How should I price my online training course?

Price is hard.

I see many people putting the price too high for the value I think they provide - particularly on Udemy, because of the massive discounting that goes on through that platform.

Next time I create courses I'll be aiming for smaller courses about 3-4 hours, at about $39 - $59

My current course is about 18 hours at $175 - $299, so I'm pricing at about $10 to $15 an hour. 

But I'd advise you not to worry about price yet. 

Focus on content and scope. And benefit to the student.

Experiment with the tools and technologies because it takes time to learn how to edit these videos etc.

I will say however that the general advice "see what other people are doing, then price a little under that" sucks. If you don't offer anything that is better value, or better quality, and can't be sold for the same price (or a little more) then don't enter that market.

Focus on the value you can add, then price accordingly.

Use other courses as guides for what you like, and don't like, and do something different.

But make sure that your course, your content, your approach, your scope, and your pricing, are true to you, and you can justify the price on its own terms based on the value your course adds, not in terms of reference to the competition.

What software should I use for creating online training?

I advise you to record and edit on Windows, using Camtasia

I tried a bunch of other tools, but for Windows Camtasia is great. 

I also have Camtasia on the mac, but I don't use it for editing, I export to mp4 and edit on Windows. I think the editing on Mac doesn't flow as well. And I wish the two versions shared the same file format.

Apparently people also like screenflow on the mac, and I think if the Mac was my main machine I'd use that. But I'm sticking to camtasia on windows.

I have also used bbsoftware in my early days when Camtasia seemed too expensive, and it was good, but Camtasia was better - again evals for 30 days so you can experiment.

I have used sony vegas cheapy edition, and it too was good, but not really aimed at the screen capture and editing that I do for my training.

What microphone should I use for recording online training?

I use the blue yeti for all my recording now

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Microphones-Yeti-USB-Microphone/dp/B002VA464S

Amazing the difference in quality.

I don't use the livechat for any recording any more - apparently the gaming headsets are the ones to go for, if you go for a headset mic. But this was great quality at a low price, when I started. But if you can, start off with the Blue Yeti and don't experiment with others - so many trainers I know, all use the blue yeti. And they do so for a reason - it is great.

I have my blue yeti on a boom stand.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000NTZK12/ref=pe_217191_31005151_dp_1

Because the blue yeti stand picked up vibration and noise when I was using the keyboard, and this avoids this problem for me. I do a lot of screen capture, hands on computer stuff in my training.

Many trainers avoid this by doing the audio track separate from the video track. I rarely do that, but on some lectures that seems appropriate.

I had to buy a thread adapter: a generic Microphone Mic Clip Stand Thread Adaptor 3/8" to 5/8" Connector, to connect the mic to the stand

I also bought a generic pop shield which works fine for me

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000L99XWG/ref=pe_217191_31005151_dp_2

Which Mailing List tool should I use?

One of the constant refrains you hear from online marketeers is "Build an email list".

And when you teach online, regardless of which platform you host your courses on, you will want to do your own marketing. And a mailing list is the easiest way to do that.

When I created my first online course, I had a mailing list for the people who had purchased my first e-book. I used this mailing list to send a discount to the course and over the course of a month had 120 people taking my course.

I have used a whole bunch of mailing list software.

I've settled on mailchimp. I'll explain why.

• Free if your list never grows beyond 2000 people
• Easy to maintain multiple lists
• Easy to embed subscription forms
• More reasons to come...

I started with mailchimp, manually uploading my sales list for the e-book to build the list. Easy with the csv importing. (I now copy and paste into the import box online from a spreadsheet).

It looked like I was going to exceed the 2000 people on the list, just from e-book sales, so I started to look for alternatives.

This was a mistake. I recommend you let your list grow. Even if your list expands beyond 2000 people on mailchimp, you can still keep growing the list for free. You just can't send any emails to the list unless you purchase some credits or a monthly plan.

I tried a few of the php mailing solutions but they all felt very Web 1.0 compared to the ease of use of mailchimp. Not just for me, but for subscribers. Unsubscribing with many free solutions I tried involved sending 'unsubscribe' emails. This was fine back in the early 90's but isn't really very good for today's users.

I tried some desktop tools. These were easy to use, but again the unsubscribe was harder than it needed to be and I had to jump through hoops to create the subscribe forms.

I've probably lost about 5 - 10 days, investigating mail solutions, trying them out, writing custom code to handle subscribe events and unsubscribe etc. In retrospect, I would rather have that time back, and have spent the money I could have made over those days, on a payment plan for mailchimp.

But, mailchimp still looks expensive to me for a monthly plan. I do not send out a lot of mailings, so paying for a monthly plan of unlimited emails doesn't work for me.

But mailchimp do a PAYG plan, where you purchase credits. This is how I plan to use it. I will either, set a budget for each advertising campaign and buy the necessary credits. Or buy a lump sum of credits and use them over time - probably the latter.

You see at the moment, I'm building my lists. I haven't sent many mailings. I don't have any credit in the system. But I have created sign up forms on many of my prominent blogs. To build up a base of emails that I can use later.

I did a quick comparison of  the different email sites. Campaign Monitor also looked quite good. As it has a PAYG plan as well.

MadMimi looked like the cheapest for a pay monthly. But I ruled out pay monthly.

If you send out a lot of mails per month, then a pay monthly plan will make a lot of difference to you. And presumably you will get the money back on sales, so you can offset it. I don't work that way yet so PAYG works well for me and with mailchimp I could pick a PAYG plan which would work out at 0.5 cents per email, pay on a campaign basis.

If my mailing plans change and I get a lot of subscribers and start sending out a log of emails then I can move to a pay monthly plan. But if you are uncertain about your use case, then mailchimp allows you to build up lists and gather subscribers without having to commit to a pay monthly plan.

10 things I need from an online e-training course hosting service

I've had a look at a fair few online training course providers now.

And new providers seem to pop up frequently.

The list below is how I evaluate them.

• How easy is it to create the course?
• How easy is it to migrate my existing courses?
• How fair are the payment terms?
• Can I update my course?
• Can I communicate with the students?
• Does the site look professional?
• Are the other courses selling?
• How well does the GUI work as a student?
• Do you allow free courses to be released?
• Can I opt out of some of your promotions and new features?

There are other factors I use but the above are the most important at the moment, since they are the criteria that I have used to reject existing vendors.

How easy is it to create the course?

This relates to the user experience for creating the course.

If I have to type in a lot of information for each lecture I add, then it is going to take a lot of time.

Simple things help:

• Automatically creating thumbnails, rather than having me upload them.
• Just a title and description - no tags, or categories, etc. etc.
• Multi-page GUI for a single entity will kill me

How easy is it to migrate my existing courses?

• I already have courses.
• I can code.
• If you have an API then I can write a conversion routine and probably have my course up and running in about an hour.
• If you have an API and a good GUI then your platform might become the 'master' platform from which I migrate to the other platforms. This would mean that you would get all the updates first and become the main platform I promote.
• Do you support automated import from other platforms? (Currently I haven't seen a single platform that does this)

How fair are the payment terms?

I'm using your service because I don't want to have to deal with the hassle of hosting, support, payments.

And I expect you to take a percentage of the sales cost because of that.

But it has to be fair.

And it has to be commensurate with other providers. Remember you are in competition with them.

If your terms say you'll promote the course. Then you better promote it, otherwise you're not living up to your end of the deal, and don't deserve so much commission.

Can I update my course?

I update my course because the technology it teaches, changes. Your GUI needs to allow me to update it.

Hopefully you have an API I can use to automate updates.

By the way - an API isn't mandatory for me, since I'll happily reverse engineer the HTTP calls and create my own API on top of your GUI, but I know this is brittle and I'd rather have my life made easy for me.

If you don't support updates, then the answer is a no-no.

Can I communicate with the students?

Learning isn't a 'shout from the mountain' process. It requires interaction. I need to be able to interact with the people on the course, and communicate via bulk processes.

Yes, some of the communication might try and upsell to new courses (particularly if this is a free course), but it will also be to provide information.

I'm happy for you not to share the emails, but you need to provide a working communication platform.

Does the site look professional?

My sites are shoddy at times. But they tend to push the boundary of what I think the minimal level of shoddiness is.

An online training platform has to look good, and feel good.

If your layout is bad. If the images haven't scaled well. If the GUI has obvious bugs. I'll walk away quickly.

First impressions count. If I'm put off, prospective students will be too.

Are the other courses selling?

If you list how many students are on courses then I'll look and see how other instructors are doing.

If they're not selling well, then I'm not signing up.

How well does the GUI work as a student?

I try and sign up as a student to see how the experience works from the other side of the fence.

If it isn't cross platform. If it doesn't work on mobile and tablets. If it is clunky and slow.

I won't put people through that.

Do you allow free courses to be released?

This costs you money. Not me. So I expect the payment terms to reflect this.

But free courses are a great way to experiment with the platform and try out the features without committing.

If you have free courses, and a communication feature. Then I can use these as an up-sell mechanism and you'll probably find all my courses on your site.

Can I opt out of some of your promotions and new features?

I evaluate your features at a particular time.

I expect you to improve over time.

But if you fundamentally change the engagement model then I need the ability to opt out, or I and my course will walk to the competition.

e.g. Udemy recently offered Certificates of completion. A new feature that they thought would be a vote winner. Not for me. But they allowed me to opt out. 

These are just the things I look for at the start. 

Not I haven't covered, length of videos, or streaming quality etc. etc. There are absolute basics that I expect you to get right, and they are so obvious and fundamental that I lump them into the user experience bucket.

I look forward to new course vendors coming out. And when they do, I'll probably add to my list.

What do you look for?

Google Hangouts for Online Training

I've been using MeetingBurner.com for conducting Webinars.

I'm going to do some Group training with a few other people so we've been investigating Google Hangouts as a possible alternative.

Google Hangouts allows you to create a "Google Hangout On Air"

It seems that you invite the people that you want in the Hangout. Then start the hangout and go live, and it will start streaming to a particular URL or live in YouTube.

• Forbes Summary Of Getting Started

 Some How Tos:

•  KirstenSwanson.org
• Ultimate Guide
• Hints and Tips from Fraser Cain
• Hangouts on Air User Guide pdf
• Tara Hunt creating a smooth hangout on air
• LeadPages and Google Hangouts youtube video

This simple video describes how to embed it on a blog.

• April Marie Tucker - How to Start and Embed a Google Hangout to your blog
• start the hangout from your Youtube account (you don't need to invite anyone yet, you can do that just before you start)
• get the embed code by clicking on the embed link at the top
• no-one can see it until you click broadcast
• once you stop the broadcast, that's it, you can't start it again
• then manage the video on your youtube video management page it will be public by default - so you might want to hurry off and delete it, if it was a test

You might need to create a chat system below the video if you embed it in a web page, some chat systems people mentioned are:

• chatango.com
• sign up
• create a live chat
• choose box
• create a group name  
• configure the size and colour of the box
• switch off sound etc.
• copy the embed code to your site
•  if you to to the url of your cat then you can sign in with your chat name and password to manage the chat window, ban users, delete messages etc.
• chatzy.com

Other Chat systems found via google:

• embedded-chat.com
• pladeo.com

Or use google + or youtube comments.

Additional Options:

• WebinarExpress.com offer a wordpress plugin for $27 to wrap around the Hangouts
• http://hangoutplugin.com offer a similar plugin for $49

References & Other Links

• Webinar on how to use Hangouts

So you want to provide training online... what are your options?

When I look around at online training platform options now, I can roughly categorise them as follows:

• Self-hosted
• Hosted
• Free video sites e.g. YouTube
• Individual course sellers
• Subscription Based sites

Self-hosted means doing it yourself. Either storing the video files on your own server or on a CDN (Content Delivery Network) like Amazon S3 (you could also use something like DropBox as your CDN). There are tools to help you with this.

By Hosted I mean that some other site holds your files, this will be dedicated either to videos, or courses.

Hosted on Free sites simply requires you to upload your videos to YouTube or some similar site and link to them from your blog or web site.

Individual Course Sellers requires you to upload your course to a site that will sell your course individually, and pay you a commission for each course sale. Hosted Individual Course solutions often allow you to make your courses free as well, even though the hosting service makes no money off them, they have another student and can market additional courses to anyone who subscribes to your free course.

Subscription Based sites, you upload your course, and are one of many courses that the student has access to through their monthly subscription fee. You are paid a percentage of the subscription fees, calculated typically from how many views your videos have as a percentage to every other course in the system.

I'll investigate the pros and cons of each in future posts, but for now... a summary of the the option I chose.

When I went live with my first courses. I chose a Hosted Individual Course Seller. It meant that I could easily manage the course through their front end. Had an easy upload solution. Had a consistent interface to communicate to the students with. Hosted solutions make it easy to get to market quickly.

I'll write a future post on how I got started and what I explored later.