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I like the idea of creating an online course. However, I have never done something like that before. My idea is:

Create an online course about a field I know a lot about and charge for that.

So when you are an experienced course creator(or have great ideas) here are some questions for you:

  • Which software would you use to create an online course?
  • How to market such a course?
  • Which are the most successful online courses?
  • Do you know some famous online courses?
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I am actually doing the same thing! Shoot me an email, we should compare notes! :-) – Manchine Jul 26 '12 at 1:01

4 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

There are several different types of on-line courses and you really don't need to be able to program to create them.

The simplest is an eBook. You can write one, put it up on ejunkie and wham, you are in business.

After the simple eBook, you can have the auto-responder series, which you would need either an Aweber or Mailchimp account. These deliver the course on some sort of interval direct to the students inbox.

Moving on to the more complex, you could build a membership site and provide the content (via ebook, video or webpages) to paid members.

There are several great platforms for this. One such combo is Wordpress + Wishlist Member.

A good example of a successful on-line course site is: http://fanextra.com/. They have tutorials about all sorts of image editing, etc.

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up vote 1 down vote

Moodle is a very popular platform for this kind of thing. Famously easy to get started - and a reputation of being a bit painful when you want to customise, but that's a good MVP option.

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up vote 1 down vote

Check out udemy.com platform, I keep seeing courses offered by AppSumo on that platform

Here are a couple of how-to-s to get you started (sorry, neither are free):

http://www.udemy.com/how-to-create-an-awesome-online-course/

http://www.appsumo.com/course-about-building-a-course-mp/?rf=srch

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up vote 0 down vote

If you have no programming knowledge, the easiest way would just be to start a blog and post all the articles there. Offer your readers information and knowledge for free and grow your reputation in your industry. Once your blog is getting hundreds of thousands of visitors, you need not worry about making money.

Marketing strategy for blogs - write guest posts, leave comments in related blogs, engage in Q&A forums.

The only downside to having a blog is it takes a while before you are able to make money out of it.

Hope this helps.

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and if I have programming knowledge what would you recommend, cause writing a blog does not seem to be my preferred communication channel and programming is not a big deal for me;) – maximus_m Jul 23 '12 at 11:16
You can write interactive training courses for all the things you know. Separate them into modules. Allow people to stop and continue their course anytime they feel like it. You can offer some free courses as a preview to potential customers and offer some other paid courses. You need to think about your pricing model etc but for marketing you can always offer your service to local group buying services e.g. Groupon to get visibility. Try getting a few other friends to help you with - more variety means better appeal to more people. – Jason Jul 23 '12 at 14:55
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Personally I would suggest not to build the whole site just for this. You said you liked the idea of online course but that doesn't mean you are able to come out with good courses. Blogging is a good way to test the market and validate your idea. As soon as you gain traction with your blog, you can start building this training website and refer your blog visitors to it. =) – Jason Jul 23 '12 at 15:00

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