Creating an online course can seem like a huge task. But rest assured—this guide will make things a lot easier for you. We’ll first walk through how to structure your course to keep your students engaged and loving your course.

Always begin with outlining your course. A course contains sections that each have separate lectures. The outline of your course will act as your course curriculum.

But...before you get much further, start selling your course.

Yes, it sounds a bit backwards to recommend this, but the point here is this: by selling your course before you’ve created all of the content, you’ll benefit more from the feedback you receive from your students on the content that does exist. They may say something like one of your videos has a sound issue, or they may want to hear more about a topic you didn’t focus on much.

Good or not so good, the feedback you receive from the first couple sections of your course will maximize your efforts in creating the rest of the course. This allows you to customize the course more towards what your students love—this is a huge value gain for your students. And when they love your course, you’ll know it (think of the raving reviews).

If you’re still not convinced that this is the way to go, let’s address another common concern. What if you never finish creating the course? With the feedback from your first section or two, you’ll gain the confidence that you can create something even better for the rest of the course. And you’ll have the motivation to finish it too—you have students waiting eagerly for your lessons!