Definitive Guide To Creating Profitable Online Courses
By: Darius Foroux
Tags: Business, Money, Marketing, Education, Startup

1. Pick A Topic Worth Paying For

You don’t want a course that’s “nice to have.” If there’s a real demand for this knowledge or skill, people would be willing to pay good money for it.

Nowadays, there’s a course for almost everything; cooking, dancing, even playing popular video games. You can create a course about anything. But I would stick to topics that people are used to paying for. Not many people will pay for a course that only gives inspiration. There are a million free YouTube videos for that.

Here’s a simple rule of thumb: Don’t create something people can easily get for free.

What Topics Should You Consider?

I’ve seen courses on creating morning rituals. Maybe some people buy it, but it’s not something I would ever pay for myself. Why? You can learn about morning rituals from a simple 10-minute YouTube video. I actually created one:

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be part of a course about a bigger topic. The video above is part of my course, Procrastinate Zero 2. Another example is note-taking. I wouldn’t create a course about that. Instead, it could be part of a course on improving your focus.

Ask yourself this, when planning a topic: “Would I be willing to pay for this?” And more importantly, have you spent money on a course that’s similar?

Compare note-taking to coding or cryptocurrencies. There are YouTube videos and free blogs about those topics. But it’s pretty much impossible to learn those skills in a short video or article. The best courses are about topics that require expertise and time to learn. That should narrow down the list of courses you should focus on.

The next step is to apply marketing before you actually create your course. You want to build marketing into the creation process.

Specify Your Course’s Focus

Marketing is not only about creating awareness for your product or service. It’s mostly about getting in front of the right audience. Try to think ahead here. If someone comes to your website, they should know immediately if the course is for them, or not. Let’s say you’re a fitness coach.

Do you teach functional strength training? Do you focus on losing weight? Or on bodybuilding? Etc.

Who do you focus on? Athletes training for a competition? Moms who want to get in shape after pregnancy? Seniors who want to regulate their breathing?

It all depends on your focus. And that focus makes your marketing strategy a lot easier. To do this, you’ll need to answer these two questions:

1. What does my course do?

How can your target students use your course in their lives? What will this knowledge help your students get?

This is trickier than it appears. A member of my online community recently mentioned he wanted to create a course on blockchain technology. He had a great presentation of his idea. But the missing aspect was a crystal-clear answer to the question, “Why would I want to learn this? What can I specifically do with the knowledge you’re teaching me? What actionable benefits can I get from this course?”

It’s not about the knowledge you’re teaching. It’s all about what you get from applying that knowledge.

It’s the benefits that make the course worth its price. If I don’t immediately see the course’s direct benefits (other than the awareness that I might find it useful in the future), it’s difficult to be convinced.

Don’t continue with creating a course unless you have a clear and compelling answer to this question. Here’s an example from fitness YouTuber Mike Thurston.

His course is primarily focused on building muscle mass. His promise is that you will look good.

2. Who is my course for?

One of the best books on marketing I’ve read is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I highly recommend reading that book if you want to offer any type of product or service — especially online courses.

One of their laws is “Focus.” It comes down to this: You’re better of creating a product for a specific audience. You should avoid creating a product that’s for everyone.

So if someone asks you, “Who is your course for?” You should never say something like, “It’s for every entrepreneur.” Replace entrepreneur with any target audience.

Here’s something that could make it easier for you. Target people that are currently a previous version of yourself. People struggling with the same things you did, before you actually did it yourself.

Let’s say you want to create a course on Mindfulness. Maybe you were a corporate lawyer and you worked 12 hour days. You could create a course for people who have that same lifestyle right now. Show them how you overcame the challenges you faced in the past.

All of this should help with picking a topic for a course that has the potential to sell. Once you’ve done this, it’s time to create the outline for your course.

2. Create an Online Course Outline

Your course has a main goal. Maybe it’s to help people become more confident, or stop procrastinating, or create iOS apps. Your course should be a framework to achieve this main goal.

A course outline helps organize your thoughts and planning. It’s your bird’s eye view. How do you create this outline?

Break Down Your Course In Modules and Lessons

To give you an example, I’ll be using one of my latest courses, digitalbusiness.school. The main goal of this course is to teach students how to create a sustainable and profitable online business. That’s what it does. Who’s it for? Entrepreneurs who are currently struggling to go full-time and make a good living.

Once I had a good idea of those things, I listed all the steps prospective students needed to complete. Those steps are your modules. Then, I broke down the modules into specific lessons.

How many modules do you need? It depends on your course and what you’re teaching. This course has 6 modules because they represent the 6 major steps entrepreneurs need to create a profitable online business.

My writing course has only 3 modules, for example. But every module has more lessons compared to digitalbusiness.school. I wouldn’t get hung up on this topic. When you create the structure of your course, always think about the students — not what other courses do.

Now, you want to break down your modules into lessons. Here’s what it looked like for module 1 of digitalbusiness.school. It’s just a Word or Google doc at this stage. But note that I also wrote a two-to-three-line description of each lesson. That helps you to get clear on what every lesson is about.

MODULE 1: How to Build a Brand — a practical, hands-on approach to creating an effective and iconic personal brand

Develop your competitive edge — Stand out in the market, and pick the right audience.

— Stand out in the market, and pick the right audience. Test your business idea — Determine an idea’s business potential, even without an existing audience.

— Determine an idea’s business potential, even without an existing audience. Craft your unique brand — project instant authority and create a compelling story that will make people buy.

— project instant authority and create a compelling story that will make people buy. Design your brand identity like a pro — Concepts to remember and tools to use for a professionally appealing brand, even without a designer background.

— Concepts to remember and tools to use for a professionally appealing brand, even without a designer background. Build a world-class website — the best website building platforms you can use, and which among them fits your business. Also includes a checklist of important website elements.

Here’s what the final version of that looks like:

We’ll get to the platform I use for online courses later. But for now, you want to focus on creating the best structure for your online course. I basically broke down the whole course before I started creating any material. Here’s the rest of the structure of digitalbusiness.school:

MODULE 2: How to Position Products/Services — etc.

MODULE 3: How to Build an Email List — etc.

MODULE 4: How to Grow an Audience Without Ads — etc.

MODULE 5: How to Launch a Product — etc.

MODULE 6: How to Increase Profits Over Time — etc.

Add Tools, Exercise, and Case Studies

I always like to include a practical exercise for every lesson. I have to stress the idea of “practical” here. Remember: Your courses are only as good as how your students do. As the instructor, your main goal is to ensure students absorb your lessons and implement them easily. Even if you built your course well, if students fail to absorb and practice it, there’s no point.

This is where exercises, tools, and case studies come in. They make learning more in-depth and practical.

Why You Need Exercises

Students should immediately practice what they learned. Learning is better when practiced. For digitalbusiness.school, I made sure that every lesson has an “action” that students can do at the end.

Notice that the actions can be applied both by students who are currently building their online businesses, and those still in the planning stage. It depends on your topic. But it should quickly and conveniently help students apply their knowledge in the real world.

Why You Need Tools

What kind of tools do you need to apply the skill you’re teaching? For instance, my productivity course shares several apps and tools I use. In my writing course, I share my writing tools and apps.

If you’re teaching website creation for beginners, you can direct your students to free or paid website and online course builders for professional-looking designs.

In digitalbusiness.school, I showed how Kajabi hosts my online courses, ConvertKit manages my email-list, Ubersuggest analyses competition and SEO, and many more. You can also recommend helpful books and media.

You can use affiliate links here, for additional income. But I recommend using free tools as much as possible. Only provide paid tools when they’re truly the best platform for the purpose. You don’t want to appear like you’re trying to sell at every turn.

Why You Need A Case Study

Can you include a real-life example in your course? If so, I highly recommend it.

You can use social proof, testimonials, and other means to show credibility and authority. But the best way to prove that your course works is through a case study. There’s no better proof than that.

A fitness coach can use “before” and “after” photos of people they’ve coached. A piano instructor can feature videos of her students’ successful recitals.

For digitalbusiness.school, I used a case study around a community I created called The Sounding Board.

To show that my course worked, I created The Sounding Board from scratch. I also documented my steps and results.

Using all the lessons from my course, it took me roughly 3 weeks to create TSB from idea to launch. After the launch, TSB was generating $1,220 a month. Case studies like these will help your students to connect all the dots.

3. Test The Outline

Okay, so you’ve finished the outline. You included all your ideas for exercises, tools, and potentially a case study. Do you immediately start creating your course?

I’ve done that in the past and it was a huge mistake. You always run into certain issues you didn’t consider. The last thing you want is to reshoot your whole course after getting feedback from students.

So get feedback on your course structure. Do this very early on, before you have any material. You can just get people’s feedback on whether your course is covering all challenges about the topic you’re covering.

Ask anyone in your network who might be a good fit (avoid asking people who have no clue about what you’re teaching). You can also reach out to an online community of like-minded people who exchange business ideas regularly.

It saves time and effort when you revise your course outline based on peoples’ feedback, before shooting your videos or making your module material.

Who Should You Ask?

I usually reach out to my readers and people in my network to schedule a video call. You can also ask acquaintances who fit your target audience. Then I ask them questions like:

What’s your biggest challenge (regarding the course topic)?

What things/actions/products have you tried to overcome that challenge in the past?

What worked well? What didn’t work well?

Have you bought an online course about this topic before?

What do you think of my course structure?

Are you missing anything?

Would you add anything?

Here’s something important to remember: Ask more about what they’ve done in the past, compared to what they think they’ll do. Actions speak much louder than words.

Don’t go asking things like, “Do you think you’ll buy something like this?” It’s easy to be an imaginary buyer. “Sure, I’d buy that!” Well, when it’s crunch time, not everyone pulls out their card.

Once you’ve tweaked your course outline, it’s time to start creating. But give this step enough time. I took about a month to tweak the outline for digitalbusiness.school.

I listened to everyone I talked to and used that input to create something I thought would be the perfect outline. After that, it’s time to record your lessons.

4. Start Creating Your Online Course Content

Here’s something I learned after making 6 profitable online courses: No matter how good you think your course is, there will STILL be things you’ve missed or need to improve, that only testers can point out. So you’re not done with testing yet!

If you don’t address these concerns during course production, you’ll risk getting more refunds later. You want to create the best course you possibly can. Which leads us to the first point.

Record One Module First

I know it’s tempting to start creating, but don’t record the whole course at once. That’s a mistake I made with my first online course. I recorded the full course before asking for feedback.

Turns out, I was missing exercises throughout the course. It was a lot of content, with no way for students to practice what they learned. So, I had to re-record all the videos to include exercises.

Testers can tell you, in one module, what improvements your course needs. It could be your course content or your delivery. Just be open to feedback and try to improve.

Have A High Production Value

Look, you don’t have to hire a videographer to do this. In today’s age, you can produce your own high quality videos. Here are some guidelines that will help.

Video

I use a Canon 80D for recording video because it’s affordable and has great autofocus. There’s a 90D now as well. And there probably will be a newer version as well. I’m still sticking with 1080p videos for online courses. Especially if this is your first online course.

These are my camera settings:

30 frames per second

50 shutter speed (for Europe, and 60 for USA, this depends on lighting frequencies and flickering)

Automatic ISO

Lowest possible Aperture setting if you want to blur the background

Aperture of higher than 4 if you want the whole shot to be in focus

But honestly, there’s no need to be super fussy about your camera. Keep it simple. Even an iPhone would do. Sound is more important.

Sound

Bad quality audio makes videos tough to consume. So make sure there’s no background noise, distracting sounds, and echoes in your videos.

I recommend getting a simple lavalier microphone like Rode SmartLav. That’s the base level. Anything below that quality is not acceptable. Never use the on-board microphone of cameras.

If you want to upgrade your mic, I recommend the Rode Link Filmmaker Kit. That’s the mic I currently use.

Lighting

I recommend investing in some decent studio lighting equipment as well. I’ve been using two softboxes for years now. I bought them once and they still work fine. But I would get LED lights now, they’re a bit more expensive but more practical. You can also use a ring light to keep things even simpler.

Video Editing

I use Final Cut Pro X on Mac for video editing, which I mostly do myself. Editing an online course is very simple. You only cut out the sections you’ve messed up. That’s all. If you have the time, just do it yourself. Any software will do.

Online Course Platform

I’ll cover this topic more in-depth later. But at this stage, you already want to pick an online course platform so you can upload your videos to it. That way you can easily share it with people who will test it for you.

I use Kajabi for all my courses and the platform works very well. As for which course platform would suit your business and style best, you can read my Marketplace Vs Own Site pros and cons analysis later in the article.

When You’re Done With Testing, Record The Rest

I recommend keeping your videos relatively short and to the point. I would avoid one or two hour lessons. If it’s a simple topic, under 15 minutes is fine. Shorter videos also force you to be briefer and more effective with your points.

Shooting videos can be draining, so take breaks in between. You want to look fresh and engaged in every lesson!

When you’re done recording, it doesn’t make sense to ask for critical feedback. While feedback is here to help you, it’s the last thing you want to think about when you’re done. At this point, you’ve already done all the testing and you’ve made the best online course you could.

5. Design A Logo and Landing Page

When you’ve actually created the course, it’s time to offer it online. When it comes to design, again, I like to keep things simple, but also consistent. Let’s start with the logo.

If you’re selling online courses, you’re probably doing it on your own name. So I recommend one logo for your personal brand and one for your online course. But make sure they are the same style. Here’s an example of my course about digital business.

It fits with the logo of my personal brand. I always want to keep things clean and if possible, I add an artistic touch to it — something I draw.

It‘s all about the feeling that the logo gives you. This is very unpractical advice, I know. But when I was creating the digitalbusiness.school logo, I tried a lot of colors. I initially went with a bright blue color, but it didn’t fit with my overall design. I hardly ever use bight colors. So I went with this warmer blue tint.

If you have an existing brand logo, then you can create your course logo based on it.

If you’re just starting, or you want to re-brand, then the main question is, “What does [Your Brand] stand for?” If you’ve picked your topic right (see the first step in this article), and can identify what your course does and who it’s for, then branding becomes easier.

Also, you don’t need to be a designer to create professional-looking logos. You can use Canva and other free platforms. You can also hire artists from Fiverr or Upwork.

Create A Landing Page That Converts

I must admit, a logo is nice. But it’s not the most important thing when it comes to selling your course. The landing page is more important.

The landing page is where you’ll convince site visitors to buy your course, so it’s crucial to get this right. If you’re unsure how to start, you can use paid tools like LeadPages to make things easier. They offer a free trial you can use.

To get some ideas and examples, you can also check out my landing pages. Just choose one of the courses. Here are the essential elements of a sales page that convert:

Your logo

A headline that captures the BIG idea

An appealing image/video

Body copy

This section is critical. If visitors don’t like what they’re seeing, they’ll bounce. Here’s an example of the header section of digitalbusiness.school that performed well:

Here’s what else you want to include on your landing page:

Testimonials

Client logos

What the prospect gets (your offer)

Guarantee (i.e. 30-day Money Back Guarantee, etc.)

FAQs

Contact Details/Chat

Buy now section

Your landing page can either be created within your website’s builder (like Kajabi, WordPress, etc.) or with your Marketplace platform. Which leads us to the next point.

6. Use The Right Online Course Platform

Once your course videos are ready, you have two options to host your online course:

Marketplaces like Udemy, Skillshare, Coursera, etc.

Your Own Site

Here’s a short table to help you decide the best online course platforms.

Marketplaces (Udemy, Skillshare, Coursera, etc.)