Have you created a course?
Can you share it below and share some juicy details around it?
- who is the course for?
- what was the hardest part of building it?
- how did you approach getting sales?
- how well has it done sales wise?
- what did you wish you knew before starting?
hellorails.io - 💎🚆
Folks who would like to learn the Ruby on Rails web development framework
90+ videos of content + editing 😆
Landing page with email capture shared on my youtube channel where I've been posting free content for years.
Just passed 30k in revenue (not bad for my first major course)
Lots of things but mostly a plan of attack for how to account for the next steps following this first course. If I were to teach something non Ruby or Rails related, would it still do well? I'm currently building a few concepts out to test this theory.
Hey Andy, I follow your story here in IH, and I really got interested in the part you told, in some of your comments/posts, that you learned RoR during the process of creating the course and also shared that learning experience with your Youtube Audience.
I would like to understand it better since I also have a Youtube channel where I'm sharing my experience on learning Rust, and eventually I would also like to go to the course path.
If you can share a little more about the course creation, or point me where you already wrote about it, that would be very helpful.
Hey man!
Thanks for following along.
So the course came by accident. Ultimately I made the commitment to learn Rails in public so I could build another app that failed prior to the course idea. I needed a framework that was approachable with practically no budget and a team of one (me). I started blog/making screencasts of my process and public and it started raining traction. With Ruby on Rails there wasn't a lot of modern content on YouTube in particular so I noticed that void after a while and started posting more consistently.
After about 70 or so videos it was obvious that I could leverage the new network I had to take on a course. I built a landing page to help validate the idea. Before launch I tallied up about 700 emails which I later notified when the course went live.
In terms of creating the course, I tried to pile as much recording time into free days as I could. Behind the scenes I was also making a custom mini course framework that helped a lot with support. The framework was a place to help me create, manage, and delete users as well a generate coupon codes on the fly to help entice a few people I reached out to about the course post launch. I spent about 3 months on the course in total which if you factor the earnings might not be totally worth it but the marketing helps toward future endeavors so I'm pleased.
For courses, most if not all earnings happen in the launch phase. I still see sales but they are definitely fewer and farer between. I've also slacked a bit on marketing it these days since I'm working towards my next course launches and other product ideas.
Maybe, hit me up sometime and we can talk shop. I'm actually thinking of building a course network that introduces new tech to aspiring developers and designers. Rust is one thing I know very little about. Maybe there's a collaboration in our future.
How is your course doing today? Any new insights after a year?
The Customer-Led Growth Program (which lives inside the Forget The Funnel pro membership)
How is your course doing today? Any new insights after a year?
The website isn't loading. :(
Ack I typo'd the URL 🙈 ...fixed now
I'm Ivo, and together with my team, we've built Launch with AI Program - A product launch course for entrepreneurs, growth marketers, startup founders, and product managers looking to leverage AI for product launches.
What was the most challenging part of building it?
The hardest part was distilling our team's experience from 500+ launches into a simple, actionable program.
How did you approach getting sales?
We used a mix of online engagement, exclusive discounts, free samples, and word-of-mouth referrals to drive sales. Now mostly talking to our community of 10k+ founders and marketers.
How well has it done sales-wise?
Still early days, but the response has been very positive.
What did you wish you knew before starting?
The presales and preparation of the actual launch were though.
https://www.avocadoaudio.com/
audio courses for everyone!
Screen free learning
hey @audionerd126 I would love to connect. I'm creating a video-podcast about online course creator and I'm looking for participants. Would you be open for a 30min call?
Any course creator can also list their courses on gumrank (https://gumrank.pory.app)
Created two courses at the begging of the summer - Make Something ( https://www.craftsmancreative.co/courses/make-something ) and What To Do Now ( https://www.craftsmancreative.co/courses/wtdn ).
Both are aimed at helping artists and creatives get control over their businesses. To create more consistently and get that work out into the world, and to start working on their business to make it more resilient.
Both took about 30 hours to put together, from outline to filming to editing to uploading and building the landing page.
I massively failed on the marketing side. I didn’t message properly and only told my immediate friends and followers , so both only did about $1k in sales so far.
I wish I had spent more time to marketing them and getting more awareness for them, but I’m trying to remedy that now so that I can improve on the marketing front and get the courses in the hands of more people because I know the courses get the results they promise.
Super interesting content. Did you create the web yourself or is it based on a platform?
Thanks! The site is built using the platform Thinkific (thinkific.com)
hey @daren, I've seen that you have many courses with a large number of lessons. I’m crafting a video-podcast that identifies trends, common problems and best practice solutions specific to online course creators. It would be awesome if you could participate. Would you be open for a 30min call?
Hey! Sorry for the delayed response. Shoot me an email at [email protected] and lets find a time to chat!
Awesome, I'll send you an email
Sorry if this comes off as spammy but for course creators who want to have their courses on a new platform, we'd love to have them on Learkn.com :)
Love this prompt and the answers so far!
I created a few courses: Marketing for Freelancers, Selling for Freelancers, and Business for Freelancers.
The course is for freelancers in their first 3 years of business who are struggling to earn the living they want. It focuses on the business aspects of freelancing, not the craft itself.
The hardest part was creating all the slide decks (48 lessons!) and recording the screen captures.
I have an email list of mostly freelancers, so besides the launch, I have a few evergreen email sequences that end with sharing the course.
In the last year, the course has sold ~$7,000 worth. It's a spin out of similar courses I made for LinkedIn Learning, which does quite well (something like 50K+ students at this point)
I wish I would've invested into my own branding before I started. I'm doing a new brand now, and I'll have to re-record them all as a result!
How is your course doing today? Any new insights after a year?
Really a lot of content, can I ask you how long does it take to create one of this courses?
I worked on these courses concurrently for about...5 months.
Web Development: Beginners Guide to Basics - https://beginnerwebdevelopment.com
hi I am developer and I am building abrain dev course for developers to get peak preformences
How to free time, earn money, and do more with ChatGPT:
https://hybrain.gumroad.com/l/chatgpt
My course is for indie hackers, business owners, creators, and marketers
The hardest part is to comprehend an enormous volume of information, but now it's easy and fun with AI tools.
I sell to my followers and in communities. I don't have any sales funnel or targeted marketing yet.
It's not much, but I'm working on it.
https://platform.intervee.io/courses
Learn programming with a virtual assistant.
who is the course for?
Everyone, who wants to learn to program, and needs feedback on his performance.
what was the hardest part of building it?
The engine lets users run their code on the system while analyzing their progress to generate meaningful insights. It involves a heavy framework that was developed in PHP and Python.
how did you approach getting sales? || how well has it done sales wise?
It's free
what did you wish you knew before starting?
More about marketing, and how to bring users to the site.
I spent too much time on the development, and sometimes developed features nobody needs.
mathrelay.com
Math solution directory with LaTeX formula search
for math studends and teachers
the LaTeX search engine and indexation
currently, it's free to use
SEO
how we can create a video course by using screen recording?
I realize this question was posted a while back...but, I'm sure others have the same.
I messed with quite a few options and ultimately settled on ScreenFlow. I didn't actually edit within that tool, I just recorded what was on the screen - while simultaneously recording via microphone + video from a sony a6400.
So - with every bit of instruction - that setup gives you the
Then I'd export it out of ScreenFlow. Save it in a templated set of folders that could be duplicated for each lesson (mine had 38 lessons, so I wanted to streamline as much as possible). And when I was ready to start editing I'd import the files into Final Cut Pro X. Just my editor of choice. For me, that was the 4th editor I spent time with before sticking with it. Just had the right feel. Mac only. Took a course on Skillshare, to get through the basics.
Content Modeling Workshop
Headless CMS creators who are struggling to come up with content models for their projects.
Mitigating the fear of "will people want my course?" I find that this fear threatens motivation.
I can't say I don't still have this fear, but I do know what I need to do to protect my motivation and keep moving forward, even when things look uncertain.
Building up an email list from free content on my blog.
I just started pre-sales. My goal at the moment is to spread the word and validate my assumption that this is something headless CMS creators want.
When deciding on the format you'll use for a course, it's important to value your own personal constraints. I discovered through the process of building this course that I find it challenging to teach over video.
https://egghead.io/courses/build-a-modern-user-interface-with-chakra-ui-fac68106
who is the course for?
People who struggle in decision making or want to learn more about decision making.
what was the hardest part of building it?
Creating videos, I don't like video shooting
how did you approach getting sales?
I am an author, I already had a small newsletter, I then created a mini-course, increased my newsletter subscribers, presell the main course.
how well has it done sales-wise?
It covered my course hosting expenses only. But there are other gains, more exposure, the authority on my subject, definitely will help my writing career.
what did you wish you knew before starting?
Course creation requires a tremendous amount of work and skills. But I think I knew all this beforehand.
My courses are hosted at my school, The Decisions Academy
https://decisionsacademy.com
We've created a tonne of courses however the thing we're most excited about right now is a tool we've created to define the learning outcomes from a course & then track how participants performing against these outcomes over time. The online course industry needs more data on effectiveness & I am hopeful tools like this https://mentalskillsgym.com/competence-pilot/ will help do this. Thoughts?
https://www.myfirstbusiness.io/
Anyone wanting to start a business and not knowing where to start from a tax and legal perspective.
Honestly, getting the flow of the sections down. Then which distribution channels I wanted to host it on. Initially I wanted to host it on my own website but....in terms of iterationn and MVC, I thought it would be best to host on gumroad and I build the user flow and paywall on my website.
Just launched, trying to spread the word and get traction right now. Working on my first sale.
Any feedback is more than welcome :)
who is the course for?
My course is for anyone wishing to lean visual, UI/UX design. The goal is to take the student from zero tho hero in 8 weeks of hard practice.
https://digital-design-school.com
what was the hardest part of building it?
Getting over talking on camera was the hardest part for me. I spent 8 months doing it and enjoyed the whole process and believe it really is a great course.
how did you approach getting sales?
Not very well tbh. So far I haven't managed. I think I did it all backwards as I created the course and launched it in end of December but did spent all my time creating it and no time marketing. Now i am starting to try and market it but finding it hard as i am a total newb at this.
how well has it done sales wise?
So far I have tested it with a few free students for feed back. no sales yet but have only been live 1 month so trying to work out this marketing malarky now.
what did you wish you knew before starting?
GET AN AUDIENCE FIRST! man I wish I had read that before starting.
I have done it back to front and trying to get a following now, hopefully it will work but I have a feeling may be a long road.
My course is on online automation with free tools. Instead of Zapier and expensive tools you can do it all for free with opensource / self-hosted tools.
https://howtoautomate.dev
Hello, folks,
I'm just about to launch an online writing course on the art of the manifesto. I've been running this course face-to-face for several years with my creative partner-in-crime, Hannah Stevens, through our tiny social enterprise, Wind&Bones. We've taught it in various parts of the world, and we've now decided to go online, partly to reach new audiences, and partly because like everybody else, we've needed something to keep us out of mischief during COVID lockdown.
As for @rosiesherry's questions:
Here's a link to the course: https://courses.windandbones.com/manifesto
Hello Rosie,
from JUST STARTUP!
Who's the course for:
We have built the course on 3 levels for Digital Marketers to Entrepreneurs.
https://startup.badboyz.org/
Hard Part:
Website building, 90+ videos, editing & content by a single person
Approach Sales:
I have asked fellow Digital Marketing Experts to review the course give the feedback on how this looks & provided the course for 90% less than what actually others charge with less than half the content we provide!
& the rest is Word of Mouth.
Sales Performance:
Made a good number of 250+ registrations with WoM & planning for a rigorous online promotion form January.
Learning:
Should have made more out of pandemic with paid promotions that could have made at least a 1000 registrations for sure!😃
Great work! Any by registrations do you mean sales?
Not just a course but a new course platform: https://qvault.io
We don't have a course, but we have a course hosting platform 🙈. Does that count?
Shameless plug - but check us out at https://www.tutorpass.io/. We are trying to hit 1k sign-ups by year on our waitlist, so please connect with us on our website. Our niche is the behavioural science aspect of course creation. Many of these attention-grabbing tricks found on social media apps take advantage of our brain's dopamine system. We want to make those design patterns accessible to a course creators workflow. How can we light up those reward pathway for learners?
We would love to connect with some of you guys here and learn more about your experience creating courses.
Ruby on Rails 6: Learn 25+ gems and build a Startup MVP 2020 - learn to build your own advanced e-learning platform. Final result - great Udemy clone
Ruby on Rails 6: Learn to Build a Multitenancy SaaS app
- course where you build your own advanced SaaS boilerplate. Final Result = Laravel Spark but for Rails
Here it is: reverse engineering through technical scraping
https://learn.mikerubini.com/reverse-engineering-through-technical-scraping
How is your course doing today? Any new insights after a year?
It's doing well - I often update it with new lessons
Handstand Essentials
https://goskillwell.com/taraquinn/
A course to teach people to do handstands in their living rooms.
Since everyone is home working remotely I condensed my 20 years of acrobatics knowledge into the most essential and fun simple elements so that folks could embrace a physical challenge and pick up a new skill before quarantine ends.
The hardest part was learning the edit video and do voice over. I am used to working with live sweaty real humans and transitioning to the online world was a major adjustment. I am excited though for the possibility to reach more people then I would though teaching in a studio.
I sold my first 5 courses just through word of mouth and previous students! Super thrilled to sell my first product. I am currently looking for more ways to market and let people know about it.
I wasted a lot of time trial and error trying out different video editors and apps. Although I don’t think there is any way around that learning process.
This is nice!
https://jsmates.com/courses/rest-api-design-using-javascript/setting-up-api
My course teaches the REST API Design using Node Js
vimforvscode.com
People who want to level up VSCode by learning Vim for use in VSCode.
Cutting down scope! There were so many commands I wanted to teach, I limited it to 22.
I tweeted about it, posted in a few Discord groups. I need to work on this since sales have dropped completely.
$2,600 (260 x $10 course).
I wish someone would have told me the hardest part is getting started. Anyone can make a course. 95% of people say, "I want to do that." Only 5% actually start. If you can move in that direction, you can make it happen.
How is your course doing today? Any new insights after a year?
Super cool to meet another IH from AZ!
It's doing well! It crossed over $10k in sales I think by the end of last year. Last month, it made over $600 and I spent less than 1 hour maintaining it so that makes me happy.
Biggest insight is that SEO has paid off and I should continue to invest it that side of things (ideally some blog posts and YouTube videos).
I wonder has anyone created broadly speakin sof skills courses?
Why your business needs GPT-3. (https://gumroad.com/l/QkTig)
Looking forward to marketing suggestions.
Get your first paying customrs on the internet
Initially, I was struggling with not knowing how to structure and deseminate the information. Notion has been really helpful and allowed me to consider the structure and emoji's
I approached getting sales by engaging with my audience and I have done 14 sales so far
I wish I created a sneak peak of the book before selling it and I also wish I was building the whole thing is public more, whilst I was halfway done with it
I started into creating a course but then conversations stirred up with a University to have me come teach to undergrads.
Course is Social Media Marketing. It’s my first crack at being a professor of sorts but I’m loving every second of it.
The real pleasure is educating the next generation of marketers. So many marketing departments are run backwards, too traditional, or just flat out aren’t effective. Literally every client, company, and startup I’ve worked with has its problems. Teaching students better ways is how I feel I’m helping contribute to business performance/our economies in the future (better ethical, responsible management with stronger leadership).
JavaScript Native Applications for Photoshop
It's a 9h long video-tutorial that walk developers through the build of a fully-fledged native (.exe for Win, .app for Mac) independent application based on
NW.js
that connects to Photoshop and operates it remotely – very much like "traditional" 3rd party Photoshop panels would do, but as a separate app upon which development environment one has full control.I've produced other video-courses, but on this is the first one where I appear in video too – which is the hardest part, especially if you have to talk, teach & do write working code at the same time. If it were audio only, the editing process would have been much smoother! Here, I had to shoot a ton of takes until each segment was more or less flawless from start to finish. But it's been recorded during the lockdown in Italy, let's say I had a truckload of time in my hands :-)
Sales-wise: eh, not so good – Adobe extensibility is a niche topic, and developers are already struggling using the available technology – mine is a creative solution that is not really by the book. I have a main-ship website where I do sell all my training material called PS-Scripting. I'm trying to expand my audience, but targeting a niche has its pros (e.g. almost zero competition) and cons (very limited pool of potential customers)
Android 50 - https://androidfifty.com
I'm not sure if it counts, but I have two online courses published on Pluralsight: https://doomhammer.info/l/courses/pluralsight-profile
One is Managing Advanced Kubernetes Logging and Tracing and is aimed at tech people.
The other is Open Source Your GitHub Project and is more general. Aimed at both techs and non-techs.
The hardest part for me was recording and editing the video. I'm very camera shy and I blocked a lot whenever I hit "record". Also, video is not my medium, so it comes with great difficulty. Editing demos (screencasts, basically) is probably the worst part as things tend to go wrong there.
The first one is selling pretty good, the second one, not so much. I'm mostly highlighting them in my LinkedIn and Twitter posts.
These are great — does anyone have a course related to (remote) executive assistants? how to hire for one or even how to be one? xx
Hi Rosie, yes, I created a course at TheSaaSAcademy.com using Kajabi.
-who is the course for? SaaS founders, finance, accountants
-what was the hardest part of building it? Creating the content! Took tons of time to create the slides and templates.
-how did you approach getting sales? I have a blog at TheSaaSCFO with 32K+ subscribers so had an audience to market to
-how well has it done sales wise? some nice initial launches, but just like a SaaS app, if you build it, doesn't mean they will buy. Covers the cost of Kajabi and more, but need more time to create more content.
-what did you wish you knew before starting? how to launch
Thanks for this post, Rosie!
How To Buy Websites For Profit
Nocodify.com - Learn how to build web apps without code.
Overall excited for the future!
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