Lessons learned building courses

Because I have experiment with many online course hosting platforms now, and had to keep multiple platforms in sync at the same time. I'm going to summarise some lessons learned about building your courses to help.

But let me tell you my old approach, my 'don't do this' approach:

• Plan your course on the course hosting platform - build the course outline, and add descriptions, and build your course around the features of that platform
• Organise your videos on disk in an adhoc, topic based hierarchy, and map it on to the course platform.
• Exported videos take space, so rely on the hosting platform as your video backup, rather than keep a local copy, after all, you've uploaded it now. Job done.
• If you do move to another platform, rely on their 'automated migration' to do the job for you.

The above is what you do, when you are learning. You are focused on pumping the course out there, and you are building the course dynamically as you go.

I don't do this any more.

This is what I do now.

Organise your disk better

I use the following folder structures

• \camtasia
• course_name
• 010_section_name
• 010_lecture_name
• 020_lecture_name
• 020_section_name
• etc.
• \archive
• video_exports
• course_name
• etc.

Numbering in 010 allows up to 99 sections, or lecture, but also allows me to add new sections or courses in the middle if I want to insert new sections or lectures without having to renumber anything.

At some point I may do away altogether with the numbers and rely on a meta data system, but I don't do that yet, and this is simple.

I create and edit in the \camtasia hierarchy, and export the videos that I upload to the \archive

Create a meta data file

I now have a course_name_meta_data_file.txt for each course.

e.g.

# Course - Course Name

The course description and blurb

## Section - Section Name

A section description

### Lecture - Lecture Name

description of lecture and other details

This lists the sections, in order, and the lectures in order. The description has 

• The location of the source file for the lecture (i.e the camtasia file) and the export location.
• The text description to copy and paste into the online hosting system
• Details of any attachment files and their location

The meta data file, is essentially my course.

I don't rely on the hosting vendor to 'manage' and 'plan' my course. I do it using the meta data file.

And if you are worried that a text file like that would become unreadable, then it is written in markdown, and you can 'pretty print' it other tools. I use the free online tool dillinger.io

Paste the above markdown into dillinger.io and see what you get.

Organisation takes effort

All of this takes additional effort, but since you are doing it as you go along, it doesn't seem as bad.

Trust me, retrofitting this process on to a 150 lecture course, is hard work.

But when you start, you don't know to do this. You just crack on and do the work.

This has the benefit that:

• When I want to migrate to a new platform, I just work through the file, creating the sections and lectures and uploading and attaching the correct files.
• When I add new lectures, I can add them to the meta data file first, and write the copy and plan that I want for the lecture.
• I can version control the meta data file and see what changes I made when.
• I can re-organise the course without impacting the file system if I want to.

Anyway - that's what I do, at the moment. I'm sure I'll learn new approaches going forward.

And for the technically minded among you, you could:

• convert your meta data file into a leanpub book and sell it as an ebook or give it to students
• convert the lecture descriptions into blog posts using dillinger.io
• generate the meta data file from a mindmap, or track it all in a mind map if you wanted
• do many more things that no hosting company is designed to do

Are you building your business or someone else's?

I've had courses online for almost two years now. And I've learned a bunch of lessons, and ultimately my experience boils down to are you building your business or someone else's?

Over that time I've tried different hosting providers, and evaluated the services of others. Some of those providers are listed on this blog.

I don't intend this post to bash these services, and I might mention some by name. But I'm doing this because of the lessons I learned from it.

I started hosting with Udemy, as many people did, and still do.

• Free to start
• Had a simple payment percentage split
• Easy interface
• Allowed me to contact and promote to the students
• Could host free and paid courses

As a busy consultant, this seemed ideal. I could ignore:

• all the infrastructure requirements. 
• Put my course live quickly and have people buy it. 
• Create a free course as a lead generation and upsell the paid course or ebooks or consultancy without having to build an email list

Perfect.

Until.

The 'partnership' that I thought I was part of, changed its rules.

Now Udemy

• Free to start
• Easy interface
• Host free and paid courses - but can't promote paid courses to free students, and can't promote non-Udemy products to either, 

I can't use it to promote. So all the traffic I've sent to Udemy and built up the student base for, I can't promote to for my consultancy, training, ebooks etc.

Oops. Costly Business Lesson learned.

But, as a consultant it takes time to move courses off the platform and on to new ones, so my inability to respond to changes of the hosting company has meant that I have continued to build their business, but not grow the future business prospects of mine.

But I've finally responded now and moved on to a white labelled hosting service called usefedora.

Full disclosure - if you use that link and sign up, you'll get $100 free credit with usefedora, and so will I. But I'd include the link to them anyway. Since my business depends on their services, I'm happy to promote it.

Useedora is good for me because:

• I have an existing area of expertise that I'm known for
• I can market to my audience through my blogs, courses, ebooks etc. So I'm not dependent on anyone else driving traffic or promoting my course.
• I have access to the email details of the people who sign up to the course so I can contact them directly without interference from the course hosting company

For other people Usefedora would suck because Udemy is great when:

• You are not going to market your course
• You want to sell the course at a low price, and with numerous flash sales that knock it down to $10
• You basically want to sell lots of courses at low price
• You don't want to upsell to the students
• All your products will be Udemy courses - because that's all you can promote to Udemy students. Not ebooks, not webinars, not face to face training.
• You don't care if terms and conditions change, because you just want to dump a course on the market

And when I create my 'self help products', and 'knock up an ebook quickly for cash schemes', then I'l use Udemy, because:

• Udemy have trained their students to expect a discount market for courses, so you want to sell cheap and sell lots
• I won't have an existing contact base to market to, so the only way I'll get visibility for my product is through their "buy any of these courses for $10" promotions
• I won't upsell from it, because each product is niche and not part of a long term strategy
• I don't plan on supporting the students, the course is just for revenue
• The courses aren't part of my long term business plan, so they don't help me grow my business, they are just experimental sources of revenue

If you actually want to build your business, and make online training a part of that business, but not the whole focus then you need a hosting partner who:

• shares the customer email addresses so you can market to them
• takes a fair share of the course payment to cover hosting costs - because you need them to stay in business as much as they need you to stay in business, and they are less likely to change their terms and conditions

Keep in mind. Are you building your business? Are the people you are partnering with, helping you build your business? Or are they putting blocks in your way, that ultimately help them?

I host my courses with usefedora and I'm happy to pay a monthly fee, for a higher payment commission, because they give me the flexibility to contact my students and use my online courses as one part of my business, and I can use it to grow my business.

Other online hosting companies probably do this to.

So check...

Does your hosting company give you access to the customer emails? If not, do they have rules about what you can contact the students about, and how often?

If they do block you, or have rules, then there are providers who don't, and if you want to grow your business rather than theirs, then this will be important for you.

Do you have an audience to market to? If not, are you prepared to build one, and live with lower sales until you do?

If you are not prepared to build your business, and market your course. Then online training is not part of your business plan, and you should go for an online vendor that brings in the students, or will make your course visible to the students that other instructors have brought to the platform.

Do you want to spread your courses wide across multiple hosting companies, or use one or two because you want to focus your marketing and support energies?

I want to be very specific about where I spend my time, so I can't afford the time to jump between multiple vendors and multiple support systems. Hence why I need to choose between hosting companies, rather than using them all.

Ask yourself: Are you building your business? Or helping someone else  build theirs?

I'm not trying to suggest that any course hosting vendor is 'bad'. But they may not be 'right' for your  situation and your business. And be prepared to take action if they are not, or if they change so that they are not.

I've uploaded my courses to 5 different companies and software now, and cancelled them on 3 platforms before launch. You do need to experiment, but be very clear about what you need, and have the courage to change, if your needs are not being met.

Notes on "How to Advertise"

My notes on "How To Advertise" by Kenneth Roman and Jane Maas

References and recommends:

• Claude Hopkins - Scientific Advertising
• Ian Ogilvy - Ogilvy on Advertising and Confessions of an Advertising Man

From "Confessions":

• "You cannot bore people into buying"
• "Committees can critcize advertisements, but they cannot create them"
• "Compromise has no place in advertising. Whatever you do, go the whole hog"
• "The consumer is not a moron. Don't insult his or her intelligence."

Ogilvy Philosophy: Research. Results. Creative Brilliance. Professional Discipline.

Codify experience into principles.

Strategy:

• What is our objective?
• What action do we want consumers to take?
• Who are we talking to?
• What is the key consumer benefit or core idea?
• Why should they believe what we say?
• What should our tone and manner be?
• What is the personality of the brand?

• Don't give up the high ground. Why people ultimately buy the product.
• Don't labour the obvious
• Don't use price as a strategy. provide value.
• Don't use popularity as a strategy. popularity is a result not a reason why.
• don't confuse attributes with benefits e.g. fast (attribute), saves time (benefit)

Strategy Checkpoints:

• Be single minded. give up some points to make the important ones stand out
• Make it fit an overall plan
• Keep objectives reasonable
• keep strategy short and easy to understand
• Decide where your business will come from - e.g. new or existing customers?
• Make a meaningful promise to the consumer
• set yourself apart
• relate the unknown to the known - what does your product replace? why is it better?
• keep your strategy up to date

Execute

Promotion

• Make them strategic - grow organically from the marketing plan and brand
• look for big ideas you can repeat year after year
• pretest promotions
• track the results
• keep it simple

The product. Not the display. Is the hero. Can the product sell itself when shown in use?