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The Online Course Coach Podcast

The Online Course Coach Podcast, brought to by TrueFocusMedia.com is THE podcast for the latest in online course creation tips, news, interviews and ideas. Whether you're creating eLearning for your company or a solopreneur building an online course to sell your expertise, this podcast will give you tips from Jeff Long as well as regular interviews from other industry leaders.
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Now displaying: November, 2017
Nov 20, 2017

My background and expertise is creating and marketing online courses and my superpower is helping people create effective online course videos. I have plenty of podcast episodes and videos on onlinecoursecoach.com. Today, we are going to talk about something that affects us all. It’s called “How to Price Your Online Course”. If you are wondering about this, it’s either you are about to launch a course or you already have a course out there, but it’s not getting the sales that you want. If you’re trying to find out how to find that perfect price point, you can download my free resource, “7 Ways Marketing Tips to Market Your Online Course”. Regardless of what phase you are in your online course creation process, marketing is key. So, let’s start at the beginning with how to price your online course.

1. You and your knowledge are valuable.

There is a lot of worth in you and your knowledge so, do not undervalue what you have. There is value in your expertise and experience of the topic that you are teaching. There is also value in gathering information and putting it together into a roadmap or recipe for success. You may not have decades of experience, but the content that you gather is still valuable. You can listen to one of my latest podcast episode ”10 Creative Ways to Add Value to Your Students” to find out how you can increase the value that you provide to your students.

1. Look at what other people are selling similar courses for.

Doing so will give you a baseline and a minimum of what you want to charge. I do not recommend going to Udemy.com because they are always experimenting with the pricing. They also give away coupons, so the number of students in each course can be deceptive, especially for some of the higher ones. Instead, you can do some Google search and find podcasts and Facebook groups where people are promoting their courses. If there’s nobody in your industry, know what people are selling courses for in a broader parallel industry. Do not be the one to give the cheapest course. Be in the middle to upper levels of what you charge, so you can get better customers. Students are more likely to complete and take participation in a course and get more value out of it if it costs more. In return, they can give a better testimony.

2. Find out how much time a student currently wastes without a course and determine how much this is costing them.

Position your course as something that helps them save time and money. Your course cost should be a no-brainer compared to how much time and money they are spending without it. Show your students that your course may come at a cost, but it is lower than what they are spending with their time, money, and frustrations. Paint a picture of the benefits of taking your course. It might not be money or time saved, it can be something more valuable, like memories and family time.

3. Price your course based on the value it provides.

The value can be time or money. It can also be things that you cannot quantify, like happiness or enjoyment. Think of pricing that reflects that value. Do not think of your course as a one-priced item. If it’s a mini-course, you can charge it for less. If it’s a 10-lesson course that has a lot of content, you can give three package levels. I like to think of it as good-better-best. You can see this in electronics where they have iPhones with 16gb, 32gb, and 64gb hard drives. A lot of other industries have this kind of pricing levels.

4. Create pricing tiers and packages.

Think of what you can do to create a good-better-best pricing. Let’s say your cheapest course contains just the basics with not so many bonus content. The middle package can be a digital course with three bonuses. The most expensive package can provide more access to it. It can have a webinar, a group coaching session, and email access for a period of time with more bonuses. You can even give a certificate of attendance. For discussion purposes, the good level can cost $100. The better should be 1.5 times more than that and the best should be twice or thrice as much. Keep in mind that the more expensive the course is, the more access and bonuses you give to your students.  You can use fun names for your pricing levels.

5. Limit the direct access you give to your students.

Think of what can give more value to your course content, but do not offer it for the rest of your life. This is one of the benefits of having open and close enrollments.

6. Test your price points with each update or release of your course.

Do not be afraid to test the price points of your course every time you release an updated version of the course. If you still need to improve the marketing of your course, check out my marketing tips on how to grow your audience, build your influence, and sell more courses. By getting more students, you can better test your price points. This can also help you offer more value, bonuses, content, and even courses in the future. Also, let me know what you are working on. I love your emails and tweets. If you have questions about online courses, marketing, video creation, or anything course-related, feel free to contact me. Don’t miss out on new podcasts episodes and videos at onlinecoarsecoach.com. You can also fill out the coaching form if you need more coaching.

 

Please help us bring more content to the masses by subscribing to the podcast at https://onlinecoursecoach.com/itunesapp

Nov 7, 2017

In this episode, we will be talking about How to Avoid the Overwhelm of Creating an Online Course. My background and expertise is creating and marketing online courses, but my specialty within that is helping people create effective online course videos. I am also pretty talented at seeing ways to leverage the power of courses and technology to better teach, market, and sell. But that’s a topic for another day. I have been coaching a lot of people and this is one thing that is a big roadblock that people can’t get over. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the details. There’s not just the idea and the outline of what you’re going to teach, but there’s also the technology that you need to learn. There are a lot of technical hurdles and once you’ve created a course, you also need to know how to market it. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when we hear about course creators who made it big. A lot of times, these successful course creators might not talk about the teams of people that it took to create and market their course. They might have a team around them - people to brainstorm the idea and an audience to get feedback from. How do you stand a chance against them? You have to understand that at one time, these people weren’t big names at all. Seth Godin talks about not being the Seth Godin he is now. When you see these big course creators, you only see their success. That is just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t see what’s underneath - their hard work, struggles, failures, and the teams they have. So, let’s start at the beginning.

1.  Keep your goals in mind

A lot of people have big hopes and dreams. They want to sell a lot of courses and make a lot of money, but you have to know what your main goals are. It’s easy to get frustrated when your courses are not selling. But more importantly, you should start thinking how you could serve your students. How can you serve a small number of students?  You should keep your goal in mind. Is it only money? Do you want to make an impact or grow an audience? Do you want to serve more people? What is that one thing that you want your course do? I highly recommend Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing. In his book, he talks about how you can focus on that one thing.

2.  Think of your course as the first round of your first version of the course

Your first course does not have to be the final version of the course. A couple of years ago, I used to interview a very famous sculptor and he told me, “When I was starting out, it was just an ugly lump of clay.” It took him about two full days of molding the clay to create the eagle. It didn’t look like an eagle on the first day. As a matter of fact, it looked like an ugly chicken. And he said, “But I kept going. I trusted my creativity and my experience. I trusted that this ugly chicken will turn into a soaring eagle.” Maybe your course right now looks like an ugly chicken and you hate it, but as you work on it and refine it, it will get better. It’s okay if you only sell one course when you release it. Again, think of it as the first round of the first version of the course. It’s okay as long as it does what you needed it to do, which is to teach.


Related Resources

How to Pick the Best LMS for Your Course How to Build Your Email List and Audience Marketing Tips for Course Creators


3. Find people who will go with you on your journey as you build your course

You don’t have to have the course built out before you pre-sell it to these people. I recommend that you charge for it so that when you ask them how you can refine the course, they will give you a good feedback. It will be like creating a custom course just for them and their needs.

4. Fear can keep you from releasing your course

Fear will tell you that your course should be perfect before you release it and you will waste time trying perfecting it. You should only spend a minimal amount of hours in refining the version one of the course. (Disclaimer:It’s not about releasing low-quality courses.) It’s about focusing on what would give your course content the most value, not the little things that make it pretty. You have to get over your fear, because it won’t do you any good if you won’t release your course.

5. Break the bundle one stick at a time

When I was in Junior High, I remember coming home from school overwhelmed with my schoolwork. My parents saw it and my dad told me to go out in the yard and bring in a big pile of sticks. So, I went into the backyard and brought the big pile of sticks. He told me to try and break the sticks. I tried with all my might but I couldn’t do it. So my dad told me to break the sticks one at a time and I did as he told me. One after the other, I’d break the sticks and before I knew it, I have already broken all the sticks. As an application, think about that one thing that you need to get done for the day in order to move your course forward. Also, you can write down one thing that no one else can do on your course. Write down the things that you can outsource and think of that as an investment. Think of the things that you can simplify. These are the most important things that your students should know first. Creating a beginner-level course can free some of you who are intimidated by others who know more about the course. All you need is a little bit more knowledge and experience than your students. You can also create a mini course to grow your email list. Take the top three things from your course and create a simple course on those topics. You can offer it on your website or you can approach people from a lead generation list.

6. Learn about the tech side of online courses

If technology is a big hang up for you, think about what you can do yourself and what can you outsource. You can also check out my Tech Guide for Online Course Creators at onlinecoursecoach.com/tech and you can download that to learn more.


Related Resources

How to Pick the Best LMS for Your Course How to Build Your Email List and Audience Marketing Tips for Course Creators


7. Think about the niche where your online course fits

Create a course specific to your niche. This will work very well because you are going to serve a specific group of audience. Think about who you can serve. If your audience is on Facebook groups, go in there and offer tips, answer questions, provide useful articles. By offering help, you can build your email list and even your income. Think about people who you can connect with. If you serve them, they might promote you. This may take time, but would you rather serve influencers who have large audiences? Or would you rather try to sell one course at a time and keep struggling?

8. Think of people whom you can leverage for maximum results

After you’ve launched your first course to your initial students, you can go to different influencers and build a partnership with them. Reach out to people from similar industries to gain good leverage. In conclusion, don’t look at the huge gurus who have thousand of followers and a huge team around them. Remember that they weren’t that big when they started. So, think of ways that you can focus your course on. Find the things that only you can do and outsource the rest. Just get that course out to the first 10 or 20 people and get their feedback. Think of creative ways that will give the most value to your course content. Again, if you get overwhelmed by the technology side, you can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/tech and download my top tech tips and resources. Focus on what your goals are. Lastly, realize that your course is going to improve over time. If you have trouble with marketing your course or any of these topics, you can go to onlinecoursecoach.com and go to the Videos tab and Podcast tab where there are topics about marketing, creation, or building your learning management system.


Related Resources

How to Pick the Best LMS for Your Course How to Build Your Email List and Audience Marketing Tips for Course Creators


Know that you’re in good company, so keep coming back for more podcasts and keep sending in those questions.

 

Please help us bring more content to the masses by subscribing to the podcast at https://onlinecoursecoach.com/itunesapp

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