In this episode of Your Best Writing Life, Linda Goldfarb and Thomas Umstattd Jr. discuss why and where authors should start Creating Online Courses. Plus common mistakes writers easily make.

Learn the first steps an author should take before creating a course, the common mistakes course creators make, how to attract students to your course, how to help your students benefit the most from your course.

LInks:

• Author Websites Course





• Book Launch Blueprint Course





• Obscure No More Beta Course

Here is the blog version:

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Welcome to Your Best Writing Life, an extension of the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference held in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. I’m your host, Linda Goldfarb. Each week, I bring you tips and strategies from experts in the writing and publishing industry to help you excel in your craft.

Today, we’re discussing creating online courses. My industry expert is Thomas Umstattd, Jr. Thomas, the founder of Author Media and the host of the Novel Marketing Podcast. Thomas helps authors build their platforms, sell more books, and change the world with writing worth talking about. He has also been creating online courses for ten years, making him the perfect fit for today’s topic.

Why are online courses so popular now?

Linda: Online courses have recently taken off in popularity. Why is that?

Thomas: Learning online has been a part of the internet from the beginning. But online courses grew as people got faster internet connections and could listen to audio and watch videos. The real explosion came during the pandemic in 2020. People were locked down, conferences were canceled, and a lot of people tried online courses for the first time in 2020. That’s when the market took a massive step forward in terms of people’s acceptance of online courses. Their children were going to school online, and online learning became almost normalized.

Online learning is here in a big way, and it’s here to stay.

Linda: I agree it’s here to stay. It’s a new normal that has infiltrated families and homes. Everyone has a device to learn from online courses. Zoomers make this a popular new process for everyone.

Why would an author want to create a course?

Thomas: In short, the money is a lot better, and the transformation is better. If someone reads a book on dieting, they may or may not implement what they learn. However, if they take a course that includes interactive elements like coaching and community, they are much more likely to apply what they’re learning and finish the course. People buy books on various topics all the time but never finish them. Sometimes, they don’t even start reading, and if they do, they rarely put the information into practice.

That’s one of the main reasons I became interested in creating courses. I wasn’t seeing much transformation from people who only read books, partly because they weren’t as invested. A book might cost around $20, which isn’t a significant amount of money, so there’s little motivation to finish it or act on its contents. For many people, buying the book feels like enough, so they end up with bookshelves full of unread or partially read books.

By contrast, a course, particularly one that is expensive, requires a higher level of commitment. The cost itself creates a sense of investment, which makes people more determined to complete the course. And since courses tend to be interactive and offer more than just words on a page, participants are more likely to apply what they learn, which leads to the transformation they want.

How can we track our return on investment when we pay for a course?

Linda: When we talk about the financial investment of wanting to expand our knowledge by taking a course to improve our craft, how can we track the return on that investment?

Thomas: Tracking return on investment is a pretty straightforward financial calculation. You track how much money you spent on something, and then you track how much that activity brought back financially. Education is a little tricky because how can you measure the value of a high school diploma? What’s the value of a college degree?

I took some classes in business school that were invaluable. They saved me from multi-million-dollar mistakes. I also took some useless classes that cost me the same amount of money. The good professors and the bad ones were all the same overpriced amount of money. College is incredibly expensive. Even when I went to school years ago, my textbooks alone cost $300, and the price of education has only increased since then. Today, some college degrees aren’t worth the investment. Many liberal arts degrees, for example, don’t provide a return that justifies the cost. If you look at the data, degrees in engineering or nursing are still solid investments, but degrees like art history often leave graduates struggling with debt. Many art history majors never earn enough to comfortably pay off the loans they took out to finance their education. When pursuing a career-focused degree, it’s important to consider how the earning potential of that new career compares to your previous one.

When I was considering getting an MBA, the university provided information on the ROI for their programs. The ROI for the executive MBA program was significantly higher than for the regular MBA program because, in the executive MBA program, you could continue working your day job. In contrast, leaving your job for two or three years to attend a traditional MBA program increases the overall cost. Not only are you paying for tuition, but you’re also missing out on the income you would have earned during that time. That creates a lot of financial pressure.

Let’s say you take a simple course on how to build a website. You take the course, and it’s $100, and you spend $300 on building the website. Now, you’re $400 invested in the website. Hiring somebody to build the website would have cost you $2,400. So, that course had an ROI of $2,000 of saved money. But really, it’s more than that because since you’ve built your website, you now know how to make changes to it, and you have more control of it. You don’t have to call someone.

On the other hand, that professional probably would have done a better job. A professional web designer has more experience because they’ve built hundreds of websites. They know how to avoid things that you didn’t learn about in that course. So, it makes it hard to judge. What’s better, spending less money and getting the experience plus control or hiring the professional? Learning about business is important because you’ll have to answer those kinds of questions, and often, there are no simple answers.

Linda: I ask because many people will hold back and wait for that perfect opportunity. Most of the time, there’s no perfect situation. But if we don’t take action—if we don’t invest in a course or take steps toward improving our lives or building that website we dream of—then we’ll stay exactly where we are. And who has time for that?

I love online courses. I may be addicted to them. I determine my return on investment by which course is applicable right now for my next best step. It narrows my field a little. I used to want to sign up for everything, especially if it had a good price on it, but I’d find I wasn’t ready to use the information. I do like courses that offer lifetime access because I can come back to the course when I’m ready for it.

What are the first steps a writer should take to create a course?

Thomas: The first step is to master your content. You need to practice presenting what you’re teaching in public. Having a podcast is the most natural first step for creating a course because it allows you to get used to creating multimedia content. A YouTube channel also is helpful because you can practice teaching via video.

Choose a method that allows you to build both your audience and your credibility. It’s tempting to jump in too quickly by creating a course before anyone knows who you are or trusts your expertise. You could develop the best course in the world, but if you don’t have an audience or a way to spread the word, no one will take it. As a result, no lives will be changed, and you won’t make any money.

The quality of your course alone isn’t what sells it; it’s the quality of your other content that drives sales. The first step is to establish yourself by blogging, podcasting, or creating YouTube videos. Focus on providing valuable conte