You have an idea for your first online course. You’re inspired to reach the masses and make an impact. You want to share your area of expertise with the world and are ready to create! But, the actual HOW all of this gets accomplished leaves you feeling paralyzed and ready to give up on your dream entirely. Look, I was there and I had mentors to guide me in this process and so today I want to share with you the online course tools you need to get started.
If you weren’t nodding your head at the beginning of this post and are looking for more of a step-by-step course creation guide to take you from “what in the world would I even create” to delivering and promoting your course, I’ve got you covered there too. Tune in to the Goal Digger Podcast episode 235.
Where it all needs to begin
The first tool I’m going to tell you that you need to build your online course? An email marketing service provider. Why? Because if you don’t have a list of people that are interested in your topic, you likely won’t have anyone to sell to when the time comes. I could go on and on about this topic, but I have covered it extensively, so I’ll leave this little list of posts and podcasts ready for you right here.
My favorite starter email marketing service provider? Kit (Formerly ConvertKit).
Where to Host Your Course
The most important thing to remember about picking a place to host your online course is to quite simply not overthink it. Give yourself a set amount of time to research your options, pick one and go with it. I see far too many entrepreneurs agonizing over these little details when their time is so much better spent actually developing the course and building an audience that is interested in buying it.
My favorite course hosting site? Kajabi.
How to Collect Payments
If you’re selling an online course, you’ll need a simple way to collect payments. We love Samcart as our online shopping cart because it is super simple to set up, has a clean interface and is really detailed reporting on our sales. You can create payment plans, collect payments, track your progress, even add in things like upsells and downsells. Samcart integrates seamlessly with our other online tools and allows us to accept payments from our customers without a ton of setup.
Start your 30-day trial for free here!
That’s it! I intentionally kept this short and sweet because it’s really not as complicated as we often make it out to be. I find in many cases, we just need to get out of our own way, face our fears and take action. This list is the necessities, but here are a few more that might be smart add-ons like Leadpages to promote an opt-in, Gotowebinar for hosting any webinars leading up to your course, Screenflow to record your modules and Snapengage for live chat on sales pages.
