Creating a course based on your field of expertise will offer maximum value for your students and customers and build trust in you and your products. 

Making a course may at first glance appear to be a difficult endeavour, but with a little work, you can have a professional course ready to market a lot sooner than you think. If you already have a blog then the whole process can be lightning fast. If you don’t have a blog, this maybe a great place to start the groundwork, but it’s not essential for course creation.

Once you have your content ready to make into a video course, you can 'do-it-yourself' with little more than a laptop and a smartphone or have a video course creation company like Screen Promos do it for you.

So let’s get into the 10 steps to creating an online video course.

Stick to what you know. Courses are all about passing on valuable knowledge. If you try to build a course based on a subject that is popular but you have little or no knowledge of, it will show in the overall quality and value. 

Choose a topic that you are passionate about. You don’t need to be a qualified academic to teach a subject, you just need passion and knowledge. Draw on your personal experiences and skills. Pass on what you have learnt. 

Do some basic research. Once you have decided on a topic, check to see if there is a demand for courses on that topic. There is no point in creating a brilliant course on a topic that has no demand. You may be temped to think that if there is low competition in your niche then you will see higher returns. This is most often not the case. A professionally made video course in a high demand niche will almost certainly do well. 

Search for courses on your topic. You may find that a particular area of your chosen subject has a high demand. For example, if you’re topic is video production, you may find that there is a high demand for courses on short filmmaking or how to shoot corporate promos.

Students will only buy or enrol on a course if they know what the end result will be. There needs to be a defined purpose. Creating a course without defined results will lead to poor feedback and low completion rates. Students ultimately join courses to learn a new skill. If you can make it clear what that skill will be and build the course with the ultimate goal of providing the correct knowledge to achieve this, the course will be easier to create and will lead to happy customers.

Let the student know what skill they will acquire and what knowledge they will gain.

With so many resources around you, it can often seem overwhelming. Where do you start? You already have the knowledge in your head, you could start my writing it down. You may have hard drives with work on that you can utilise or repurpose. You probably have books of your chosen subject which will help. As mentioned earlier, blogs are a brilliant source for course content. If the prospect of sitting and writing a course from beginning to end seems daunting, a blog might be the perfect way to start. With a blog, you don’t need to worry about structure, that can all be done later. Start writing regular blog posts on topics that can be used in your course. These posts will become the building blocks for your course and can also become a valuable traffic building resource.

Take a look at some courses online. There are some free ones available here to get you started: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses

Take your blog posts and start to arrange in a logical order. It’s easier than you may think.

Video is the most engaging type of media and will certainly be the main delivery format, but you should also consider having some text based documentation. Work sheets are a great idea. This could be a simple quiz at the end of each section of the course. These can also be used as course work which can be submitted by the student at the end of the course to receive a certificate of completion.

Now we are ready to produce the course video content. You can do this yourself or use a specialist video production company do this for you. If you have some video editing skills and a smartphone, there is n reason that you can’t produce the videos yourself. If you don’t have those skills or maybe you want a more polished product, sites like Screen Promos offer video course packages from $95. These include a spokesperson, text overlays, graphics, stock footage and background music.

There are several types of videos that can be used for your course.

This is where you or a spokesperson talks to the camera ( direct to the audience ) - This is great for building a relationship with the audience. A green screen spokesperson video is a great option here as you can add in different backgrounds, slides, graphics and infographics. You can also use powerpoint style slides behind the spokesperson to give the video a classroom feel.

This is where you record the computer screen. This is great for teaching about software or showing examples. You can also add in a talking head webcam style video of yourself in the corner to keep the connection between yourself and the audience.

There are three main ways to sell your course: 

 1. Online course marketplaces

 2. Learning management systems

 3. Stand alone download / offline

Online course marketplaces like udemy are the equivalent of selling on ebay - it’s a marketplace with lots of other courses and is all structured and administered by the hosts website.

A learning management system is like having your own eccommerce store but in this case it is an Academy. You can link this to your website and brand it. It makes it easy to create and structure your online course ready for delivery.  Thinkific is a great option.

You need to determine the ultimate goal of your course. Is the course to be used as a free lead magnate? subsidiary income to your main business or your main course of income? Once you have decided on this, the content, duration and pricing of the course can be determined. If it’s going to be given a away for free as a lead magnate, it will be acting more as a teaser. It would be very high quality to demonstrate your authority but should also be short to keep costs down and leave the customer wanting more. If you are planning on using courses as a main income, you will need to provide maximum value for your customers and then you can charge accordingly.

Now the real work begins! Marketing is key. An ongoing marketing plan will ensure exposure and sales. If you stop marketing, sales will stop. You can use paid ads, runs an affiliate program, setup regular social media post - hootsuite is a great option. Partnering with influences is also a good idea. Offer discount codes. Write guest blog posts about your subject to build links and authority. Create trailers and promo videos.

So there is an overview of of how to become a video course maker. Hopefully this will give you a basic idea of the process. Now get started!