At the time of writing, Fizzle has over 400 lessons in 31 courses. That’s over 10 courses a year for the past 2.5 years.
I’ve always loved teaching ideas that excite me. And, after the past few years here, we’ve made a business out of creating courses that change people’s lives.
“I have learned most of what I know about starting an online business from Fizzle and I learned it in a few short months and now have a thriving, growing, website! Fizzle is effective while at the same time authentic and grounded.”
Alison C.
In this 2 part conversation we share over 30 tips to help you make engaging courses you can sell yourself, covering topics like:
- How to develop a course topic that will sell itself instead of burn you out.
- What apps and software should you use?
- When should you host it yourself (on WordPress or something similar) and when should you jump on a platform like Udemy?
- What methods we use for content strategy.
- And a whole crap ton more!
This is an exciting couple episodes to me because I’ve lived this course creation stuff for the past few years, figuring out some processes that have been enormously helpful for us (and hopefully will be for you as well).
Enjoy!
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“38 Tips to Make an Engaging Course on the Cheap”
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Andrew’s Question
Teach others how to build courses (in your course). It’s a big stumbling block for me and many others. And I am sure it would help with student retention.
Teach what theme to use, where and how to store video for the courses, how to outline courses, etc…Value :)
- Andrew Kidd
Idea: your course as an investment
When I launched my first product, Planscope, I was pretty disappointed with the income. It took over a year and a lot of effort for it to make any measurable impact in my finances. The problem was that I could make in a few hours of consulting what Planscope brought in each month.
But it was growing, and each month it was making a little more money. And eventually, I realized something: if I’m looking at this as an income replacer, I’m probably going to be disappointed – at least for a few years. But if I classify it as investment with a return rate that outpaces just about anything on Wall Street, it’s a strong win.
~ Brennan Dunn (emphasis added)
Course Topic & Research
1. Pick a good topic — Useful to someone’s career (…or life). Something that’s important to you. Something you have experience with (but you don’t have to be an expert in it).
2. Use your existing audience to come up with a potential product idea — survey them about their goals and challenges. Or, when they subscribe to your email list, send each subscriber an email asking what their #1 challenge is right now and collect the responses in one place.
3. Run a test on that topic — email course, podcast series, blog series, anything to test if people are curious about this topic or not.
Note: all these items are discussed in detail in the podcast.
4. Research Competition — Find out what products already exist that address similar pain points. What words do they use? What words do people use about the course? Buy those products and study them. Take extensive notes on what works and what doesn’t. Where are the holes?
General Content Stuff
5. Sell discovery instead of expertise:
“You sell your expertise, you have a limited repertoire. You sell your ignorance, it’s an unlimited repertoire. [Eames] was selling his ignorance and his desire to learn about a subject, and the journey of him not knowing to knowing was his work.”
6. Find the angle you’re coming at this topic from — Chase shares a story about his development of the Shareable Images Course.
7. Be learner centric — not teacher centric.
8. Be useful centric — not explainer centric. E.g. what 3 things will someone walk away from the course knowing exactly how to do?
9. Make one module, not a whole course — you can add more later! ship something NOW, get feedback, iterate. It will make each subsequent module so much better.
10. Define how you’ll know when you’re done — when the sales page is up? When you’ve gotten beta feedback? When you’re on the beach drinking mai tai’s for a living? Set realistic expectations.
Webinar Path
Note: This is an optional path. It probably sounds like a hassle if you’re not planning on it. But, in my experience, if you run through your content a time or two everything get’s better. It’s up to you.
11. Develop a presentation of the outline for your course content. This should be enough for a 45 minute to 1 hour webinar.
12. Promote your webinar to your existing audience.
13. Deliver the webinar and ask for signups for your alpha test group for your product. Make them pay, but only a fraction of what you’ll charge future customers. If you get enough people to sign up (to show there’s a need for your product), continue. If not, consider whether there is a true need for your product.
14. Create an outline for the the content for each module or topic in the course.
15. Use your outlines to create very basic webinar-style presentation for each module. Not at all polished. This may require more research.
16. Deliver each module to your alpha test group on a set timeline so they know what to expect.
17. Take extensive notes as you learn from your alpha group about what works and what doesn’t from your content.
18. Make edits to your content based on the feedback from the group. Use this feedback to create finalized outlines for your course content.
Show Notes
Products: The Best Investment You’ll Make In Your Business – Double Your Freelancing
SPI 142: How Paying Attention Paid Off for Joseph Michael, the Scrivener Coach
Evernote Essentials — The Definitive Getting Started Guide for Evernote
Roasty Coffee | The Unfiltered Resource for Coffee Lovers
Deconstructing Expertise: Why You Need it & How to Get it
Learn how to set goals that actually stick!
The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business
Every week we talk with entrepreneurs. We talk about what’s working and what isn’t. We talk about successes and failures. We spend time with complete newbies, seasoned veterans, and everything in between.
One topic that comes up over and over again with both groups is mistakes made in starting businesses. Newbies love to learn about mistakes so they can avoid them. Veterans love to talk about what they wish they had known when starting out.
These conversations have been fascinating, so we compiled a list of the 10 mistakes we hear most often into a nifty lil' guide. Get the 10 Most Common Mistakes in Starting an Online Business here »
“Gotta get home to my MacBook Pro….” Sing it, Chase!
Your writeups really tickle the grey cells. Thanks for articles which can change the course of entrepreneurs life.
That Nacho Libre quote tho…
I was finally in a position to listen to the podcast live today. I got everything ready, and clicked on the link. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was early for the meeting, and was waiting for Corbett to start it! I waited with anticipation, but nothing happened. So I waited a bit more. Maybe they had technical difficulties. After a while I went back to the email to see if there was something I missed. Newsflash! the podcast was at 8am. Hmm, no wonder I got a spot in the meeting. I was trying to connect at 4:15pm….
Sad face. Ah, well. Happy Friday anyway.
Hi Charles! I get from your comment that you are a new Fizzler, right? The podcast is never live. Fizzle Friday is a live group coaching hour 3 times a month with one one the staff hosting. Once a month on Fridays it’s called Office Hour and the whole staff is present, but there you can only listen in and post questions. You can add it to your Google calendar on the dashboard after you log in. I was confused, too!
To add my 2 cents to this weeks podcast and being an expert, I’d like to point out that even though people might know more about a subject, they do not necessarily have the skills to teach others. I find it difficult myself. On my last trip a bought a book at the airport, Talk like TED by Carmine Gallo. I just finished reading it and I got some new ideas how to make my ideas stick. Recommend checking it out!
I am a professional organizer in a country where there is not a whole lot of competitipn yet
Aha! Thanks for that info, Eveliina! “Light dawns on marblehead!”
First of all, thank you Corb for correcting these fellas about the tech stuff being a single lesson inside of a large course. So critical to realize that you have AT LEAST two kinds of students: one kind TOTALLY gets the Fizzle mindset, the importance of idea and value and gutsy and audience and such, but they DON’T know where to host their course, how to design stuff, or whatever; the other kind DOESN’T get the mindset-holistic-strategery stuff, and so they just need to have that pounded into their head and kneaded into their heart before they get the techniques they THINK they need.
Love you guys — such a privilege to listen to this ep.
Also: that Bon Jovi song.
Amen, Dave! A few mildly tech-challenging things about building my first course seemed nearly impossible at first. I got help from Fizzle and just hacked my way (think “dull machete,” not “sharp hacker’s mind”) through the rest.
This was really an outstanding episode and I’m looking forward to the next one. Having made some major progress this year, and having just launched my online Health and fitness coaching programs, I was already in the mindset of, what do I create next.
What you said about webinars and creating a single module and then adding more later really resonates with me. I love the idea of doing a beta launch with my subscribers and getting as much feedback as possible to improve the course.
Another great episode, guys. I will have to run it back to about the halfway point, though, as I got distracted picking up dog poop and missed a few nuggets (of wisdom).
One thing I did hear clearly, and wondered about, was Corbett’s saying that after you get your first course out there, you should move along to the second. I understand that it’s not helpful to keep obsessing over one course and never get any other product out there, but I’m struggling right now with the balance between devoting effort to refining and marketing this course (which has precious few students so far) and getting on with the next course, which is about half done. I have no idea which one I should prioritize because right now they seem equally likely to be successful (or not).
Any advice would be appreciated, and I promise to refrain from dog-doodies as I read or listen to your response.
I’m 30 minutes into this episode – loving it, very sensible stuff! I particularly liked that you referred to “something that’s important to you” rather than “passion” and I can’t wait for your release of “Blog in the USA.”
I like the different angles and approaches. My experience. I teach SEO for photographers and when I do live classes, they booked but its limited spots so I recorded my content, packaged it up and launched an online on demand class, using shopify actually cause I liked the vimeo integration and guess what, NO SALES! ughh, seems they want the live class but half of them can’t make it live anyways. I feel live class drains me so much and I fear the technical issues side of things. but I think I will launch another webinar soon, not a huge fan of doing webinars but have to try options as I need to be making a living well goal is $1000 a month is not a huge one but last 2 months have been so slow.
I’ve put together a lot of courses so I’m really pleased to read this and see so many new ideas for doing so in an on-line entrepreneurial context. Great episode!