How to Become a Course Creator | 6 Tips from Pro Creators

When we say "online course creator," we might think of someone who just designs educational content and uploads it on the internet. However, a course creator is much more than that! 

Online course creators play an essential role in creating effective learning experiences based on the needs of their students. 

So how can you become one, and what skills do you need to be on top of the market? Our team has asked Jessica Terzakis, who has been helping course creators bring their programs to life and increase their income, to share her best strategies with you.

Why become a course creator?

There are multiple benefits to becoming an online course creation or e-learning business owner.

Let’s see what awaits you! 

• You have the freedom to work on your terms. You can set your schedule, allowing you to strike a balance between your personal life and work.
• You share your expertise and passion with a wider audience and change someone’s life for the better.
• Partially, it is also a source of passive income. 

In the video, you will find out about other reasons why creating online courses can benefit you. 

6 Tips to Become a Course Creator

How can people actually turn creating courses into a profitable business? That may not happen overnight. 

You have to go through certain stages, from research to selling your online courses. The following are the basic steps every course creator encounters in their journey of becoming a successful entrepreneur. 

#1 Do market research 

Research is definitely not the funniest part of the whole process. All you want to do is get into the content creation itself as soon as possible. Yet, if you decide to skip the research, you are about to take the biggest risk, resulting in a total failure of the online course idea you are so obsessed with. This is why the research part is your first step as a course creator. 

“My greatest suggestion is to start with your research. You should look at other people who create courses on your topic, see how they frame and position it, and analyze whether they are successful”. 

 

Jessica Terzakis, 

Business Growth Consultant and Course Creator 

The cornerstones of your research are the market and the audience. If you study the market well, you can find the answers to the following questions that will help you on your way to achieving the greatest. 

Who are my competitors? 

Do some research on who other course creators in your niche are. You can pay attention to what they already offer, their pricing, marketing strategies, their style, and every other aspect that can help you differentiate yourself. 

As you already know what other creators in your niche are good at, you are ready to identify new opportunities in the market. At this point, remember that if something worked for one person, it may not work for you. 

So what’s more important is to find a unique thing that will help you stand out in the crowd. That will become your unique selling point and strong suit.  

What is the demand in the market like? 

According to Kayne’s law, the demand creates its own supply. So, at this stage, you want to find out the level of people’s interest in what you offer.

If you see your services are in demand, which we are sure you will, you can think of how you will provide supply.  You can look for data like the number of people interested in your product and the amount of money they are willing to pay for it. 

One of the best ways to find out if your online course idea enjoys demand is to Google it. Another good way is to ask potential students directly and consider their feedback.  

“Rally the people around you because that excitement will help you understand if people really like your idea and if they truly need it.” 

 

Jessica Terzakis, 

Business Growth Consultant and Course Creator 

What are some industry trends? 

If you can already sense what will be in demand in the near future, you are lucky. At this stage, you can experiment with different course formats, pricing strategies, and marketing tactics. Being innovative is what will help you stay ahead of the curve. 

Related: Top 7 Online Training Trends You Should Not Miss Out

#2 Find  out who your ideal students are 

Our market research is not limited to competition and demand. We should not forget about the most essential part of your course creation business - your community of learners.

 Your goal at this stage: Understand your audience’s needs, wants & interests so you can ensure your courses are the best solution to their pain points. 

Your audience is the main group of people who benefit from your courses. Let’s suppose you are offering digital marketing courses. In this case, your target audience may be an individual who has a small business and wants to deepen his/her knowledge in marketing. 

A common mistake when it comes to identifying the target audience is considering a too-wide or a too-narrow audience.   
 

So make sure you get the balance there. We will need to create buyer personas to maintain this balance. Consider these points when you find the perfect audience and buyer personas. 

• Demographics. As you might already have guessed, demographics include information such as name, gender, profession, age, and income level. 
• Psychographics. Beliefs, values, motivation, lifestyle, interests, and the like. This is what we mean by psychographics. Such information will help you choose styles, methods, and tools to create and present the course, as well as bring examples that resonate with your students perfectly. 
• Behavior. Behavior also includes the transactional part in itself. It is how your audience makes decisions, how they buy, and how they prefer to pay. Such insights will help you position and market your course.  

Where do you get all this information? 

The internet and social media make it easy to find all the details you need about your target audience. Yet, if you prefer a more straightforward way to learn about the pain points and interests of your audience, Jessica Terzakis recommends finding as many opportunities as you can to get in front of your audience directly. 

As a creator, you want to ask yourself, “How can I find the highest-touch opportunities to get in front of my ideal client?” 

 

Jessica Terzakis, 

Business Growth Consultant and Course Creator 

#3 Build your audience right from the beginning 

The moment you have that brilliant course idea in mind, you have to think about building a community of learners. What you do NOT want to do is allocate too much time to put the content together and try to gather your audience around yourself only when the course content is ready. Working on the content and engaging your audience at the same time ensures you have a ready and interested group of potential students when your course is ready to launch.

The most common approach is to establish your presence on social media platforms where your target audience is active. You may consider posting content about your course topic, about your mission as a course creator and, why not, share some behind-the-scenes content. 

Besides the social media, there is a more powerful way to connect with your audience Jessica Terzakis recommends - speaking on other people’s stages.  Whether it's at conferences, webinars, workshops, or local meetups, public speaking can also boost your visibility and credibility. 

“I spoke on people's stages. I spoke on social media lives, I spoke on people's podcasts. I went on a speaking tour and talked about my course. And I found for me at the time, that yielded far better results.”

 

Jessica Terzakis, 

Business Growth Consultant and Course Creator 

When you speak at events, you have the opportunity to show your expertise and connect with a large group of potential students. 

#4 Don’t let planning take ages

Earlier,  we mentioned doing thorough research is the most important part of your journey of becoming a successful course creator. Yet, it does not mean you have to allocate months for that research and another year to put your course together. 

“Do not keep it to yourself for months on end. My biggest recommendation is to get your course off the ground.”

 

Jessica Terzakis, 

Business Growth Consultant and Course Creator

 Here is how you can plan your content and develop a specific structure. 

• Identify goals. Based on these objectives, you will later be able to measure the effectiveness and improve further. 
• Another important step is breaking down the whole topic into episodes. A lot will depend on this, so ensure you have browsed all the subtopics you want to cover within your course. 
• Work on the outline. You always want to make sure you do not miss any important piece of information. So, having a defined outline for each module can help with that. It will also be your structure to follow when designing other course materials. 
• Incorporate engaging activities. For example, you can create and include quizzes and assignments choose multimedia elements, and additional materials to keep the students interested & engaged.

#5 Make it digital  

One thing that is left before you can start selling the course is getting clear with the course creation platform. 

You can find many options available in today’s market, which makes the final choice harder. One of the best platforms that is easier to start is Uteach. Apart from rich course creation features, Uteach also has affordable prices, which makes it a favorite for many creators-entrepreneurs. 

And how do you choose an online teaching platform? Ensure it is:

• User-friendly, so that it is easy to navigate and accessible for you and your students. 
• Has customization and branding features so that you can easily adapt it to your needs.
• Offers analytical features so that you can track results and improve. 
• Provides with integrations so you will not have to jump from one tool to another but manage everything from one dashboard. 

Afterward, you will be ready to upload your materials. When you have your first course ready, launching it on Uteach will take just a few minutes. It provides user-friendly course-builder, analytics and is compatible with various payment gateways. 

Here is how you can upload your first course on Uteach. 

#6 Be ready for the launch

Finally, it’s time to launch. To make sure your online course is successful, it’s essential to apply some marketing strategies.

You should start promoting your course even before it’s complete. This way, you will build anticipation, and people will start looking forward to the day of your course launch. Various promotion channels come to help you in this regard. You can use:

• Your own easy-made website
• Blog
• Social media channels
• Email newsletters

Besides promoting, you should also have a wisely-planned online course marketing strategy. They will help you to keep the existing students engaged, attract new students, and scale gradually. 

Check out what it is like launching your online course with Uteach. 

You will surely get lots of testimonials and positive reviews. So do not forget to share them on your social media accounts and even include social proof on your website.   
 

The most important thing after you have gone through the journey is staying consistent. 

Remember that consistency is key! You should still analyze the results of your first online course to get better and better. 

#7 Be ready to update and continuously improve your course 

It's crucial to be open to continuously updating your course based on student feedback. After launching your course, actively seek out feedback from your students. Ask them what they found helpful, what was confusing, and what additional topics they would like to see covered. 

The reason you want to do this is to keep the client experience at its highest level. And it is not just about the contents of your course. It’s the whole journey a student takes to move through your modules. 

“Create a client care experience around your course, ensuring somebody starts from the beginning and moves through the end. It’s really important to keep in touch with the clients, seeing how they're progressing”. 

 

Jessica Terzakis, 

Business Growth Consultant and Course Creator 

Skills you need to succeed as an online course creator

As an online course creator, you must have certain skills to succeed in this competitive industry.    

• Firstly, you need to have great communication skills. Such skills include interpersonal communication, negotiation, body language, oratory, and, of course, Emotional Intelligence. These are important if you want your future students to stay engaged and keep coming back for more!
• Management. You will certainly not limit yourself to creating one course. And sooner or later, you will have multiple courses and many students to manage. Thus, you should know how to organize and prioritize tasks and manage certifications, tests, etc. Management skills are extremely vital to tracking & measuring data and provide students with useful insights and materials. 
• Basic technical skills are required as well. Of course, there is no need for you to be a tech expert. You will just need to work with various video conferencing tools, platforms, and editing software. 
• Marketing basics. When you publish a course, remember that there is always lots of competition. So, to provide your potential students with reasons why they should choose your course, you employ various marketing tactics and strategies. 

Now, let’s move on from general must-need skills to more specific skills in terms of hard and soft skills.    

Soft skills

• Teamwork. An essential soft skill that online course creators need is teamwork. Even if you are working on your course, in some scenarios, your students may need to work on an assignment in groups. Therefore, knowing the basics of teamwork will allow you to create a more efficient learning environment for your students and teach them to work productively.  
• Problem-solving. Coming up with innovative approaches and solutions takes you to the next level.    
• Time management will help you to stay organized and focused and avoid procrastination. To become better at time management, set goals and, based on their tasks, plan for at least a week ahead. 

Hard skills

• Copywriting. To sell your online courses, you need to create a copy that helps promote them. The good copy on your sales page will catch your potential students’ attention and affect their buying decisions.  
• Proofreading - as someone who is going not only to speak a lot but also write a lot (blog posts, how-to guides, website content, and course descriptions), you have to know how to proofread your content.  
• Content creation. At every step on the course creation journey, you need to provide your students with engaging and quality content. It includes visual, audio, and text-based content. As you write emails, blogs, and speeches for your videos, your content creation skills will set you apart from other creators in the industry. 

FAQ

Let’s answer the most commonly asked questions to sum everything up. 

Who is a course creator? 

A course creator is an individual who develops educational content and materials for online or in-person learning. They design and organize courses, often with the aim of teaching specific skills, knowledge, or subject matter to students. Course creators can be educators, experts, or even organizations. They often use various tools and platforms to deliver their courses to a target audience.

What is the first step to do to become a course creator?

Creating a course and becoming a course creator is not something that can be achieved with just a few steps. Still, if you are planning to take a specific path on your way to becoming a course creator, think of your first-ever step to be the research. 

Although it seems like doing research is time-consuming, it will still save you a ton of time in the future. Research is the solid base you are going to build your online course on. 

What if I'm not naturally adept at selling a course? 

If the selling part of creating a course intimidates you, fear not! You are not the only one. 

Selling is not about trying to convince people to buy. First and foremost, remember that you are there to help people by offering a solution to their problems with your online course. Next, reflect on the last time you bought something. Was it because you were made to buy, or was it that you found that solution extremely helpful and something you had been waiting for to get? 

Exactly! The same way, there are lots of learners waiting for you to guide them through something. And if you can manage to communicate the value of the transformation clearly, the students will get excited to purchase your course before you can even write an ad copy. 

What if I can’t do it all alone? 

If managing all aspects of course creation and continuous improvement feels overwhelming, you can seek the guidance of a mentor. For example, a mentor with experience in course development can provide valuable insights, help you prioritize tasks, and offer strategies for effective time management. 

You can look for mentors in different paid communities or reach out to your own network. 

However, if you do not feel like getting guidance and it’s the time aspect that keeps you from getting started, you can have a team by your side. 

What if the topic I want to create my course on is taken? 

If you are creating a course on some topic, there is a 90% chance that there are existing courses on your topic. This should not keep you from creating a course on the same topic. Let’s take the music industry, for example. Should one refrain from making song covers just because the original is widely popular and seems unbeatable? If all of us were to think that way, think of how many beautiful covers we would be deprived of. 

So, still, what guarantees your course success? The answer is - your own experience and expertise. Even if you are addressing the same issues someone else did before, add your own perspective, examples, and attributions. And remember, you are not here to reinvent the wheel. You are here to provide the best learning experience for your students and help them solve a problem. 

Where to start an online course business? 

To start an online course business, you will need to choose an online teaching platform like Uteach. Uteach allows you to easily upload course content, videos, and assessments. It integrates well with a wide range of local payment gateways. You can also take advantage of Uteach’s marketing and analytics tools to promote your courses and track performance.

Time to start & Time to grow 

While you are still in the stage of considering whether to start creating online courses or not, others take definite actions toward their goals. And the sooner you make your first move, the sooner you will achieve success as a creator.  A lot of course depends on the online platform. If you want a platform that will help you scale your business easily, consider Uteach. 

With Uteach, you will be able to:       

• Control every aspect of online course business from one place 
• Enjoy good user-interface 
• Choose from flexible & affordable pricing plans, with a 14-day free trial run period. 
• Enjoy end-to-end live sessions and integrations 
• Automate routine tasks to save a great deal of time 

Do you want to try and see how Uteach helps to start and grow your course creation business? Start your free trial now!