Udemy Course Planning is the first of the critical Six Steps to Success. Before I dive in deeper, I would like to introduce you to this Step so that you know what we are going to be getting into. This is a critical phase and can save you a lot of wasted time later so don’t skip it. All the most successful instructors take their time over their Udemy Course Planning.
Time Spent in Reconnaissance is Seldom Wasted! So goes the old military adage. Well, I am here to tell you that they are right. Before you start to create your online video course, whether its on Udemy or anywhere else, my strong advice to you is to start with some good old fashioned Planning!
Udemy Secrets Revealed – Tips and Tactics to create best selling Online Courses
This is the first of our Six Steps to Success to Creating Online Courses so I really want you to get off on the right foot! If you work hard now, you will avoid mistakes and save time later. You will also set yourself up for longer term success as you will be prepared for the medium term with a whole cluster of courses that you will be eager to start creating.
I am going to take you through the six parts of the Planning Step one by one but I first allow me to introduce them to you.
- Expertise
- Audience
- Problem
- Objective
- Validation
- Outline
At the end of this Udemy Course Planning Step, you will be ready to start creating your first course. However, if you do not know where you are starting from, it is very hard to create a road map to take you to your objective. To journey is to travel between two points. A to B.
At this present moment, I want to help you make sure you know exactly where you are now – we need to agree the coordinates of Point A. Furthermore, while you may think that you know where Point B is, I want to work with you through this step to confirm that we both agree.
When I started creating my first courses, I did not really know either of these two coordinates properly. I would have told you that I did. However, with hindsight I was wrong. I simply believed that all I had to do was to create courses and people would be pushing each over in the rush to buy them.
This thinking was based on what I felt I was expert at and a confident, if misplaced, belief, that automatically there were people out there who wanted to discover that knowledge. Well, in many cases, I am sure the people exist but unfortunately not many of them are on Udemy or any other course platforms at the moment.
My mistake was to focus on me and not the needs of my audience. What do my students need. Remember, you are here to serve them and they repay the compliment by buying your courses. This also means that you cannot become complacent. You must always be improving your courses and your course creation technique. Only last week, I was given specific feedback from Udemy about some of my less well performing courses and encouraged to improve the student experience. I will also take these ideas forward in to the new courses I am creating. You should do the same as well.
As I embark on creating my 20th online course, I look back and think, where would I be today if only I had been given the advice I am now sharing with you. I believe I would have made different courses, in a different way, addressing different topics in a more student centric way. That is what I would like you to be able to do.
The first step is always the hardest but we are taking it together.
I am your mentor and your guide. I will not let you stray from the path or take a false step.
So, lets move forward together and work through the six stages of the Udemy Course Planning Step on you way to creating incredible courses which are going to entertain, inform and educate your students.
In the next post, I will be discussing the importance of establishing your Expertise.
If you missed the previous post, Introducing the Six Steps to Success you can find it here.