How To Know What Type Of Online Course To Create
If you’re feeling like many aspiring course creators, you may be struggling with these questions…
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How much content should I include?
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How long should my course be?
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How much should I charge?
That’s exactly why I wanted to talk about the three different types of online courses you can create when you’re considering a new digital product for your business.
If you are like most entrepreneurs, coaches, and professional service providers, you’re not sure what to include in your course. And that’s okay! Unless you are an educational designer by trade, it can feel foreign to create a teachable course for students. And that’s completely okay!
Many times what can help is to get crystal clear on the type of course you want to offer to your student audience based on your goals and where you are in your business. From there, your main topics, what information you can include, and even your price start to become obvious.
Here are the 3 types of courses I recommend.
The Kickstarter Course
This course type will include the essentials on the first level of working with you or an introduction to your business approach or philosophy. What that means is the course won’t go into as much depth over your whole process or methodology. For example, a personal coach may want to introduce themselves as an expert in their field. Perhaps the coach will lead students through their first level of coaching with enough detail to allow them to make a decision on whether or not they would like to continue onto level two, which could be one-on-one coaching.
This course type is by far the lowest investment in development time because your students’ average learning is 1 - 2 hours. This is especially a great option if you are overwhelmed with too much content and not completely sure what your students would benefit from. Don’t include it all!
Give them some bite-sized information that gives them a feel of what you offer and make a special offer at the end to continue to work with you. Consider what could be a small win that you help your students achieve. For example, if you’re a weight loss coach and you have a year-long program to lose over 50 pounds. Your Kickstarter course could start with meal planning because that’s one of the initial stages of working with you and can give them a quick win and a sense of accomplishment by knowing how to properly plan their meals. This could be the gateway to your 12-month program.
Makes sense?
Your students will typically pay $47 - $197 for these courses.
The Anchor Course
The Anchor Course is a way to teach a step-by-step process to students or go deeper into your approach when working with clients. For example, a marketing agency may want to teach companies “How to Get Leads from Facebook”. The course would guide the students step by step on how to accomplish this goal and give them a tangible product at the end like a completed FB ad campaign set up and ready to go. This course typically takes a deeper dive into a process or specific area. Students can typically expect 3 - 5 hours of learning time. This course type would be a great fit for businesses that know their audience needs a process to deliver results and are frustrated about what the course will deliver because you cannot go wrong with step by step instructions.
Students will typically pay $197-$697 for this type of course. One of my clients has an Anchor course to teach Oracle cards. We developed a course that takes her students from being a novice or beginner in working with Oracle cards to feeling more confident in reading cards for themselves and others in 30 days.
The Signature Course
The final course type is the Signature course. This offers a transformation to your students . For example, a client we’ve worked with on a course of this type is a weight loss coach. Her students know at the end of the course, they will lose at least 50 lbs should they complete the course in its entirety. It’s an obviously robust and comprehensive course with a real opportunity to share your wealth of knowledge. With that, this course is typically the longest in learning time, approximately 6 - 8 hours of learning time for students. You will also invest the longest time developing the course. We recommend this course type for businesses who know for certain their course delivers results and they have validated this is what people want and are motivated to buy, because of the larger time investment. As we have discussed, you have to have passion and commitment to developing a course anyhow, and this will be a course to test that passion.
But it will be worth it!
Students will typically pay $997 or more to enroll in these types of courses and achieve that transformation. Our weight loss client covers her entire methodology with students who truly see a physical transformation once completed. Can you see why this course would be priced higher?
Let's Recap
So to summarize, there are three courses you can choose to add to your digital products.
First, you can offer a Kickstarter course where you will introduce yourself and your company in a way that can “kickstart” a relationship moving forward from the course. Second, you can offer the Anchor course. This would be a great option if you have a step-by-step instruction, detailing the way students will accomplish the goal at the end. You will dive deep into a specific topic and provide tangible success at the end of their course. And finally, you can offer a Signature course. This is the course type that will transform your students and provide them with the most comprehensive access to your knowledge and expertise.
I would love to know what type, of course, you’re going to create. Let me know in the comments.
Ready to go from idea to sold?
Download the free guide, The First 7 Steps to Create a Profitable Online Course
