Are you building a course that people ask for?
I saw this Tweet and I naturally thought of y'all here.
How do you go about finding out what people want in a course? What approaches have worked for you?
In a comment from the Tweet Kerri mentioned she does:
- tracking common requests
- tracking repeat conversations
- asking how people best learn
- tracking where people get stuck in classes I already taught
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I created a course which is very niche; something very few people even know about the subject. It is an elaborate course. However, I have very few students as it is extremely hard to find niche customers who even know about the subject. But those who do take it are extremely appreciative. I am the only one who teaches a course on the subject.
The course does not make me money, but it does boost me up as an expert in the field and gives me a ton of credibility. I have received person high-paying gigs from people seeing the course.
But I recently had another idea and actually wanted to make money and make sure enough people would be interested. (Website just completed: runafilmfest.com). I have not advertised yet, but can easily reach my target market; filmmakers, screenwriters, producers, directors, etc.
This time I did something different as well. I targeted 5 large facebook filmmaker groups with 5 figure members. I contacted the moderators and asked them if I could post a poll. They all agreed. I then posted a poll to see if people would be interested. I got 90% yeses. Some even said, "hell yes."
So now I know I have created something people want. I'll never do it any other way again. I will also be going back to those who took the poll and tell them about the launch.
Nice way to do it.
I guess a good strategy here would be to keep friendly and active on those groups that have shown an interest. Maybe share some of the ideas you have, so that when it comes time to launch then many of them will have their trust in you.
Awesome stuff!
I 100% agree. What I thought people wanted from the first version of the S4F course and what they actually wanted were two very different things.
That's why I recommend people do a small, live version of their course first, before investing time and money into recording videos etc.
Good advice.
My experience was a combo of things: 1. answering the same questions about career development, 2. many prospective clients (in China) can't afford my full edit services and 3. there is a group out there that believes in D-I-Y-ing their resume and LinkedIn Profile or preparing for interviews solo and I strove to meet their needs all with one set of drip email courses. Still, the market here has gone to short 5 minute videos to match commute times and very short attention spans so I will do a video course soon. So much for long form content providing the best value!
How are you setting up your video course?
When people make courses, where do they sell them? Would it be Udemy?
With Udemy, you have to create it on their platform. There are other self-hosted wordpress course plugins. Teachable is a popular platform which hosts courses . Their courses are easier to find as well - so marketing would be easier. But it is up to you to advertise your course to interested parties and or work with partners/affiliates to sell it as well.
I'm not building a course but I do have an educational membership site. One thing I'm glad I built was a system for users to request tutorial topics and site features.
It's a slightly gamified system, but basically I've set it up so the following three groups have roughly the same amount of voting power in aggregate: me (the teacher), the small(ish) group of paying members and the much larger group of free users.
I evaluate the difficulty of requests and order what I work on based on points spent voting on the request / the time it will take me. I haven't seen a 16x revenue increase like Kerri did, but revenue growth sped up and churn is low.
I organize workshops, started by laying out a program and asking potential students whether they were interested, developed the content, built a website and started contacting managers and students with the offer. I don't offer any on-line training, though. Everything is face to face.
Relatable to any product!
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