Second Time Course Creation - Progress

[DanInSyd]

Hi all,

I'm working on my second training course creation at the moment. I created a course and launched it on Udemy a couple of years back, and had some reasonable level of success and made me a couple of thousand $. The trouble with the course was that it was pretty niche, even though I tried to market it in a few different ways to get people interested.

Making those sales and seeing the notifications come up is intoxicating though, having a couple of kids and struggling for time (and let me not kid myself, motivation) over the last couple of years, I am ready to get back into course creation mode. Having some training at my day job over the last couple of years has given me some new inspiration for a course, and over the last month or so I have written about 15,000 words for a script of sorts, plus I have material from a keynote speech I recently gave. My plan is to film this in a talking heads style, and I have some lose ideas around how I might market it and to who. There is a large market, and significant demand for this type of content, and my target audience initially would come from LinkedIn, but I can see an avenue to target a wider range of people from other socials too.

Still lots to develop, including the content which I would like between 8-10 hours worth of video to get me started (I'm probably at the 1.5 to 2 hour mark now), with a plan to continue to build it over time and add written articles, interviews and keynote speeches too, all hosted on my own site. Plus marketing strategies and material, but I really want to get some more content down and not be distracted with shiny object syndrome with websites and marketing too early, plenty of time for that once I get a bit more down on paper.

It would be great to connect with other people on the course creation journey and find people who may want to critique others work and ideas for the greater good and hold accountability (especially Dad's of young kids, we need all the support we can get!)

Also, I'm thinking of creating a two-tier structure on how i market and sell my courses, so I would be keen to hear any strategies that people have for deciding how much to put in each category, like how much is too much in the lower category, and how much should I include in the higher category to make it premium?

I'm taking some time out soon for a trip to the UK, as it's been a busy first half of the year with work and getting this course planned and going (plus its winter here in Sydney), but there will be down time so hopefully I can write bits here and there to keep the momentum going!

I have seen recommendations for Graham Cochranes book 'How to Get Paid for What You Know', so might take that to read on the plane (when my kids sleep).

Thanks for reading, and I will keep the forum updated as I go

Dan

 

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[Andy Black]

Hang in there. Our boys are now 12, nearly 14, and 16. I vaguely remember how hard it was. Thankfully the brain blanks out those days of being punch-drunk from tiredness. Now the problem is getting them to do things. Lol.

I have a little paid membership and a few people tagged in the thread below have paid memberships or courses.

My thoughts reading your post are that you're likely spending too much time in your batcave "building stuff".

People either value their time (in which case they'll spend money on a course to save time trying to learn themselves) or they don't put a value their time.

Who are you appealing to if your course is 8-10 hours long?

Case in point, I released a one hour course for $399. On the sales page I said there's a 24 hour course on Udemy for $10, but my course is for those who want to get up and running fast rather than "learn".

Can you produce much shorter material?

Can you post short videos or carousels/tips to LinkedIn and start building an audience and reputation as a helpful expert on your chosen topic? Thereby helping people earlier, getting feedback on your content, and starting to grow an audience?

Can you "Be so good they can't ignore you" (Steve Martin) and have people ASK you for a course because you've flooded t'internet with so much good content and tips they want to pay for you to hand-hold them through that content in the fastest path?

I did follow Graham for a while and even bought his book. I whizzed through it but can't remember anything in it, possibly because I'd listened to enough of his podcasts that I understood most of his content.


Thread added to

CHAT - [Master Thread] Selling Courses

Here's a thread to chat about selling courses. I'll keep this opening post up to date with links to progress threads and other related threads. Please reply and tag me if there's any I've missed or if there's any new ones. I'll add them to this opening post. # People who know a bit about...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[Cameraman]

ontent which I would like between 8-10 hours worth of video

That sounds like a lot of material. Personally, anything over two hours puts me off purchasing a course because of the time I would need to invest. Could this be broken into multiple courses, or is it a single topic? It may be more appealing if you could break it down into multiple courses, but you wouldn't know without split-testing.

Also, I'm thinking of creating a two-tier structure on how i market and sell my courses,

When you say two-tier, are you talking about pricing?
I'm in the middle of a course launch. For that, I decided to sell the course as an eBook and a Video course. The eBook is around £20, the video £60, or you can buy the two for £70. I've had roughly a 50:50 split with people buying the book or the bundle. Hardly anyone has bought just the course. If this is what you mean by a two-tier offer, it's working for me.

I also documented the launch so far in another post because I've tried to take a different approach. I dropped out of the course market for a while but decided to give it another go, and it seems to have paid off. Even as I've been writing this, I made three sales.

Keep at it. If you believe you have something valuable to sell that can help others achieve a goal, you need to produce the course. Helping people is what it's about. Those who can have a duty to do so but should also be fairly compensated for their efforts.

Good luck and I look forward to reading your progress.