Blog

  Workbooks are the get-it-done complement to your core lessons Workbooks are a supplement to the lessons in your online courses. Done well, they give your students the reference materials and guides they need to complete lessons well. When you’re deciding on...

  When it comes time to sell your online course, you need an element of "urgency" in your offer. You need a reason for your prospect to buy now rather than putting the purchase off for another day. Common ways to incorporate urgency into a course offer include...

  When you're doing the work of making a profitable online course, you're not only creating lessons: you're also setting up lead magnets, adding captions to videos, designing slides, writing emails, and much much more. That's why as soon as you can afford the...

Your online course lesson content needs to come out of your own expertise, ideas, and experiences. But when it comes to your marketing content, you don't need to completely reinvent the wheel. Instead, you can curate inspiration and build swipe libraries to turn to...

  There are going to be points in your work where you’re stuck, where you’re not moving forward, and where sitting down to do the work becomes difficult. Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art calls this “resistance.” He says: "Resistance cannot be seen,...

  Your paying students sign on for the core content (and support) you've promised in an online course so that they can get to their goals. When you can also incorporate surprises and unexpected value, you'll have students who are more likely to persevere through...

  Building a profitable online business does not happen overnight. Many of us still need to generate income while creating our course and the systems that go with it. That income is needed to cover costs we’re responsible for in our personal life, to make a...

  As you're designing an online course, the incorporation of extraordinary value PLUS a stand-out student experience will make the purchase decision easy for your prospects. A stand-out class: Acts as a catalyst for change for the student in it. It reveals to...

  Ready to teach online? And sell your courses? Welcome to online marketing. Let's get you ready to succeed at this work by making sure you set up and maintain three key online business pieces: 1. Your website. Your website is your home base and it is an...

  It's always a good thing when your arrival somewhere new goes well. If the restaurant has a table for you and your drink order is taken right away, you feel like it bodes well for the whole experience. And I'm sure if you have guests, you want all to go well...

  When it comes to creating an online course you will need to develop some tech skills. Not to worry, though: for almost all of them, there are tutorials created by the tech-tool creators and free Facebook support groups where you can get speedy help from peers...

  A key challenge when teaching is to give your students a path to making their own original works that aren't simply replications of your own projects. You need to do more than present a project that gets copied. You need to facilitate your students' own...

  Are you in slow-mo when it comes to getting your course outline done because you don't know what comes next? Or did you outline it and then stop because you didn't know what to do then? The work that comes after your outline is to choose ONE lesson you're...

If you have written a non-fiction or how-to book, you can give it new life and extend its power and uses by turning it into an online course. Here are 4 ways an online course can extend your how-to book content and impact. #1. Add PACING to your how-to book when it's...

  Over the holidays, my family played the board game Settlers of Catan. Several times. In this game, you trade resources--sheep and wood and bricks and wheat and rocks--to build roads and settlements and cities. The gameboard is set up so that there are fewer...

  There are 3 things I talk to would-be course builders about that have them worried and stalled BEFORE they've even created their course. Let me tell you why you should skip these concerns and move on to the real work. Worry #1: which online classroom platform...

  Once you get students into your online course, you've still got work to do. You need to make sure your students consume the lessons AND take action: Here are 6 ways to amp up the engagement level of your students and make sure they are taking action. 1. Start...

  If you're going to make an online class, of course you want it to be a success. And, so, let's talk success. Here are six things I've found to be key to creating a successful course--and happy students. 1. Make sure you're teaching a course people want and...

  Done-for-you tools give your students adaptable and even swipe-worthy content that they can use to execute on the tasks they're learning in your course with greater ease than if they started from scratch. Here are several examples of done-for-you tools to get...

  You've got different course delivery tools and approaches available for online teaching than you do for live classroom teaching. That means you've got opportunities to do things in new ways. Your best teaching will happen when you marry the opportunities that...

  When you get started with online teaching by offering a "minimum viable product" (MVP) or beta version of your course (which you will refine based on student feedback), you’re overlapping the work of development and selling—even blurring the lines between the...

  First: do you have "the bug" to teach? One sure piece of evidence is that you're always having ideas about your course--and not necessarily at convenient times. You might be packing lunch--for yourself or your kids or both--and it occurs to you that your online...

  Would-be or will-be? Are you a would-be dreaming-on-it course builder unsure of how to start taking real action? Or are you a for-sure, gonna-do-it will-be course builder. While you might well have joined a dozen Facebook business groups, watched several tech...

  Here's why you need to create regular and free content to build an online teaching business It turns out that in addition to creating those lessons you will sell to your online students . . . . . . you'll also need to create regular free content. You need to...