How to Create a Fantastic Online Course on a Tight Budget

In the digital world we live in, there are many great ways to make money online. Some people create YouTube channels and end up millionaires from the views and endorsements. Others create content through platforms like Instagram and promote products for a variety of brands. Yet, one of the best ways to make money online is to create a course. Compared to being an influencer and having a YouTube channel, it would be fair to say that online courses are underrated in that regard. Still, creating one isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially if you don’t have much money. Here’s how you can create a fantastic online course on a tight budget. 

Understand the Content 

It goes without saying that you need to have a thorough understanding of the content you will be selling to people. It might be something you taught, worked in, or just have a thorough understanding of.

Either way, you need to meticulously research the subject and cover it from all possible angles before you can even think of creating a course around it. Ask yourself if this is a topic that you can explain to a novice, and how well you can do it.

Can you predict all their potential questions and cover them in the course? This is the basic level of understanding that you need to have early on before you create a high-quality online course. 

Narrow It Down

Understanding the content is just the first step. If you’re on a tight budget, you need to narrow it down to a specific subject that you will be covering in your course, thus saving money on the design and development process. You shouldn’t create a course titled ‘music theory’ or ‘quantum mechanics’ and hope to do it right on a tight budget.

These are examples of very broad topics that cannot be covered wholly in a condensed course. It would be better to narrow it down in these previous examples to ‘rhythm in music’ or ‘special relativity,” which are specific contexts that you can cover on a tight budget. 

Reuse Preexisting Content 

One of the best ways to create an excellent online course on a tight budget is to repurpose old materials. If you have access to instructional videos, text, images, or any other uncopyrighted materials, then you can reuse them in your course.

Even if you need to make some modifications to tailor them to your exact content, you will still have saved a lot of money compared to creating new content from scratch.

You should find a tool that will help you organize and categorize every learning tool at your disposal, from brochures and manuals to videos and images. That way, you will be able to access your content whenever you need it with ease.

Save on Marketing  

An online course, like any business endeavor, is as successful as its marketing. Promote your product through the right channels and using the right tools, and your course could be a hit. As explained in this useful guide, one of the best ways to promote your online course without spending too much money is through social media.

Billions of people use social platforms all across the world, and you could have access to many of those users if you play your cards right. You need pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and they should all be linked to one another.

Make sure you create engaging content that isn’t necessarily just about your product, but whatever topics that matter to your followers. That way, they will take an interest in your course and might even purchase it.

To market your product, you need to sometimes think out of the box. Sure, the usual platforms from Facebook to LinkedIn are useful and you must use those, but there are other ways to promote your course on a tight budget. You could start a podcast and offer it for free to your followers and those who might be interested in the course.

Webinars also often prove to be quite useful in promotional contexts. These are all different ways to promote your course, but each has its benefits, and each caters to a certain audience that might just be a future customer. 

Use eLearning Tools

You can’t hope to create a high-quality online course without utilizing the many available eLearning tools. They allow you to create high-quality content for a fraction of the cost, while also saving you a lot of time. A lot of those tools are free or cost little money.

Google provides a bunch of apps for eLearning that you can utilize to great results, with tools to create surveys and online presentations, develop tests and assessments, and much more.

Get Help

While this is your course, and you’re looking to develop it for the least amount of money, that doesn’t mean you should go about it on your own. There are certain tasks that you might need to outsource in order to get the best quality possible.

If creating a certain video animation or interactive content is beyond your skill set, then there is nothing wrong with getting outside help for the best possible results. This will eventually save you time and money if you think about it.

If you go about it on your own, you will keep doing it all over again until it is perfect, which is both costly and time-consuming. 

Consumable Content

You should create bite-sized content for your students, which is far more consumable. Creating 15-minute video bits is a lot easier on the student than one-hour videos, and it also minimizes the cost for you while providing the best learning experience. Bite-sized content is also significantly easier to edit should your course need any modifications. 

With all the available tools online, it is quite possible for you to create a really good course on a tight budget. You just need to consider it from all angles. Focus on the content rather than the quality of the images and videos, at first at least. The end goal is to teach your students something. You can work on improving the images and videos a bit later down the line.

About the author:

Allen Brown is a dad of 3 kids and is a keen writer covering a range of topics such as Internet marketing, SEO and more! When not writing, he’s found behind a drum kit.

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