With the rapid use in most online technologies, training and education like most industrial sectors have achieved a sudden boost in growth. From flexible course timings, refined course delivery to tracking, the wonders of the ed-tech industry has taken the world by storm.
Mostly available as cloud-based solutions, the e-learning tools have paved the way for the best course creation marketplace. Another reason behind this overwhelming popularity of the eLearning industry is because the Yester year’s way of storing data cannot cope up with the increasing content of the educational institutions.
Also, since you can access the online courses from any electronic devices, including mobiles, laptops, tablets and PCs with a stable internet connection, the number of enthusiastic learners are increasing with each passing day.
How to Create a Course Online?
Online courses are here, and if they remain as successful as they are currently, they are going to stay for at least a while now! And therefore if you can chalk out a business strategy revolving around the eLearning courses, you might earn considerable profits.
If you want to create an online course, follow these simple steps:
- Choose the course topics
- While choosing the subject, ensure that it has a crazy demand in the market
- Make sure your course is informative enough so to make compelling learner outcomes
- Gather and organize your course content
- Chalk out your lesson plans
- Recording videos and designing the courses
- Setting up your e-learning platform, in the form of website or app
- Launching marketing campaigns
How to Market an Online Course?
There are numerous ways to market your freshly created and launched online course; some of the tactics are explained here.
Know your audience
Before you start developing the content of your course, you should keep in mind the avatar of your learners. This will also help you while marketing personalized messages to your target audience.
Identify your USP
There are numerous online courses available in the marketplace, then why would learners choose your course in the first place? Therefore, you need to determine a unique value proposition and include it in the marketing messages and sales pages.
Create a catchy course title
Choosing a course title which often appears in the search engine is also a clever marketing tactic.
Starting a youtube channel
After google, youtube is the most-visited search engine and therefore if you manage to spread the word about your business over there, you would start generating leads almost immediately.
Adding student testimonials
Often we tend to choose products and services having more positive feedback, and thus if you request your satisfied learners to write their experience of using your services, you can put them in your sales page, and it would add in more to your revenue.
10 Free Course Creation Platforms and Marketplaces for Instructors
If you think to create your website then you might think that creating your online eLearning website and then designing and arranging courses and lessons might be much hard work, then you should consider the solutions of the following course creation tools.
Udemy![]()
Udemy is an LMS which operates by connecting learners with instructors. It assists in helping learners study various topics and explore their areas of interests. While students in exchange for the knowledge they are acquiring are paying fees, instructors are earning money for their great efforts.
Features
- Course marketing– with the help of this platform, instructors can brand and promote their courses to the target audience.
- Email campaigns– another effective way of marketing, supported by this platform is by sending emails to the right audience.
- Search, and discovery– instructors can also improve the searchability of their course in Udemy by taking assistance from the product team.
- Retargeted ads– These ads are sent over to students who have visited your website and viewed your courses but did not purchase.
- Course quality checklist– You can assess the quality of the course of an instructor by running the course through the course quality checklist.
Pricing – There are three pricing plans offered by the vendor, free plan, $24/month plan, and the enterprise plan charges you based on the specifications you want from this software.
Pluralsight
If your organization aims to create and deliver courses at the fastest time possible, while bridging technology gaps, then Pluralsight’s solutions would be quite helpful to you. The solutions empower business owners to keep track of the changes in expert courses and the analytics help in skill assessments.
Features
- Built-in LMS – Now you can forget about taking care of technicalities of your platform, as the expert team would do everything for you.
- Certification management – It is one of the best course creation tools which enables you to give certificates to your learners.
- Mobile learning – The platform is mobile and tablet friendly.
- Interactive video content– Users can add in quizzes and videos to make learning exciting.
- Customization– Users can customize every component of the platform.
- Reporting tools– Users can make use of it and track their business performance.
Pricing – The company does not reveal the pricing of the plans.
Linkedin Learning
This online learning platform helps organizations in scaling up learner engagement, thereby helping them develop their skills. World-class experts teach the courses available over here, and the library always remains updated with the latest industrial happenings.
Features
- Customization- Users now have the option to customize their eLearning platform as well as their courses the way they like.
- Analytics– With the help of advanced analytics, users can see an overview of the progress of their business.
- Dashboard– Users can interact within the platform with learners by navigating various options through the centralized dashboard.
- Internationalization– Regardless of the language of your courses, you can sell it to learners locating in other parts of the world, and speaking different languages.
Pricing – To know about the pricing, contact LinkedIn Learning directly.
Skillshare
One of the few free course creation platforms, Skillshare is created for the benefit of both teachers and students. The USP of the platform is its project-based classes, and if you want to develop project-based online classes for your learners, then it is perfect for you.
Features
- Offline viewing- For premium learners, you can enable offline viewing of your courses for the times when internet connectivity is low.
- Free classes– If you want to publish all or some of your courses for free for those who cannot afford to buy courses.
- Learning materials– Users can upload high-quality learning materials in the form of ebooks and lectures.
- Class creation– The classes supported in this platform are not one-to-one classes. Instead, they are aimed to offer a shared learning experience, and therefore users have to set the class creation and timings.
Pricing – There is a free trial version, and the paid premium plan charges $12/month or $8/month annually.
Treehouse
Treehouse is a popular MOOC provider. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses. If you want to create IT-based courses, then better take the help of the experts of the industry, Treehouse. It is another free learning platform like Skillshare, but the courses available are inclined to IT and software.
Features
- Numerous courses– A vast number of educational resources are available.
- Coding– The coding experience that the learners extract while learning is enriching.
- Usability– The ease of navigating through the course creation tool is quite impressive.
- Simplistic– The entire platform is kept simplistic, and even the landing pages only have a few necessary buttons.
Pricing – The basic plan starts from $25/month, and the ‘Pro’ and ‘Techdegree’ plans start from $49/month and $199/month respectively.
Code School
Code School, now acquired by PluralSight, is an online learning platform developed for beginners and amateurs wanting to build their careers as coders. Courses are designed in a way to give it a storyline so that learners will feel that they are playing a game, and not studying coding.
Features
- Extensive library- The deep and enriching library of courses would amaze any code fanatic.
- Video tutorials– Courses are formed in a way to make learning fun by embedding in video tutorials.
- Screencast– In case users want to check out industry trends, choose the screencast.
- Free courses– A good count of courses have been kept free so to spike up the interest of even non-coders.
Pricing – There is a free version, and above it, there is one plan priced at $29/month.
Coursera
To facilitate best quality education from the world’s top educators, Coursera has built its eLearning platform. It offers courses for both individual learners and organizations, and even encourages students to take up classes for free.
Features
- User-friendly platform- Students need not have to elbow grease to navigate through the courses and lessons
- Peer graded assignments- Majority of the courses available over there works by assigning tasks to the learners and ranking them based on their performance.
- Free courses- There are numerous free courses which upon completion, even awards certificates to the learners.
- Studying specializations- Not only classes, but you can also apply to learn up entire specializations and get certificates for it.
Pricing – The company has not provided pricing information for any of its plans.
Udacity
Students and employees looking forward to learning cutting-edge technology solutions would find the platform of Udacity quite helpful. The course involves hands-on-training from industrial experts, besides delivering technical guidance.
Features
- Organized– The lessons are in perfect order to accelerate your learning process.
- Suitable for beginners– Learners who are in new in the tech industry can significantly benefit from these courses
- Tutorials– The hand-written tutorials are excellent, and learners can surely be able to improve their concepts.
- Practical exercise– The notes and the exercises are designed, keeping in mind the industry requirements.
Pricing – Pricing information not revealed by the vendor.
edX
Unlike other eLearning platforms, edx is a non-profit organization, solely created to educate enthusiastic learners. It is founded by some of the leading universities of the world, including Harvard and MIT. The academic content delivered by the platform is high-end.
Features
- Video lectures- You can play video lectures even through Youtube and can also download for future references.
- Audit and certified courses– Courses are available both with and without a certificate, and you have to decide which version you will study.
- Academic credit– There are a few MicroMasters courses which enable you to score credits for US universities.
- Format– Navigation might seem complicated at the beginning, but with the time you will get used to it.
Pricing – The service provider has not disclosed the pricing.
Code Academy
The initiative has been started by hackers to offer coders a chance to the best at their game. If you want to learn coding that goes through in building an entire website, then you can check up the platform and find some courses to match your interest area.
Features
- How to code- It is the best platform to teach you to code a website from scratch.
- Code testing– You would not have to download any 3rd party plugins to test your code; you can do that right on this platform.
- Simplistic– The simplistic design and the UX will surely win you over, and you can learn almost any programming languages in vogue today.
- Free account– Even if you register yourself with a free account, you can still learn the basics of coding.
- Examples– There are a ton of cases and practice sets given to polish your coding skills.
Pricing – If you are eager to register with a paid account, you will have to contact Codecademy directly.
Conclusion
Whether you are passionate to teach courses as an instructor or create and sell courses to learners, you will always find something relevant for you in the course creation marketplace. For the ones who are looking to generate income out of their eLearning platform without having the expertise to design it, would get professional help from some of these course creation platforms mentioned in this list.
If you are selecting a tool to launch your course, consider your earning potential, budget and not to forget, the current online trend. When starting anew, it is recommended to let the experts work their magic into building your platform and create your courses. After that, if you feel you own all the skills necessary and even the technicalities, then you can give it a go and launch your platform.
I and my team research various e-learning platforms and can help you choose the right toolkit to get you started. I am just a mail away, so reach out to me if you want to tap into the power of online learning business. mail: [email protected]