Your guide to crafting and selling a successful online course

How to create an online course THAT SELLS (from a 6 figure course creator)

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this engaging and informative session, six-figure course creator Millie shares her secrets on how to create and sell an online course successfully. She highlights the importance of selecting a profitable topic, validated by audience interest, and provides detailed steps on structuring, pricing, and launching the course effectively. By addressing how to design courses that offer specific, transformational results, Millie equips potential course creators with practical strategies and tools to appeal to target audiences and ensure sales. Throughout the presentation, she emphasizes validating course topics, leveraging a minimum viable product (MVP) approach, and offering pre-sales to generate early interest and revenue. Presented with real-life examples from other creators, this session is a comprehensive guide to launching a profitable online course.

Highlights

Start with a profitable topic by validating it with your audience's needs. 📈
Use real-life examples to illustrate course creation and selling strategies. 📚
Adapt the minimum viable product (MVP) approach for course development. 🎬
Conduct market research and audience polls to refine course content. 🧐
Employ pre-sales to gain initial traction and ensure guaranteed sales. 💸

Key Takeaways

Choose a profitable course topic by focusing on audience interests and needs. 🎯
Create an MVP to test and refine your course idea before full deployment. 🚀
Utilize platforms like Thinkific for ease of course hosting and student experience. 💻
Offer pre-sales and exclusive bonuses to drive early interest and course sales. 🎉
Engage your audience to co-create content through feedback and interactions. 🤝

Overview

Millie, an experienced course creator, kicks off her guide by highlighting the significance of picking a course topic that truly resonates with a specific audience, ensuring its profitability. She lays out the foundational elements: niche-specific transformations, authority establishment, and course validation. By focusing on these, she explains how to craft a course that resonates, not just something that interests you personally.

She walks us through the development journey from creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to a more polished version and finally, a continuously evolving final product. Each step is meticulously detailed, showcasing how Millie's approach helps in understanding and meeting customer needs effectively.

Finally, Millie introduces tactics for pricing and successfully launching a course. From setting the right price bracket to executing a comprehensive six-week launch plan, she empowers creators to maintain momentum and drive sales. Her emphasis on pre-sales, market research, and audience engagement provides actionable tips for a successful course launch.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The Introduction chapter provides an overview of the course 'Create an Online Course that Sells'. This section is brief, lasting about five minutes, and aims to set proper expectations for the learners. It outlines the course objectives, which include learning the initial steps of creating an online course, the intricate details of course creation, setting pricing, and the technology needed. The ultimate goal is guiding students on how to successfully create and sell an online course.
00:30 - 01:00: Setting Course Expectations The chapter titled 'Setting Course Expectations' discusses establishing expectations for making sales from a new course. Three methods to ensure sales are introduced, followed by a Q&A session. Transparency is emphasized by clarifying that the session is genuinely free and not a pretext for selling another course.
01:00 - 01:30: Sponsorship Disclosure In this chapter titled 'Sponsorship Disclosure', the instructor discloses a sponsorship arrangement with Thinkific, a platform they use to host their course. Instead of asking students to enroll in their courses, Thinkific has paid the instructor to include a one-minute segment in the class promoting their platform. The chapter emphasizes the first step in creating an online course is selecting a profitable topic, which is crucial before creating any course content.
01:30 - 03:00: Picking a Profitable Course Topic The chapter titled 'Picking a Profitable Course Topic' emphasizes the importance of selecting a course topic that will be profitable in the market. It starts by acknowledging that simply having a topic in mind doesn't guarantee that it will sell or attract an audience. The chapter then outlines the need to ensure that a course idea is marketable by considering three key elements, although only the first is mentioned in the transcript: niche specific transformational results.
03:00 - 05:00: Niche-Specific Transformation The chapter 'Niche-Specific Transformation' discusses choosing a course topic that aligns with what you want to be recognized for, is validated by your audience, and where there's overlap among these factors, you'll find a profitable topic. It emphasizes understanding the importance of a niche in the context of course creation.
05:00 - 07:00: Establishing Authority in Your Course Topic The chapter discusses the importance of establishing authority in your course topic by niching down. It highlights that just like on platforms such as Instagram or YouTube, identifying a specific niche is crucial for creating a course that sells. The focus should not only be on the topic but also on the specific transformation or outcome that the course provides to its audience. It reassures readers that it's okay if the course idea currently seems without a transformation; the key is to define what the course will teach.
07:00 - 10:00: Validating Your Course Topic The chapter 'Validating Your Course Topic' focuses on the importance of having a clear and specific outcome for your course topic. Whether the course teaches a skill, a problem-solving technique, a more efficient way to perform a task, or how to overcome an obstacle, it is crucial that the topic is well-defined to reach the right audience. The chapter also addresses common mistakes people make when defining their course or social media content topics, emphasizing the need for specificity to ensure the target audience is accurately reached.
10:00 - 12:00: Examples of Unique Course Topics The chapter discusses the importance of specificity when choosing topics for courses. It critiques broad statements like wanting to inspire or teach people to have a better life, stating that while these intentions are positive, they are too vague. The chapter encourages course creators to define their target audience clearly and specify what exactly they are teaching. It emphasizes the need for clarity not just in the purpose but also in the outcome for the learners, outlining how they will achieve the intended benefit.
12:00 - 15:00: Building an Online Course This chapter focuses on the concept of creating online courses with an emphasis on mindset shifts to achieve an ultimate level of happiness. It begins with the idea of redefining what 'a better life' means to individuals, suggesting that instead of seeking generic improvements, one should consider what happiness truly signifies for them personally. The intended result of the course is to guide participants into achieving happiness through altering their mindset.
15:00 - 18:00: Minimum Viable Product (MVP) The chapter focuses on the importance of mindset shifts for leading a happier life. It emphasizes the need for specificity in presenting and communicating ideas, using examples like creating a course on understanding social media. Instead of broad topics, it suggests narrowing down to more specific issues or angles to effectively engage an audience. This approach is compared to the concept of creating a Minimum Viable Product, which also requires focus and precision.
18:00 - 21:00: Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) The chapter titled 'Minimum Marketable Product (MMP)' focuses on crafting effective social media strategies specifically for businesses. It emphasizes the importance of targeting the audience by addressing the 'who' (businesses), 'what' (social media strategies), and the desired 'transformation' (growing online and reaching new customers). The chapter suggests that by aligning these elements in a sentence, businesses can have a strong foundation for their course topic.
21:00 - 25:00: Final Evolving Product (FEP) In the chapter "Final Evolving Product (FEP)," the importance of establishing authority in your field is discussed. It emphasizes the need to reflect on what you want to be known for professionally. This involves contemplating whether you are passionate enough about a topic to teach and discuss it continuously over several years. The chapter suggests envisioning where you want your career to be in five years and aligning your current actions towards that vision. For instance, if you aim to make sales through online courses and want to be regarded as a social media expert, you should focus on creating a course centered around social media.
25:00 - 27:00: Course Hosting and Tools Chapter Title: Course Hosting and Tools Summary: The chapter emphasizes the importance of aligning your personal brand with your professional offerings. It suggests asking yourself what you want to be known for and how you can monetize that expertise. The example given is of an online educator and social media coach who focuses on building a reputation in those areas, rather than diverging into unrelated fields like baking, despite personal interests. The main idea is to stay consistent with your brand identity in your professional endeavors.
27:00 - 28:30: Creating a Course Outline The chapter discusses the importance of aligning one's course content with their business goals rather than personal interests. The speaker shares a personal anecdote about their love for baking and how they considered but ultimately rejected the idea of creating a course on gingerbread cookies. They conclude that it might be more beneficial to focus on content that is relevant to social media and their professional identity.
28:30 - 31:00: Pricing Your Course The chapter emphasizes the importance of establishing authority in your course topic and validating it. Validation involves determining whether the transformation or result your course offers is something in demand and actively being sought by potential learners. This step is crucial to ensure that your course will sell effectively. Without this validation, there is a risk of developing a course that does not meet the needs or desires of the target audience.
31:00 - 35:30: Successful Course Launch Strategies To ensure a successful course launch, it is crucial to validate your course topic before creation. You should confirm that there is interest in your topic and that people are willing to buy it. This validation can be done by conducting a simple search online to check if there are ongoing discussions or content related to your course topic. Look for questions people are asking and content being created by others in the same niche.
35:30 - 38:30: Screen Sharing Google Drive The chapter discusses the perceived saturation of certain markets, such as Instagram courses, and reframes it as an opportunity rather than a drawback. The presence of multiple courses in the same niche is seen as proof of a successful market. This validation implies demand and profitability, suggesting that one can also enter the market and succeed by offering a unique perspective or approach. The chapter encourages thinking of competition as a positive indicator and advises on exploring other ways to validate a course topic, such as by considering the questions and interests of potential audiences.

How to create an online course THAT SELLS (from a 6 figure course creator) Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 welcome to create an online course that sells from yours truly right now we're in the overview and introduction section we're only going to be here for about five minutes just setting proper expectations of what you'll learn and then we're going to dive into the first step of creating an online course then we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of how to actually create your course how to build it out how do you set the price what tech do you use does it have to be Tech heavy all the things that you need to know to actually create the course and then how to have a successful
00:30 - 01:00 course launch so now that your course is created how can you actually make sales from it so we're going to give three ways to guarantee sales and then the last part of our time together will be Q&A and then I do want to be fully transparent I'm not selling you anything at the end of this webinar I know sometimes we go to webinars and then at the very end it's like oh they're selling me their course I'm not selling you anything because I wanted to create a free training and because this is free
01:00 - 01:30 I did accept a sponsor where one minute of our class today I'm going to tell you about think ific which is the platform I use to host my course so basically instead of asking you to sign up for any of my courses think ific paid me to have like a one minute section in this course first step of creating an online course is to pick a profitable course topic keyword here is profitable before you even start creating your online course or content for the course idea that you
01:30 - 02:00 have really you need to make sure that it's going to be profitable just because you pick a topic or you have something in mind that doesn't necessarily mean your audience is going to buy it or anyone will buy it so how can you ensure that the idea you have for a course will actually sell there's three kind of things that go into picking a profitable course topic the first thing is a niche specific transformational results the
02:00 - 02:30 next is you want to pick a course topic that establishes what you want to be known for and course topic that's been validated by your audience with all three of these things where they overlap that's where you'll get your profitable topic hopefully this is making sense so far I want to talk about each of these three things individually for further explanation and understanding so we all hear this word Niche Niche however you want to say it the reason we hear this all the time is because it like legit
02:30 - 03:00 works so when you hear oh how do I grow on Instagram oh you need a niche down how do you grow on YouTube you need a niche down same thing with a course how do you create a course that sells niching down and not just the topic but the transformation that your course offers can also be really Niche specific so what's the specific result or outcome that someone will have by taking your course and some people when you right now maybe you're like okay well my course idea there's no transformation that's okay your course can teach a
03:00 - 03:30 transformation it could teach a skill that maybe you've mastered you're really good at other people want to learn the skill maybe it teaches a problem you've solved or a quicker or more efficient way to do something maybe it teaches an obstacle you've overcome whatever that thing is that you're teaching we just want the outcome to be really specific so it targets the right person an example when I ask people like okay well what do you want your Instagram to be about what do you want your course to be about a mistake that I hear is people
03:30 - 04:00 just like they have very broad answers they're like I want to teach people how to have a better life I want to teach people or I want to inspire people to follow their dreams I want people to be happy and it's like okay that's great love that for you but let's get a little more specific who are you trying to reach What specifically are you teaching how will they be able to do that right when you're able to specify even more
04:00 - 04:30 good example of this would be instead of how to have a better life how to access the mindset that will allow you to reach an ultimate level of Happiness it's not just like how to have a better life it's like okay what does better life mean to you maybe to you that just means finding happiness in the day-to-day so it's like okay the result is an ultimate level of Happiness how do they do that through mindset shifts so you're able to categorize this topic idea into a mindset based course where the results
04:30 - 05:00 that they'll see is mindset shifts allowing them to live a happier life do you see that how it gets a little bit more specific let's do one more um how to understand social media that's kind of really broad so if you're like here's a course for how to understand social media it's like okay but like why wait what who you know so instead of being really broad saying how to understand social media the topic is going to be
05:00 - 05:30 social media strategies for businesses so you can grow online and reach new customers that is way more specific it talks about the outcome you notice it touches on who it's for which is businesses what they're going to learn social media strategies and the result they will see grow online and reach new customers if you can craft a sentence that targets the who what and the transformation you have a really great start for your course topic now you want to make sure your course topic also
05:30 - 06:00 establishes Authority so the importance of this is you allow yourself to wonder and answer the questions what do you want to be known for do you even want to be known for teaching that thing and can you see yourself teaching and talking about this topic for the next few years so where do you want to be in five years okay I want to be making online course sales okay what are you known for that's generating those course sales oh I want to be a social media expert perfect create a course that's on social media
06:00 - 06:30 so ask yourself what do you want to be known for and then how can you make money by being known by that thing an example using myself I'm an online educator social media coach that's what I want to be known for it wouldn't really make much sense for me to put out a course on how to make gingerbread cookies right like I love baking it's a personal passion of mine like guilty pleasure I worked at a Cakery like I love baking but that doesn't go in hand
06:30 - 07:00 with my business goals it's like a personal thing we need to separate that personal in business sometimes and yeah I love to bake personally but launching a course on how to make gingerbread cookies just doesn't make much sense for what I want to be known for I mean maybe you got y'all would like a gingerbread cookie course but I don't know I'm thinking it might make more sense to be more like social media relevant you know what I mean so that's kind of an example
07:00 - 07:30 of why it's important to establish Authority with your course topic now we want to validate your course topic basically by validating your course topic you're asking is the transformation your course offers or the result that your course offers something that people are actively searching for is it a result that people actually want and this is literally the key to making sure your course will sell because if you don't validate your topic first you
07:30 - 08:00 could have a course launch that flops because you didn't confirm people are interested in this people will buy this topic all the things so validating your course topic is so important before you even start creating to validate your course topic you can do a simple search on search engines look up your Niche or Niche the topic your course is going to be about see if people are currently looking for answers about that specific thing are people creating content answering questions about that even if you're looking at other people who have
08:00 - 08:30 a course similar to yours that's a good thing so it's actually not bad if you see like oh my gosh there's a bunch of Instagram courses out there that doesn't mean oh no it's oversaturated I can't do that that means that must be a successful Market these people have already validated this topic they know it performs well it's making them money I can create an Instagram course too my own way and see success so competition's not bad actually other ways to validate your course topic ask yourself hey what are people currently asking
08:30 - 09:00 uh you can talk to your audience ask them questions like hey what are your pain points what are you struggling with what are you dealing with right now what's a transformation that you wish you could see in the next six weeks so get on calls with your audience and ask them that or if your audience already follows you you could pull them on your Instagram stories saying if I taught a class what would you want me to teach a class on which topics are you more interested in this this or this pulling your audience and talking to your audience is a great way to get feedback
09:00 - 09:30 and validate your course topic you could also offer free coaching to test your methods and make sure that it's working and getting results and again market research look at other people in your industry what are they teaching on what are they selling and are they selling something similar to what you want to sell if so that could be validation that hey people are seeking this out and they want results on this so we've already talked about my course like it's like a
09:30 - 10:00 big 10 module big transformation maybe somebody doesn't know anything about Instagram and by the end of the course they know Instagram they know how to work with the algorithm they know how to create consistent content they know how to land brand deals make money blah blah blah so that's a huge transformation but maybe that's not something that you're thinking about you're like oh that's not really what I want to teach and that's okay maybe there's a specific tool that you know and understand really well and you could teach somebody how to use that tool this is Thomas he has a course that teaches notion if you don't know what
10:00 - 10:30 notion is it's basically like a organization tool for creators businesses entrepreneurs and it's it's really cool I love notion and he has a course that just teaches how to use that tool now if you're somebody you're like okay Millie I'm not in like the business industry that's okay you can still sell a course so this is a course learn to draw daily practices to improve your drawing skills so that's a skill that you've mastered maybe you're really good
10:30 - 11:00 at drawing you can teach people how to draw what daily steps do they need to take to get better at drawing this one's my favorite I use this example a lot in my YouTube videos but this is David Henry he has a course or yeah he has a course called Christmas lighting Academy and it teaches you how to set up a Christmas light display where it's like dancing to the music on a radio you know when the lights dance when you drive by a a house and it's like you tune into a
11:00 - 11:30 radio and it's like in sync with the music he teaches that I've been wanting to do that for so long and when I was we just we're in a house now so I was like oh how do I do that I was looking up how to do Christmas light displays he has a course on it and I thought that was so cool so that's an option too and then we also have daira daira is she has a course called fail prooof caramel apples so she does gourmet caramel apples and teaches people how
11:30 - 12:00 they could do it from home themselves for parties events how to brag and look cool to your friends you know but teaching you from your own home how you can make a caramel apple and make it Perfection so this is just a few examples of course topics with specific Transformations where the seek and the result has already been validated and is actually needed by a pretty large group of people so now we have the first step done which is is picking your course
12:00 - 12:30 topic I want to talk about building out your online course what goes into that we have a lot of things that go into that you have like how to actually create the course what does it look like the structure how do you build it out what tools do you need what does the tech look like how do you set the proper pricing for your course all of the things let's talk about all of that right now creating your online course you will likely create three versions of your on online course over time you
12:30 - 13:00 don't have to do this right away this is something that happens naturally over time but it's also a great strategy if you're somebody who's overwhelmed with the idea of creating a course this is the perfect process to follow to help ease that overwhelm or stress so when I'm explaining each of these I'm going to explain what it is and how I implemented it within my business so first we're going to talk about the examples of how I implemented it and then after that we'll talk about how you
13:00 - 13:30 can Implement those things so I wanted to make sure you had examples of how to implement before trying to apply it to your own thing starting with the MVP MVP stands for minimum viable product this is the release of a new product that is used to validate customer needs and demands prior to developing a more fully featured product so this is like the bare minimum product where like low
13:30 - 14:00 effort low Tech low friction before you fully flesh out your course and create spend like a hundred hours trying to create this Perfect online course you start with MVP an example of what that is is through my MVP journey I didn't start with the modern influencer I just didn't have that course I didn't start with creating the course I started with an 8 week Instagram transformation coaching call so I accepted 10 spots so
14:00 - 14:30 10 people signed up for an8 week coaching program where every week we would get together and I would teach them how to grow on Instagram starting with the basics getting more advanced and then brand collaborations this was my low ticket offer and low Tech offer I didn't do slideshows I didn't do anything it was just like week one let's talk about this let's hear your questions let me answer them very casual I did this two times from October November and then November December
14:30 - 15:00 there was some overlap with the two different groups this was really great because I was able to get live feedback from my target audience and they could ask questions and they would kind of guide me through okay what should next week look like how fast are they able to implement this how slowly are we working through this one thing what questions are they asking how can I make it better for the next group of students so I really liked this method I accepted applications through Google forms so it's free basically anybody who wanted
15:00 - 15:30 to join my coaching they would apply and I would get on a zoom call with them to make sure they were a good fit before I accepted any payment from them because I didn't want to waste their time or money and I didn't want to feel like they were like jipped out or anything I don't know so I just wanted to make sure they were a good fit before they paid anything coaching calls we did on Zoom Payment Processing I did through PayPal and then I backed up all the zoom recordings onto Google Drive so that the students could watch the replays even if they couldn't
15:30 - 16:00 join live so that was my first version of the modern influencer I didn't cost me anything I didn't use any tools that cost anything it was completely free to launch and I got paid to do it once my MVP was done and I was like okay this is a validated course topic I'm seeing results with my students let's move on to create my MMP your MMP is the next step and that is your minimum Market marketable product your minimum marketable product
16:00 - 16:30 is a more developed version of the MVP that is ready to be sold to customers so you kind of start to package everything together in a course format where it's ready to be sold it's a little bit more developed it's not maybe at where you want it to be long term it's not that like wow this is the dream maybe it's not there yet but it's kind of that transition phase to that my MMP Journey my first version of the modern influencer that I launched had seven
16:30 - 17:00 modules of pre-recorded videos it was my mid ticket item so I went from a low ticket to a mid ticket where anybody who joined at this it was 597 to join the course anybody who joined at 597 price they would have lifetime access to any and all future course updates no matter how advanced and crazy it got so mid ticket at the very end I had a feedback questionnaire where I asked people like what do you love what didn't you love what did you feel was missing so so I got feedback from my students this was
17:00 - 17:30 the done is better than perfect method maybe the videos weren't as high quality as I wanted maybe some of them were literally like Zoom recordings of me teaching to my webcam but it was done is better than perfect that was my mindset I was like I just want to get it up this is what I launched in August 2021 I know you some of you might be like whoa that was like a two-year Gap well I took like a year break during 2019 2020 like during 2020 was kind of crazy for all of us and was getting married so I took some time off before coming back build
17:30 - 18:00 out my course and then I did like one-on-one coach so whatever you don't have to wait that long what I'm saying basically what I'm saying you don't have to wait a year before doing an MMP Journey you could do this all within one year and then tech-wise again I did the wait list on Google forms I didn't put this but I emailed the wait list when the course was ready to launch I emailed them through flowes so I started building my email list flowes was was my host course hosting I chose thinkific
18:00 - 18:30 Payment Processing also thinkific which syncs with PayPal and or stripe that was the middle now this produces your Fe your Fe is your final evolving product I made up this term because I really liked it and I couldn't find one that I liked that like went with the MVP MMP so we're doing FP this is the final product that can be sold continuously after Gathering student
18:30 - 19:00 feedback you're able to create a satisfactory and lovable product that you will continue to evolve over time so this is finally when you've reached that like yes this is the course that I've been dreaming of and with that course you're probably going in once or twice a year to make tweaks update depending on student feedback or maybe things you're teaching get outdated so you have to tweak things but it's like that ultimate final version and my Fe was the final
19:00 - 19:30 version of the modern influencer today has 10 modules of videos over 100 worksheets and every worksheet is updated and made sure
19:30 - 20:00 it's the most up to date so we have one big update but then halfway through the year we also have a little update which is just like a general okay what has Instagram changed lately let's change these few things and tweak these few things so we have about two updates every year the tech for this one we use Evergreen for like Evergreen sales we use ever webinar you're on webinar Jam right now it's like their sister companies course hosting think AIC Payment Processing think AIC PayPal stripe and then for email we use active
20:00 - 20:30 campaign I don't recommend active campaign to start because it's very complex so flowes if you're somebody who's just starting out at this point we're using active campaign for our email list for course hosting I use thinkific the reason I picked thinkific this is like even if they're sponsoring a minute of this webinar or not I would recommend thinkific I picked them out when I first launched my courses over a year ago the reason I picked them out is because yeah there's a lot of options out there but my thought was from a
20:30 - 21:00 student's perspective what's the easiest way for somebody to take my course I was enrolled in a lot of courses I've taken a lot of courses so I logged in as a student for a bunch of courses that I'm like signed up for and I was like okay what's my favorite platform as a student and think ific was my favorite platform from a student's perspective so that was my priority and then second priority was okay which one's the most easy to use and think ific was the most easy to use so it was perfect that from a student perspective think ific was my favorite
21:00 - 21:30 and then ease of use think ific now the next minute of this video will be sponsored by think giic because I genuinely love them I use them for all of my courses so let me just tell you about a limited time deal that they are running just for the people who are watching this YouTube video for anybody who wants to try out thinkific by using the link in my description you get one month free of their start plan they do have a free version of think giic that you can use but you can get this $74 per
21:30 - 22:00 month plan for free test it out have access to all of the features on the Start Plan so that you could really start building out your course so you'll have this start plan for free you'll also get their online course training bundle so they have a bunch of bundles of online courses to help course creators better create and sell their products there's the online education business Master Class how to price your course build your content Empire and so much more and a lot of these courses are
22:00 - 22:30 step-by-step instruction for how to have a successful online course so you'll have access to their training bundle on top of that you'll also have 100 plus hours access to their thinkific Summits these are like Workshop bundle videos from course creator experts they come do workshops with inic and some students and those are recorded you'll have over 100 hours of these workshops to watch as many times as you need there replays so you could go watch those now to hear
22:30 - 23:00 from the experts of having a successful course and then finally you'll get over $1,000 in software savings so they have a bunch of savings discount codes tools and softwares at a discounted price that you can use when you create a thinkific account so these are all the things that you'll get by joining thinkific testing it out seeing if it works for you I'm not saying it's going to work for everyone but I loved it for my business and I just want to present this as an option for anybody who wants to test it out I'll leave the link in the description down below all of those things that you'll be getting through that link specifically
23:00 - 23:30 is saving you over $1,000 in value so it's definitely worth trying for free for the next 30 days use the link below and let's move on hi so we talked about how I created each of these but how can you create each of these and how do you create your course you yeah so let's build out your course outline ideally you want to create a course that is simple to follow a toz format and
23:30 - 24:00 valuable to your audience I love the a toz format because it's like you get to follow it step by step from beginner to expert but how do you actually build that out like how do you get everything in here in your brain onto a course and communicated to students in a cohesive way I think that's the hardest part A lot of people struggle with and first thing is to let your audience design the course with you then you can do a sticky
24:00 - 24:30 note brain dump this was one of the best things that I had ever done and get organized from the very beginning I'm going to talk about each of these three things a little bit further so first let your audience design the course with you go to your Instagram stories and put these two slides on your stories the first slide says have you ever bought a course on insert your course topic and then do a poll yes or no the next slide ask if yes what did you feel that course
24:30 - 25:00 was lacking or missing what did you wish that it had I did this when I was building out the I think the third version my Fe so I did my MVP and then I did my Mmp I asked okay who's bought an Instagram course before if you have what was awesome about it what did you not like about it what was missing from it and my audience gave me feedback they were the ones that created my course outline because they told me I wish it
25:00 - 25:30 had an in-depth explanation of the algorithm I wish it told me the legal side of being an influencer how to set up your business legally how to set your pricing how to write contracts for brand collaborations like they told me everything that was missing in other courses and I was able to craft like the best course ever because of my audience not because oh I'm so cool like no I heard their needs and created answers for it you don't currently have an audience then what you can do is just go to Tik Tok make a video say if you're
25:30 - 26:00 somebody who's bought a course on D D D I want to hear from you what did you love about the course what did you hate about it what did you feel it was missing I'm creating a course on da D D D D would love to hear your feedback in the comments boom done create a Tik Tok let it go over there a few times put it on Instagram reals put it on YouTube shorts and let that roll now for part two of how you can create the course do a sticky note brain dump I cannot emphasize this enough even if you're like I want to skip this step don't skip this step please you want to get
26:00 - 26:30 everything out of your head and onto paper write down everything that you want to teach on an individual sticky note so every topic every strategy every every step put it on individual sticky notes once your table is a complete mess and disaster you're going to organize the sticky notes and be like oh okay all of these kind of relate all of these kind of relate and all of these kind of relate so just kind of like organize them and that will give you your course form format I did this here's like pictures of literally my sticky notes
26:30 - 27:00 and it was so amazing because you're able to like move them around and be like oh that one doesn't go there that should go here this one should go here it was just this really easily digestible Hands-On approach that I recommend everybody do when wanting to build out an online course an example so here's just like a brain dump of random ideas random here's Instagram account settings like this is how to grow on Instagram and lamb brand cabber right so these are just all the random things
27:00 - 27:30 that I need to teach they're not in any specific order once I have my brain dump I'm going to organize them see now they're rearranged A to Z okay well first step people need to know the algorithm before you even do anything on Instagram you need to understand how it works and then next let's talk about the purpose of each feature before you create content for that feature you need to know what the purpose of it is your Instagram account settings all the things so I arranged it a toz where the result would be okay they grown on
27:30 - 28:00 Instagram and they're making a consistent income how do they get from A to Z and then from there I categorized them so as you can see the top row this is kind of beginner steps so like the basics let's start with the basics these are what you need to do module two the second row this is more intermediate it's like okay now that you have your foundation set let's start creating content and know how to come up with content and create a Content calendar so module 2 is more intermediate and then module three this is Advanced how to
28:00 - 28:30 grow on Instagram the actual strategies Landing collabs all the things obviously I had like a 100 plus sticky notes because obviously how to grow on Instagram there's a bunch of other sticky notes that describe that one thing so this is just a general overview of how you can Implement that and then get organized from the beginning I use Google Drive to get organized from the beginning at the end if you want me to like do a screen share and show this a little bit more in depth just let me know during the Q&A and I can show you
28:30 - 29:00 any screen share you want but top picture shows how I put folders for each module when you open a module folder inside of it is more folders so I have a folder for the a Google doc so module 3 lesson one is
29:00 - 29:30 getting comfortable in front of the camera and then I brain dumped all the tips that I knew for getting comfortable in front of the camera and then the next script was photo tips I bring dumped all the photo tips that I knew so that was how I organized my ideas and the sticky notes once the sticky notes were organized let's talk about how much to charge when you're figuring out how much to charge first step is to do market research what do similar courses cost when one of my students was figuring out
29:30 - 30:00 how much to charge for her Fitness coaching one you start with market research so she was looking at all these other Fitness coaches and she was seeing how much they charge but something that she also had to keep in mind was this was her first year as a certified trainer and the courses she was comparing herself to or pricing to were people who have been in the industry for 10 plus years some someone was even I think 20 years in the industry so obviously there's going to be a price price difference because they're at different levels of expertise and
30:00 - 30:30 experience that's just it makes sense her first year being certified versus somebody who has been in the game for 10 plus years so when you do market research just make sure you're not only analyzing okay what do these courses cost but who's the course host who's teaching it what's inside the course and kind of weighing and leveling everything that way I don't pick a price until I'm done creating the course so my MV P I didn't really pick a price until I had it outlined Mmp I didn't pick a price
30:30 - 31:00 until I had it done and Fe I didn't pick a price until I had it done because I wanted to know like this is so much value how much would somebody pay for all of this next I recommend your MVP being the lowest price it's always easier to charge lower than you think in the beginning and I'm not saying charge less than what you deserve I'm not saying that at all but it's a safer Gamble to charge Less in the beginning
31:00 - 31:30 because it's always easier to bring your prices up in the future as opposed to down for example if I launched my original MVP at $500 and I only got like five sales and like which isn't bad but like I got five sales but my goal was maybe 50 right I was like okay why didn't I hit my 50 goal I realized okay maybe I priced it too high so then the next time I launch I launch it at 297 the five people who en the first time are going to say hey give me a refund for at least $300 because or $200
31:30 - 32:00 because I paid $500 for this and now you're selling it for 297 or 300 what's going on so that's why I say it's always easier to start lower and then as the evolution of your course grows bring the price up until you're at a price that you're solid with happy with you're like yes that's the that's the key price we're leaving it there for forever and then finally there 's no right or wrong answer here only you can
32:00 - 32:30 truly Define what your value is and the value your course is offering you need to listen to your gut follow your gut and set that price that way finally let's talk about how to have a successful course launch and make money with your course launch first thing create a wait list way way way way way before you launch as soon as you start working on your course maybe you've validated the topic okay as soon as you validate the course topic and know you're going to create a course on it make a wait list go to Google forms it
32:30 - 33:00 is free say get on my wait list for Christmas light display course right and then have somebody's put their name email done put it in your linkoln bio put a call to action saying get on my Christmas light display course weit List have that in your bio for however long it takes for you to create the course maybe it's a few weeks maybe it's a few months keep it in your bio for as long as possible because you're building warm leads of people who are willing to buy that specific thing from you and when
33:00 - 33:30 you do launch your course those are the people that you email and those are the people that will buy from you so create a weit list before you start creating your course next is you're going to follow my six week launch plan so this is the but basically this is the plan that my team and I followed the launch strategy we did was a webinar format where you teach a free Master Class like this like this one hi this is a free 1our Master Class it relates to your course and then at the end and you sell your course to the attendees now I don't
33:30 - 34:00 have anything to sell to you at the end I'm not pushing a course but if I did have a course to sell to you at the end of this it would be like this is how you create and sell this is how you have a course that has a sixf figure course launch you know so that would be the course that I would sell to you at the end of this webinar because it goes hand inand the key here is to create a webinar that gives and offers a specific transformation and result alone so somebody could take that webinar and see tangible results they could walk away from it being like whoo I learned a lot they never had to buy your course but
34:00 - 34:30 they walked away feeling dang that was one of the best webinars I ever took so that like whether they buy from you or not they're like yes that's somebody I want to follow because they're knowledgeable and that's more valuable than getting a sale so one of the webinars that I have is how to grow and monetize on Instagram get your first 10,000 followers and $1,000 in less than 100 days it teaches a 100 100 day Instagram road map strategy and then at the end of that webinar sell the modern influencer I try to get people to sign up for the modern influencer to grow on Instagram become full-time influencer make money with collabs affiliate
34:30 - 35:00 marketing digital product sales merch all the things and that's my transition in the file that I'm sharing right now it's going to go over all everything that you need to have done for your six week launch plan so what sort of content do you need to have created before you launch get that done first that'll probably take you about 6 weeks to create all that and then on the right hand side you can see calendar-wise when my team published each of those things so so for further explanation of like okay what goes into a nurture email what
35:00 - 35:30 goes into a webinar invite what does this thing mean what does this thing mean download the file because at the bottom of the file there is a link to a video that explains your six week launch plan it explains it much better than how I can in this webinar I know we're limited on time so I wanted to make sure we still had or you still had a resource that explained all of these things and what to put in each of these things so like what do you put in a nurture email what the heck is a nurture email obviously that's like okay that makes no sense Mellie but download the file at
35:30 - 36:00 the very end of it it'll have a full explanation in a video format now let's make sales three ways to guarantee sales is to offer pre-sales this is so underutilized but let's say you're going to launch your course in two months and so what you're going to do is say hey you can pre-order my course it's going to be live in 60 days but you can get it at a beta price right now and that way people basically pay you for the work that you're about to do you get 10
36:00 - 36:30 people to sign up as like a beta students they get the beta price which is like the lower ticket item you have money before you even launched the course so that's a way to guarantee sales you can create exclusivity basically saying hey I'm only launching or open cart is for seven days and there's 10 spots available who's in right so creating that exclusivity will help somebody buy also sign up bonuses this was so helpful for me to hit my goal goals during course launch and that's for like the first people or
36:30 - 37:00 anybody who joins today will get this anybody who signs up during the weekend will get this a signup bonus that worked really well for me was offering Instagram Audits and then another signup bonus that worked really well for me was offering 2hour group coaching call so I did hey anybody who joins this weekend you're going to get a 2hour group coaching call with Millie open Q&A ask her anything so those were the signup bonuses that I offered that helped in increase sales dramatically can you show your Google Drive in more detail yes let
37:00 - 37:30 me do a quick screen share this is my drive so here's my like all the files that I have for my courses I have my email list courses here Instagram courses here and my reals courses here so inside of the Instagram course I have the outline which is like overall everything graphics so if I want highlight graphicss infeed posts stories
37:30 - 38:00 that goes there and then I have like an update tracker where every year we track all of the updates like 2019 version 2020 21 2022 2023 so we have all of the updates tracked there course outline this is all of it so module 0 through 8 plus there's like a bonus module but it didn't need any scripting so it's not seen here inside of the modules we have
38:00 - 38:30 it links you to the algorithm script so
38:30 - 39:00 all of those this is like the overall outline they're linked somewhere here so I could have it at an overview or I could go in and get more complicated with it hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you around social media okay bye