I had a post show up in my social feed today that read, “Launch that course. My simple way.” The copy went on to talk about how easy it was to launch a million dollar online course with no list, audience, blog, etc. This particular ad promised to tell you:
- How to select a profitable course topic (even if you don’t know what to teach or feel like you’re not an expert).
- How to create amazing course content in one day (and charge a premium).
Here’s another ad headline that appeared moments later: “When you launch a course in less than 72 hrs with zero experience and start getting sales.”
I guess if your only goal is to sell courses and make money these might be good for you.
If however, your goals include helping your people create lasting change and improve their life or business by applying the information you provide you’ll want to consider a different approach.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever contributed to one of those 6,7,8 figure launches by buying their “easy”, “proven”, “I did it, so can you” courses. I have. What I know to be true for me is, the content was thin, it didn’t work as promised or I got bored by the lack of engagement and never finished the course.
I’ve created a 30 year career designing and delivering high quality learning experiences and I know three things for sure. Doing it right is not easy, it requires skill, and it’s takes time.
Truth 1: Creating a Course is Not Easy
Understanding how humans learn, how they process information and how they apply that information is key to designing any learning experience. And people learn differently and different paces. A good instructional designer knows this and incorporates varied methods to the teaching to assure everyone has a good outcome.
Truth 2: Designing a Good Course Requires Expertise
Experience in your area of teaching gives you credibility and confidence. Both key ingredients in building trust with your audience.
Second, expertise in course creation and delivery gives your students a chance to absorb your knowledge, apply it and make lasting change . You can pay people to write marketing copy that sells. You can buys ads that drive traffic. But you need to understand effective design and delivery that assures your audience will remember what you teach them a month or year from now.
Truth 3: Good Courses Take Time to Create
I’m talking about everything from clarity of purpose, learning objectives – for you and your audience, content and delivery. Knowing what to leave out of the program is as important as knowing what to put in it. How you deliver content matters for retention of information. To design an effective course you need to understand learning styles and apply design techniques to each chunk of content. Then you need to know how to facilitate the delivery in a way that reaches your audience and has lasting impact. This doesn’t happen in a day.
I’ve been designing training programs, courses, retreats and conferences for 3 decades. I can tell you will absolute certainty, a course worthy of “premium pricing” can not be created in a day.
So, if what you’re looking for is the promise of a 6,7,8 figure course launch there are a lot of people out there willing to sell you their fast, easy, profitable course. Just do me a favor. Do a gut check before you buy into it. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
