How to Create an Online Course for Free: Proven Tips on Topic Selection, Descriptions, Lessons, and Teaching Tools

Creating an Online Course For Free: Introduction

While money can help speed up specific steps in course creation, it’s not even close to being the most crucial factor. Creating online courses doesn’t require a large chunk of money. If you have the skills, you can develop profitable online courses without spending a penny.

It’s not difficult as you think to create an online course that will attract students. You can complete an online course that your audience will appreciate by following simple steps.

The steps listed in this article are crucial to success. Once you have completed the steps, you will be ready to create your online course.

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Choose Your Topic Before You Create an Online Course

Choosing the primary focus topic is essential in planning an online course. Without a focused goal, knowing where to begin is difficult, and your class will likely suffer. In addition, your course content should be based on a thorough understanding of the topic, not just a general overview. 

Your course’s subject matter will determine your audience, the style of teaching you adopt, and other factors. Therefore, it’s important to choose a specific topic early in the development process so that you can create an engaging online course.  

It is a common misconception for new online course creators to try to cover too wide of a topic in their first course. This can be difficult for those overwhelmed with too much information in a single class. 

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Short courses effectively improve your course development process and increase the volume of courses you sell. This is because you can develop your course more quickly and improve upon earlier iterations.

Think About Your Audience When You Create an Online Course

To ensure that the workshop is effective, you must understand your target audience. Again, be specific. You should determine the following demographics for your target audience:

• Age: How old is your audience? This can range depending on the topic of your workshop.
• Gender: On average, the audience for online courses is pretty equal in terms of male and female students. However, this can change depending on the subject of your course. 
• Level of Education: What level of education is your audience? Have they or have they not completed any higher education? Determining your audience’s level of education will help you structure your online course.
• Employment: Will your course be for professionals already in the workforce or those looking to switch careers?

It can be challenging to identify all of these demographics, as not every platform is equally accessible or informative. If you’re struggling to identify your target audience, try using social media for research purposes.

Creating Course Sections and Lessons

After determining which skills are most important for your students, it is necessary to create an outline covering these essential skills. Again, the learning outcome can be used as a guide in the outlining process.

After you’ve determined the learning outcome for your online course, ask yourself the following question: What skills are required to achieve the learning outcome?

Make a checklist to answer this question; a list that includes ALL of the skills, knowledge, and competencies that the student must possess by the end of the course.

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Using Skill Checklists to Create Course Modules

After compiling a list of skills and abilities necessary for achieving your desired learning outcome, you can create an online course module. 

The module design is important to provide an effective learning experience for students. 

It is helpful for group-related skills, ensuring the content is relevant and valuable, and avoiding overloading the course with too much information to create effective modules.

The skills checklist you made should be structured in a way that reflects the complexity of the skill. For example, basic skills should be at the beginning, and more complex skills should be towards the end. In addition, skills that are closely related should be grouped, with an end goal or learning outcome identified for each group of related skills.

Create an Eye-Catching Landing Page

When making a course landing page, you should include a profile picture, contact information, and a short course description to attract potential students. In this description, you should state what your students will gain from taking it. If you would like, you can also include a FAQ section.

It is wise to provide all of the required information on your course landing page. Otherwise, it will look incomplete and could harm your sales. Creating a great title and subtitle for your course, as well as filling in at least 5 or 6 benefits, will help potential students know what to expect when enrolling. Additionally, taking the time to write an excellent course description can influence conversions!

Choose a Great Online Course Platform

Canva

Canva is not necessarily an online course platform but is a great space for branding and creating course content.

If you’re creating an online course without a brand, the free version offers a range of layout suggestions and fonts. But if you’ve already invested in branding (logo, colors, fonts, and textures), you can quickly bring them together using Canva for Work. This is ideal for online course creators who are willing to do some brand DIY.

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Vimeo

Vimeo is also not strictly an online course platform but is one possible way you can upload your online courses. The platform offers a variety of options for uploading, hosting, and sharing videos of high quality. Once upload your videos, you can share the link or embed them on your website for online course participants to watch. Additionally, there are privacy options available, so only paying participants will see your videos.

There are several ways to host your videos online so that others can watch them and share them. For example, you can embed the video on your website, post it on a social media platform, or download the video to an app.

Thinkific

Thinkific is an online course platform where you can produce, advertise, and sell your content. With Thinkific, you have the choice to host your material on the platform itself and get compensated to offer either free or premium courses. In addition, for those online course makers who have already invested in a brand identity but want to save money on sales websites, membership sites, and shopping carts, Thinkific offers a branded landing page for marketing purposes.

Klatch

Klatch is the best online course platform that allows you to create an online course for free. With Klatch, facilitators have complete control over the content, price, and schedule of their workshops. This gives creators the freedom to create powerful and engaging workshops without worrying about financial constraints. In addition, Klatch provides payment processing, flexible refunds, workshop merchandising, learning community infrastructure (including tools for curriculum planning and secure live-session hosting), as well as interactive content tools.

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