Create an Online Course in 10 Steps | FreshLearn Guide

Rahul Mehta

on Feb 22, 2023

• 23 min read

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E-learning is here to stay! According to Forbes statistics, the e-learning market will grow by 20.5% between 2022 and 2030. Also, after COVID-19, online learning grew to a whopping 200%. So, if you consider online teaching, now is the perfect time to leverage this booming trend.

Besides being a profitable online course, you can turn your expertise into a marketing tool to generate leads, create a community, and build your brand. The good news is that the availability of user-friendly online learning platforms like FreshLearn makes your job much easier.

Having said all that, creating your first online course is a giant leap. I get it. It’s obvious to have so many questions on where to start, how to choose a topic, and how to convert what you are good at into a profitable business. No worries, I’ve got you covered!

All About Online Courses

The concept of online courses is simple. Do you have knowledge or expertise in any topic which you could offer to people? Then, create an online course about it.

The topic can be anything from marketing to cooking; all you need is engaging content and the right online learning platform to reach your audience.

A major benefit for you as a course creator is you can create profitable online courses either as your main income stream or as passive income. For example,

If you are a fitness instructor, you can create and sell online workout programs as your primary income. By consistently developing new courses and offering personalized plans, you can rely on course creation as your main source of revenue.
If you are a social media influencer, you can create online courses on topics such as how to increase your followers/audience or improve your content creation skills. This helps you make a passive income when participants enroll while continuing your focus on regular content and engagement.

Pre-work Before You Create an Online Course

Every successful online course requires a little pre-work before launching and marketing it.

1. Identify your niche

Begin by identifying your correct niche. Choose your niche depending on your focus area, as it will define your course content and target audience. For example, if you want to create courses on cooking, there are various segments in it. Choose the one you specialize let’s say, ‘baking.’ Narrow it down even more, ‘baking under 30 minutes.’

How does choosing the right niche enhance your online course offering?

Clearly defining your niche allows you to tailor your content to a specific group, improving the online learning experience.
Focusing on a more narrowed-down topic reduces the competition compared to broader markets. This makes it easier to stand out and create a profitable online course.
A niche audience helps create an online community among like-minded individuals who are likely to support your future online courses.

FreshLearn makes it easier for you to create a community with your audience. Our online learning platform lets you create your membership plan and sell it at a price you decide — with a 0% commission.

2. Assess the market demand

Does my online course have a market demand? This should be your next focus after specifying your niche. Choose a topic that is trending to convert it into a profitable course. You can assess it using various methods, including:

Check your online course marketplace to determine how your online course offering fits into a broader market.
Conduct customer research and surveys to get feedback on your audience’s requirements. This helps in creating a relevant and necessary course.
Read blogs, industry news, and articles about your niche to stay current. This will enable you to find a new market that requires your online course.

FreshLearn can help you validate your course idea and assess its possibility of success. You can create a course landing page using our AI page builder in less than 60 seconds.

After you create and publish your landing page, you can market it to your target customers to understand their interests. By encouraging them to join a waitlist for the course, you can validate whether your course idea has enough market demand before fully launching it.

How Can You Create a Course from Scratch?

Once you have identified your niche and created online courses that meet market demand, you can execute your online course creation process. Let’s understand it step-by-step.

Step 1: Select a specific course topic

As there are ample online courses available, it's obvious that you will face competition when you launch your online course in the market. So, choose a unique course topic that you can teach your learners. It is important to decide on a topic you are passionate about and one you think you have a broad target audience.

a. Passion

While it's essential to choose a topic you're passionate about for your online course, it’s equally crucial that it’s not something you're overly attached to. That means something you could find interesting to read about, consider, and discuss for weeks, months, and perhaps years.

If you are excited about your online course topic, that will reflect in your material. Your course will seem more accurate and relevant, and you will be better able to inspire and involve your audience. This will also keep your students excited, leading to repeated enrollments.

b. Experience

Students will always like to learn from an expert ahead of them. Learning from the course creators, who have much experience and knowledge in the field, gives them a sense of credibility. You can consider your experience from:

The sectors with which you have worked for years and are familiar.
You can make well-informed projections about an industry.
You have credentials or honors that indicate you are a subject matter expert.

Based on this criterion, you can consider choosing the topic of your online course, which gives you the confidence to develop a full-length course and assess your learners.

c. Market demand

As we already discussed, it is necessary to choose a topic by understanding its market demand. To determine whether your course topic has a market, consider the following points:

You are creating courses to fill a market gap for the underrepresented audience.
Use search engines and other online learning platforms to check whether your chosen topic is in demand.
Your course content fills the content gap that your competitors are missing out on.

Create a checklist and write down all this information. Brainstorming ideas will help you find your perfect course topic. Remember that you do not need a professional degree in a subject to consider it as your course topic. Even your hobbies could, at times, become a successful online course.

Step 2: Conduct customer analysis

Finding a perfect course topic is essential, but you must evaluate your target audience to create a profitable course. Before you work on your course material, do a basic research on your learners. This helps you deliver a high-quality course resonating with your student’s needs.

US Veteran Tim Hobbs created his online academy after conducting years of in-person training to reach a larger audience and accept more assignments. This is a perfect example of analyzing your learners and offering your online course depending on your target audience to increase scalability.

Doing a customer research will help you to:

See from a customer viewpoint — As an expert, you may have a cognitive bias whereby you assume that the person you speak with has the same prior knowledge as you. Analyzing your learners will enable you to return to a beginner's mindset and guide you in adjusting your course.
Identify your students' goals — For students, the transformation they experience following your course is the most crucial aspect of their learning. Speaking with potential clients can help you identify their goals.
Know your learners' pain points — Your course should enable a buyer to address an issue they have been having, assist them in acquiring the knowledge they have been unable to locate elsewhere or allow them to learn something more quickly or effectively than any other choice. Research will help you know precisely your potential consumer's problems and how to handle them within your course.

How do you research your customer’s requirements?

Use forums like Google Trends, Quora, and Reddit to see the scope of your course and what people are talking about.
Follow influential individuals on social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn and pay attention to their conversations about your course’s subject.
In addition to conducting secondary research on social media, personally interact with and contact possible clients to determine whether they would be available to answer a few questions during a research call.
Interview at least ten people, stating you are beginning a course and would like their responses to a few questions, including their challenges and possible outcomes from an online course.

Protip: Use the research to see the customer’s preferred online course format and what they would consider a reasonable price. You can also offer a free course to incentivize the interview.

Step 3: Decide your course’s format

You need to decide on your course’s format, which will form the basis for marketing it to buyers. You must also determine the content size to include in the course curriculum and how much to price it based on the format. There are typically three-course formats, namely:

Multi-day course
Mini-course
Masterclass

a. Multi-day course

Typically requiring several days to complete, multi-day courses are intermediate digital learning tools. They might include additional resources like worksheets, checklists, and pre-recorded video lessons that break the course into several tiers or modules. You can also include tests to evaluate students throughout. A multi-day course is perfect if you have already proven your idea with a mini-course.

Consider the example of a multi-day course created in FreshLearn.

b. Mini-course

A mini-course is simple and usually takes 90 minutes or less. You can present it through several mediums, like a series of emails or a playlist comprising ten quick videos.

Usually offered at a low cost, mini-courses may be free and act as a digital marketing tool or lead magnet for a slightly expensive full-length course. For course creators who are just beginning, a mini course is a fantastic approach to testing the market and learning how to develop a full-length course.

For example, consider the mini-course created by our client.

c. Masterclass

Masterclasses can last several weeks to months, offering buyers a comprehensive strategy for success. You can conduct a masterclass as an individual event or a complete video course. However, if you are initially developing a course, you shouldn't begin with a masterclass. Instead, build up your experience designing multi-day and mini-courses.

FreshLearn lets you create in-person or live online masterclasses in less than 5 minutes. You can also brand it as you like and set your own price. Consider the following masterclass on PowerPoint and presentation skills created by our client.

Create Masterclass

You should choose the kind of course you develop based on your experience building courses, the scope and depth of the material you will create, and the target buyer's willingness to pay.

Be in any course format; FreshLearn helps you create it in no time. Use the AI course creator in our online learning platform, through which you can create, upload, or embed any course content, including audio, video, documents, assessments, assignments, and live sessions (one-day or multiple-day sessions).

You can design and upload the course certificate and automatically award it to your learners upon completion. You can also gather feedback from members throughout their course journey and make ongoing improvements to the course.

Step 4: Outline your content

Create a course outline to help you focus more on your course development.

Your course outline will guide your students from point A to point B and enable you to deliver your course in a disciplined, structured manner. By outlining your course’s content, you can divide the entire course into modules, which will eventually help you to view the course from a customer’s point of view.

The course format you choose will help you determine the content size, how many lessons you should include, and the completion time and price. This format will also help you break down your course into modules and lessons for easy understanding and appeal. Creating an outline before you actually start creating your course is the best way to plan better and make the work easier.

With FreshLearn, you can easily create a course outline that automatically classifies your course into modules. To begin with, register for free on our online learning platform. Next, use our AI course creator to start creating your course outline.

Step a Specify your course idea.

Step b - Choose from any auto-generated topic or create one on your own.

Step c - Our online learning platform will generate your course outline. You can regenerate it to match your needs.

Step d — The course curriculum will be available in your profile, which you can edit to add content, set pricing, and add drip and certificate. You can also add more modules and chapters to your course.

Under the settings tab, you can include your course’s sales page and other marketing information to enhance your course.

After you have a clear plan outlining the subjects for every module and lesson, you should have a clear road forward for developing your course materials. Every lesson should have thorough instructions, knowledge, and assignments for students to work through.

Make sure that every lesson has well-defined learning goals that students can achieve by the end of the course.

Step 5: Test the course’s market demand

Checking the demand is essential before investing money and resources into a comprehensive course. This will help you see whether customers are willing to purchase your course and will be a checkpoint for your return on investment.

Creating a minimum viable product is one of the approaches to doing this. You offer an MVP to the public with just enough functionality to support your presumptions. When building an online course, design a minimally viable product version of your course — a mini course or a free webinar to validate your idea.

a. Start with a mini-version

Usually taking less than two hours to finish, mini-courses focus on a single topic rather than trying to cover a broad spectrum of ideas. A mini-course can ultimately be a module or lesson in a multi-day course. Consider the following mini-course examples as an alternative to your full-length course.

Full-length course	Mini-course
Digital Marketing Mastery	Social Media Strategy for Beginners
Vegan Nutrition Certification	Vegan Meal Planning
Mastering Photography	Basic Lighting Techniques
Total Body Transformation Program	Strength Training for Beginners

A mini-course lets you pick a topic you know well and package your knowledge or repackaging of current material—such as blog posts or email newsletters—into a structure similar to an email course. If you have demand for your mini-course, it’s evident that its more extensive version will be a successful online course.

b. Pre-sell your course

Pre-selling a course is selling it before you create it. This is another mitigating tactic to avoid designing a full-length course without market demand.

Stress-testing your idea, customizing your material to early customer comments, and generating money via pre-sales to support your course's development are other benefits you can avail yourself of when you pre-sell your course. Early student sign-ups will encourage you to complete and launch your comprehensive course.

To pre-sell your course in FreshLearn, select ‘one-time’ payment in the pricing section. You can mention the plan name ‘early-bird’ to help you stay organized for the pre-sale and the main sale.

c. Offer a free webinar

Making a webinar with an upsell is another MVP approach to confirm the need for your course for the market. A webinar's typical conversion rate could be around 20%. The conversion rate this indicates proves that your more extensive course has market demand.

While you use most of the webinar session to provide insightful analysis on your course topic, get participant feedback on what they thought was worthwhile and what they want to learn more.

These techniques of verifying your course idea will save you the time to design a course with no customer demand.

Step 6: Choose an effective delivery method

Hang on; You are halfway there in creating a successful online course. Your next step is to choose the most effective and engaging delivery method.

When determining the ideal delivery method when creating an online course, consider your audience's various learning requirements and how you may provide knowledge to make your course as interesting as possible for your students. To make it better, consider the following questions:

Will your online course have video content, activities, reading content, or videos?
What is the visual type you are planning to use?
How will your course be exciting and entertaining?
What is your plan to help your learners with various learning styles?

Brainstorming these questions will help you decide on the right delivery approach. To make it even more engaging, follow the below points:

a. Use a combination of teaching techniques

A traditional classroom experience does not often transition well into attractive online learning opportunities. Therefore, finding strategies to make your online course entertaining, simple, and fun is crucial. You can try a combination of teaching techniques to achieve it. You can make it happen through:

Include storytelling in your course content
Utilize both real-time and self-paced learning
Create a community
Host live sessions
Include gamification to encourage your students
Break down big chapters using microlearning for easy understanding.

Adding quizzes and live Q&A can be a powerful digital marketing strategy to make your course fun and improve student involvement. The key is to add surprise elements now and then to enhance participation.

FreshLearn helps you add gamification and quizzes to your online course. Gamification lets you provide reward points for your students for achieving milestones and completing courses.

In FreshLearn, you can include gamification reward points under settings once you create a course outline.

You can also add quizzes as multiple choice, single choice, or short answer questions. Once the assessment is over, you can email the student’s results.

b. Avoid making lengthy courses

When developing the course, it should be as short and straightforward as possible. Though there is no one-size-fits-all approach, keeping it minimal will help increase its success and redundancy.

Many factors influence your course length, including:

The topic’s complexity
Requirement for continued education
Pricing structure

As this is your first online course, do not put everything you know in a single course. Instead, you can break down the topics offered in several courses and let your students cherry-pick what they need.

c. Including learning communities and cohort-based learning

As students learn at their own pace in an online course, creating a learning community and including cohort-based learning can help them improve their learning experience. Creating a social space helps them have peer-to-peer support and learner-to-instructor support.

In FreshLearn, you can use the community section to add members and upload posts for discussion.

Step 7: Creating the course

Now, you can create the actual course content. This step includes producing your course content - shooting, recording, and editing. Although each creator may approach this procedure differently based on their course of instruction, you probably will have to shoot some video material.

There are three popular ways to record your video. They are:

a. Screen recording

Record your device's screen to produce online course materials. This kind of video typically utilizes a process, idea explanation, or how-to guide to walk viewers through. You might also decide to show your face or an avatar on-screen.

Visit FreshLearn’s product demo page to see how screen recording videos work.

b. Talking heads

One of the best recording formats for building online courses is showing your face and upper body in the frame as you speak to the camera. You can use this format to give lectures or instructions. It easily creates connections and increases engagement among your students.

c. Voiceovers

This method is similar to screen recording, but you will narrate what you display on the screen. You may or may not choose to show your face in a voiceover format. This can be a cost-effective and convenient way of recording video and is less labor-intensive.

d. Set a course objective

When creating an online course, sticking to its objectives is important. Objectives are brief, simple statements that outline what students will be able to accomplish through your course. They identify the particular information, skills, and values students should be able to demonstrate by the end of their course.

You can use a module, a particular lesson, a specified assignment, or any other course component that aligns with your learning objective. Bloom’s taxonomy is a method you can follow to make sure that your learners meet the course’s objectives.

When defining the course’s objectives, it's important to keep them realistic. Consider the time allocation and set the objectives accordingly, which students can complete within the course duration.

Step 8: Set the course’s pricing

The kind of course you develop will impact the pricing of your course: a masterclass is often high cost; a mini-course is free or low-cost; a full-length course is mid-priced. Still, the cost of your course will rely on a number of elements you should give thought to:

a. Your course’s topic and niche

Think about the niche your course fits and your clients' possible level of price sensitivity. Consumers purchasing a course on investing are more willing to pay than those downloading a digital course on social media marketing.

b. Course creator’s authority

A course developed by a seasoned industry expert will cost extra to buy. Your pricing should consider your relevant authority.

c. Marketing

What do you intend to spend on marketing campaigns? Make sure your pricing reflects the expenses of spreading the word about your course.

Research competition pricing to learn how other digital course developers in your business are pricing their digital products. This will give you an even better notion of how you should price your course. Ensure your pricing is not so low that you sell yourself short.

Study what rivals provide, add more value to your course offering, and price your course accordingly. In addition to conducting a focused pricing analysis for your course, create a sales target to guide your pricing and marketing strategy.

It is easier for you to sell a high-quality course to 50 students than to market and sell it to 1000 students. But remember, you should create an online course worth the value your learners are willing to pay.

Why pricing too low is bad for you?

People will assume your course has less value and will be less likely to purchase if it is far less expensive than your competitors.
If you plan to offer your course cheaply to maximize your learner count, you also risk lowering the quality of the learning process for your clients. You will have less time to help your students, respond to inquiries, involve your audience, and provide a tailored experience.
Reducing the price point of your online course also means less money to reinvest, which could lead to less marketing and advertising budget.

If you need help figuring out where to start, ask your audience. In FreshLearn, you can decide the pricing of your online course (one-time or recurring). Click here for more details.

Step 10: Choose the right online learning platform for your course

The online learning platform where you decide to host your online courses will define the complete course experience, from designing your course to enrolling students to gathering feedback and printing certificates.

Your choice of learning platform will determine whether your online course business can scale as you develop and meet your requirements, including design, marketing, and community-building tools.

As a first-time course creator, you may have several questions about choosing among the different online learning platforms. To pick the right one, consider the following questions:

Does my online learning platform accommodate a course landing page and a website?
Do they provide what email marketing tools?
What are the data analytics and metrics I can track?
Can I create a product bundle for this platform?

If unsure, examine case studies, testimonials, and reviews from other creators who have utilized the platform to understand their experience.

There are basically three types of online learning platforms, including:

a. Standalone

Standalone online learning platforms concentrate on providing particular tools or services instead of giving comprehensive features. Without bundling services like website design, marketing, or payment processing, these platforms may focus on one area of the course creation process—such as course hosting, learning management, or content creation.

Unlike course marketplaces, stand-alone online course systems provide more freedom and control over your learning resources. You can decide on the look and layout of your company website, course presentation, promotion of your offerings, and the advantage of continuous assistance.

b. All-in-one online learning platforms

As an edupreneur, all-in-one course platforms are the best tool available since they offer everything a creator needs to build, host, market, and sell online courses without depending on extra outside resources.

These online learning platforms often include tools for course design, website builders, content management systems, marketing automation, payment processing, analytics, and even student involvement tools like discussion boards or community features.

c. Online course marketplaces

Course marketplaces operate like supermarkets for courses. They provide an extensive range of courses from many different course creators. Course marketplaces operate for courses like supermarkets. They offer an extensive range of courses from many different course creators.

While online course marketplaces require most of the effort needed to create a website and host the courses, you lose control of student data and a sizable portion of the income, which could be a drawback.

Among these types, you can choose the one that fulfills your requirements and fits your budget.

Launch your online course and advertise

That’s it. Now, you can launch your course and begin using marketing tactics. Like creating a quality course, launching and advertising are equally important. Effective marketing will help convert your potential customers to clients. You can do it through:

1. Prioritizing email marketing

An approach for sharing updates, information, and discounts related to your course is creating an email list of potential purchasers. Collecting their email and building an email marketing funnel could persuade someone who initially visits your landing page to purchase your course later. You can also use email marketing to design a mini-course promoting your primary course.

FreshLearn lets you conduct email campaigns more effectively. To do so, you choose any one of the email templates, edit them using the drag-and-drop builder, customize them, and automate them.

You can do the email campaigns by selecting the email templates under the marketing section in your profile.

2. Create a marketing strategy

Creating free educational content about your course topic and niche can be an effective marketing strategy. You can provide it as a digital download, which can be a lead magnet that converts your readers into paying customers.

FreshLearn lets you upload digital downloads of your PDFs and videos, which you can provide as free content to promote your course.

3. Run paid ads

Targeting your potential consumers and getting them to convert to customers after seeing an advertisement can be significantly achieved by running sponsored ads — like Google Ads or Facebook ads on your sales page. Make sure you're returning on investment — your cost of obtaining a consumer should be less than the course's price.

4. Collect feedback and improvise

Although clients could believe what you say, it would be much better if actual users of your course could praise it. Get feedback and testimonials from satisfied clients who have used your course and found results. Positive stories about changes on your landing page and across your marketing can help prospective clients see the value of your course and the outcomes it can produce.

Clearly state what you want in their testimonial to clients. Ask more focused questions like, "How much new income have you seen through taking my course?" or "How prepared did you feel for taking the real estate licensing course before my course versus afterward?" instead of only requesting an overview of their positive experience.

Specific facts on how your training proved helpful are more impactful than vague generalizations. Ask for a video testimonial instead of a text anywhere at least once, if possible.

Ask consumers enrolled in your course for feedback so they can compile customer reviews and testimonials. Inquire of clients who offer excellent feedback and whether they would be ready to provide a testimonial to market your future courses.

Naturally, seeking comments shouldn't be limited to testimonials. Use critical feedback to change your underperforming course content and positive comments to guide what areas of the course resonate with students. Considering feedback from every student purchasing your course will help you progressively enhance it over time and provide your students with the finest learning experience possible.

FreshLearn’s Features to Enhance Your Online Course

In addition to the excellent support FreshLearn offers, let’s explore how we can further enhance your online creation process.

You can send newsletters to your subscribers to keep them engaged about your current and future courses. This can be a perfect lead magnet tool you can leverage to convert your subscribers to paying customers. You can add the correct titles, social sharing images, descriptions, and URLs to make your posts Google-friendly.

2. Coupons

As part of your ongoing market strategy, you can provide coupons to your students. We also let you generate bulk coupons in one click and share them with your prospective customers through email or other channels.

You can also check the coupon code your students used, if any, in the payment section of your profile.

3. Product bundle

You can also club more similar digital products and sell them under the product bundle option. This lets you sell more digital products, as when students purchase a bundle, they buy all the related products.

4. Affiliate program

You can create and launch your affiliate program in FreshLearn with the commission rate you choose for your individual or all digital products. You can even track your sales conversions using an affiliate link given to each member.

5. Assignments

You can add assignments to your students at any point in their course journey. You just have to provide instructions and save it. Members can submit their assignments by uploading PDFs, documents, videos, and more. You can also send email notifications to approve or reject submissions.

Conclusion

Creating an online course is an excellent chance to convert your passion into a profitable business. Whether you share fitness, business, or creative skills knowledge, developing a course that captivates your learners can feel like a big task. But with the right online learning platform, you can make the work smoother and more exciting.

FreshLearn’s ample online creation features help you create an effective online course and market it the right way. Our exclusive features let you create an online course from scratch and sell it at the price you decide with a 0% commission. Our integrated payment types, drag-and-drop builder, and automation processes let you effortlessly convert your knowledge into money.

Ready to take that big leap and create your successful online course? Leverage the FreshLearn’s abilities today!

FAQs

1. How do I create an online course?

Follow the below steps to create a profitable online course

Identify your niche
Assess the market demand
Select a specific course topic
Research your course content
Decide your course’s format
Outline your content
Choose an effective delivery method
Set the course’s pricing
Choose the right online learning platform for your course
Launch and advertise
Gather feedback

2. How do I script an online course?

To develop a script for your online course:

Plan and create an outline for your course.
Use storytelling.
Write as you speak.
Cut out all the jargon.
Remember to include CTAs.
Read your audio script out loud.

3. What is the best format for an online course?

With each module building on the next, a step-by-step course is the most popular online type that guides students on a defined path. A course typically has three to five main phases or modules, each with multiple lessons.

4. How do you sell a course to a student?

Clearly state the goal of the course and how it will help your students. Use social evidence. For someone who has already sold a few courses, social proof — sharing ratings, reviews, and testimonies from past students can help. Spread your credentials.

5. Can I make money selling courses?

An average course creator can make several thousand dollars a month selling online courses full-time. Starting part-time, you should first expect a few hundred dollars, but this will rely on many aspects, like the cost of your course, your audience, and your marketing and sales strategies.

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