MBA1020 Q&A Wednesday: How do I create an online course on a budget?

Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that gives you the answers you're looking for to make your business better every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar is at home. I'm also the co founder of the hundred dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100 MBA. And today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from you, one of our listeners. Today's question is from Derek and Derek asks, how do I create an online course on a budget? I don't have much cash, but I have something to teach that I want to offer in a video course. I like to charge for this course. What do you suggest? Don't worry, Derek, we got your back. I'm going to show you how to create and launch your course for $0. Really? There will be some costs, some minimal costs in the coming months, but to get started, to actually have it out there for sale, you could do it for very little to no money. I'm going to show you how in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode of the $100 MBA show is supported by Earth Class Mail. If you run a business, you need a business address, but it doesn't mean you need to open up a business office. You can work from Home and Earth ClassMail can hook you up with a business address and scan all your mail and upload it to your account in the cloud so you can check all your physical mail anytime, anywhere. I love it. I love it. I love it. And we use EarthClassMail because we love it so much. And Earth ClassMail wants to hook you up with a free month to get started. Just go to earthclassmail.com mbamonth again, it's earthclassmail.com mbamanth use coupon code mbamonth. Alright, so Derek is asking how he can create an online course, a video course on a budget. I'm gonna walk you through it right now. But a quick note, if you have a question you want to ask for Q and A Wednesdays, just email me over at Omar MBA Net. I would love to answer your question here on the show. All right, so Derek wants a video course. He wants to sell it, so he wants to offer it to the world. How can he do this with very little to no money? All right, let's talk about what you need to create and sell a online course, a video course. Well, first of all, you need some content or you need some videos. So I'm going to explain to you how you can shoot some videos on a very low budget even. I'll show you an option where you can do it for absolutely no money and it'll still be high quality and it will look pro. Two, after you have your videos, you need a way to be able to upload them somewhere so people can watch them. And, and you need a system to deliver these videos to people when they purchase. Right. So you need an actual website or a page where they can consume these videos, whether they're different modules or different sections in your course, you need a way to accept payment. And of course, you need a sales page. You need a page where you're offering this course and showing people what the course is all about. That's really enough for you to get up and running. You can use your email address for customer support, but that's really the bare bones you need to have these things so you can be able to offer your course and charge for it. All right, let's talk about creating the videos themselves. So first of all, if you have a smartphone, your camera is incredibly powerful and with the right lighting can look incredibly pro. If your smartphone is, you know, within two to three years old, it's probably better than most DSLRs were five years ago. So, you know those DSLR really like fancy cameras you see on shoots, your smartphone is probably more powerful than the latest DSLR five years ago. So the point here is, is that you can use your phone as a camera. So if you want to be in front of the camera and teach, use your smartphone. You can get a tripod on Amazon for very, very little, maybe five or ten bucks, or hey, you can prop it up with some books on a desk. But the most important thing to lookpro is great lighting. So make sure you have some great lighting shining towards you. If you don't have great lighting, a great tip is to shoot with a open window in front of you. Now, the window itself doesn't have to be open, but you want some sunlight shining on your face. This will give you some natural light, some even light, and make your videos look great. So I recommend you get close to the camera so you're like kind of shoulders up one, because a tighter shot will look better. And number two, if you're using the onboard mic on your phone, the closer you are to the phone, the better the audio is going to be. So that's option number One, you can shoot videos with your smartphone. You can download them to your computer and you'll have those videos there. You can even edit some of these videos on your smartphone, depending on any kind of editing apps you have on your phone. You can edit videos with your iPhone for free. Or you can use some editing software that you have on your computer already. I'll mention them right now. What kind of software you might just have sitting on your computer right now that will allow you to edit them? One, if you have a Windows computer, Windows Movie Maker is free and it's easy to edit with that number. Two, if you have a Mac, QuickTime has a free editing tool as well. You can trim your videos from the top and the bottom and you can make them look pro. I recommend you keep your videos short so that you can have a good take. The longer the video, the more mistakes you're going to make, the more time you're going to spend on editing. Now that's one option. Option two is you can just do a screen grab video screencast. That means you're just recording what's on your computer screen while doing a voiceover, while talking over what's on your screen. So this can be a tutorial of a software that you're using, a tutorial of how to use some sort of website so you're actually recording your computer screen navigating to that website. Or if you're teaching something completely different that's not online. You can just use your slides like PowerPoint or Keynote. Open up PowerPoint, Keynote, create some slides that you can talk over and record your screen as you're going through the presentation. Again, super, super simple, super free. And you can make it look great with fonts and colors and transitions and images and all that stuff. There are a lot of courses online that use this method where they screencast, screen record and use slides as their visual aid. Again, you can edit it with QuickTime or Windows Movie Maker. Now that you have your videos and they're saved on your computer, what do you do with them? Now, there are a lot of options when it comes to selling an online course, using an online course platform, all that kind of stuff. Now, the least expensive way to do this is uploaded some online course marketplace, something like Udemy. Now, full disclosure, Udemy is a sponsor of the show, but you can upload your courses, create courses with Udemy and pay nothing to get started. Udemy will take a percentage of your sales, but you're not paying anything upfront. So you can actually sell your courses online for Free. They'll take care of payment processing. They'll give you a page where you can market the actual course and you'll be listed in their course library. So if somebody's searching your keywords, they'll find your course. So the whole software and the way to deliver it and worrying about memberships and all that kind of stuff is taken care of by Udemy. So that's one option. You can definitely do that. Now if you want your own kind of place in the Internet, your own kind of website and your own little membership area and you don't want to be part of a marketplace, there are other options. The option that comes to mind that I believe is great for getting started, especially if you're on a budget, is Podia. And that's Podia. I know Len and Spencer over there from Podia. Good guys. I know the software, it's super solid. And they have a 30 day free trial, no credit card required. So you have no excuse. It's so simple just to get started. So your first 30 days you can make money and not have to pay any money. And even when you have to pay money, their plans start, I believe at $40 a month. So very, very inexpensive. They take care of everything from your video hosting to giving you a way to charge for your courses via Stripe. Even your sales page and all that stuff is included. They even include some email marketing as well. Podia is not a sponsor. We're not affiliated with them anyway. I just know the guys behind there. I know the software and I know that they currently have a 30 day trial, no credit card required. So it's a good way to get started. If you want your own little space in the Internet and you don't want to be part of a marketplace for some reason, check out podia.com I got more on today's Q and A Wednesdays episode. But before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. Do you want to start, grow or scale a business? Of course you do. That's why you're listening to this podcast. You might be ready to launch a new product, enter a new market or build out your sales and marketing strategy. Whatever your goal is, the Self Journal will help you plan and implement it. This comprehensive success tool is designed to help you achieve your goals by organizing your day for success. Inside, you'll discover goal templates and weekly planning pages to structure your goal into a 13 week plan. This helps you keep track of your progress. With the daily templates, you'll be able to prioritize your tasks Schedule your time and make each day productive, positive and high performing. Who doesn't want that? The truth is, is that business information and knowledge can only take you so far. You've got to implement what you learn. That's how you build a successful business. So if you're ready to bring your business to the next level, check out the self journal at Bestself Co 100 MBA and you'll save 15%. Again, that's the Bestself Co 100 MBA and save 15%. So Derek asked how you can create and sell an online course on a budget and I just outlined some very, very simple ways to do it for pretty much nothing. But what it will cost you is time and effort. You gotta roll up your sleeves and make it happen. We live in a world where we got plenty of tools to make it happen for for pretty cheap. So if you're listening to today's episode and you're just like Derek who wants to launch an online course, a video course, but are strapped for cash, now you got a formula, now you got a strategy. Take it and run. Your course doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be long. It's just got to be. It's gotta exist. It's just a good idea to get started and start selling your course. Why? So you can start making a profit, Learn from the experience and create a better course the next time around or create a next product or a membership area or coaching or whatever it is. But you got to make that dollar. You got to make that sale so you know what people actually want and are willing to buy. Thank you so much for listening to the hundred dollar MBA show again. If you have a question you want to ask on Q and A Wednesday, just email me@omar mba.net I would love to answer your question here on the show. Speaking of online courses, we have a course called Easy course over at EasyCourse co. It's a $500 course, but you can grab it for free. Yes, free. All you gotta do is leave us an itunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Every Friday we do this draw and somebody who's left us a review wins and wins free access to this $500 course on how to build an online course. It walks you through day by day for 30 days to make sure that you can actually launch that course. And once you leave us an itunes rating and review, you enter the draw for every week in the future until you win. It's our way to say thank you for leaving us itunes rating interview. Pretty cool. Alright, before I go, I want to leave you with this. Some of the best online courses I've ever taken are short. I want to be able to sit down for maybe an hour, watch eight to 10 videos and learn how to do something quickly. I want to get a win. I'll spend money, I'll spend more money to be able to watch something a less amount of time to get my result. I mentioned once before I'm learning the piano and I searched high and low on the Internet for a great online course on how to get started. And the best course I found was the shortest one. The one that actually gave me a win and showed me how to play my first song. That gave me the motivation to keep on going. And you know what? I started to look at the course creator of that course and said hey, do you have any other courses? And lo and behold, he did talk about having return customers. So keep it short, keep it concise and give them a win quickly. Alright. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care, Sam.