How To Launch a Mini Course in 30 Days or Less

Creating an online course can take a lot of time, and there's nothing worse than putting a lot of time into building an online course and then having it not sell. I know this from experience. I built 6 online courses before I was able to make one that sold by itself, completely hands-off. And I wish that I knew this early on, but the best solution to make sure that doesn't happen to you is to start by creating mini courses. Mini courses are great because they take way less time to build, and you can start creating multiple different mini courses that build multiple income streams for yourself. So you can start making money in your business a whole lot faster. And then when you find out the topics that are really working, you can double down and build a full-fledged online course. So today we're going to cover mini courses and specifically how to build and sell and launch a mini course in the next 30 days or less. Let's dive in. Before we get into the content, I do want to offer you something awesome that's really going to dovetail and connect nice with today's piece of content. And it's a 5-step sales copy formula that I use in my own business. This guide is going to be extremely valuable because it actually gives you examples of copy that you can use, and it's kind of like Mad Libs, so you can just fill in the blanks and it'll give you just a way better idea on how to actually build a sales page that is successful. Because if you see sales pages they can be really overwhelming just to look at them. There's like these massive pages, but when you break it down into small chunks and just focus on putting small chunks together, then you end up having a really nice sales page that is like one of those big sales pages. And the biggest thing is that it's gonna convert, and that's what I want for you. So pick up the 5-Step Sales Copy Formula to effortlessly sell your digital products and coaching online. To get the guide, just go to profityourknowledge.com/copy. There's also a link down in the description. So let's dive into the first bit that I want to cover here, and that's the difference between a mini course versus a full-fledged online course. A mini course, what I usually recommend is making a mini course around 5 to 7 videos, or if you think about time-wise how long it should be, you want to aim for right around 2 to 3 hours. You could even get away with an hour-long course. What matters more is that your mini course solves a single specific problem that your audience wants to have solved. Better that you understand your audience, the easier it is to actually give them products that they care about because you know what they care about. It becomes a game of just putting square pegs into square holes. You want to find a single specific problem that you can solve for your audience that they want to have solved and break it down, the whole problem basically, into 5 to 7 steps. And that's what each one of your videos are going to be, okay? It should be right around 2 to 3 hours. If you make 5 to 7 videos, 2 hours or so would be right around 20 minutes of videos. Okay, it may sound like a lot. You could even break it down to 10-minute videos as well. That works totally fine. But when it comes to actually pricing a mini course, a good range would be right around $50 to $100 or $47 to $97. That range is nice when you start getting a good amount of traffic too, where you can still make some decent income even though it is a low-ticket offer. But it's also going to weed out problem customers. Okay, when you start going underneath $50, you can start getting people that want more refunds and things like that. An online course, a full-fledged course, is going to be right around 10 to 20 videos, I would say. There's no like hard rules, just kind of giving you a ballpark idea. It's more in-depth than a mini course. Full-fledged online course should be right around 8+ hours long. Okay, I'm not going to put a cap on this because it depends on what the online course is actually about. An online course still solves a specific problem for your audience, but it's a lot more in-depth and it can even cover multiple different components. For example, I have a course called Effortless Income that helps you sell digital products and coaching online. Inside of that, I have multiple different sections or modules, if you will. And if you hear that term module, people think that a module is the actual lesson or the video that you watch, but it's not. A module is a collection of videos. Okay, so if an online course has 5 modules or collections of videos, A mini course is just gonna be one of those collections of videos. A mini course is just a lot shorter and it's more specific. An online course in terms of price will be, you know, there's no hard cut rules, but what I'd recommend is somewhere between $150 or $147 up to $997 or $1,000 plus. Now let's talk about building your actual mini course content. What I always do every time I build any kind of course is write out the outline or the structure of the course on a Google Doc. It always starts on a Google Doc or a piece of paper or Microsoft document, whatever you wanna use. Reason that we do this instead of just building videos and things is that we really wanna make sure that the structure is right and the order of the videos makes sense to give this person the right kind of transformation that we want them to experience from going through our course. It's also gonna be great for you to not just write out the videos or the content ideas, But you can even write down the 3 key points that you want to cover for each lesson or each video. If it's a mini course just about getting into shape and maybe nutrition is just one of the videos, you can come up with a catchy title for that. And then you can say, I want to cover like boom, boom, boom, these 3 different points inside of that video. You want to make sure that the structure makes sense and that it's just, it's a sequential order for the person when they actually are in the course to just follow along. That's really what it is, solves that specific problem in a sequential order. So you're laying it all out right now in that document. I would say give that like a week. Creating your outline is like laying down the foundation of a strong and healthy house. It's the first thing that you're gonna do to really set you up for success with everything else that you do. 'Cause you have that structure, you know exactly what the content is, and then it's just about executing and upload. One thing that I really recommend with online courses just to up the value is that you can create PDF worksheets. Let's say if you had 5 videos about nutrition, you can have 1 PDF worksheet for each video. That's 1 idea that just kind of walks them through to help them get the most out of that video and make your online course a bit more tangible. Another idea is that you can build a 30-day course blueprint to go along with your course. Now I have a 90-day course blueprint in my Effortless Income course. For every module, there are action steps inside each module or section of the course. For example, if we're talking about getting traffic. There are action steps on how to set up their traffic source, whether that's a blog, podcast, or YouTube video, come up with a content schedule, like all that stuff. So all they need to do is just read it, take action, and then check off the box so they can get that satisfaction. That was a rhyme. If it's just a mini course, I would say a 30-day course blueprint is great. The reason I have a 90-day is because it's just a lot bigger of a course. So when it comes to actually filming your course, you can honestly whip out your iPhone. It is crazy the level of quality you can get on an iPhone or an Android, any kind of phone. And there's this really cool feature if you do open up your phone called Cinematic Mode, if you have at least a newer iPhone. And what that does is it blurs the background for you to make your video look more cinematic. And you can literally film your course content straight from your phone. If you wanted to, you can get a little tripod or something, hook your phone up to it, and then record yourself. If you don't want to use your phone, all of my online courses, they're all built in Apple Keynote or PowerPoint or Google Slides. I used to use Apple, so I use Keynote and they have presentation mode and you can record it. And it's really cool because you can see what slides are coming up next. And then also in PowerPoint, you can do the same thing. You can have presentation mode, which is what I use now, uh, is PowerPoint because I switched over to PC. Filming your course should take right around 1 to 2 weeks. This part of the process does take a bit of time because you have to film it. You're going to have mistakes probably. And then you also have to edit your videos unless you're just a complete animal and you can do one take and then call it good. If you really want to get this thing launched, then go ahead, just do one take, get it up. That's what you're going to do. Create your outline, add your worksheets, a 30-day blueprint, and then just film that content. But plan it all out ahead of time. That's paramount. It's going to be super big for you. So what we want to do in terms of selling your mini course, if you really want to make this process as easy as possible for yourself, then I would highly recommend to pick up Kajabi. If you just go to kajabi.com, you can pick up a 14-day free trial straight from their website. So you get 2 weeks to try out the software. But if you do use my link, you're gonna get a 30-day free trial. So launching this mini course in 30 days or less, that's actually what I teach you when you use my link because you're gonna get a 30-day free trial. You're also gonna get instant access to a course that I created specific to Kajabi called Kajabi Kickstart. That is gonna walk you through how to build and launch your course with video. and it's just screen shares really using Kajabi. So you can really get the most out of Kajabi. If you end up signing up with Kajabi, you end up paying, uh, through my link. There's no extra charge by any means. Whether you use my link or just straight through Kajabi, if you sign up just straight through them, there's no difference for you. The only difference for me is that a small portion of your monthly or yearly investment that you make comes over to support me and this channel so I can keep showing up every single week and supporting you with as much content as I can to help you succeed in this online world. So if you wanna check out Kajabi, I'd highly recommend to at least just give the 30-day trial a try. And you can go through their website too. But if you want to get twice the amount of time plus a course that walks you through how to maximize Kajabi from someone who's been using it for the last 3 years, then check out my link. You can go to ProfitYourKnowledge.com/Kajabi. There's also a link down in the description. Inside Kajabi, it's just the best because you can build products, you can have email sequences, you can have sales pages and landing pages. Your website is completely built. Kajabi is the all-in-one platform for knowledge creators and people who want to sell the things that they know online. Just makes it so much easier because I could, I could spend a whole entire episode talking about all the different tools that you can use, but just check out Kajabi because your life is going to be easier. If you wanted to, you could use ClickFunnels or LeadPages to build out your sales page. You could even build in Google Docs if you're really short on change. I've seen people do that. They build out an entire sales page just inside of Google Docs with a couple buttons and then it goes over to a checkout page for their course. But inside of Kajabi, you won't have to worry about that. Your checkout pages, everything is already in there. And what's even cooler than that is inside of Kajabi, you can actually do a one-click sales funnel where you literally just click a button, name your funnel like mini course, and then click create, and it gives it just a couple minutes, and then it actually is gonna build your entire mini course system for you with emails and everything. And you're going to be off to the races. Okay. All it comes down to is just kind of plugging in the information for your product. So it makes it super easy. And I show you all of that inside of Kajabi Kickstart when you use my link. When it comes to actually creating a sales page, this is where I'd recommend that you pick up that 5-step sales copy formula that I told you about in the beginning. Again, you can go to profityourknowledge.com/copy to pick this up. The formula that I have used and has really worked for me is to come up with a headline. That's gonna be step number 1. Headline is the first thing at the top that captures someone's attention. And then when you scroll down, you can introduce yourself. You really want to address the pain that this person is feeling. You're getting into shape or you're helping people get into shape with your mini course, address the pain that they're experiencing and just really dive into it because it's one thing to help them like experience that frustration again and really just put a magnifying glass on it. But even more than that, it helps them feel that you understand them. And then they feel heard and they're more likely to actually invest in your course, your mini course. Don't shortcut that part. A lot of people, they just kind of blast through the pain portion and they just blast through that and go straight into the offer. And then their offer is super big. Addressing that pain, the problem that they're experiencing, you want that to be like two-thirds of your sales page. Like it's going to be a big part of the sales page, more than your offer. Okay. People think it's just about the offer. It's not. It's about understanding your audience and letting them know that you do understand them. And that's what that whole section is about. So you got your headline. And then you address the pain or the problem. And then we transition into introducing your offer and just explaining what your offer is. This part is really cut and dry when it comes to your offer. You're like, here's the solution. Then we go into social proof and a guarantee, which is huge for actually converting people into buyers, having some sort of guarantee. Again, in the guide, I walk you through how to actually set that up and why it's important. And then at the end, we want to paint the dream. You can call this future pace as well. You're just saying basically you have two options. You can either leave and not invest in this, or you can invest in this and get the kind of results that you want. Sales is nothing more than you finding the problems that people have. And then when you understand that really consistent problem that someone has, if you're studying your audience, you find the, the trending problem, the thing that most everybody is experiencing, and that's where you're going to build your mini course around. Sales is really just you creating a solution for them and then offering them that solution. I get you. I understand your frustration. Here's a solution that I created for you that's going to work. And you can have some social proof of people that you've tested this with to show people that this does work and it's going to work for them because that's what they're wondering. They're like, okay, you get— I get that you understand my pain. Is your solution actually going to work for me? That's what people really care about. That's really all it is, finding the problem, solving it for them, and then them getting that problem solved. They just have to give you a little bit of money, which is like $50 or $100, which if it really solves their problem, is not a lot of money. That's definitely worth every penny. It's one thing to just talk about it right now when I'm sitting here with you, but for you to actually sit down and just decide that I'm going to build a mini course, I'm going to understand my audience, I'm going to solve their problem. The way I'm going to solve that problem is in 5 to 7 videos, and I'm going to charge $50 to $100 to give people the solution. And that's really all it is when you build out the mini course. Just write it out on an outline first. You have the structure. You know exactly what content you're going to build, and then you can even write out each lesson in depth if you want to do like a script or something. But I just like bullet points and then just film it. Use your phone. Like, there's literally no excuse to get this done. You could just pull out your phone. It doesn't matter if it's an iPhone or an Android or anything. As long as people can see you and they can hear you, that is all that matters. Put a little time into that. Come up with a couple of worksheets that just give them some bullet point, little check, checkmarks, action steps that they can take. Once you get it filmed, then upload it to Kajabi. Ideally, I'm never going to bother diving into other tools because we could talk again a whole, whole day about that. Check out Kajabi. Use my link to get a 30-day free trial to try it out. You can even build your mini course in that 30 days and then launch it with my link and the course that you get involved with it. If you do sign up with Kajabi using my link, then I'm going to give you a one-on-one coaching call as well where we can review your sales copy. We can dive into the actual content itself and see if there's anything that you want to do to adjust your course to make it a bit more streamlined. Or your copy as well on your sales page. Okay, I'm here to help you. If you end up signing with my link, that is my gift to you. Profityourknowledge.com/kajabi. And to get the 5-step sales copy, down in the description, uh, it's profityourknowledge.com/copy. Okay, so 2 links down there for you. Try them out, use it yourself, see what kind of results you can create for yourself when you really buckle down. But the biggest thing that's going to make this work for you is just deciding that it is going to work for you. I know you can do this. I believe in you. If you got value from today's episode, leave me a comment, please, down below. Give me a thumbs up just to let me know that this was valuable for you. And let me know a core takeaway, what really stood out for you in today's episode. Okay, that's all I got for you. I hope you have an amazing day. I will see you in the next one. Mm-hmm.