 Well hello and welcome to this video where today I'm talking about how to create a winning online art course. Now this video is one of two. It's a two-parter because I had so much stuff I wanted to share with you. I didn't want to cram it into one so I've made it into a two-parter video. So if you're watching this at time of publishing then make sure to subscribe to my channel and hit that bell to get notified every time I post a new video so that you don't miss out on the next one part two. And if you're watching this later on then you can go straight ahead and Netflix your way into the second part. Now I remember when I recorded my very very first online course way way way back ago in the dark ages. What I did was I actually put a course together over a period of about 10 weeks. I got everyone to show up to a live call. I did an online call like a zoom call but it wasn't zoom in those days. And then I recorded that and I put that into the membership area and at the end of the 10 weeks they got access to all that information again. And that is a really good way of putting together a course without too much planning. The downside is most people don't want to sit and watch an hour or an hour and a half of a lesson. They want something short, sweet and bite sized. So make sure that you've watched my previous video on how to turn a workshop into a course and also check below this video because I have a link to another video that's talking about the pros and cons of workshop and course. So make sure you check those out as well. Before you decide yes 100% this is going to be me I'm going to be creating online courses because as I've said a few times in the other videos there's a good amount of work to actually putting together a really good quality online course. So today's video is based on the idea of a pre-recorded course. So not like that very first one I did but one where you plan it all out, you record it and then the person gets the access to everything already inside their course portal. Alright so let's dive into that content and step number one is really important and it's usually the piece that most people forget all about and that is who exactly is your ideal audience for this course. You really want to get crystal clear on the person who's going to buy their course. They want their needs, their wishes, their desires, how they think, how they operate, everything about them. Now I've talked an awful lot about ideal audience generally across your art business and if you haven't watched that video about how to find your ideal audience that might be a useful video to watch as well but you really want to understand that person that's going to buy your course because if you create something that you'd like to attend but you haven't thought about the audience then you could be setting yourself up for failure from the word go and of course we don't want that to happen. So get crystal clear on who that audience is. The second thing you want to think about is once you've got a crystal clear idea of audience what do they actually want to achieve? You might say oh that's really simple I'm going to teach them to weave for example they want to learn to weave. Well okay but weave what, how? A short project, a long project, a hobby professionally you really need to break it down. So these first two things the ideal customer once you've worked out the ideal customer work out exactly what they want to achieve. What do they want to learn? What do they want to walk away from your course having completed? Because if you can get that part right all you need to do is deliver on that and you have a happy customer. But if you put together a course that's basically a lot of information that you have that you'd like to put out into the world that's not really a course that is particularly going to help the audience. It's got to be audience first, audience first. What do they need to learn? What do they want? What are they looking for? What do they want to really achieve from your course? Once you've worked out those two things you can proceed to the next step. So the next question to ask yourself is well how could you deliver a course on that? So once you've worked out what it is they want you know okay they actually want. All right so if we use the weaving example maybe they just want to learn some basic techniques so that they can buy a loom in a local craft shop and make a one-off piece as a gift to a family member. Super simple. Well maybe they want to learn how to become a professional weaver. So those are two very very different outcomes. So once you've got clarity on your outcome let's go with the first one so they want to make a one-off piece for a family member. They're like I just want a really simple course that's going to tell me exactly what I need to do step by step. You now ask yourself okay how could I best deliver on that? And you might come up with a few ideas. You might say okay so I'll do some techniques, I'll do some yarns, I'll do where to get a loom from. You know you just want to give them short and sweet information so that they can get the practical bit. I'll give them short demos on what they need to do to how to put it together, how to do the weaving, how to complete it, hang it and get it ready basically to give as a present. Right so that's really simple but now we're presuming at this point that you are a professional weaver. So the next step I would be doing is actually brainstorm out all the things that you could teach. So put this workshop up here for a moment and now think well okay what else could I teach? Because likely thing is if you're going to get into the online courses you might not just be making one course. You might want to make a few courses. So by putting down on paper all the different things that you could teach you'll I think likely have a bit of a light bulb moment. Either going to create lots of small courses on different topics to do with weaving and yarn and maybe spinning all that sort of things that you do. Or you're going to create one big whopping course that has everything you know and love in one fell swoop so it becomes one big giant course. And again that's not the course that that customer is looking for. But if we were to take the other example so you found out that your ideal customer is somebody who wants to become a professional weaver and they want all the tools and tricks and shortcuts and how tos and all the different options so they can find their style and go off and do their thing then you might want to put together an all in one course that's the ultimate weaving online course for example. And then you want to really think about well I'll put all those things I could teach into one course versus you know the idea of saying well okay I've got six different things I could teach that could be six short courses. Now the decision of how you do that is of totally up to you. We're just sparking you with a few exciting ideas here. So once you've made your decision on what you're going to start with and you know what we're talking about now we're talking about that one off little course that's going to help somebody create one weaving. That's kind of a beginners could be could be termed as a beginners course. Then you've got the other topics that you might want to teach. They would be just focusing on one area but then you've got the all in one course. I'm going to suggest again you start with with something simple. Don't decide to start with the big course because it's a lot of work to start with something smaller and see if you like it. So maybe you start with that medium course you get okay I'm going to start with that and I know that I've got these other things further down the track that I'd like to do. And it's really important to know that because once you know that you won't put all your information in one course. People don't want all your information either by the way they just want enough to do whatever it is that they wanted out of your course. So if you bombard them with all the information they will stop watching and click away. So you want to give them just enough to move them forward and complete their project. So if we go with beginners course and you know you've got these other things you can even make notes and say okay well I would teach that in those courses and I'll teach all of that in a big course for example. Therefore I only need to share these few things in my beginners course. So next up you've got to plan it out. So once you've decided let's go with a beginners course. Now you've really got to hone in on what the content is that you're going to teach in the various lessons. So I like to use post it notes it's something I learned back in the day. You can move them around really easily. So the other thing you could use is a mind map. So as a creative it's quite nice to get a large sheet of paper coloured pens and mind map out your course. The only problem is that there's no working parts unless you do the two things together. So you mind map out your course idea on a giant sheet of paper and then you create sticky notes and you could move the sticky notes around. Personally I've always been a sticky note person. I've either used a wall or a window and I've just written out the different things I'm going to teach put them on the post it notes and then I put them into order and I'm going to teach that followed by that followed by that followed by that. So the next step really is just to hone in on the essential things. So at this point you're looking through and thinking I maybe don't need to teach that. That's information they perhaps don't need. So we'll remove that post it note and put it over here. So you're really just looking for refining. So you might even have missed something. You look through, you review and you think oh I forgot about this item. So you add in all the things that you want to teach to help that person walk away with their one-off project. You hone it down, you keep it super simple. They're not in it for the long game. This audience just wants to get in, get the information and get out. Remember if you are going to build that huge course they're in it for the long haul. They do want the extras, they want all the tidbits. Different type of course, different audience. All right, so once you've got your post it notes worked out you now need to go ahead and put that into simple modules and lessons. Now listen, here's the thing. If you're going to create that really, really simple course you might just actually not have modules necessarily. You might just have six lessons and it might just be under one umbrella of getting this project finished. So it depends really on the size of the courses. It feels a bit like the chapters inside your book and then the lessons are sort of like the words or paragraphs inside each chapter. If you're just making that super short beginner's course you might do away with the modules and just simply have the number of lessons that you need so long as it's not 20 lessons. This is where modules come in really useful because if you've got three modules and each module has four lessons in it looks really easy to do whereas if you had 15 lessons and the person logs on they're like oh my God I've got 15 lessons to watch so it's going to depend on how to make it easy for your customer. So really the last part of this is just pulling everything you've done together so it really is about structuring. Now you might want to think also at this point how am I actually going to do this are these going to be face-to-camera videos am I going to use PowerPoint am I going to be filming over the top of a table am I going to need some PDF instruction downloads to go with it so you start just making some general notes on how you're going to put this course together and then you need part 2 of the video where I'm going to go into much more depth of how you go from that rough plan actually having a completed course ready for your customer to purchase so like I said if you're watching this after the fact go ahead and there will be a link below this video that will take you direct to the second video if you're watching at the time of publishing you'll just have to hang in there for when part 2 comes out and I promise you it'll be worth the wait let us know in the comments below where you're at with an online course have you done one have you thought about doing one have you got some more clarity after today's video you're thinking I've got more of an idea of how I'm going to do this, what I'm going to do all of these good things so just let us know because we love to hear from you we love to hear where you're at in terms of building your art business and only that of course whether you're going to create an online course alright thank you so much for watching look out for part 2 I'll see you on that one take care, bye bye