E-courses are excellent sales tools and a great way to get your knowledge out there. It is very simple to create your course and either sell, or give it away as a “give-before-you-get” sales technique. If your course is designed to be a freebie, you’ll want to give a portion of good information; but don’t tell them everything or they’ll have no reason to make a purchase. If you are selling your course, make sure to jam pack it with everything you know, that way your customer will feel like they are getting a lot for their money (depending on how much you really know.)
E-courses are simple to create because there is no need for fancy formatting, heading tags or conversions. E-courses are made in the same fashion as e-zines; by using plain text.
For a sample of my 7-day mini course, send an e-mail to: minicourse@aweber.com. You will receive the first portion of the course in just a few minutes, and then for the next 7 days you will get an email with a new section attached.
AOL USERS BEWARE: The only complaints I have ever received about the course not being delivered were from AOL members.
Here’s a quick check list for creating your course:
• Pick your topic of expertise.
• Divide your material into specific sections. These topics will be your lessons. I advise starting out with a day-by-day course rather than splitting your material into weeks.
• Write an introduction to the course and a list describing upcoming lessons.
• If this is a free course: make sure to weave subtle hints throughout about all of the information that they are not receiving to give them incentive to purchase something (anything!)
• Once you have written your course, set up an account with a sequential auto-responder company. Every company will have different instructions for set up, but basically you will be cutting and pasting and they will deliver the e-mails/lessons at the appropriate time.
• Promote and advertise your course on your website, and send out a notice to your distribution list: let people know about it any way you can.