Online course creation guide checklist

On a piece of paper or in your notes app of choice, answer the following questions:

1. What does your ISP struggle with the most?
2. What do they fail to motivate themselves to do?
3. In what would an external opinion (yours) bring the most value?
4. What tangible outcomes can you help your target students to get to?
5. What things would you have loved someone to have taught you when you were starting out?
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On a piece of paper or in your notes app of choice, make a list of:
• The 5 most popular content that you’ve made
• The 5 most popular content of at least 5 content creators or websites that create content around your topic
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Share the survey you created with your audience on your own marketing channels.
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On a piece of paper or in your notes app of choice, write down a list of places where you can find potential students online (groups on Slack, Discord or Facebook, which forums, Quora Spaces, websites, communities...).
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Choose a course name and a USP for the problem you chose to solve with your course.

Find the right price for your course by using these 3 strategies.

Before you start looking for beta students, write a quick outline of what you think your course curriculum will look like on a piece of paper or in your notes app of choice.

Also, prepare your sessions with beta students by using the strategies in part 4.

By using the strategies above, get on a call with at least 12 beta students and take notes or record your sessions with them. (ask for permission if you want to record your sessions)

As you start having your first conversations, you can start listing what you think the most impactful and useful things to teach in your course.

For example, which examples created "aha" moments for your students, or which questions were really common?

Identify 20 to 30 gaps (knowledge, skill, environment, habit, motivation) your students will have to overcome by using the feedback you got during your beta tests and the first section of this chapter.

Arrange the gaps that your students have to overcome in the order in which they will have to face them. This will be your student’s learning journey.
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Write a quick story that mirrors your student’s learning journey in 500 to 1000 words.
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Write down around 3 examples for each learning gap your students will have to overcome.

Find or create visuals to illustrate the 10 most important concepts you will teach in your course.

Write down an exercise to help your students overcome each skill gap you wrote down.

Improve your physical space to make it easier to sit down and write quickly.

Organize your notes and resources so they’re easily accessible when writing.

Setup Dynalist (The free version is enough) or the writing tool of your choice.

Install the News Feed Eradicator extension or a similar one to block distractions.

Schedule at least 2 hours of writing time every day to make progress on your course material.
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Write down the sections that will be in your course.

Write the individual lessons that will be inside of each section.

Write your first section’s lessons and what actions you want your students to take at the end of each lesson.

Create the additional resources your students will need for the first section like PDFs, mind maps, or checklists.

Take a break of at least a day to be able to look at your course section with a pair of fresh eyes.

Go through your first section with fresh eyes and refine it by using the tips above.

Get on a few calls with beta students whose problems can be solved by your current section, and use what you wrote so far to help them, and get feedback on your course so far.
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Make changes to your course material based on the feedback you got.

Create the final slides for your section  (you can use our Google Slide template).

Create additional visuals if needed.

Write your intro video in your note-taking tool of choice.

Create slides for your introduction video (you can use our Google Slide template).

Make sure you have all the required equipment and software to create an online course.

Set up everything so you are ready to film (microphone, lighting if used, webcam or camera, tripod if used, recording software, slides...).

Record your introduction video and get your audio & video files ready for editing.

Film and edit your first course section.

Configure your online school.

Create a space for your course and configure it.

Create your course and configure it.

Create your first section and configure it.

Add your lessons to your section and create steps for each lesson.

Create an offer for your course.

Write a first draft of your sales page using the template you just completed. You can do it on a new Google Docs or in your note taking app of choice.

Apply the 5 tips to write a sales page that converts to your first draft.

Re-read your page with the goal of anticipating the readers’ objections and make edits if needed.

Re-read your page with the goal of eliminating repetitive or useless elements and make edits if needed.

Check your sales page for grammatical or spelling mistakes.

Implement your sales page on Carrd or the page builder of your choice.

Buy a domain name for hosting your sales page or use a subdomain of one you already own.

Publish it and make sure that there are no errors, and that the page works on desktop and mobile.

Make sure that your CTA buttons are linked to your payment page correctly.

Edit your emails with the goal of anticipating the readers’ objections.

Edit your emails with the goal of cutting about 15% of the useless words.

Edit your emails to correct grammatical or spelling mistakes.

Add your emails to your ESP (without scheduling them yet!)

Schedule your 3-day email campaign.

Announce the pre-launch on social media to bring more traffic to your sales page.

Send an email to your customers to collect their feedback.

Finish your other course sections using chapters 4, 5 and 6.

‍Tip: You can use the drip feature in SchoolMaker to release new sections each week.

Launch your finished course with a longer email campaign.