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3 Applicable Lessons I Learned From Building a Profitable Online Course

October 25, 2022 by luikangmk

Here’s what you can take away from it.

Source: Canva

Have you ever wondered what it takes to build an online course that will earn you a living?

When I thought about leaving my job as a teacher at the beginning of 2020, earning money independent from time seemed like a distant dream.

Now it’s reality. I’ve just wrapped up my third cohort-based course cohort. 72 students have joined three cohorts, with a rating of 9.1/10.

If you’re toying with the idea of running a course one day or you’re already running a course and want to improve it, this article is for you. I share my biggest learnings from building and running a cohort-based course with you.


1) The Only Metric Needed for Building a Course Your Students Will Love

Many online courses are money machines for course creators but time-wasters for their students.

Most of the time, people who’ve excelled at their craft aren’t the best teachers. Moreover, the most dominant form of online courses (watching videos) does not align with how our brains learn best.

As a former teacher and learning weird, I didn’t want to settle with how things have always been done. I researched better ways to help students achieve their desired learning goals through online education.

The answer? A format that aligns with the science of learning: cohort-based courses (CBCs).

In CBCs, learners move through a course together, with direct access to instructors, ongoing deliberate practice, and a high accountability system.

The key reasons why I decided on CBCs are the benefits for students:

  • Real-time feedback on learning progress.
  • Structured access to a subject-specific community.
  • Assignments that are directly linked to their desired learning outcome.
  • Accountability through communities and instructors helps follow through when things get complicated.

What you can take away from this:

You don’t need extensive teaching experience but the willingness to learn and deliver. Your students learning outcome is the only metric that matters. Make student success your number one priority by building a no-BS course your students will love.

How?

You want to be crystal clear on what your students should be able to achieve with the help of your course.

You want to make your course highly outcome-focused (e.g., mastering a skill, landing a job, growing an audience) and focus on the how instead of the why.

Source: Created by Eva Keiffenheim inspired by Wes Kao.

A helpful framework is the following, suggested by Wes: “By the end of the course, you’ll be able to do X without Y (usual blocker or friction).”

Lastly, use backward design to structure your course. Two questions that led my thinking were: “Which activities would students need to practice to achieve the desired learning outcome?” and “Which input is required so they can best complete this activity?”

Consider the learning outcomes and the necessary practice for achieving them before considering how to teach the content.

Design the lessons around action orientation. Provide guided exercises, templates, and step-by-step guides to help your students succeed. This way, you will create a course your students will love.

Screenshot from the Writing Online Accelerator Community Cohort 3

2) Without This My Course Would Have Failed

A friend told me he attempted to copy Ali Abdaal’s structure to make $2,000,000 on Skillshare. My friend soon gave up. He neither had the video experience nor an existing audience that followed him everywhere.

The best tutorial is useless if you compare yourself against someone too different. So here’s a thing I need to reveal.

Before creating the course, I had 15,000 followers on Medium, 2,500 on LinkedIn, 10,000 podcast listeners, and 2,900 loyal email subscribers of the weekly Learn Letter.

I am convinced my course would have failed without this existing group of online friends.

Before building my course, I followed Julia Horvath’s instructors to first understand my customers.

I sent several emails to my subscribers asking things such as: “I’m thinking about building an online course. Which topics would you like to see me cover?” People replied with questions about how to write online.

In my next mail, I asked: “What’s the number one biggest challenge when it comes to learning or writing?” Informed by around 25 replies to these two questions, I wrote this email and created this survey. Two hundred people replied to the survey, which helped me with the subsequent step.

The email template I used to ask my audience.
The email led to this survey, where I would capture initial interest.

What you can take away from this:

The biggest struggle most online creators have is selling their courses. This is so much easier if you have an existing newsletter subscriber base.

Build an audience before you build an online course.

If you have close to zero followers on any platform, this might sound frustrating. But what a waste of time would it be to create an online course that nobody ends up buying?

So how do you create an online audience?

Provide value online by being helpful. That’s how James Clear, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Ali Abdaal, and many other successful online entrepreneurs did it.

This requires a lot of investment upfront, without expecting anything in return.

But once you have an online audience, you can build a course and basically do anything you want. Where do you start?

Choose a means (video, writing, or programming). Then, start creating content and follow your audience’s clues.


3) The Tools and Resources I Use For Running a Cohort-Based Course

After deciding on the CBC format, I researched the best options to host cohort-based courses. I looked into Teachfloor, Teachfloor, Virtually, Graphy, and Classcamp, and ultimately settled for Maven.

Maven was started by the founders of Udemy, altMBA, and Socratic. And you can tell Wes, Gagan, and their team knows what they’re doing. Their creator course accelerator has been the best online learning experience of my life.

What does the platform do for me as a course creator? Maven handles the payments via Stripe, has a landing page builder, sends out calendar invites and emails to students, and offers excellent support if something is not working. I’ve run my first three cohorts on their platform and am very content.

In addition to Maven, there are a couple of further resources I use.

  • Convertkit to run my newsletters and email marketing campaigns ($80/month).
  • Zoom pro for the live sessions and recordings ($50/month).
  • Canva for creating slides ($15/month).
  • Slack for communication (even though I’m considering moving to a different platform, such as Circle or using Maven’s newly inbuilt platform).
  • A second screen, a high-quality webcam, a ring light, and a solid microphone.
  • Clickup to do project management of everything required for pre-launch, launch, running the cohort, and strategy.

And lastly, I have support from brilliant Eszter Brhlik, who supports operations, project management and leads our sales strategy.

What you can take away from this:

Building and running a cohort-based course requires different subskills and some tech tools.

Spend time researching the infrastructure that works best for you. Then, think about the people you need to support you (marketing, sales, creating course material, student support).


What’s Next

Building this course has been one of the most rewarding learning experiences of my life (apart from teaching kids at a school).

I hope you will find similar enjoyment and financial success in building a course your student will love.

May you enjoy your journey as an online creator 🙂


Want to feel inspired and become smarter about how you learn?

Subscribe free to my Learn Letter. Each Wednesday, you’ll get proven tools and resources that elevate your love for learning.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: cohort based courses, Editing, Writing

The 5 Best Platforms to Create Your Cohort Based Online Course

August 2, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Teachable & Co belong to the past. Here’s what’s next.

Photo by ConvertKit on Unsplash

Whether you’re a serial course creator or entertaining, the thought of launching your first online course — cohort-based courses will likely disrupt the way you teach.

Platforms like Teachable, Podia, and Kajabi belong to the past. Say goodbye to course design that ignores social and active learning.

Your (future) customers don’t acquire new skills by consuming pre-recorded content. Learning is at least a three-step process: acquisition, encoding, and retrieval.

That’s why learning by doing is much more powerful than learning by watching. These platforms will help you create and sell learner-centric courses that help your customers master the skill you teach.

1) Teachfloor

Teachfloor combines all the tools you need to build a cohort base course. The platform equips you with a curriculum builder, Zoom and Stripe integrations, e-mail automation, a course landing page, calendar scheduling, on-demand videos, and peer-review opportunities.

Teachfloor offers a vast course creator academy with 24/7 support in 50+ countries. With more than 3,000 clients, Teachfloor belongs to the more seasoned platforms.

After a 14-day free trial, pricing starts at $49 a month (billed annually).

Screenshot of Teachfloor’s landing page by the author.

2) Maven

Maven is a very new cohort-based course platform started by the founders of Udemy, altMBA, and Socratic.

In a podcast interview, Maven co-founder Gagan Biyani shared how they aim to revolutionize education and replace universities with a more individualized approach to education.

Pricing is not displayed on their website. If you want to create a cohort-based course on their platform, you must apply to their course accelerator. In an intense 3-week program, you build and get feedback from a cohort of top-notch instructors and coaches.

Screenshot of Maven’s landing page by the author.

3) Virtually

Virtually provides all tools you need to run your online learning program in a single place.

Features include analytics, life conferencing, payment processing, calendar management, auto-attendance tracking, assignments and grading, student records, and content libraries. Plus, Virtually has integrations with Zoom, Slack, Stripe, Google Sheets, Airtable, Circle, Zapier, and Google Calendar.

According to their website, creators such as Ali Abdaal and Tiago Forte built their courses with Virtually.

If you join the beta, pricing is $50 a month for your first 250 students and $0.25/month for each additional learner.

Screenshot of Virtually’s landing page by the author.

4) Graphy

Similar to Teachfloor, Graphy is an all-in-one platform to help you set up your live courses, grow your community, and monetize your knowledge without any barriers.

Yet, Graphy doesn’t include features or integrations for asynchronous communication. Instead, they built a tool similar to Zoom that can be used for online live teaching.

The platform doesn’t charge upfront. They make money only when you make money with a flat 5% platform fee only on successful enrolments in your courses.

Screenshot of Graphy’s landing page by the author.

5) Classcamp

Classcamp is a mobile-first, interactive learning platform for creators. Unlike the other platforms, your brand will serve as the center for the learning experience.

Features include the option for pre-recorded or live lessons, fan assignments, submissions, and reaction videos.

The platform launches in September, but you can already sign up on their website.

Screenshot of Classcamp’s landing page by the author.

Excluded Platforms

While researching this article, I stumbled upon a few sites that were recommended as cohort-based-course platforms. Yet, upon further review, I found these sites to be misleading.

Airschool

Airschool is a course creation tool. As a creator, you start a landing page and launch with them, then share the link with your community. Initially, I found their claim to “Sell Courses, Make Money!” a bit sketchy, but the team reached out and clarified all my doubts. The tool is free to use but charges 9.90% of the product’s price if it’s priced higher than $30.

Airtribe

Airtribe aims to help the world’s top instructors start cohort-based courses which are live, engaging, and community-driven. While the claim sounds promising, the platform is very early-stage, and it’s not clear how Airtribe intends to achieve its goal.

Disco

Founded in 2020, Disco helps creators build live learning experiences. It comes with integrations to Stripe, Mailchimp, and Zoom. From their website, the exact features and the pricing are not listed yet. Similar to Maven, you can apply to get creator access to build your own course.

Eduflow

Eduflow is a well-established collaborative learning platform. I didn’t include their solution in the list, as they targeted higher education and corporate training. For example, they don’t have payment provider integrations, and you’d have to go with the $400/mo subscription to add your personal branding to the course.

TopHat

Founded in 2009, TopHat provides an all-in-one teaching platform purpose-built to motivate, engage and connect with students. TopHat offers interesting features (e.g., interactive textbooks, simulations, testing as a tool) but is targeted at higher education institutions.


Conclusion

Most educational video content is available free — learners watch content on YouTube 500 million times every day. But while the means for learning online are abundant, community-based experiences are scarce.

The list of online creators who successfully scaled their business by running cohort-based courses is long:

  • Tiago Forte with Building your Second Brain
  • Li Jin with The Creator Economy
  • David Perell with Write of Passage
  • Ali Abdaal with Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • Will you be next?

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: 🧱Transforming Education Tagged With: cohort based courses, education, elearning

How Cohort Based Courses Can Help You Master Any Skill You Want

July 28, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


MOOCs are dead. Here’s what’s next.

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

Having access to content is not enough to master a subject. Learners ace a skill via direct practice of the skill they’re trying to master.

In 2011, people believed massive open online courses, so-called MOOCs, would revolutionize online learning.

Yet, data from Harvard University and MIT revealed three devastating data points against these courses:

  1. Completion rates. Only three to four percent complete MOOCs — a rate that hasn’t improved in the past six years.
  2. Retention. Only seven percent of MOOC learners start another course after their first year.
  3. Accessibility. While MOOCs promised to bring high-quality education to all corners of the world, only 1.43 percent come from countries classified as “low” in the Human Development Index.

As a result, the future of education doesn’t belong to MOOCs any longer. Instead, a new model emerged. Whether you’re a content creator or a lifelong learner — here’s how Cohort-Based Courses can help you master any skill.


What are Cohort-Based Courses?

In Cohort Based Courses, so-called CBCs, a student group moves at the same pace through the same curriculum. Typically, CBCs include a mix of life lessons, remote assignments, and peer learning.

If you ever attended school, you’re familiar with cohort-based education. Schools and universities rely on cohort learning models — students take the same lecture, assignments, and tests simultaneously.

Both have in common that you don’t pay for the content’s quality. Studying with free videos can teach you as much as attending universities or CBCs. What you pay for is the likelihood of completing the learning track and achieving the desired outcome (e.g., land a job or acquire a specific skill).

Why CBCs Are Better Than MOOCs

Socrates tutored two learners at a time; a MOOC scaled learning up to 100,000. With CBCs, the teacher-student ratio increases, and relationships are at the core of the learning process again.

If you want to master a skill, access to instructors will help you stick with the course.

A study found interaction with instructors affects MOOC learner retention directly. CBCs use online tools like Zoom or Slack to give feedback and help students complete the course.

“Active learning works, and social learning works,” said Anant Agarwal, founder, and chief executive of edX, in an interview with the New York Times.

Seth Godin’s altMBA, a cohort-based online MBA, supports this fact with a completion rate of 96%. Other CBCs report, the completion rate is up to 85%.

Building relationships with instructors and peers, plus the limited time factor, is a way to force yourself to complete a course. Through more teacher-student and student-student touchpoints, you’re more likely to hold yourself accountable.

The Distinctive Learning Features

There’s more to CBCs than the tutoring and completion ratio: collaboration and community.

While you go through the course, you interact with your peers. Thus, learning is not one-directional (teacher to student) but also bi-directional (student to student).

Through regular collaboration, you form a community. You network with like-minded people from across the globe. As you follow the same learning goal, these relationships can be very powerful.

If you join a community of future data scientists, this network can give you access to opportunities and resources in the future that will enhance your career.

How You Can Distinguish Average from Great

You don’t absorb information and knowledge by consuming content. Instead, learning is at least a three-step process — you acquire, encode, and retrieve.

Learning by doing is much more powerful than learning by watching. When you pick a course, evaluate whether the curriculum design will help you achieve your desired outcome. Here are key features to look out for:

  • Real-time feedback on learning progress.
  • Assignments that are directly linked to your desired skill.
  • Structured access to a subject-specific community.
  • Evidence-based learning design, e.g., spaced repetition features and testing mechanisms.

7 Promising Cohort-Based-Courses

Here are seven courses you might want to consider:

  1. Career Advancement
    Reforge teaches the systems and frameworks that help you take the next step in your career. CBCs include product management, marketing, and growth strategies.
  2. Writing (Beginner level)
    Ship 30 for 30 teaches online writing through active learning. You will establish a writing and publishing routine with 500+ other writers.
  3. Writing (Advanced level)
    Write of Passage helps you develop a process for cultivating ideas and distilling them into writing.
  4. Knowledge Management
    Building your Second Brain can support you in saving your best ideas, organizing your learning, and expanding your creative output.
  5. Video Creation
    Minimum Viable Video is a 5-week live cohort that helps you creating and publishing professional videos that move the needle.
  6. EdTech, NoCode, Deep Tech, Scale, and More
    In 2021 Be On Deck launches 120 cohorts of 25 programs. They attract top talent to accelerate your ideas and careers, surrounded by a world-class community.
  7. Youtube
    The Part-Time YouTuber Academy teaches you how to grow your YouTube channel from 0 to 100,000+ subscribers and transform it into a sustainable, income-generating machine while keeping your day job.

In Conclusion

In a podcast interview on the future of education, Udemy founder Gagan Biyani stated how in 2009, nobody believed in online learning. Since then, everything has changed.

Apart from MOOCs, like EdX or Coursera, other EdTech solutions emerged. Platforms like Udemy or Skillshare created marketplaces for online education. Teachers competed with keywords and content and shared their earnings with the platform.

Then followed a third iteration: direct-to-customer solutions, such as Teachable, Kajabi, and Podia. On these platforms, online educators bring their own audience while keeping most of the revenue.

The new iteration towards CBCs is more student-focused than any previous solution, and it’s one of the most effective ways to master skills online:

  • Accountability through communities and instructors helps learners follow through when things get hard.
  • Because CBCs are outcome-focused (e.g., mastering a skill, landing a job, growing an audience) instructors focus on the how instead of the why.
  • CBCs help learners build skill-relevant communities that will support them in their future endeavors.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: 🧱Transforming Education Tagged With: cohort based courses, education, elearning, Ideas

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