Course Creation Bites

Show Notes:

Online courses don’t work.  This seems like a strange thing for an online course creator to make – but if you look at the stats this is something you could easily think.

The truth is online courses can work and do work, but it is worth considering some of the reasons that they don’t work so that we can improve those things. 

1. Initial course login process is complicated/delayed.  In that period between pressing buy and getting access to their course materials, a student gets distracted and never comes back.   
2. It's easy to hide.   It is easy to drop away and never come back as there is no accountability.    
3. It's online.   It’s very easy for students to get distracted while on the internet.   

Action Steps:

What are you doing to make sure your course does work?   How easy it to get into your course content and log in?   How easy is it for your students to hide once they are in your course? 

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

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Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

The question I have been asked is – Will online courses replace traditional, classroom style classes? – and the answer is no.   Online courses are not the death of traditional courses and I believe will not replace face to face learning.  They are not the same. 

This is because:

• While you can teach technique online, you cannot correct/influence technique online. 
• You can’t provide  the interaction & support that a classroom does, online.

While I don’t expect online courses to replace face to face learning, I do expect to see more online blended learning going forward – a combination of online and face to face learning.  

Action Steps:

Think about how you would deliver the course face to face, and how you can bring some of those elements across to your online course.   Would you have an opportunity for students to ask questions at the end?  Would you get people to do an icebreaker at the beginning of the course?  How would you bring some of the great aspects of face to face training to your online course?

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

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Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

In this episode I take you behind the scenes in a client's course.
This week we are talking all about The Seedling Group. You can find out more about their amazing work here: https://www.theseedlinggroup.org/

The program we are looking into is called the Billabongs of Knowledge Training by The Seedling Group.    The Billabongs of Knowledge Training is a series of 8 modules, each about an hour duration, and is all about culturally safe trauma informed practice – specifically designed for first nations people or those who work with or deliver services to the community. 

Things I love: 

• It comes from a place of experience, knowledge, research and understanding.    
• Its delivery style.   Kelleigh & Nicole sit side by side and use story telling and a really conversational manner to talk through some incredibly heavy information, but they come across in such a way that it feels like you are talking to family. 
• It uses an app called Padlet to offer a whole range of resources and links that go with each of the lessons.  Because it is offered slightly separately to the program, it means that you aren’t overwhelmed while you are trying to go through the content, but you do have a wonderful range of resources when you are ready for them. 
• They have some fun engaging worksheets that are designed in a manner that suits the program perfectly but have a graphic element that makes them really fun to work with. 

Things they could do to improve:

• This is heavy content, and it would be good to see other elements of support available within the course. 
• The length of the sessions – one hour can be quite long and it would be better if it were in smaller bite sized pieces. 

Action Steps:

Firstly, when you are looking at your courses, take a moment to stop and think about the wealth of experience you have – because for most people I work with, it is more than they realised.    

Secondly, really think about your delivery styles – can you vary your delivery style?   With your additional resources, how are you delivering them to the student – are they accessible, are they overwhelming, are they opening in a different window?  How are you giving them the information and are you giving them too much at one time?  Can you pull it back and bit and put it in a bonus lesson rather than putting it all into one place and hoping they go through it in one go?

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

Content Into Courses Facebook Group

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Find out more at samwinch.com.au
Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

So often we aim for a standard that just doesn't exist. 
Are you waiting for your course to feel 'finished'?   Today we are going to talk about one of my favourite sayings:  Progress over perfection.  

Course creators often wait for something to be finished or perfect or done before releasing their course to their students.   Unfortunately though, that is a standard that is often unattainable - mostly because it is a standard that is only in YOUR head.  The standard of finished is completely different for everyone. 

Another important thing to think about when considering ‘perfect’ or ‘finished’ is that a course isn’t designed for you – it's for the person using it - and we don’t know if it's any good until someone else is actually using it.   Until it's in the hands of the user, it's just theory about what is finished or perfect. 

Action Steps:

If you have a course that is part built or not finished, take a step back and think about what needs to be done.  Write a list of everything you think still needs fixing or finishing – be as thorough as possible.  Next, look at that list and decide which tasks are essential and which ones have a work around that could get your course out and circulating earlier. 

Where can you look for the concept of progress over perfection. 

I want you to have a great course, but I also know that most people are striving for a standard that physically does not exist.   What is the fastest way you can get your course out and live?

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

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Find out more at samwinch.com.au
Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

Let’s talk all things Notion.   

If you are not familiar with Notion, it is an all-in-one workspace.  It can do just about anything you want it to do – it is a single space where you can think, write and plan anything you want.   It takes planning and project management to the next level.    If you haven’t looked at Notion, go have a look – the link is: https://www.notion.so/

Notion can also be used to host course content and guides, workshops, modules and lessons.  It isn’t a course platform as such, but because it is a completely blank page you can make it into one.   

If you have found yourself limited by a platform because you want more flexibility with your branding, or you want to break things into more than just lessons and modules, then Notion might be something to consider. 

The downside is also that it is too flexible – opening a blank page can be incredibly overwhelming if you don’t know what to do.    It’s also important to remember that it isn’t a course platform, and therefore isn’t designed to host courses or show you all the data that specific course platforms can. 

Things to consider if you are thinking about trying Notion:

1. It is free so great to experiment with.
2. It a blank slate & therefore has a lot of flexibility.
3. It gives you the opportunity to be smart about the way you build a content database.
4. If you want all the functionality that comes with a course platform, Notion is probably not for you. 

 Action Steps:

If you found this interesting, then by all means go and look at Notion and see if it could work for you. If you have a course platform that is working for you though, then stick with it. If you know you need some of the functionality of a course platform, then don’t get distracted by this podcast! 

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

Content Into Courses Facebook Group

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Find out more at samwinch.com.au
Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

Let’s talk all things time.    Research shows that the main thing that gets in the way of people creating their course is time.  Finding the time to create new content or new course material is hard, especially when you are already busy with client work.  

I want to share with you some of the things I use to create my own courses.

1. External deadlines.   You will find that with an external deadline you will work faster and harder than you will for your own deadlines. 
2. Accountability & POM Sessions.   Having an accountability buddy really keeps you accountable and the POM sessions means you get a dedicated work time.
3. Outsource.  Outsource the tasks that are taking up your time so you can dedicate your time to building content and creating income.   Or you could hire a course creator to help build the course. 

 Action Steps:

Today I challenge you. If time has been the one thing that is stopping you from moving forward what I want you to do today is set the date for when the course is going to go live and then Go and Tell someone about it.

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

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Find out more at samwinch.com.au
Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

In this episode I'll take you behind the scenes in Kim Dunn's course, Essential Self Care for Psychologists.

Kim is a psychologist who has a large network of psychologists and clearly knows her target audience and their needs.    It makes such a difference when you are going through a program that is written for exactly the people it is intended to reach and help, and that is probably the biggest takeaway of this course review – the more you understand the people you are trying to help the better you can help them.

Firstly, I want to make it very clear that when I do a course review, I am not looking to rip the course apart or find great holes.  I’m looking at it to find those small niggly bits that might prevent your audience from doing the work you want them to do or that might take away from the experience.   Most courses I review have great content. 

Things Kim has done really well:

1. Used activities that are helpful to her students
2. Understood the needs of her students
3. Broken down her content into reasonably sized modules
4. Asked questions that genuinely make people stop and think

In terms of user experience some of the things she can look at are:

1. Small spelling and grammar mistakes (that everyone makes)
2. The length of gaps and spaces in both written and video media
3. The ways that videos are embedded and the kind of information that is available on and around them

Connect with Kim:
Course
Website   

Action Steps:

What I hope you have taken away today is some of the insights into what I find when I go through a program.   I generally find that the content (physical words) is great – you know your stuff.  Helping you build a course isn’t about you knowing your content though.  The focus needs to be on knowing your audience and then all the little things that impact user experience – the gaps, pauses and the little idiosyncrasies that might break their concentration.

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

Content Into Courses Facebook Group

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Find out more at samwinch.com.au
Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

What I want you to think about today is what you can sell people before they buy your course, product, or service.   How can you use courses to help prime your audience for the courses you really want them to buy that might be bigger, or more expensive, or that they aren’t ready for yet?   

These are likely to be freebies or lower priced programs that are an ideal lead into something you want them to buy next. 

There are a couple of ways you can do this:

1.       Alternate smaller courses.  If a client lands on your sales page, has requested information and shown a lot of interest but doesn’t finalise the sale, you could offer them a smaller program instead.   The person was obviously interested or curious, but they weren’t quite ready for your larger, more expensive product or course. 

2.        Using a course to help clients get ready for the thing that you want them to buy.  Having a course that is a bit of a downsell or a presell helps potential clients get ready to use your products and services and they are more likely to come back to you for the big purchase because they know you and they trust you. 

This is a great way to warm your leads and also a great way to pre-qualify them so they are ready to purchase from you. 

Action Steps:

Take a moment and think about what you are selling that some people are not quite ready for yet.    Could you offer a free or low-priced program to help people get ready so that they are able to purchase your signature program from you?  Is there something people need to know or have done, or is there a system or a process they need to go through before they are ready to work with you?   

I get so excited because there are so many opportunities to support your clients to get them ready for you & your product that aren’t being taken advantage of yet because you just haven’t thought about it.

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

Content Into Courses Facebook Group

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Find out more at samwinch.com.au
Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

In this week’s episode we are looking at the different ways you can use courses as upsells to increase your profit margins and your sales. 

Upselling is taking what was going to be a sale of an original purchase price and increasing the sale price.  For example, at McDonalds, how many times have you been asked “Would you like fries with that?” or “Would you like that in a meal?” 

There are two clear examples of using courses as part of an upsell. 

1.       You can add courses as a bonus, or a value add to increase the value of an original sale.  Also known as creating companion programs.   It is an upsell where you are already giving them a digital or physical product, but you are going to upsell them by adding a course to a sale.   You could either give them the course for free as a value add if they increase their purchase size or you could give the course away for a small fee.   

 2.       You can upsell people to a more expensive program or course when they were coming to buy the original course anyway.  There might be one version of your course which is available for a base level price and there is a VIP or a handholding version that is a more expensive version of the program with extra bonuses or benefits. 

Action Steps:

Think about your strategy for upselling.  Are you upselling anywhere?  When people are landing on your course sales page are they being offered a different price point, or an advanced/VIP version?   If you are selling digital/physical products, have you considered using a course to increase your sale value?   

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

Content Into Courses Facebook Group

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Find out more at samwinch.com.au
Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food. 

Show Notes:

Today I want to talk about the delivery content you can use in your course.   I see so many people putting off releasing their course because they haven’t recorded a video, and so what I want to say to you is this:  You don’t have to use video!

When you start planning the type of content that you are going to create for your program, I want you to think about two things:

1. What suits you? If it doesn’t suit you, then consider other options.  You don’t HAVE to have video to create a program.  Or as another option, you don’t need to have your face on video.   There are many other mediums that are also very popular at the moment. 
2. What suits your audience? If you are currently engaging an audience through audio or text, then they are already enjoying that medium and will be happy to continue consuming it. 

Then think about what your options are.  For example:

• Face to camera video - Builds a relationship with your audience
• Screen Share - Great if you have something technical to show
• Voiceover PowerPoint - Perfect to show processes or step by steps.  It gives people a visual representation of what you are talking about. 
• Audio Only Files
• Graphic Animations
• Templates/PDF Files/Images/Infographics
• Text - Really well written text on screen is very powerful. 

Action Steps:

Think about what suits you.  Go away and really think about how you like to deliver content.  What do you enjoy producing? 

Think about what suits your audience.  What are they already consuming?  What are they enjoying from you?   Survey them - Go and ask them.   Do they like videos?  Do they like podcasts?  Do they just want to read text?  What do they want from you?   You might be surprised by the results. 

Video is an incredibly powerful useful tool when it comes to content delivery, but it is not the only tool available to you and you do not have to use it just because you think you should.

Connect with Sam Winch About Your Online Course:

Content Into Courses Facebook Group

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Find out more at samwinch.com.au
Or connect on socials. Simply look for samwinch... no one else is silly enough to be named after a lunchtime food.