By just 2022, the e-learning market is forecasted to surpass the $243 billion mark underlining just how eager people are these days to sign up for online educational opportunities.

Creating your very own online course will not just allow to get yourself to benefit off of this lucrative industry, it’s also an excellent way to position yourself as an industry influencer and promote your core business.

However, despite knowing the apparent advantages of starting their own online course, a lot of people are still apprehensive of taking this leap. They don’t know exactly where to start and how to create a course that will become an instant hit with the audiences.

But don’t worry at all, as we’ve got it all covered here in these 5 tips that you can apply to create your very own, highly successful online course:

Starting Off By Choosing The Appropriate Subject:

You cannot just choose any subject and start developing an online course for it. And neither should you just focus on what you would like to impart in terms of skills. Both of these are inherently wrong approaches because they don’t take into account the choice of your core audience.

The most successful courses in any industry are those that aim to solve the most common and complex problems faced by the target audiences in that sector. For e.g. if you an SEO expert and most queries from your audience revolve around understanding snippet optimization on Google, then this is one of the best ideas you can convert into a full-fledged online course.

This way, your audience will know that signing up for your course will help them understand a complex problem in a streamlined manner, resulting in consistent sign ups.

Create Your Own Unique Course Outline & Content:

Generic content never works at all in online courses. Your course audience has only signed up because they want to grow their existing skill set and knowledge bank on the topic you are teaching and if you are also teaching the exact same things that are available in spaces like blog posts, YouTube videos etc. then you will surely end up with disgruntled customers and tons of bad reviews.

To avoid such a scenario, always ensure that your course outline is created through extensive research combined with expert opinions and not via on-the-surface sort of content.

People who have created unique content have experienced tremendous success during their early years like Zach Evans, a man who offers piano courses online. Despite having a tremendous profile which boasts of multiple renowned engagements like getting featured in one TEDx talk and top podcasts, Zach ensured that he offered value in his content. For e.g. he has courses on topics as diverse as best left hand patterns to number # 1 exercise for pianists spread through his site. This allowed him to garner massive enrollment numbers that currently exceed 40,000 members just in his first few years of operations.

Power Ease on Each Step of the Way:

Modes of delivery and access matter just as much as unique content, however most first time creators overlook this incredibly important issue. Creating hindrances towards accessing your course or any of its aspects can be a huge turn off for your audience, effectively shutting you out from a majority of your potential sign ups.

As a rule of thumb, keep things as simple and conveniently accessible as possible. For instance, ensure that your course sign up forms are visible throughout your site and the audience doesn’t have to search too much for it or if you are looking towards building a paid course, integrate as many payment options as possible. You can even send transcripts of your video content to people’s emails once your lesson has ended.

Doing this will also save you time, effort and resources when designing your first online course as you will have to do minimalistic website restructuring and will have the option to leverage existing modes of delivery to offer access to your course.

Never Bore The Audience:

Your content may be top notch but if you don’t master the delivery, not many people will be willing to continue after the first few lessons. First time creators fail to wrap their head around the idea that user engagement has to come from their end and it’s not the other way around.

If you look at some of the best online courses these days, their creators go out of the way to make a special effort to make their content interesting to view every single time.

For e.g. Neil Patel always has things like info graphics, interactive visuals and even relevant quizzes and worksheets attached to his online courses, making his audience remain hooked on during and even after the course lesson ends.

You will need to take a step in the right direction and ensure that your content delivery doesn’t fall flat during your very first attempt.

Market The Course Aggressively:

You have done everything right up till now like making the course unique and engaging, creating ease of access etc. but if your audience doesn’t know that it’s there, how will they come and sign up for it?

Marketing is what will take all the hard work you’ve put in to designing the course and convert it into real time success, so don’t under do it. Explore every possible channel to create the buzz for your new course and ensure that people know what it’s about and all other essential details.

You can start off by creating a blog post on your site and then market it on your social channels. After this, you can do an email marketing campaign by sending out a short, personalized email to your list telling them about the benefits of enrolling in this course. You can even use influencers to get your word out there for you.

Wrapping Things Up:

It’s high time now that you stop doubting your own abilities! You too have all what it takes to build and impart a successful online course like others, so don’t procrastinate any further and delve into creating your very first online course right now.