Masterclass: How To Create & Successfully Launch Your Online Courses

6 min readMar 31, 2020

Creating online courses is one of the most fulfilling activities we can do.

More than ever before, students of all ages are seeking to learn online, for a large variety of topics.

By creating online courses, we bring together a body of work that can positively impact more people than we could with individual work, and provides a recurring income.

The key is to make it easy on yourself to launch and learn. By holding an experimentation mindset, you’ll be able to observe what the market wants most from you, and which courses you should launch.

In this masterclass, I will teach you everything I know about this process, sharing my decade of experience with you, and answer your questions so that you’ll be confident in launching your own courses.

You can join this class even if you’ve never created a single course. You’ll learn everything needed to launch lightly, and how to gradually improve your courses.

In this program you’ll have access to a supportive group of peers who are fellow course creators. You’ll find lots of encouragement, mutual support, and opportunities for partnerships to get your course to a much wider audience.

The regular price starting April 6 will be $125 x 2 payments ($250 total).

You can join us now at the pre-launch price of $105 x 2 payments ($210 total).

What’s included:

Comprehensive online course on how to create and launch your own courses — instant and lifetime access.
Our private group, created especially for this class, for the rest of 2020 to support your course creation and launches.
8 Q&A Webinars (will be recorded this April and May) to answer the most frequent and essential questions for creating, launching, and growing Online Courses. Those who sign up in time will be able to participate live in these webinars.

Join us at the Pre-Launch rate by using this paypal link.

(This link will change to regular price on April 6.)

You will be learning:

How to decide on a course topic that your audience will more likely buy.
The step-by-step method to prepare for your course, so that you’ll spend your time productively, and create something of real value for your audience.
In this world of “free” webinars, workshops and classes, how do we come up with a price that is fair to us, while still giving value that is over-and-above what others are giving away?
How to differentiate between what content to add in a paid course vs. free channels?
Simple solutions for the software and hardware tools that I use and recommend.
Ideas for promoting your course (marketing & enrollment)… whether or not you have an audience!
The marketing checklist that I use to announce courses, including how far in advance to start promoting, how frequent to announce it, where to promote, etc. (Ethical marketing without being salesy and annoying.)
How to deliver the course in an enjoyable way, so that you’ll be inspired to keep creating courses!

Common questions:

If I have a lot of material should I create a large course or split them up into shorter courses?

I highly recommend shorter courses. They are much easier to launch and teach. You need test the market to know what your audience wants you to teach — and short courses are perfect for this important process of testing.

Are these evergreen courses you are talking about, or live online, or both?

If possible I recommend recording them live online then continuing to sell them evergreen, but if cannot record live, then pre-recording is fine too.

What specifically will you be teaching in the course?

Here’s an initial list of topics that are covered in the course, with more coming as we do the Q&A webinars:

Getting Started

Benefits of teaching online
What is an Online Course and the various types?
Why you should have a catalog of courses
The overall business model wherein an online course fits (concentric circles)
Difference between free content vs paid courses? White belt vs other belts

Course Prep Principles

Why no additional research is needed: You already know enough!
The rhythm of annual teaching
The “paper airplane” principle of launching and learning
Why you shouldn’t be concerned about creating deep transformation…
How to improve your courses? Think in terms of versions.

Logistical Prep

My step by step registration process for students to enroll in the course
Why I love using Zapier to automate some processes
Hardware needed for course creation?

Choosing Your Course Topics

How to decide on course topics?
Questions to help you brainstorm course topics
How to survey your audience about course topics (various types of surveys)
How to outline what you might want to say in the course
Should you allow students to make changes to your Resource Guide?
How to time the course, a 60-minute sample outline

Steps of Course Preparation

10 Step Course Creation Strategy
Why you should create the course *after* you have some signups…
Reducing course ideas to prevent student overwhelm
Creating a course format that is light to manage and deliver
How to price your course?
What should the length of your course be?
Things you could include in your course (resource guide, etc)
Idea for small audiences or beginners: require attendance in order to get recording
Should we create a Facebook Group or other forum for each of our courses?
What about intimate student sharing? Have it be recorded?
Tech Tools for course creation

Launching/Marketing Your Courses

The Basic Marketing Plan
Detailed / Advanced Marketing Plan
Course Titles — how to write interesting ones? Copywriting tips.
How to create credibility re: the topic of your course, without a degree or credential in it?
The general arc of course sales (numbers) during launch
Should we have early bird incentives and expiring bonuses?
What if there are not enough sign-ups?
How long beforehand to announce your course?
Elements of Course Sales Page (what should it say?)
What do I mean by making easy-to-read formatting on your sales page?
Should we give updates of our courses to previous students?

JV (Partnerships) to Launch Your Course

What are JV partnerships (important), and why they don’t have to be trades?
How much commission to offer your JV partner?
What about tracking sales in JV partnerships… affiliate links?
How much effort should JV partner put into marketing?
Be realistic about how much outreach to get 1 JV partner
How to reach out to JV partners?
JV partners can help you come up with great course ideas…
Where to find JV partners?

Live Sessions

Get comfortable looking at yourself on video so you’re not shy about it
Notice how I start the course: asking people to chat
The importance of showing up, no matter what, imperfectly
Things I do 15 minutes before I teach the live session
Energetically preparing to teach (a few minutes before I start)
What to expect re: attendance rate?
First 5 minutes of your live session: get people chatting
The 2nd 5 minutes of live session: course overview and yourself
The next 45 minutes: your course material in 3 segments
Pause for 15 seconds for questions, in between segments
Final 5 minutes / how to end your course session

Becoming a Better Teacher Online

Practice looking at the camera lens!
Being an engaging and more dynamic speaker
There’s no perfect online teacher — there’s only learning from experience — your students will always learn something from you
What students generally want in a course…

Logistics (after recording the sessions)

Where and how to upload the course recording?
Following up with students after the course

When you register (use this paypal link) you’ll get immediate access to the 3-part course that answers all the questions above.

You’ll also get access to 8 Q&A Webinars (to be recorded in April and May 2020) to answer additional questions for creating, launching, and growing Online Courses. Those who sign up in time will be able to participate live in these webinars.

Lastly, you’ll get access to our private group, created especially for this class, for the rest of 2020 to support your course creation and launches.