Creating and selling courses is a way to increase your income and promote your expertise. Here’s how to create your own online training courses and tips on how to deliver those courses.
From kindergarten to college and continuing education to self-interest, people from all walks of life are looking for and enrolling in online training. Online training is used to educate children, improve employee skills, transform careers and pursue personal development. Anyone with a skill to teach can create their own online training school or teach their skill to eager students. The key is to develop a course that people are interested in and find the right place for that course.
3 THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN DEVELOPING YOUR ONLINE TRAINING COURSE
There are three main components for the successful development of any online training. Those are :
The first step to developing an online course is to take a personal inventory. What do you know, or what skill do you have, that others might be interested in learning? Start by writing down everything you know and all the skills you have. Hold nothing back.
Then write down the potential audience for each thing you might teach. Whether it’s specific knowledge – how wild birds mate, for example – or specific skills, like playing the piano or doing business marketing, make a list of groups of people (moms, teenagers, professionals, etc.) who might be interested in learning that skill or body of knowledge.
Third, you can research the different places where online training courses are offered and choose one that would be appropriate for your online course.
HOW TO CREATE YOUR COURSE
Once you have identified what you want to teach, who your audience is, and where you want to teach your course, you should start developing the course. As far as location is concerned, another option is available to you. If your course is specialized, you might consider offering it on your own website, on a learning platform, or through email. Instructions on how to set this up will follow.
To launch your own online training course and teach your expertise to others, follow these steps:
Identify the skills or knowledge you want to teach. Make them specific. In other words, don’t go for an all-in-one business course (at least not on your first attempt). Instead, teach a specific aspect of the business, such as bookkeeping for service businesses, marketing for laundromats, or cash-flow tactics for lemonade stands. The more specific, the better.
Identify your target audience. Who would be interested in learning what you have to teach? One way to do this is to focus on a narrow market.
Find the training platform most likely to appeal to your target audience. You can use an existing platform or if you think you can create an online course, deliver it via email and successfully market it, you can always produce your own course via email or on a membership site. Think carefully about this part of the process.
The outline of your course. Before setting up the content of your training program, outline it. How long should each module be? Some courses might consist of short 5 minute videos. Others may require longer periods of instruction, practical application, or interaction with students.
Structure each training module. Not only does your entire course need a plan, but each training module within the course must have a plan. What will you say in your introduction? What type of resources will you use to deliver your training and explain the concepts students need to understand? For example, will it be a video lesson, an audio lesson, or a written lesson? Do students need special tools? What type of examples or anecdotes will you use to explain the concepts to the students? Will there be student-to-student or student-instructor interaction (this is possible if you include something like Zoom in your training)? NOTE :The type of resources you can provide to students will be highly dependent on the platform technology you are using, so make sure you are using the right platform.
Develop your training course. After you’ve thought about your online course and come up with your outline, start developing the materials. If you plan to provide written materials, write them up or hire a writer. If you plan to include videos, you will need to create them.
Upload the course material to the platform. Every platform is different, so learn the platform and its technology. If you stream on YouTube, all you need to do is create the video and upload it, but the course is free for the whole world.