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 your field of interest and promote it to see what kind of interest there is before creating or hiring a freelancer to create a online course for you. This mini e-course should be 5-7 days long and cover the topic from a 30 thousand foot perspective (a general description), this way it will cover the topic in its entirety but will not give the details. A full course (for a fee) would cover.

You should also create a series of 5-6 promotional emails that you will send out to prospective students to see if they are interested in such a course. If it takes the whole series of promotions for someone to sign up every time, you may want to rethink your topics or see if you can better focus before continuing.

After creating a short email course on the topic, you are considering taking a course as you can take the following steps to determine interest in the course and whether or not you are emphasizing key areas. This is the best way I know of to make sure that there is interest in the subject you want to teach and that people value the type of information that you are going to offer.

Make sure each email ends with a [signature] this is meant to be replaced by an actual signature phrase. Something memorable or inspirational that you can use to end each email. Most email services (autoresponders) can automatically fill in this field.

Also, include the [Link to sign up page here] tag that is intended to be replaced by the link to the single registration web page or the link your email service provided to the registration form you created for the email course. Again, something provided by most email services.

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

The promotional emails you created are used to gain e-course subscribers and are emailed as needed. You’ll just want to keep drafts of them in your computer’s email program so that you can email them to people yourself every day via Bcc after making your daily stakeholder list of forums, groups, blogs, pages. Facebook groups, Facebook groups, and professional association websites full of people you have determined should be interested in your e-course based on your activity.

You can find these people by doing keyword searches on Google, searches for hashtags on Twitter, searches for group names on Facebook, setting up Google alerts for key phrases, and searching for industry business documents. Then search these results for email addresses. With those email addresses, you build your list of potential candidates and then send an email or Bcc with one of the promotional emails. Continue working randomly through the list until you reach the last 2.

If you hit 5 promo email or bonus promo email, it’s time to remove those email addresses from your list and move on. Once people start enrolling in the e-course, you should be on the lookout for their constructive feedback and criticism. This knowledge is invaluable in perfecting and creating your complete e-course.

I’m not sure how I can make it any clearer than that. By following this system, you can determine if there is enough interest in your course material to devote time and resources to creating a complete course.