The Best Way to Launch a New Course

If you have an idea for a course the first thing to do is create a small email-based course on general topics in the field of interest and promote that to see what kind of interest there is before creating or hiring a freelancer to create a full online course for you. This mini e-course should be 5 to 7 days long and cover the topic from a 30 thousand feet perspective (an overview), this way you cover the topic fully but don’t give the details a full (for a fee) course would cover.

You should also create a series of 5 or 6 promo emails that you will send to possible students to see if they are interested in such a course. If it takes the full promo series to get someone to sign up every time you may want to rethink your topics or see if you can get better focus before proceeding further.

After creating a small email course on the topic, you are considering making a course for you can take the following steps to determine interest in the course and whether you are hitting on the key areas or not. This is the best way I know to ensure that there is interest in the topic you want to teach and people value the kind of information you are going to offer.

Be sure every email ends with a [signature] this is intended to be replaced by an actual signature phrase. Something memorable or inspiring you can use to end each email. Most email services (autoresponders) can auto-fill this field.

Also, include the [Link to sign up page here] tag which is meant to be replaced with either the link to the single signup webpage or the link that your email service gave you to the signup form you create for the email course. Again, something provided by most email services.

If these steps are a challenge for you remember that most (autoresponders) like AWeber and GetResponse and MailChimp have video tutorials on how to do these things so that should be your first course of action. Or you can probably hire a freelancer who can do it for you (for a fee).

The promo emails you created are used to get e-course subscribers and are emailed as needed. You will want to just keep drafts of them in your computer email program so you can email them to people yourself each day via bcc after you make your daily list of interested individuals from visiting forums, groups, blogs, Facebook pages, Facebook groups, and professional association websites filled with people whom you have determined should be interested in your e-course based on their activity.

You find these people by doing keyword searches in Google, hashtag searches in Twitter, group name searches on Facebook, setting up Google alerts for key phrases, and looking for industry trade papers. Then searching in these results for email addresses. With those email addresses, you create your list of likely candidates then email or bcc them one of the promo emails. Continue working your way randomly through the list until you reach the last 2.

If you get to promo email 5 or the bonus promo email then it is time to take those email addresses off your list and move on. Once people start signing up for the e-course you have to watch for their comments and constructive criticism. This knowledge is invaluable when refining and building your full e-course.

I am not sure how I can make it any clearer than that. If you follow this system you should be able to figure out whether there is sufficient interest in your course material to devote time and resources to building a full course.