Today I am thrilled to present a video training session I recorded with Corporate Rescue Plan member, Mary Ellen Roth! If you have ever thought about turning your knowledge and expertise into an online course but just don’t know where to start, this podcast on how to teach online is definitely for you!

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How To Teach Online and Stop the Overwhelm

1. Create your course vision.

Start making a list of what your life will look like when you are teaching online. Your life is going to change and what is that going to look like for you? What are you excited about teaching? What are the most important factors that got you to where you are today?

 You are going to be taking people from one place to the next in your course so you need to create the vision for your students too. Have a vision mapped out and start believing in that vision. What are their needs? Use surveymonkey.com. Find out what your clients really need to know right now. Then, clarity will come to you about the whole course.

Creating a course takes a lot of energy. It’s not something you can put together quickly. Everyone wants to start right away and wants to know the technology as soon as possible. Instead, it’s good to wait and make sure we have the right vision of where we want to take our potential students. You need to stay connected to what it is they really need from you and the message you really have. It’s distracting as soon as you start researching the technology piece, the overwhelm will start soon and you start chasing something.

[RELATED: How to Create a Marketing Plan in 4 Easy Steps]

You have to put the blinders on when you are starting to teach online. You are here to serve the world and focus on what that your gift is. We are so unique each one of us and our courses is going to be unique too. We don’t have to try to be like anyone else. Focus on market research and surveys. Don’t just create what you want. Match what your future customers want that you find on your surveys and where your vision is. Don’t operate in a bubble. You have to get out there and talk to real people. Start talking to your friends and start meeting people who need your help and interview them and ask them questions which will lead to the next thing you need to do. Now your pre-work is done.

2. Figure Out Technology To Teach Online

Beginners:

If you are just in phase 1 of Corporate Rescue Plan or you are just starting out but you really want to teach, you can do a course using emails. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You can send out attachments to your email with videos or worksheets.  Then, pose questions for your students and ask them to share how what you are teaching affected them that week. This can be really basic.

Another thing you can do to create a simple course is to record at home with your phone or laptop and make really short videos. You don’t want to create any videos longer than 8 minutes. You can save them to youtube and make them unlisted videos. You can do a series of 3 videos and have worksheets included. Anyone can do that.

Another way to do a short course is to do a series of live webinars. You can do google hangouts or zoom to record the webinar. Get people together and just speak for 10-15 minutes on a topic and get feedback. Always remind your students to think of ways that they can immediately apply what you teach to your lives. It has to be applicable learning for adults. How is it going to make their life better that week? Also, you don’t want to overwhelm them. You don’t have to tell them everything right away. You want to take them through the baby steps of your course.

Also, use your survey tools at the end of each session. Use surveymonkey.com to get feedback on what they learned each week. Then, you can keep making the course better and better.

You can also do a course in a free Facebook Group and do Facebook Live videos. You can upload documents, save your videos and do polls inside of the FB group.

Intermediate:

These tips are for you if you are not afraid to move forward and you are ready to take your online course to the next level.

With this level, you’ll use a done for you platform such as Ruzuku, Zenler.com, or Teachable. These are all really highly rated platforms and everything is already done for you. You pay for it and there is some limit for the free parts of these platforms. If you plan to keep growing your courses, you’ll have to pay a small monthly fee or they take a percentage off of your course sales.

Anna started with Ruzuku before she came to the advanced section. All three of these are making great improvements consistently including adding discussion groups.

Advanced:

If you have a WordPress site, I would highly recommend using wishlist member and Optimizepress. They are about $200 for a one-time purchase. It does take knowledge to get it installed.  This is the recommended place to go because it’s completely integrated if your long-term plan is online courses. You have much more control over everything and you establish better authority having it all in one place.

I did my first course on Ruzuku and transferred the content to Wishlist Member. Then, I paid in 2012 and I have never had to purchase it again. Now I have two membership sites running on wishlist member and I just paid that initial $200. I like having my brand, header, design and colors so for me, I was able to learn and grow and teach myself wishlist. But, there is a technical challenge and you would need to take the time to learn it or obviously work with someone who knows it.

You have your online course in your head and you just have to get it out. There is so much opportunity right now. The internet has made it so simple. The path has just started paving itself for you. Go create that course!

What topic do you want to teach online?