My Top Course Creation Resources

In this guide, you’ll find some of my favourite resources and people for putting together your course materials.

Note: Some of these links are affiliate links, which means I may make a small commission at no additional cost to you. All affiliate links are marked with an *.

Creating Your Materials

Tutorials + Instruction:

Course Builder Box

Design:

Canva

Google Docs, Google Forms

Stock Photo & Illustration Sites:

Stock photos are such a time saver and more cost-effective than hiring a photographer for one shoot. I love these sites because of the inclusivity and diversity they have available. There are both free and paid options here.

The Gender Spectrum Collection

Pexels

Stock Video Sites:

Adding some stock videos to your intro/outro or wherever needed adds amazing extra visuals to capture your audience’s attention. I recommend these stock video sites. There are both free and paid options here.

Royalty-Free Music:

Ever watch a video or tutorial online and there is no music in the background, intro, or anywhere in the video? Adding music in these spots entices your audience and helps encourage them to actively watch what you have to say. There are both free and paid options here.

Video Recording:

Video recording doesn’t have to give you a headache! With these options, they’re easy to learn and have both free and paid options for you. I use these in my projects and can’t recommend them enough.

Quicktime
Quicktime is the built-in recorder and player for all iMacs and Macbooks. I love recording with Quicktime because it’s not using the Internet, which means less chance of a lag during your recording.

Loom
Loom is a Chrome plugin, which makes it super handy for recording quick tutorials and screen captures.

Video Editing:

Camtasia*
I love Camtasia because you can record your videos, and create beautifully polished videos for your quick bite-size trainings. It’s easy to use with basic video editing settings and easy to navigate.

Captioning:

Captioning is essential to have in all videos. Here are some resources you can use to make the process go smoothly.

Transcription: Temi

Adding captions: Descript

Hosting Your Course

Course Platform:

Thrivecart & Learn+*
They have fantastic customer support. They also can do amazing things, but they come with a significantly higher price tag because you don't need as many integrations because they have so many features. If you're worried about your budget or you're looking to not make that much of a monthly or annual commitment then I would highly recommend MemberPress*, depending on where your level of tech is and how much energy you're ready to invest in this.

Thinkific*
Thinkific is an amazing course platform that is super user-friendly, cost effective, and easy to set up right out of the gate.

Self-Hosted
If you are feeling like you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ve run your course awhile and now you want to take it to the next level, you could begin hosting your course on your own website, especially if you’re a WordPress user because you get complete control over the look and feel. If going this route, Learndash is a fantastic plugin to help you.

Note: As with all self-hosted courses, this comes with quite the tech learning curve, so I recommend this option when you can outsource the setup.

Video Hosting:

Vimeo
I love Vimeo for video hosting! You don’t have to deal with advertisements, they have both free and paid options, with inexpensive monthly options. You also don’t have to worry about links to other people’s content. It’s easy to navigate and you can even upload videos linked from your Google Drive, Dropbox and more.