Mistakes You’re Making When Creating Your Online Course (and how to fix them)
Let’s talk about the five most common mistakes people tend to make when creating online courses. I want to take a different spin on things and shift your mindset so that you can stop getting stuck in that overwhelmed spiral and start creating with confidence and clarity. Check out the video or read along below!
Mistake #5: Focusing on the Tech Before You’ve Intentionally Designed Your Online Course
One of the most asked questions I see in Facebook groups, podcasts, summits (you name it!) is what platform do I use for my online course (spoiler, I have a post alllllll about that!). But before you choose your platform , you need to design your course.
If you pick your platform before you design your course, you will have no idea what platform features you need once you get going. Now the beauty of starting with a solid course design and knowing what your course is going to entail is that when you go to choose your platform, it's so much easier. You don't need to worry about finding a platform that has all these bells and whistles if your course only needs a few specific features.
So to stop yourself from spiraling into tech overwhelm before you've even started, give yourself permission to wait to make the tech decisions until after you finish your course design.
Mistake #4: Thinking That the Value of Your Course is Based on the Amount of Content You Put into it
Have you heard this question before: I have 8 workbooks, 10 modules, 500 hours of video ... how should I price my course? When people ask this question what they're implying is that the more content equals more value, which can lead to overstuffing your course. It's easy to get caught up with the idea of adding more and more and more... more workbooks! More videos! More slides! Unfortunately this has the opposite effect where your people become overwhelmed and don't know where to start.
I want you to shift from thinking value = amount of content to value is based on the impact that you can provide to your people.
If you can have an impact on people's lives, if you can lead them to transformation and you can do that in a fun, easy, bite-sized way, that's way more valuable than if you take 500 hours and a whole bunch of worksheets to do that.
Mistake #3: Focusing on Content More Than Action
This is really common when you’re first creating your online course. You've made the decision, it's time to create your course so you sit down and think about everything you know on your topic and you just brain dump it all out. Next you organize it all into your modules and lessons and away you go. The problem here is that because you know your content so well, it's really hard for you to know what needs to be included and what is maybe more of a nice-to-know-but-not-really-necessary.
Instead, you need to shift from focusing on content to focusing on action because action is what drives results.
You can throw all the information you have at people but if they’re not taking action, they’re not going to see a transformation, they’re not going to see results and you’re not going to be making an impact on their lives.
Instead of letting your content drive your course, I want you to let action drive the design of your course! I actually have a full free guide on how to inspire action that you can grab below. It walks you through my two top tools that I use ( goal statements and action statements) so that you can make sure your course is as actionable as possible.
Start asking yourself, what do my people need to be able to do to reach the goal of my course? What do they need to do to see results? What do they need to do to see transformation? Not what do they need to know, what do they need to do?
Mistake #2: Designing Your Course a Certain Way Because That’s What Everyone Else is Doing
There have been some standard models that seem to pop up again and again in the industry, we’ve all seen them. Membership sites where you have to have monthly training, monthly guest speakers, monthly new resource...etc. Courses where you have 8 modules, all videos and worksheets and biweekly coaching calls. Well… not every single learner is the same, just like not every single business is the same, which means not every course needs to be the same!
You are completely unique, which means your learning experience can be too.
Don’t get caught up on what others are doing and instead focus on what’s authentic to you. Your course does not need to look the same as another. You want your course to feel in alignment with how you want it to show up for your people.
Instead of trying to fit yourself into a one-size-fits-all model, I want you to ask yourself, what do my people need? What experience do I need to craft for them? What journey can I build for them and how do I want them to feel along the way? Allow yourself to show up in a way that's uniquely you and that's going to have a huge impact on the learning experience.
Mistake #1: Not Spending Enough Time on Your Course Design
You may have noticed the common thread throughout these mistakes which is not spending enough (or any) time on the course design. When you take the time to intentionally design your course, to intentionally build a path for your people, there's a multitude of benefits:
It makes selling your course so much easier because you are confident that you have built a path for your people to get the results they want.
You know you have intentionally designed this path together in a way that provides exactly the right amount of information to give them what they need to have those big results.
You know that you've intentionally woven who they are as people, their strengths, where they need support, their community, what lights them up, what makes them your people. You've woven that through the experience so that it doesn't feel like someone else's course. It feels like this is an extension of my business and how I can share this with the world.
When you take the time to intentionally design your program, you’re focusing on what your people want and what’s the best way to get them there, aiding them in getting a life-changing experience! As a result, your people become your biggest fans, your cheerleaders, which in itself is a brilliant marketing strategy.
Are you ready to design a course that feels like you and gets your people huge results?
If you're ready to bring your course vision to life and want someone who can help you during this course design process so that you are creating a course that feels like you, I am here for you! (In case you haven't noticed, I nerd out about this stuff!) This is the exact reason I host free Course Cafes.
What's a Course Cafe? A Course Cafe is a live Zoom chat where you can find out more about what I do. Maybe you’re just getting started, or maybe you have an idea for a course and you're feeling totally stuck. Let's chat it out. Let's get you making momentum. Let's get you making this happen because I know that you have something incredible and that you have the ability to change lives.
