How To Create an Online Course – A Complete Process for Success

By Jeff Cobb.  Last Updated on January 22, 2024

Individual typing on a laptop

I hear quite often from readers that it is difficult to find high-quality information on how to create an online course. There is a lot of information out there about how to sell online courses and about the various online course creation tools and online course platforms that are available. But most of what you find if you search on “create online course” is pretty basic.

So, how do you take your ideas and actually turn them into a successful online course experience?

I’ve heard about this need enough from readers – and seen so much fluff advice out there – that we decided it was time we wrote a comprehensive article on the topic. So, that’s just what this is: a complete process for how to create an online course…successfully!

First things first …

Everything written in this blog post is based on the assumption that you have at least one online course topic or course idea in mind; and that it is one in which you already have the subject matter expertise and know-how.

We’re also assuming that before you jump into course creation, you have good reason to believe there is market demand and a target audience for the online course you plan to create. If that’s not true, you will benefit from taking steps like validating your market to make sure you actually have students enroll before jumping into online course creation.

Once you are ready, though, what follows will give you everything you need to design, create, and sell courses online – and not just any online courses – profitable online courses; successful online courses.

Think of this blog post as a mini-course on how to build an online course—a starting point in how to take your great idea for creating an online course through the course creation process to start your online course business.

Best Online Course Platforms

If you are wondering what the best platforms are for course creation and selling online courses, here’s our quick list. (More on the best online course platforms here.)

  • Thinkific – Best standalone platform; great for solo edupreneurs, small businesses
  • LearnWorlds – Very close runner-up to Thinkific – and a better choice if you create SCORM-compliant online courses.
  • Kajabi – Best all-in-one platform; run your main website and course site together
  • LearnDash – Best WordPress course platform options; for those who want to keep it all in WordPress
  • Talent LMS – Best small business-extended enterprise option for more complex needs and business-to-business course sales

Disclosure: We are supported by our readers, like you. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. You can read our full disclosure here.

Create Online Course: The A,D, and DIE Approach

After the past couple of years of people flocking to online learning, expectations in online course marketplaces are higher than ever. The days are gone when you can just talk over some slides or point a video camera at yourself and expect that to result in a high-selling, profitable online course. So, what does it take to turn your first course idea into a profitable online course?

In short, design matters.

It doesn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel any more than necessary. There are, as you might guess, already very established and widely used market research tests and approaches for how to design an online course.

Arguably the most established and most widely used is ADDIE, which stands for:

  • Analysis
  • Design
  • Development
  • Implementation
  • Evaluation

We won’t bore you with a detailed discussion of each of those elements. The basic idea is that you figure out what issue really needs to be addressed and for whom (Analyze), you come up with an effective approach for teaching people how to address the issue (Design), you build it (Develop), have learners go through it (Implement), and then figure out how well what you built addressed the issue (Evaluate). If you see room for improvement, you begin the editing process by going back to step one.

It’s hard to argue with the basic logic of ADDIE, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.

The main issue I have with it is that, traditionally, too much faith tends to get placed on the initial Analysis and Design stages. As a result, online course creators tend to over-invest in the Development and Implementation stages and it takes far too long to get to the Evaluation stage – where, more often than not, you will find significant potential for improvement.

So, I follow a modified ADDIE process to creating an online course outline, which can be laid out as follows:

Analyze

  • Determine the major positive outcome you seek to help your learners achieve while being very clear about who your learners are and why the learning outcome is important of them.

Design

  • Map out what the learner will need to do to achieve the major positive outcomes and the methods you will use to facilitate learning. Determine the types of activities most appropriate for helping learners acquire or develop the knowledge, skills, and/or behaviors you have identified.

DIE (Develop, Implement, Evaluate)

  • Assume that you have gotten parts of the Analyze and Design steps wrong. Develop the minimum viable version of your target learning experience as your course material and test it with target learners—this is the market testing phase. Gather feedback and revise the course experience. If necessary, test it again with target learners. Only after an appropriate number of DIE cycles do you develop a full “go to market” version of your online course.

Now, this may not seem like a huge departure from ADDIE, but lumping the last three parts together and treating them as a rapid test-learn-repeat cycles can really make all the difference between a ho-hum (or outright “fail”) course and one that is a tremendous success.

A,D, and DIE with an Example

Now let’s look at these steps in more detail. As we do this, I’m going to reference an online course I am currently designing as an example. The course topic and working title for the course is “How to Select the Right Platform for Selling Your Online Courses.”

Analyze

man writing analysis on a clear screen with graphics
Analysis – The create online course success key

Your “Major Positive Outcome”

In the analysis phase, you want to make sure you are crystal clear about what I call the “major positive outcome” you are trying to create, why, and for whom. From these points, you will develop your course focus statement.

Start by asking yourself, “What positive, meaningful change will I empower my learners to achieve? Then state your answer as clearly and concisely as you can. Spend some time refining and editing, as needed, so that you get it down to a single, compelling statement.

Here’s my statement for my platform selection online course:

I will empower aspiring course entrepreneurs to identify and select an appropriate learning platform with maximum confidence and minimal stress.

Notice the key elements of this statement.

What?

First, it clearly states what learners will be able to do once they finish the course: identify and select a learning platform.

Who?

Next, I have identified who the learners are: aspiring online course entrepreneurs. This is not a course for corporate trainers or academics: it is a course for entrepreneurs, people who are subject matter experts and want to sell online education.

What’s more, it is not a course for seasoned course entrepreneurs – i.e., people who most likely already have a course platform: it is a course for people aspiring – i.e., who are just beginning their journey as course entrepreneurs, and possibly as entrepreneurs in general.

The “who” is extremely important because it helps you determine the scope, level, and tone of the content that will go into the course. In my case, I’m going to stick to foundational topics because I can safely assume that most of my target audience will not have a lot of “prior knowledge” (official learning theory term) about online course platforms and would only be confused or distracted if I get into advanced topics like learning analytics or psychometric testing.

Because my target audience is made of entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs I can also assume, with reasonable confidence, that most of them are not going to want a lot of academic language or rambling information about the theoretical underpinnings of my course.

Why?

Finally, the course focus statement statement implies a compelling “why” by incorporating the concepts of “maximum confidence and minimal stress.” I know from a lot of interaction with Learning Revolution visitors that choosing a platform stresses people out and that most people just don’t feel all that confident when making a choice.

The power of getting your focus statement right up front really can’t be overstated. It will – as the name implies – help ensure that you truly focus your efforts and develop the right content, for the right people, and for the right reasons. Only with your focus statement right can you start to identify the right structure for your course.

To arrive at your structure, you need to break your major positive outcome down into its e

Breaking Down Your Major Positive Outcome

The power of getting your focus statement right up front really can’t be overstated. It will – as the name implies – help ensure that you truly focus your efforts and develop the right course content, for the right people, and for the right reasons. Only with your focus statement right can you start to identify the right structure for your course.

Image of a hand holding a molecule
Breaking down your positive outcomes and course structure is essential for successful online course creation.

To arrive at your structure, you need to break your major positive outcome down into its essential sub-elements. If that is starting to sound a bit like a chemistry lesson, that’s because it kind of is. Think of your major positive outcome like a molecule that is made up of multiple atoms.

That’s how most major positive outcomes work, after all. They don’t result from just a single action or behavior, they result from the synthesis of multiple actions or behaviors.

In the case of my platform course, these include:

Understanding what a learning platform can do

  • What is reasonable to expect, what is not? I’m keeping my “who” in mind here – most of my learners are going to be novices.

Understanding why and how to develop clear objectives

  • I know from a lot of experience that many selection processes start going off the rails at the very beginning because the objectives are poorly, if at all, understood.

Understanding what “requirements” are and how to generate and document them

  • Most of my existing audience will not have had much experience with selecting complex technology platforms. They probably aren’t all that familiar with the concept of requirements or how you create and use them.

Understanding how to find and narrow the choices

  • What I am teaching is fundamentally a decision process. Having covered the objectives – i.e., what making a good decision will ultimately achieve – it is now important to understand how to identify the best alternatives for achieving the objectives.

Understanding how to vet the choices and make the final decision

  • Once alternatives are identified, learners need to feel competent at comparing the alternatives in a meaningful way and making a clear, rational decision.

Now, there are plenty of other areas I could cover in an online class about selecting a learning platform. I could, for example, add in a whole section about e-learning industry standards. Or, I could talk about the different approaches to designing and programming your own platform. Or a few ways you could benefit from a learning management system, … well, the list goes on.

Covering any of these areas might give me a nice ego boost by showcasing how much I know, but they are far from essential areas for my target learners – they would not contribute meaningfully to the major positive learning outcome. Which leads to a fundamental rule of successful online course creation:

Do not teach everything you know. Teach only what your learners need to know to achieve the major positive outcome.

So, at this point, if you have followed the advice above, you have refined your course topic and developed your online course outline. This includes your course focus statement and you have broken your major positive learning outcome down into the components that will make up your online course. Hopefully you are starting to feel like you have a fairly clear roadmap that will guide you in how to write and create an awesome online course.

Now it is time to start filling in the details.

Design

As you may have noticed, we have already taken a significant step toward design by breaking the major positive outcomes into sub-elements in the previous phase. (Instructional design purists may quibble that the sub-element break down really belongs in the Design phase. Let them quibble. I think it is an important part of Analysis, and most of the purists never sell online courses anyway.)

Tightly crumpled and rolled paper on a sheet of paper with a lighbult displayed on it
Breaking down your online course design – a core part of how to build an online course

At this point, you will want to:

  • review each of your action/behavior areas and clarify the learning objective(s) represented by each
  • break down each of these areas into the sub-elements that will support achieving the learning objective (just as you broke down your major positive outcome into sub-elements)
  • For each sub-element, identify appropriate media (e.g., text, recorded, discussion board) and instructional activities

Let’s look at each of those areas a little more closely.

Review and clarify learning objectives

Depending on how well you have stated your learning actions in your course outline above, you may or may not need to do much work in this area. It’s easy to get bogged down when addressing learning objectives – it’s a topic academics love to debate – but all you really want to do is make sure that:

  • there is a clear objective (or objectives) for each of the action/behavior areas you have outlined
  • that you have some reasonable way of determining that the objective has been achieved – for example, by testing your students
  • that the objective truly contributes in a necessary way to the major positive outcome for the course

So, look at each of your action/behavior elements and ask:

  • have I been clear about what the learner needs to achieve here?
  • how would someone know the learner has achieved it?
  • is achieving it really a necessary part of achieving the overall course goals?

If I look at my third element above – “Understanding what ‘requirements’ are and how to generate and document them” – my responses to the above questions would be:

  • Yes (Of course, there is debate about whether a word like “understand” can really be used as a learning objective. If you really want to dig into that debate, I highly recommend this video on learning objectives from Dr. Will Thalheimer.)
  • Good: by having the learner identify well-stated vs. poorly-stated requirements Better: requiring the learner to provide reasons for identifying requirements as well or poorly stated. Best: by having the learner generate and submit requirements for my review and feedback.
  • Yes, this is absolutely essential. Well-stated requirements are essential for identifying the right technology.
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Breaking objectives down into sub-elements

In most cases, it will be possible to break your objectives down into elements that contribute to achieving the objective. For example, if I want my students to understand what requirements are and how to generate them, it will most likely be useful to:

  • Explain what requirements are and how they are used in a selection process
  • Explain how objectives are used as the basis of requirements
  • Provide examples of clear, objectively stated requirements and contrast them with ones that are not
  • Illustrate what can happen when requirements are not clear and objectively stated

Remember my analogy above? At this point, you have broken that molecule down into atoms and the atoms down into electrons, neutrons, etc.

Not into chemistry analogies? Then think of your course like a book. While you definitely should not be creating an online course that is little more than a book, it can nonetheless help to think of your course structure for your course curriculum as: Course Title | Chapter Titles | Sub-Chapter Titles | Sub-Chapter Bullets.

Again, keep reviewing all of this to make sure only what really needs to be there is there.

Identify appropriate media and instructional activities

We’re now getting into the area that hangs many would-be course creators up when trying to create an online course. Many are convinced that online courses need to have a lot of video in them, and for a variety of reasons they just don’t feel comfortable shooting a lot of video. Or, they have heard that successful online courses have to be highly interactive and assume that means they have to have video-game level programming.

The fact is, there are nearly always multiple instructional methodologies – combinations of media (text, video, audio, etc.) and activities – that can be used to achieve a learning objective when it comes to online school. And there is not always clearly a “best” methodology. That means you have options, and many of those options can be quite straight forward and low tech. Some key rules of thumb to keep in mind when determining your teaching style are:

  • Make sure the activities and media are truly appropriate for what you want the learner to achieve. This will help by protecting your budget – and time – and also make sure you are not simply distracting the learner with unnecessary or – worse – ineffective course elements
  • Include a mix of media and activities for imparting knowledge in your courses. Doing this will help both you and your learners by keeping them attentive and engaged and it also helps to reinforce learning by engaging different areas of the brain.

Let’s once again look at some of the elements in my example course and see how the above points play out.

For my first sub-element above – “Explain what requirements are and how they are used in a selection process” – my student will mainly need is information. This is an instance in which it is appropriate for me to simply lecture – i.e., tell them what requirements are and how they are used – but as part of this lecture, it will be valuable for me to show them what well-crafted requirements look like.

So, for this element I may use a combination of text and images (media) and require them to read (activity). Or, I may use video (media) and require them to watch (activity). There are other possibilities, but there is also no need to over think it.

At this point, I am aiming for a relatively low level of learning – i.e., basic comprehension and absorption of facts. I don’t need to over-engineer and, in fact, throwing in anything but the most basic facts and examples may be distracting at this point and thus hinder the online learning process.

On the other hand, when I move into the other elements – for example – “Provide examples of clear, objectively stated requirements and contrasts them with ones that are not” – there is almost no way that learners will fully “get it” without some opportunities for apply and practicing the information that I provide. I’ve actually already hinted at some of the possibilities above. My media and activities here might include:

  • An auto-graded quiz – have the learner identify well-stated vs. poorly-stated requirements
  • A teacher-graded quiz – require the learner to provide reasons for identifying requirements as well or poorly stated.
  • Graded “homework” – have the learner generate and submit requirements for my review and feedback

Obviously, the options present trade-offs between your learning and your business goals. The first one is most scalable from a business standpoint, but least effective from a learning standpoint. And the reverse is true for the third one.

These are the types of trade-offs that, in my opinion, the best course entrepreneurs will really take to heart and try to resolve in favor of the learner to the greatest extent possible. For example, if you really want a highly scalable course model, then you will put significant time into crafting quiz questions and automated feedback for option one above that help make that approach as effective as it can be.

(As a very important aside, a key part of choosing the right learning platform is having some understanding up front of the media and activities you will likely want to use and vetting platforms to figure out which ones best support your learning and business goals.)

Now, I’ve stuck with pretty common media and activity combinations above, but there are, of course many, many possibilities, and I encourage you to explore them as part of making your online courses more effective and making them stand out in the course marketplace.

Learning Activities

For suggestions for learning activities, I suggest starting with:

Telling Ain’t Training by Harold Stolovitch

Telling Ain't Training by Harold Stolovitch - book cover
Telling Ain’t Training by Harold Stolovitch

Harold runs through a long list of instructional activities in chapter 8 of this book (which I highly recommend, in general). While most of these are geared toward face-to-face training, most of them can also be adapted to online training with a bit of imagination.

The Thiagi Group

Thiagi Group website showcasing different types of puzzles
Interaction puzzles at Thiagi Group website

You’ll find a wealth of games, activities and other resources on this website. Again, these were mostly developed for the classroom, but can be translated to online school easily in many cases.

As a general rule, for any information you are teaching online in a course, strive to provide activities – even very simple ones – that support the learner grasping and retaining that information. Support their learning journey by making it into something he or she can actually use in every day life/work.

Now, D.I.E.

Equation where the combination of lightbulbs and gears results in a bar graph
Arguably the most established and most widely used is ADDIE, which stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation.

So, we’ve just devoted quite a lot of space to just two letters: A and D. I believe this is appropriate because I’ve seen from experience that these two areas – analysis and design – rarely get enough attention outside of professional instructional design circles.

Course entrepreneurs, in particular, often do little more that regurgitate all of the information that they have amassed with little attention to refining their objectives, much less providing appropriate activities to support those objectives.

Of course, the downside of devoting so much attention to analysis and design is that you may be tempted to over think and, as a result, become a victim of “paralysis by analysis.” And absolutely nobody wants that so you’ll need to resist the impulse.

Really, the opposite should happen: everything I lay out above is, when you really think about it, glaringly obvious and logical. The key to a successful course is simply to focus, roll up your sleeves, and do the work to:

  • identify your major positive outcome
  • identify the elements that are truly necessary to support it
  • ruthlessly prune away everything else
  • align appropriate media and activities to your course elements

Simultaneously, you need to stay aware of VERY important facts. Namely,

You don’t have to get it right!

In fact, it is almost certain you will not get it right. Paraphrasing what has been said about business plans (which rarely survive their first encounter with actual customers), few course designs survive their first encounter with actual learners. So, this is where the “DIE” part of the formula comes into play.

Piloting Your Course

Once you have your basic design and online course content together, you don’t just head into full-blown course creation to start selling it immediately. Rather, you do as I have suggested before: you pilot your course.

You can read about piloting here, so I won’t cover at length in this post. The main point about piloting to make here is that it is an approach to moving rapidly and flexibly through cycles of the development, implementation, and evaluation phases of ADDIE.

To stay with my example, I’ll note that I have piloted the platform selection course in a couple of ways. First, I have run webinars devoted to the topic in which I have walked through an abbreviated version of everything I describe above. I have also run a more full-blown multi-week program with live webinars and assignments in between. At this point, I’ve had enough experience with the content and with actual learners to feel confident in putting together a (mostly) self-paced version of the entire course.

Marketing Online Courses

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the importance of ongoing marketing as you’re developing your online course. As you’re going through the iterative process and fine-tuning your course, you should also be thinking about how you will market your course and what your anchor sales page will include.

Here are some things to keep in mind related to marketing in the piloting stage (and beyond):

  • Your social media presence – Ideally, you should already have a social media presence where you’re able to reach and interact with prospective learners. Whether you are active in Facebook groups, have a large following on Twitter, or have an established network on LinkedIn, the more interaction you have with social media followers, the easier it will be to market and sell your course.
  • Your ability to be seen as the credible subject matter expert in your field – Think about how you can showcase your expertise. Maybe you’ve written a book or published research in your field. Or maybe you should consider creating a simple free course or free training you can offer as a lead magnet to get learners interested. Whatever the case may be, you’ll want to put that front and center on your sales page for your prospective audience or use it as a lead magnet to cultivate interest.
  • Your landing page – Make sure you’ve done some keyword research to see what language your prospective learners are using when searching for a course so that your sales page is discoverable to your audience. Reach out to a core group of your audience and get their feedback to see what resonates with them on your landing page and make any necessary tweaks. (For more on landing pages, see How to Create Landing Pages That Convert.)
  • Your potential for an affiliate program – Monetizing on your course doesn’t have to come solely from your online course sales. You can potentially earn a solid passive income with an affiliate program. Thinking about where you might be able to suggest additional products or services to your audience in the piloting stage, which can give you insight into what may be successful further down the road.

Platforms and Tools for Creating Online Courses

technology hand reaching to shake human hand
Many online course platforms are built to assist in creating your success

As suggested above, I am an advocate of keeping it simple when you pilot an online course. As you move beyond the pilot phase, however, you will like want to consider course production and delivery options beyond a webinar platform. In case it is not clear already, the options you consider should be driven by the design decisions you made during the process outlined above.

If, for example, a high degree of interaction with your learners is essential for the success of your course, you’ll probably need to find an online course platform with strong discussion board capabilities. If not, you’ll want to create an online community on your own website or perhaps use a Facebook group to keep students engaged.

Similarly, if “show and tell” type video is an essential learning element, then you will want to find screen recording software that fits your needs. The bottom line is that there is no single best online course builder – it all depends on your learning goals and your business goals.

Given that I have written about online course software and online course platforms in a number of other places, I’ll wrap up this post by pointing to some of those other places for additional guidance:

Online Course Authoring Tools

You can create an online course using any of the platforms I cover in the next section, but you need additional tools and know how to create the course content that you put into those platforms.

Also, you may really want to consider specialized online course authoring software to help make sure your courses do not get held hostage by your delivery platforms and that you have as much flexibility as possible for selling to businesses.

I cover various categories of tools in my free Learning Revolutionary’s Toolbox, including:

Online Course Software

These are online course authoring tools that are usually much more feature rich than what you will find in the standard online course platform. They also empower you to create your courses according to major e-learning standards like SCORM.

An individual crafting user flow strategy on sticky notes
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Screen Recording Software

Software for screen recording or screen casting will enable you to make videos of anything on your computer screen – so for example, you can show your learners how to complete specific tasks. You can also film yourself and/or capture yourself narrating to PowerPoint slides. For my money, this is one of the most essential tools that any online course creator can have. The one I most recommend is Camtasia.

Camtasia Studio -Screen recording software in action
Camtasia studio screenshot

Video Production Equipment

Naturally, you are going to need to be able to create videos if you want to create online courses of the type that people expect these days. It pays to invest in a basic studio set-up so that your videos will be as professional as possible.

basic studio set up
A basic studio set up. (Credit)

Platforms to Host Online Courses

The following lists of online learning platforms and learning management systems will help you find the perfect platform for selling and delivering your online course.

To help you sort through the decision process, I strongly recommend that you download my free course platform selection guide.

How to select the right platform - Book jacket
How To Select the Right Online Course Platform by Jeff Cobb

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I create an online course?

Online courses offer a multitude of benefits beyond simply conveying knowledge. They serve as potent tools for establishing your expertise and enhancing your brand recognition. In most instances, they provide a more scalable approach to knowledge dissemination compared to traditional teaching methods, such as public speaking or classroom-based instruction. Additionally, depending on your approach, online courses can generate a passive, continuous revenue stream for your expertise-based business. If you provide other knowledge-based services, such as consulting or coaching, online courses can effectively diversify your portfolio and minimize reliance on a single income source.

Are there course creation services that build courses for you?

Yes. Two options we recommend are courseCREEK and Fiverr. Our partner courseCREEK is a top-shelf option for experts who want a team of seasoned entrepreneurs to help them create, launch, and monetize their courses. Fiverr is a great option for entrepreneurs who want to be able to access different types of help as they need it along their course creation journey.

What technical skills are required to create an online course?

The technical skills required to create an online course will vary depending on the complexity of the course and the platform you choose to use. However, there are some basic skills that are essential for all online course creators. You should be proficient in using the internet, screen recording, web conferencing tools, and basic video editing.

If you don’t have the technical skills needed, there are online courses available where you can learn them.

Course Creation Final Thoughts

We live in a time when the opportunity for online course creators is huge. That doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon. In fact, the opportunity is likely to grow significantly in the coming years.

That said, the days when you could just throw a few narrated PowerPoint slides online and call them a course are long gone. Competition has increased and learner expectation have increased as well. The good news, though, is that most course creators will not take the time and make the relatively small effort described here to boost the quality of their online courses.

So, take what I’ve advised in this article on how to create an online course to heart, put the advice into action, and claim your spot as the go-to course provider in your niche.

If you have questions or comments, submit them in the comments area below.

Jeff

See also:

Head shot of Learning Revolution Founder Jeff Cobb

Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution

Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.

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