shipped work that is beloved by online entrepreneurs around the world.

If you are not established in your niche, creating authority and trust with your free content is key. This aspect of marketing is on-going and will build upon itself with time. You do not need to have established credibility within a niche to successfully launch a course. By being aware of the credibility you’ve built, you will be able to more easily identify your true fans and create products they love.

Profit Margins

Profit margins are determined by dividing profit by total revenue. This measures how much money a business is making in profit for each dollar made.

Online businesses that sell digital products are often able to generate profit margins of 85% and above — compared to 7 to 10%, which is considered good for other small businesses.

If your profit margins are too low, you will not have capital to invest in promoting the course, nor will you be motivated to invest your time in doing so. You’ll also want to consider how much money the course will make as it scales. Consider the example below:

Alder is trying to price their course on designing a tiny house. Originally, they planned to sell it for $50. But after doing some research, they decide to test $80 and see how their audience responds. They spend $200 creating the course. They launch the course to a segment of their email list with 100 people. This generates five sales. At $50 per student, their course generates a 20% profit margin ($50 in profit). When charging $80, however, their profit margin jumps to 50% ($200 in profit). After refining their price with this experiment, Alder launches the course to the other 700 people on their email list. In two weeks, they make 50 sales. Based on this information, Alder determines that by charging $80 instead of $50, they made $3,800 in profit, instead of $2,300 — that’s a difference of $1,500.

On the surface, a price increase of $30 doesn’t seem like much. But Alder now has more cash to reinvest in marketing and expansion.

For many new course creators, the inclination is to choose a price they think others will pay. The challenge, therefore, is to set a price that’s a little higher than you feel comfortable charging.

You can always change your pricing in the future. Pick a price and adjust as needed. Track your sales conversion rates to make informed decisions on whether to change your pricing strategy, adjust marketing, or improve upon the product itself.

Average Time Investment: 20 Hours (Course Structure & Pricing)

5. Plan Course Launch & Sell

You’ve done it! You’ve created a course and you're ready to share it with the world. Now what? Before you can make your first sale, you’ve got to promote your product.

The best way to promote new products is with a launch. A launch generates excitement for an upcoming product, while offering a discounted price or special bonus for being an early adopter.

When you launch a product, a key component of making the sale is your landing page. A landing page outlines the benefits of a product and persuades readers to buy. Let’s discuss.

Create a Sales Page

The goal of this page is to convert browsers into buyers. Your landing page (also known as a sales page) should empathize with your audience’s pain points and illustrate how your course will transform their experience, perspective, or skills.

Use value propositions to showcase why someone should buy your product. Share a full description of the course, as well as what is included (bonuses, worksheets, etc).

Break up the wall of text with videos, bolded key features, bullet points to highlight benefits, and headers to make your value-propositions stand out. Your sales page should also include:

• Testimonials (once acquired)
• Who you are (your credibility)
• Frequently asked questions
• Pricing details
• Your return policy
• Checkout buttons

Your conversion rate is determined by the number of people that buy your product after landing on the sales page, divided by the number of people who only visit the page. You can use this information to determine how well your landing page is performing.

Johnny sends an email to his list of 2,000 people, of which 400 click through to his landing page. Only 5 people buy the product. Johnny’s conversion rate is a measly 1% (5/400). Johnny decides to spend more time talking to his audience. He knows his course can help, but he’s not sure how to position the messaging. After listening to a few people discuss their wants and needs, Johnny adjusts the text on his landing page and sends out another promotion. This time, 300 people click-through to the landing page. Of this group, 25 people buy the course. That’s a significant improvement, with a conversion rate of 8% (25/300).

Remember, you can always tweak and adjust this page later. Focus on creating a solid structure that you can optimize once you’ve collected analytical data. After you’ve created a landing page, it’s time to plan your course launch.

Plan Your Launch

There are many approaches to launching a new product. Entrepreneurs will often employ multiple techniques to reach their audience across channels. This includes:

• Webinars. These allow entrepreneurs to offer free value, build trust, and sell their product (often at a special price) in the span of a couple hours. In fact, 53% of marketers feel webinars generate the highest quality leads when used at the top of a funnel.

• Lead magnets. Also known as opt-in offers, this might be a mini version of your course, ebook, or PDF that’s offered in exchange for email addresses. As the free content concludes, you can offer the full course for complete immersion in the topic.

• Paid advertising. Paid advertising is ideal for generating new leads to a business and can be re-targeted, which is to advertise to the audience that engaged with past advertisements or the brand in general.

• Social posts. Social media posts allow you to promote your course across channels. Integrate your promotions into the style of your regular content. This will help with engagement and reach, as algorithms are adept at ignoring promotional material.

• Email blasts. Within most industries, email marketing still generates the most sales transactions. That means your email list is a highly valuable asset to your business. While you don’t want to overwhelm your prospects, email blasts are an essential part of any product launch.

• Third-party features. Whether in the form of a guest blog post or podcast interview, third-party features include any kind of promotion that prominently features you (or your niche) and directs traffic directly to your website or product.

• Influencer marketing. A form of paid advertising, influencer marketing relies on the trust and authority someone else has built with their audience. Influencers are paid to share a product with their audience. Companies often provide a discount code to entice potential customers and to track the success of the campaign.

• Affiliate programs. When you have affiliates who sell your product, they do the marketing work and receive a percentage of the sale. This is a great way to broaden your reach and access niche communities.

All of the above can be used in your on-going marketing plan beyond launch day too. While you do not need to use all of these techniques, try to incorporate three or four into your launch plan.

Next, decide how long your launch period will be. Will you have the doors of your course open for a few months, then close them for the rest of the year? Will you promote the product for two weeks, then launch it and create an on-going marketing plan?

Create a content calendar to stay on top of what needs to be created, published, and promoted. Also consider if and how you will motivate leads to buy; options include: a time-sensitive discount that will expire, extra bonuses offered to pre-launch customers only, a limited number of class spots, and more.

You’re ready to sell! Start your product launch and begin selling your course to the first group of customers. Once you launch the course, solicit feedback and review the data. Both of which will be crucial for improving your course and continuing to acquire new customers.

Average Time Investment: 20-60 Hours (Create Sales Page & Launch)

Next Steps: Improve Your Course & Acquire New Customers

Once your course is out in the world, with real students absorbing and applying the information, it’s time to revisit your minimum viable product. To serve current students and attract new ones, solicit students’ feedback, improve the course, and execute an on-going marketing strategy.

Solicit Feedback & Improve Your Course

Online courses often include access to all future updates of the course. This creates trust and encourages students to collaborate with the creator to make an even better product.

Once your course has active students, solicit their feedback with an email or survey. Review the additional course content and materials you’re planning to add. Ensure that new course content is in alignment with what students need to better understand the topic and apply the information.

As you add new content, inform your students of the additional information they’re getting and ask them to provide feedback and promote the course word-of-mouth or as an affiliate.

Eventually, you may reach a point where there is nothing else you need to add. Revisit your course on a yearly basis to ensure the materials are relevant and up-to-date.

Develop an On-Going Marketing Strategy

With consideration to the various marketing methods listed above, create an on-going marketing strategy. When developing a marketing plan, it is helpful to plan sprints and marathons.

Sprints are marketing efforts that can be executed quickly and produce fast, often short-term, results. Marathons are the marketing efforts that produce consistent results in the long-term and require a continued time investment.

Paid advertising, webinars, and influencer marketing are great examples of marketing methods that can be done in sprints. While blog posts optimized for SEO, lead magnets, and affiliate programs are marathon marketing strategies.

Social media posts can go either way: Instagram and Twitter require sprints; while content designed to be searchable on YouTube and Pinterest utilize marathon marketing.

It’s important for most marketing plans to include a bit of both. However, prioritize marathon marketing strategies to create a sustainable business model, especially if you are a solopreneur or your business is a side hustle.

Top 3 Pitfalls for Course Creators to Avoid

We’ve discussed the importance of pricing strategy and the necessity of a course launch. While the process of creating and selling a course will teach you the most, here are three mistakes to avoid on the path to becoming a successful course creator.

Not Building an Audience

In the vast world of online courses, one of the most challenging aspects is bringing awareness to your course and acquiring students.

The solution: Create a marketing funnel that attracts potential customers, builds trust, and strengthens the connections between you and your audience.

The likelihood of launching a successful course is significantly increased by building an audience before release.

Your audience might include social media followers, podcast listeners, blog readers, email subscribers, and more.

Not Completing the Course

Once the excitement of an idea has worn off and a creator is in the process of building their course content, it can become all-too-easy to become overwhelmed, discouraged, or distracted.

The solution: Instead, ground your ‘why’ in how your course will improve someone else’s life. What is the vision in your heart that will get you out of bed in the morning to create your course (potentially before working a full time job)?

Creating a course is a project. At the beginning, determine your ‘why’ for creating the course beyond personal gain.

While it is motivating to know that the money (or freedom) generated from the course will improve your life, there are often other thoughts wrapped up in that too (“What if it doesn’t succeed? What if I’m wasting my time?”).

If you find yourself getting stuck along the way, return to your outline. You may find that the topic needs to be broken down into smaller segments.

Not Validating the Course Idea

Prove your product concept as soon as possible. This is key to creating a successful course (with a profitable conversion rate). There are many ways to go about this, but one of the most effective is to create a landing page that promotes the course before you create it.

The solution: Create a landing page and lead magnet to promote your course to your audience before creating it. Use this to validate your idea and solicit early feedback on your topic.

Instead of using this page to convert sales, create a lead magnet (such as a mini version of your course) that your audience can receive for free in exchange for their email address.

We mentioned that this is effective for building an audience, but it also serves as a way to validate your product idea with those who are already part of your audience.

You can also use the mini-course to solicit early feedback on core topics your course will cover and learn more about what students are interested in, struggling with, and want to know.

A Note on Mental Roadblocks

The gap between creating something and knowing that others want what you’ve created is scary for everyone: artists, entrepreneurs, makers, musicians, designers, inventors.

You don’t need to have it all figured out. Follow each of the steps above until you have a product to share. Then send it out in the world and let it become its own entity. Whether it succeeds or fails is not personal to you; it is not a determinant of your value or ability.

Take your time in the planning phases, create your course with intentionality, and be receptive to feedback from potential customers and students.

There is no wrong way to do this. There are a million different perfectly good and wonderful approaches to creating and selling an online course. SendOwl makes it easy to get started without spending a dime: try it free — no website needed; no credit card required.

Conner Carey