how to build an online course in one week

by Waylon Jerde Published 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago 8 min read

How long does it take to create an online course?

Let's create your first online course in one week. This step-by-step plan shows you how to go from planning to publish. Receive a step-by-step plan to creating an online course from beginning to end. Know when to do which task, so they fall in line with other tasks.

How many online courses should you create per topic?

A common early misconception when creating online courses is that you should create one course per one topic. From a student’s standpoint – that’s a terrible idea. Students get overwhelmed by massive amounts of all-over-the-place information within a single course. And, from a profitability standpoint – that’s an even worse idea.

How much does it cost to create a profitable online course?

If you know what you are doing, you can develop profitable online courses at no cost whatsoever. While money can be used to speed up certain steps of online course creation, it’s not even close to a major determining factor for success. The truly crucial factors for success in designing courses are the ten steps listed in this article.

Should you build online courses for teaching?

You’ll constantly be adjusting your methods depending on a multitude of factors. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, to pour your skill and your soul into your work, then building online courses is a great way to dip your foot into the world of teaching.

How do I create an online course quickly?

How to Create an Online Course for FreeChoose Your Course Topic.Identify the Target Audience.Gather and Structure Your Knowledge.Create an Online Course Outline.Choose Your Online Course Software or Platform.Create the Course Content.Make Sure Your Content is Engaging.Create a Community for Your Online Course.More items...•

How long does it take to build an online course?

It can take anywhere between 3 days to 2 months to create an online course, assuming that you are working on it full time. A mini-course covering a very narrow topic can be produced in only 3 days or less, while a complete in-depth 20h masterclass covering all levels can take several months to produce.

How do I create an online training course?

How to Create Online Training Courses in 5 Incredibly Easy StepsStep 1: Define Your Online Training Goals and Learner Persona. ... Step 2: Create an Outline for Your Online Training. ... Step 3: Build the Content for the Online Training Courses. ... Step 4: Engage Your Learners. ... Step 5: Measure Meaningful Engagement Metrics.

How much money can you make creating an online course?

Your online course could earn anywhere from a $0 – $50k+ per month. Many course creators will earn $1 – 5k/month and there are numerous examples of online course teachers earning $10k – $50k per month.. There are lots of factors that will determine how much you can earn by selling online courses.

How long does it take to develop 1 hour of eLearning?

How long does it take to develop 1 hour of eLearning? A average 1-hour interactive elearning course will take 197 hours to develop. But development of a 1-hour elearning course can range between 49 hours for the low end of the range of a “basic” course to 716 hours for the high end of the range of an “advanced” course.

How many hours does it take to develop a curriculum?

In the study, 29% of respondents said it took them over 100 hours, while 87% take up to 16 weeks to develop their course. A good rule of thumb is to allow 2-3 months to account for research, designing the course, testing with students and finalizing.

How do I create a free online course?

How to create an online course for freeThinkific: Software to create an online course for free. ... Canva: Free and low-cost design tool. ... Beaver Builder: affordable WordPress page builder. ... Camtasia: Cheap software for editing online course videos, with a free trial. ... Vimeo: Free video hosting.More items...•

How do you make a mini course?

Ok – so how do I create a mini-course?Step 1: Define the outcome for the subscriber. ... Step 2: Identify small actions to get them there. ... Step 3: Outline where they go from here. ... Step 4: Figure out the best delivery method. ... Step 5: Create your content! ... Step 6: Set your mini-course up for delivery.More items...

Which online teaching platform is best?

List of 15 Best Online Teaching Platforms for TeachingByju's.Vedantu.Unacademy.Udemy.Skillshare.Teachable.Cuemath.Lingoda.More items...•

How profitable is udemy?

Udemy's profit and revenue Although Udemy has not released any year-end numbers, Forbes makes note that two sources close to the company said revenue would exceed $400 million in 2020. Though other sources put their revenue as high as $653.9 million.

Which course is best for earning money?

10 short term courses that can help you earn Rs 40000 per month...PPC Course. ... Graphic Designing Courses. ... Web Designing Courses. ... Voice Modulation Course. ... Animation Courses. ... Content Writing Courses. ... Programming Language Courses. ... Networking Course.More items...•

What online courses are in demand?

Top Trending Online CoursesData Science. ... Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. ... Big Data. ... Business Intelligence. ... Cloud Computing. ... Project Management. ... Software Development. ... Full-stack development.More items...

How long does it take to create a training?

Time to Develop One Hour of TrainingType of Training per 1 hourLow Hours Per hour of Instruction (2009)Text-only; limited interactivity; no animations93Moderate interactivity; limited animations122High interactivity; multiple animations154E-learning Developed within a Template13 more rows•Dec 6, 2017

How long does it take to do e learning?

The research gives a mid-point for medium interactivity courses of approximately 180 hours development for every 1 hour of eLearning. Therefore, by their estimates, a 20 minute course would take 60 hours of development. If you work a 40 hour week, that's about a solid week and a half of your hard labor.

How can I make an online course for free?

How to create a successful online course?

The key to creating a successful online course is identifying exactly what outcome your audience is looking for—what problem are they trying to solve? Do they want to learn Python to become a developer and advance their career, or do they want to know the latest SEO marketing tactics so they can drive more organic traffic to their website?

What is the trickiest part of creating an online course?

Creating your outline is the trickiest part of creating an online course. This is where you decide all the information you will share (and not share) with your audience.

How to stress test a course?

To stress-test your course, you can simply give the course out for free to your first-time students and allow them one-on-one interaction with the instructor. For example, you could release lessons and then host a Q&A session to drill deep and figure out pain points. If you addressed them in the course, great.

What is a first batch student?

Your first batch of students are your future case studies, your success stories, and the future ambassadors of your brand. Through them, you’ll be working out what does and doesn’t work with your course, and they’ll give you invaluable feedback on how to move forward.

How to get students to take action on your course?

Go and find your potential students online to see if they’ll take action when they visit your course. Blast your email list, comment on forums, and post your landing page on social media.

How much will the online education industry grow in 2026?

According to market research firm Global Industry Analysts, the online education industry will grow from $107 billion in 2015 to $370 billion in 2026. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, online courses had overtaken traditional education in all aspects.

What is the goal of an online course?

The goal of your online course is to help guide them through that transformation process. However, finding the problem your audience needs to solve is easier said than done. It’ll take time and a bit of research, but you must find the right opportunity before you rush off to build something that you hope someone needs.

What are the platforms for online courses?

Online course platforms are one of the most popular methods of distributing your online courses. Platforms such as Coursera and Udemy are vibrant course marketplaces where you can sell your tutorials. These platforms provide a stable and integrated environment for course uploading, marketing, and selling.

What are the demographic factors to consider when creating a course?

The following are some of the demographic factors that you need to consider: Age of your target audience. The Gender your course is more popular with. The average Education Level of your target audience.

What to do after you complete the above steps?

After you've completed each of the above steps, it's finally time to jump in and create the actual course material. Here, you have a plethora of choices regarding the medium; I recommend going with video courses as these tend to have the most impact.

How to make an online course more engaging?

An easy way to make online courses more engaging is to stimulate the student visually. This means pictures and videos. The simplest method of using picture and videos in an online course would be constructing your online class more like a PowerPoint presentation:

What is the most important part of creating an online course?

One of the most important components of creating an online course is setting a learning goal for the course . However, there’s more to it. Every online course consists of various sections, and each individual section also needs to have a clear learning goal.

What does it mean to get started teaching?

Which means you need to get your knowledge together.

How to keep students engaged in a course?

One way to keep your students engaged is to provide an early return on their investment. If a student feels they’ve learned something just from the first module alone, they’re a lot more likely to stick around. Nothing gets someone down faster than them feeling stupid or unproductive, which is very easy to do in a learning environment. Give them feedback, and an ongoing sense of accomplishment, and they’ll stick around.

What is the target audience of an online course?

The target audience is the group of people to whom you are writing your course.

What do you need to teach a class?

Ideally, you should have demonstrable expertise on the subject you are teaching. That could be either by education or practical knowledge on the subject. Having real qualifications to show to your students makes a big difference in establishing trustworthiness for yourself.

Is it a waste of time to create an online course?

It’s crucial that you decide on a specific course subject in the beginning phase of creating your online course. Be as specific as possible.

Introduction

As you may already know, I’m pretty big on online courses. I started my first online course in 2001 and transitioned it to online around 2004. Over all the time I’ve run that online course, I’ve helped thousands of people reach their goal of passing an exam so that’s a pretty successful course.

Further Benefits of Offering Online Courses

Online courses fit under the category of info products (or at least that’s what we used to call them before watching videos online was even possible). Back then, you could choose from ebooks, big-box items, or live seminars.

MARKET RESEARCH

In this first section, you’re going to conduct some market research to help you with your course topic. You’ll do it from the perspective of finding the unique angle for your online course in the marketplace.

Validation

First, you need your online course idea. Then you need to validate it as best you can.

Format of Course

The next step is to figure out the format of your online course. If you spent the time researching your competition, then this will be easier to do. There are three ways to go about this.

Medium

When it comes to your medium you want to be clear on how your online course materials will be delivered. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

TOPIC RESEARCH

You may already know enough about the topic for your online course that you don’t need to do any research. If so, then that’s great. But after reviewing the boundaries of your course, you may find that you have gaps you need to fill. You may need to research specific topics.

How long does it take to create an eLearning course?

The idea behind rapid eLearning is where you use every tool and strategy you can to potentially create a course in 2 to 3 weeks instead of taking several months. So within your lessons, outline the exact content you will cover.

What is course outline?

To put it quite simply, a course outline is a map of the knowledge you’ll include in your course. It shows where you will begin and where you will end. It also lists out all the major steps you will take in between.

How long should a microlearning lesson be?

Depending on how far down the path of microlearning you are going, lessons might only need to be a couple of minutes up to 10 to 15 minutes in length. There's not too much content in a 2-minute lesson so you really need to get at the heart of the topic and do so quickly if you're going that route.

What is the best tool to use to outline a project?

These are great, but with most, you will have to manually re-type your ideas into other software to use them later on. However, if you're a visual learner, mind mapping is probably the best tool for you. You can also use Trello or other productivity software to outline and manage your projects.

What is the purpose of an outline in a course?

Creating an outline that serves as a guide to the course is useful for both learners as well as for you so you can develop a more effective course .

What is the best way to dig deeper into a topic?

There are some elements you may not have considered before your lesson planning, so starting with an outline is the best way to dig deeper into the topic and make it more interesting and informative to your learners.

Why do you need to write an outline first?

Lastly, writing an outline first will make developing your course a much faster process.