Stepping into the world of e-learning with your very first online course can be quite a nervous experience. Naturally, you would have a lot of questions including where to start and how to maximize your reach in the online world. However, you need not worry. Launching an online course is not exactly that hard and it can even be fun if you know what you’re doing. As such, below is a step by step process on how you can successfully launch your first online course.
1. Stand Out
If you really want your course to sell, then you need to make it stand out in the market. This basically means that you have to do something to make it totally different from what everyone else is offering.
Think of it this way: there are multiple ways to solve a problem or routes that lead to the same goal. Why not introduce a new way of solving a problem that is both fresh and, if possible, a bit unorthodox? To do this, you need to set the tone of the topic to be new right from the start. Ask yourself these: just what makes you, well, you? What topics do you want to tackle? What kind of problem can you solve in a way nobody else had?
2. Build the Offer
Basically, what are your students exactly paying for in your course? What should be included in it? This will form the base of your product offer which should draw in your students. If you have yet to create a course, you must establish a clear roadmap of every idea you want to talk in your course divided into different modules and categories. You should also identify the kind of content that you need to make your offer all the more interesting.
If you have already created an online course, then what you need to is to spruce things up. What other features can you add to make your offer all the more enticing? Would you want to add bonuses to those that enroll in a set period of time? There are quite a lot of things that you can actually add to your offer that will motivate your would-be students to start enrolling.
3. Try the Limited Offer Route
Do you know what the most effective way of making people buy something in the real world for decades was? Telling them that supplies do not last. When launching your online course, set a limited but reasonable time for enrollment as this gives people the motivation they need to sign up to your course. A week or 7 days should be good as this gives undecided customers enough time to reconsider their decision. Also, you should expect for a bulk of enrollments to occur during the second to the last day and the last day of the sign up period.
4. Build up Hype
Since you want to maximize sales for your course, it is best that you actually get people interested in it in the first place. Your pre-launch phase should be filled with a lot of neat gimmicks and other hype building strategies that will get people interested in your product. The most basic one you can offer is a “preview” of sorts that feature the best parts in your course.
You can also go for the “soft opening” route where you actually start the course proper (the introductory sections, at least) for those who sign up early. You can also use this in tandem with your extra offers such as making the first parts of the course free for early students or giving them points that they can exchange for real-world freebies at an online store.
5. Face Your Fears
Now that we’ve made the course all the more enticing, we will then have to focus on one big factor that can make your launch successful: you. Before you launch your course, take the time to reflect on some things. What are your biggest fears in launching the course?
You might be expecting a negative reception or some technical hiccups that can make your launch a mess and that might be true. But think of it this way: the way you handle unfavorable response to your product can determine its success in the long-term. You have to take that big leap forward and push on with publishing the course. Who knows if people would like it and actually pay a lot of money to listen to your solutions?