5 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Online Courses to Sell

Originally published on programminginsider.com

Building an eLearning course to sell can be intimidating. To help improve your chances of success and reduce stress, eLearning Partners have gathered the top five mistakes to avoid when creating a course to sell. These are based on years of experience, both things we've tried early on before learning and things we saw our clients try early on in their course development. 

Mistake #1: Having a “Built It and They Will Come” Strategy

One of the most important things to remember is that you can’t just have a “build it and they will come” strategy. Your learners aren’t going to seek out your course and find it right away just because you built it. Instead, it would be best if you start backward. Start with a sales strategy or process. From there, you will better understand what type of content your learners want, so you can build what they need. 

Mistake #2: Making It Too Big

It is a common mistake to believe that the larger the course, the better value it delivers. But this is not the case. You will quickly fall into the trap of trying to cram in all of the relevant content for a topic, and your course will be massive and impossible for you to build and for your learners to finish. 

Instead, you want to focus on high-quality content. An hour-long course filled with specific content to overcome challenges is much more effective than a 20-hour course with lots of fluff. The former makes better use of your learner’s time and delivers better value. 

Mistake #3: Focusing on Technology

Early on in creating your online course, you will likely find yourself overwhelmed with various technologies, such as LMSs. While you need tech for an eLearning course, you shouldn’t overthink it. It’s better to plan and start to build your course, then figure out what type of tech best suits it. Otherwise, you may find yourself choosing a piece of tech that doesn’t work with your course. We suggest Kajabi for external eLearning courses, meaning those you sell. 

Mistake #4: Desperate Marketing

You can’t expect to create a course to sell online and get instant sales. When you don’t see results immediately, it is common to worry and throw everything you have into marketing. You can easily spend tens of thousands of dollars for minimal return. You are simply throwing money at the problem without it working. But that simply isn’t effective, leaving you with less to spend on your learners. Instead of desperate marketing, you want to have a solid sales strategy or sales funnel. 

Mistake #5: Obsessing with Getting Sales

While you need a sales strategy, you shouldn’t obsess with creating sales. Instead, you want to create valuable content and let learners come to you. One of the best ways to do this is to offer free content. This will help you build a relationship with learners and gain their trust. Learners will see how great your free content is and know that your paid content is even better. So, they will be more likely to buy. 

The Bottom Line

As you create your online course, keep the above mistakes in mind. This should help keep you on the road to success.