#214: Do I Have the Right Amount of Content for a Course?

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host Gina Onativia, here to break down your biggest course creation question and give you actionable steps to build a course, a program, a workshop that sells with confidence. And today we’re continuing our series, Your Biggest Course Creation Questions Answered. Last week, we talked about how to know if you have the right content for a course.

And spoiler alert, you probably do. And it’s probably more than enough. Once you really get down to it and now that you’ve got your content outlined this week, we’re tackling the next big question. How do I know if I have the right platform for my online course? And there are so many online learning platforms out there today? Good job, Learn worlds, teachable thinking, big podia, not to mention all of these industry specific platforms.

And I know it can feel overwhelming. I hear from a lot of you that this decision is what sometimes stalls you out because you think there’s a perfect tool out there or you say to me, Hey, I see so-and-so expert has this platform. Do y need to be on this platform? And let me just say, it’s less about the tool and who’s doing what and more about your needs.

I’m going to walk through three questions that you can ask yourself when you’re thinking about your platform to take the stress and the overwhelm completely out of the process. Picking a course platform should not be stressful for you. I just wanted to say it upfront with these three questions. It’ll simplify the process. And one note here I see very low price point courses on Udemy, Skillshare, Coursera.

When you are building your brand, which most of you listening have an existing brand, you might be branching out to courses for the first time, or you might be going out there in a bigger way. I want you to own your course, own your traffic, own your students contact information, and when you drive traffic to something like Udemy, you’re building them up and not you.

Sites like that undervalue and what you bring to the table. You look like everyone else. You’re competing against everyone else in your niche. So let’s focus on building your brand, owning your audience, scaling for the long term, and that means getting your own course platform. So we’re going to look at course platforms that really work for you as part of this episode.

Now, before we get started, this episode is brought to you by our Done for You course creation. If you are looking for some handholding and some customization in terms of your course creation and or your marketing. We’d love for you to be one of the few clients that get to work with us each quarter. Go to Course Creation Bootcamp slash course to learn more.

And before we dive in, I ran a race on Sunday, so it had been about a month since I went out and did a race and I did a four mile bridge run. You get to run across the Coronado Bridge. It’s gorgeous here in San Diego. If you’ve ever been to Coronado, you know the beauty that this island gives and offers and they open up this bridge, I think once a year and it’s a Navy bridge run, And this year they offered a ten K along with the four mile run.

And I’m starting off and they have you in corrals which if you’ve been running races, you know, they put you in corral. So everyone has kind of a staggered start. So I’m about a 11 minute miler. So I went back all the way back towards that 11 minute mile and 25 minutes later, I’m crossing the starting line. So I’m so far back there, it takes me 25 minutes to actually start.

I can’t even hear the announcer. I’m so far back. And then they say, Go and it’s all walkers. I am completely caged and with a bunch of walkers, I’m no race champion. However, I run when it comes to these races. So here I am darting in and out of these walkers. And by the way, when you walk the Coronado Bridge, it’s absolutely gorgeous.

So you get a lot of walkers, you get a lot of people who just want to catch the sights. So here I am dodging walkers, trying to run to get to the bridge. And then I realize I have not set myself up for success. I under-valued myself as a runner and I ended up back with the Walkers, so I was already at a disadvantage that I was stuck in this crowd and and then I had to make up for a long time an

I end up doing a ten minute mile was really proud of myself, but my point in telling you this is set yourself up for success. Don’t line yourself up for the with the walkers. Right? If you are a tier above you have something special. You are listening to this because you are the expert and I want you in the right place.

Get in the right starting line. Set yourself up for success. Now, speaking of setting ourselves up for success, let’s dive in to the three big questions to ask yourself when deciding on a platform, because I definitely want you set up for success when it comes to the platform. Now, the first question is, I know, I know it’s going to be what’s your outcome?

My favorite question of all time. What’s your outcome with running your course? What’s your outcome with getting this platform? What are you hoping to achieve? Are you a consultant with a starter course? You want to build a starter course? Then maybe you want to upsell to live coaching with you then Kaija maybe, or Lauren World or Podia may be a great option for you.

Or are you an agency owner and you’re looking to branch out to maybe a B2B course then high level might be a better option for you or your coach looking to branch out to a paid community, then you might want to look into something like school Escola, which in my opinion has excellent options and gamification for community building or Mighty networks is another platform I like and I’ve used for community building.

Or are you an expert looking to have a course and community? If you want both of those options for ease, I might recommend Hijabi. So think through what are you using this platform for? Are you going to need it for other aspects of your business, or is it just solely going to be for a course Some of you want something that’s all in one because you’re thinking, Hey, I’m just starting out in terms of an email database.

I know some of you have thousands of emails and you have to organize them in a database, yet you could do that with job, you could build your course out, also have emails and a couple of these other platforms. So thinking in terms of what’s your outcome, that’s number one. Second question is what’s your budget and overall growth plan?

So budget matters. Okay. So some platforms like I mentioned, good job are all in one. So you’re paying a little bit more because you’re getting your website on their sales funnels, emails and your course all in one place. Other tools like Lauren Worlds offer different pricing tiers and some cool add ons such as advanced quizzes, certificate or interactivity, which is great if you’re planning to have more of a school feel.

So think about where you are now versus where you want to go. So this is connected with number one, right? What’s your outcome and then to what your budget. So I’ve had some students when I was doing the six week accelerator live who said, Gina, I’m just starting out. I really want to start with a free trial of something versus paying a lot of money month to month for my course.

Or I had some students say, Hey, I’m in it for the year, so I’ll pay an annual fee, but then I’m not sure. So you’re not necessary only going to get something that has email built in, right? That has other your website built into it because you know you have a one year test. These are the kind of questions that you want them ask to help you determine your budget.

The third question I love to ask is how tech savvy are you? And along with that, do you have a team that can help you be tech savvy? So I consider myself mid level tech savvy, like I know enough to be dangerous. However, I know I also grow impatient if I have to figure something out. That’s why I have a great team.

I am very lucky to have David to help me or Robin to help me figure things out because I know this is a weakness of mine. And if there’s one, please, I really don’t want you to struggle. It’s your course platform. But regardless, I look at hijabi. I think it’s super intuitive. Learn Worlds gives you more flexibility in design, but might take a little bit more setup time.

It’s great if you want for customization or you’re working with the designer or team, then you’ve got platforms like the GIF IC or Teachable, which I consider a tier down from job, but still great because they’re hosted solutions. Okay, let’s talk about this for a minute. In other words, I don’t need to host to the cloud or anywhere else.

Could Joby think if it teachable. They’re hosting my videos really easy for me just to upload videos, upload assets and then have them ready for my students. So that’s why I love a really good hosted solution. Now some of you WordPress users out there could use a WordPress based option like member press or Learn Dash. You could do that if you have a great developer already.

And this is why I’m asking you how tech savvy you are, or do you have someone tech savvy on your team? You have a great WordPress developer, they’re part of your team or they’re just ongoing and support you. Then you could think about a WordPress option like Learn Dash. If you don’t have that, if you don’t have a consistent WordPress developer, I do prefer the hosted solution.

So think about that. You’re I think you’re more in control and then communities. Let’s talk about that for a minute. I mentioned those at the beginning of the episode. I think school is a really great community based platform. Some of you have been leaning into school for community first courses and it’s another great option if group interaction is key for you.

So say you’re doing group coaching and you want to have that community, you want to go beyond WhatsApp, for example, and include some content in there, some gamification, then I like schools and option. And once you know your comfort zone, you would start narrowing down your option. By the way, one big thing and I’ve talked about this before, I don’t want you buying a platform until you are ready.

I can’t say this enough. I know I’ve said this before on this podcast. It’s been a while, but sometimes I hear students and clients, they get a special right? Oh, I see Axios on special for the next three months or the next six months, so I’m going to grab it now. But meanwhile, all you’ve gotten is outline. You know, you’re at the beginning of your journey, of your course journey.

Please wait. Specials come up. Okay. And by the way, there might be a platform, more than one platform, that really suits your needs. So nothing gets me more, though, when I talk to somebody and they say, Hey, I’ve had X platform for a year, I’ve been paying for it and I’ve done absolutely nothing with it. Okay, so that’s number one.

Please, please, please don’t buy a platform until you’re ready for it, too. I want to reiterate, do not struggle in silence. There are so many great developers out there, Vas, who can help you with a course platform these days. Go on Upwork. These people are geniuses. They’re really quick. A lot of them are affordable. You should not struggle in silence.

Okay, so just consider that. And then third, don’t be afraid to test out different platforms and get some free trials and try them on. Or if you are impatient like me, ask your team to vet them or hire someone to vet them for you. Give them your criteria. All right. So in closing, I’m just going to talk about my favorites a little bit.

I’ve already talked about them inside of this episode. You guys know I’m a job fan. It’s what I use for my business. Most of our done for you clients are inside of a job My team has been exploring learn worlds. They say it’s great for those who want to get fancy with interactivity. We’ll have links for both job and learn worlds and a couple of the others I mention.

And yes, we’ll have links for a job and learn worlds in a couple of other platforms that I’ve mentioned. And if you’re curious which is best for you, send me a message on Insta or on LinkedIn. Happy to talk through. Okay, hopefully this was helpful for you. I do not want you to get stuck in platform paralysis. Choose the one that works for you and go with it and remember.

And I said, try them out. Try them on and remember those questions. One What’s your outcome? Two What’s your budget? Three, What’s your comfort level with tech and get some help. All right. So now they’ve got the roadmap to choose a platform that fits you. Here’s to making a decision and moving forward with confidence. Next week, we’re going to have an awesome workshop with Christina Minkowski, who is the guru when it comes to podcast casting and getting the most out of that.

Until then, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.