Lauren Bateman says your first course should be free: a small crash course of 5 to 10 lessons that delivers a quick win, like learning a song in 14 days. It builds trust, lets people try your teaching risk-free, and collects emails for selling paid courses later.
I firmly believe that this is the first course that course creators should have, and it is a free crash course. The biggest mistake a lot of course creators make and content creators is that they try to sell something without having an audience. All right? So if you are building a YouTube channel, you're building your content, you're trying to build this email list, you need a way to collect those emails. So my recommendation is to make a very small mini course, something that's maybe five to 10 to 10 lessons that helps people get a big win within 30 days. It's just one of those aha moments. It's a quick fix. So for me, my free guitar crash course helps people learn to play a real song on the guitar in 14 days. Okay? My YouTube crash course helps people define their niche and get started with YouTube in 30 days. I have these programs because it allows people to interact with me. No cost, no risk to them. It helps me build a relationship with them. It helps them get to know me, my teaching style, and test out if it's a good fit. It also allows me to build my mailing list so that down the road, I can market to them later. So the first course you should make is a free course so you can start building a mailing list, because down the road, you'll have an audience to actually promote your first course to and make sales.
