Biggest Mistakes Tutors Make When Creating an Online Course

According to Global Industry Analysts, the online course industry is already worth 107 billion. And they project that this number will triple to 325 billion within the next 5 years.

So yeah, a window of opportunity just opened. And more and more people are crushing it with courses than ever before.

But that doesn’t mean that you can create a course, put it for sale, and buy a private island.

If only it were that easy.

In today’s article,  I want to make sure that you start things off on the right track.

This is why I’m going to share the five rookie mistakes that hold people back from success with online courses.

Maybe you're thinking of starting an online course. Or maybe you already have a course that you want to sell more of. Either way, when you avoid these five mistakes you’re primed for success.

Let’s jump right in.

1.  Packing a Course With Way Too Much Material

Humans have a short attention span. Making a lengthy online video is one of the commonest mistakes online content creators make. And yes, this isn't good for business. The research said 53% of users access the internet via their mobile phone in 2019.

It then means that most of your audience is either on the move, at work, or distracted with one task or another. If this is the case, I doubt that watching a video spanning several minutes is ideal. If they open your video in the first instance, they trust your content and hope to cart away with valuable information. The onus now lies on you to live up to their expectation.

No matter how much research you have put into the work, a module shouldn't exceed 15 minutes else; there's likely to be a low completion rate. No one wants to create online content only to have it listened to halfway, or do you want that? Plan your script and carefully choose words that hit the nail on the head early enough into your video.

2.  Creating one big course

I haven’t seen a YouTube video that teaches how to make a shoe and how to polish it at the same time. For online tutorial videos, it's one step at a time – if you're looking to make an impact. You may be passionate about sharing your knowledge with your audience by all means that you begin to stuff information down their throat.

As online learners prefer shorter modules, they also prefer shorter videos because it aids comprehension. Creating one big course is counterproductive, and you'll be running at a loss should you do that. You and the learner have a lot to benefit from breaking the courses into chunks.

Learners are motivated by progress such that they want to move from one new course to another instead of having everything at once. Shorter courses mean more profit for the teacher because students subscribe to another after they're done with the previous one. You would also charge customers exorbitantly if you offer one big course, which would make them look elsewhere.

3.  Seeing negative reviews as a bad thing

Everyone that has a business online or offline takes reviews seriously because they make or mar your efforts. Even if you have put in so much effort in creating online content, you should also expect a negative review. This is heartbreaking, but it's an avenue to make things right some other time.

Most online tutors delete these comments and pass it off as a troll or some person trying to seek attention, but it's not always the case. Bad feedback is the best thing that would happen to your online business, and I'll tell you why.

When a user drops a bad review, they point out aspects of the course that don't meet their expectations. You have to note all the things they don't love about your content and update or make amends instead of deleting the comments. The best online tutors make sense of bad reviews and come up with a best-selling online course.

4.  Creating a course the audience doesn't need

You may be flattered into thinking that people would be interested in a particular subject only to find out that only a few persons are willing to tow that path. Surveys are one of the surest ways to measure audience participation and interest.

When you have weighed the opinions of prospective learners, you will discover the huge disparity between what they need and what you think they need. It would help if you had a standby audience willing to take your course instead of preparing it and spending so much on marketing.

Before you spend hours on content creation, make sure you do some market research so that your time yields profit. Make a list of course outcomes and send it out to the prospective audience. If the response is positive, it is a green light, but if it's not, it's time to retrace your steps.

5.  Failing to promote your course

Whatever goes out to the public needs to be promoted for greater visibility. If you have spent several hours preparing, you need to put in more effort to get it out to a wider audience. There are hundreds of similar online courses like yours, and the competition is nothing like a joke.

If you must sell, create a list of targeted leads before launching your course. One way to promote your course is by writing informative articles and publishing it for free. Use the opportunity to collect email addresses while building trust and authority in your field.

Gradually, you become a go-to for questions and information about your field. It becomes easier to sell your course when people trust you.

There are hundreds of online course creators who are working tirelessly to seize the market. For every online course created, there is an end goal in mind. The aim is to educate learners and earn an income from it. The next time you sit to plan an online course, look out for these mistakes and correct them before publishing.