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Avoid these 3 things when creating your Online Course

online-course-mistakes-rachelle-deem

Creating your online course should be an exciting and enjoyable experience.

An online course is a massive asset to your business. It’s a resource that can take your revenue through the roof. It can also extend your reach much further than you ever expected.

There are 3 mistakes that I commonly see. Mistakes can turn course creation from a profitable, fun experience to a miserable one. This experience leaves the business owner feeling defeated, deflated, and writing online courses off as something to have in their business.

What are they? Keep reading…

The first mistake is creating a course that is too broad.

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Many new course creators think the key to a successful course is choosing a broad course topic.

But this typically does one of two things:

  1. Overwhelms students with too much information and they struggle to mine through the information to find the bits that apply to them
  2. Doesn’t provide enough detail or specific topic information to get the results your students are looking for.

While having a broad topic may make it easier to find information to include in your course, it isn’t. Realistically, it’s more difficult to have this information relate to specific learning outcomes. 

The more specific and niche your course topic is the more effective it will be in your course creation journey. It’s also easier for your ideal customers to find your course. They will see how it can support them and help them with the thing they desire.

The second mistake is one that I see often…

Similar to having a topic that is too broad, I often see course creators creating video lessons that are so full of information they take an hour to watch.

This is way too long.

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Our current environment is full of distractions, extremely busy, and one where we can do our learning on the go. As a result, we have a pretty short attention span.

Commonly, students are accessing their course content from their mobile phones. They fit in the study while they are out and about or doing other things... commuting to work, on their lunch break, while the baby is having a nap.

We need to aim to provide the content to our students in videos that are a maximum of 15 minutes long, and ideally between 5-8 minutes.

I would always recommend that 5 x 10-minute videos with some concrete actions for students to take in between each video over one 50 minute video. It will also significantly increase your lesson and course completion rate and keep your students engaged and motivated to do the course.

The last mistake is one that can cost you a tonne of time and a lot of money.

It is creating your course BEFORE you’ve validated that it’s a course that people are going to buy.

My mother used to have this saying that I now say to my kids, and it is so relevant to this area:

When you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and me…

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As business owners, we shouldn’t get in the habit of making assumptions about what our audience needs.

And we certainly don’t want to be making an assumption about what our audience needs and then spending a load of time and money creating it before we ask.

Too often I see women going out to market with a completed course, expecting to hear the ‘cha-ching’ of the sales coming in... but they hear crickets.

That’s because they’ve created something that they believe their audience needs... and it might be, but their audience either doesn’t know that they need it or they don’t WANT it.

To make sure you aren’t making this costly mistake, I always recommend that you pre-sell your course.

Sell the idea of your course to your audience before you make it... if people are buying then they want it and you can spend the time and money creating it.

If the thought of selling a product that isn’t created feels off (I hear that a lot), then create the first module or two and then go to market. You have something to provide when someone purchases, and you’ll be two weeks ahead of your students and you can keep creating the content to stay ahead, knowing that it’s something that people want to get their hands on.

So before you create your next course, check that you aren’t making any of these mistakes.

And if you’re ready to create and launch your online course in the next 6 weeks, get your hands on The Course Creation Formula.

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It’s open and you can start straight away.

And because it’s a self-paced program right now, I am giving it away at a MASSIVE discount.

You can check it out right here.

https://www.rachelledeem.com/course-creation-formula-selfpaced

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