6 Step Online Course Checklist For Course Creators

Thinking about starting an online course? Then follow this 6 step online course checklist so that everything is in place when you launch.

Hi Trish Davies here and my objective for today is to give you an online course checklist. The objective of this checklist is to show you what to do every step of the way when launching your online course.

You may have an idea for your online course and then again you may not. You may have an established audience in place and then you may not. Whatever position you are in this online course checklist will give you a direction in which to follow.

This sequential online course checklist will outline the process you must take to ensure your course is successful. This is going to be a practical process that you can follow which will help you fill in the blanks.

It will show you what you need to do and more importantly when to do it.

6 Step Online Course Checklist For All Course Creators 

online course checklist

Coming Up With Your Online Course Idea 

This is obviously your starting point but can be somewhat challenging and a roadblock you must overcome. The best ideas for online courses usually integrate three elements which are the following.

  • What You Know
  • What You Are Passionate About
  • A Profitable Niche

The first two points are self-explanatory and are the first two core pillars for my Build Your AU program. Here you must look at what you are good at. What are you an expert in and what experience have you got.

Your story will give you all the answers you need for these two points. It will define your authenticity and your authority which is what you position in front of your ideal audience. This is what will attract them to you and place their trust in you.

Then you need a profitable niche. A niche is a segment of a broad topic. Your niche audience are the people interested in that niche segment. The key here is profit and some niches are more profitable than others.

For example, sport is a very broad niche. Golf is within the sport niche, but it is more specific and historically it is a profitable niche. Golfers tend to spend money on coaching, training etc.

A key milestone for golfers is to break 80 in a round. If you have done that it could be the idea for your online course. You have the expertise, experience. This is your authenticity and authority that you can teach others who want to be like you.

Concentrate on those three bullet points and I am sure you will come up with a list of potential ideas for your course.

Idea Validation 

Once you have some ideas you must validate their potential before you go ahead and create a course. Now this tends to take some time, but you must do your research.

The last thing you want to do is spends weeks, maybe months, creating a course that no one is interested in. The internet is a massive vault of information and where you must spend some time researching.

The first place to start is Google and it’s baby brother YouTube. Install an extension called Keywords Everywhere and enter your idea into the search box. The keywords extension I mentioned will tell you how many people are search for that keyword. These are real people who are looking for a solution.

Also, the search results will show you who you competition is within your marketplace. You want competition because you know there is a demand from the public.

Another great source is a website called AnswerThePublic.com. Here you enter 1 – 3 words relating to your idea, and it will generate many different variations of your idea. If you have the keywords extension it will again show you how many people are looking for each search term.

Further research can be done on the likes of Amazon, social media, niche forums, question & answer sites. You must know what people want, what questions they are asking and then you can supply that demand.

Build Your Audience 

build an audience

Here you must start to build your audience who are those specific segment of society interested in your topic. You must start to build your audience before you start to build your course.

What you are doing is setting the foundations to your online coaching business. If you have an established following then it is going to be much easier for you to sell you course. You will introduce your course to a warm audience and not a cold one who doesn’t know who you are.

So how do you start building you audience?

  • Create A YouTube Channel
  • Social Media Pages
  • Offer Lead Magnets (Free Reports)
  • Host Webinars

Create value driven content to attract potential ideal customers to your business. Each platform you publish on will have it’s own following. Utilise the four strategies I have mentioned to start building a subscriber list of laser targeted people and warm them up.

Pre-Sell Your Course 

Once you have an established audience on place you can ask them exactly what they want in your course. Remember you haven’t created anything at this moment, but this is great way to gain feedback from your audience.

If you know exactly what people want it makes it easier for you to create it. This feedback will become invaluable for you business. It can become you “Beta” version before you mass market to your ideal audience.

You will gain a sense of what people are prepared to pay for your course and make tweaks along the way. You could offer a discount to incentivise your audience to take part in your pre-sell program.

They then pay you before you start to create your course and you give them a timeline as to when it will become available. One great benefit for you is that you have revenue at hand and the motivation to crack on with your course creation. You know that thee is a demand.

Creating Your Course 

Course creation can be time consuming, but it is a lot easier if you know what to create. That information will be at hand if you have followed this online course checklist up to this point.

Then it is a matter of creating your content in the formats that people want. Usually that is video, text and audio. Fortunately, there is a plethora of online resources that you can leverage when it comes to course creation.

You will probably find that you have all the tools you need within your device to create the formats I mentioned.

What you do need to do is structure your course. Think of thee overall benefit your course delivers to your ideal customer and then break it down into steps. These steps can become chapters, modules and lessons.

Launch Your Course 

This is the most nerve racking step to this online course checklist. You will let your pre-sell clients know that your course is ready for them to access. These people are the barometer as to whether you need to tweak things before mass release.

When you are ready to push that mass release button you will systems that create sales pages. For that phase you must know how to write compelling copy or get someone else to do it for you.

You may have additional services that you can offer as upsells. One on one consultation comes to mind which increases the purchase and customer value.

Finetune Your Online Course Checklist With Build Your AU 

online course checklist

I have shared a 6 step online course checklist that you must have in place before launching your course. I know that what I have shared is a lot to take in. You can do this on your own, but it may take you some time to figure things out.

To shorten that process I invite you to register for a free 9 step program which shows you how to do what I have shared. To learn more about this opportunity click here or at the link below. I look forward to connecting with you on the inside.

Register now by Clicking Here!

Helping you build your authenticity, authority and audience.

Trish Davies

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Build Your AU