Launch Your Course

This month we have Ankur Nagpal from Teachable in to share how you can launch your own online course in 3 days or less.

Yep, in 3 days or less.

:08-Ankur and Bryan introduce themselves

2:21-Bryan introduces the webinar and the value courses provide

3:15-Ankur gives info about his course

3:42-Ankur begins his presentation for Teachable

4:13-Ankur talks about who this lesson will be perfect for

-Blogger, creative, consultant, freelancer, solopreneur

-If you already have an audience and want to monetize

-If you’re looking to grow your business

4:57-Ankur goes over the game plan of how to create and launch your own course in the next 30 days or less

-Why to use online courses

-7-step process

-Technology

-Case studies

6:36-Bryan talks about the first time he created an online course

-May 2013

-Course was on explainer videos

-Launched to 28 people and did $800 in sales

7:47-Ankur introduces himself in more detail and explains why he’s so excited about online courses

-He’s the founder of Teachable

8:34-Ankur goes into detail about Teachable, some of the courses offered, and some of the people using Teachable

9:50-The most interesting and exciting part is that regular people are getting results

-Most of the people seeing results are people who didn’t start with an audience

-They all followed a basic 7-step process

11:00-Ankur asks Bryan to guess what the 7 steps are

11:06-Bryan guesses that one of the steps is creating something that’s worth something

-Teach in a way your students can learn

-The number one goal of your course should be for your students to get results

12:00-Ankur goes over steps 1-7

-Step 1: Find your profitable idea

-Step 2: Price your course

-Step 3: Create & record your course content

-Step 4: Get your school online

-Step 5: Presell your course to test demand

-Step 6: Build an initial interest list

-Step 7: Generate your first course sales

13:00-Reasons to launch a course

-#1: You can make the amount of money you want or replace your full-time job with online courses

-#2: Everyone has unique and valuable expertise to share

-#3: Courses can be an asset

-#4: Establishes you as an authority and helps you grow your audience

-#5: You get to help a ton of people

-#6: You can get results pretty quickly

-#7: You build a community

18:12-Step 1: Finding your most profitable course idea

-The internet is so vast, that there’s a good chance there’s someone out there who is passionate about your topic as well

-There’s no such thing as an unprofitable idea

21:20-How do you find your profitable course idea?

-What are you good at or passionate about?

-What are you already interested in?

-What have you done?  What skills do you have?  What hobbies have you spent time on?

-Come up with 6-8 broad topic areas

22:11-Ankur addresses the myth of “I’m not enough of an expert.  Who am I to teach this topic?”

23:26-Story of John and Eliot-the million dollar teachers

-They aren’t professional programmers

-They are self-taught programmers

-They consumed all the free content available on the internet, and it made them better teachers because they’re only slightly better than their audience

25:42-Ankur gives another example of why you don’t need to be an “expert”

26:14-Step 2: The most important part of any online course

-The Urkel Effect: Provide a transformation for your students

-What is the transformation and outcome for your students?

27:02-Ankur walks through a couple of transformation stories

28:01-Step 3: Ankur addresses another myth: the more information you have in the course, the more valuable it is

-A good online course simplifies things

-An online course is a shortcut to an outcome

-There’s value in simplifying and aggregating and helping people sort through the noise

30:06-Tim Ferris does a great job at this

-He isn’t an expert, but he gathers the information and finds the specific outcome, and teaches to get there quickly

30:45-Review of finding your profitable course idea

Step 1: Write down topics you’re passionate about, skills you have, things you’ve done, things yo uknow

Step 2: Figure out the outcome you’re going to provide to your students

Step 3: Choose the most impactful information

31:33-Bryan suggests writing down topics you want to know more about

-Your course could be about something you aspire to be and your discovery to achieving that

32:34-Step #2: Price your course

How much would you need a month to change your life?

-Premium pricing because:

-It’s easier to hit income goals

-Your students get better results

-Your students are more fun to work with

Challenge:

-Take the price you have and double it

-What can you do to make it worth twice as much?

38:15-Bryan and Ankur talk about why they charge more, how much they first charged

40:05-Step #3: Recording your course content the easy way

First, create your course online

-Each step in your outline becomes a module

-Use PowerPoint or Keynote to create the content

-Done is better than perfect

44:29-Other content ideas

-Interviewing experts

49:04-Step #4: Get your school online

5 things you want:

1. The course to be beautiful
2. The course to have your domain name
3. The course to be mobile optimized
4. Total control over my students (email addresses)
5. To be able to accept payment on day 1

51:27-Step #5: Presell your course to test demand

-Make sure you don’t skip this step

53:17-Ankur walks us through the Teachable sales page and how to create a really effective one to launch your presale

58:07-How many people are on your list?

Bryan talks about how many people were on his list when he first launched

58:58-Step #6: Build an initial interest list for your course

-You need to give away free value in exchange for someone’s email address

-Then, some will buy your premium course

-Take one module from your course, break it into a mini-course, and give it away from free for email addresses.  This leads to:

1. You can instantly put hundreds or thousands of happy students in your free mini-course and build a great audience
2. You deliver a ton of value and start building a relationship with them
3. And you can use their feedback for testimonials to help sell your premium paid course

65:36-Step #7: Generate your first course sales

Ankur asks Bryan what he would do if he were starting out and he’d given away a free course, got a list of a couple hundred people, his paid course is ready, how would he sell to them on email?

-It depends on the goal

1. If the goal is to pre-sell
2. If the goal is that the course is ready and you’re ready to sell

-The key to getting people to buy is to give them a sense of urgency to the problem they have and also increase their confidence that they can solve that problem

-You’ve built your list, now send an email to them

68:51-Ways to grow and promote your online course

-Webinars

-Guest posts

-Deal websites

-JVs/Partnerships

-Personal networks

-Email