The average online course builder won’t meet the needs of coaches and their clients. Coaching Genie was designed to help coaches deliver courses and run coaching programs.
What is an online course builder?
An online course builder is an internet based software that allows you to create and sell your courses to a wide audience. It assists you in transforming your your intangible knowledge into tangible lessons.
Many people walk around carrying a wealth of information, experience, and expertise.
[bctt tweet=”Discovering the ability to create your own course is very exciting. It means you can monetize your knowledge and your experience while simultaneously using it to benefit others.”]
An online course builder is designed to help transform your knowledge on a particular topic into a clearly defined set of lessons that can be autonomously delivered to a student. These builders basically transform the traditional classroom teacher-student model into a virtual environment.
What is the difference between an online course builder and an online coaching platform builder?
The difference between a coaching program builder and course builder is that the purpose of the course builder is to create and sell courses. These courses can be on any type of topic. Many people who are creating and selling courses aren’t coaches. Therefore, the vast majority of course builders don’t fully serve or understand the needs of coaches because they are intended to be a one-directional system of information delivery.
A coaching program builder can also allow you to create your courses, but it also understands that a coach is more than just a content creator. A coach works with humans and has more complex needs from their online system in order to meet the needs of the system users. Coaches wants to check to see how their clients are doing, where they are struggling, and where they are progressing. They need to track goal progress and see proof that their coaching works. It’s much easier to show when the client is keeping track of their progress with easily accessible tools, such as client journals and weekly check-ins. This differs from a course building in which the client or student receives information but isn’t required to engage in any kind of feedback loop as part of the course.
Another feature that course builders typically lack is the ability to customize the coaching path for each individual client, even inside the group. Coaching program builders, such as Coaching Genie, recognize the fact that each client is unique. Although all clients or group members may receive the same content, there will be some differences where a coach can easily customize individual clients, curriculum, and materials based on where that client is right now.
Where can I build online courses?
There are many places to build an online course, such as Teachable, Thinkific, and Udemy. You can also use Coaching Genie to create a course. What I love about Coaching Genie is that you can deliver your content as a course or, with a click of a button, effortlessly turn your course into a high ticket coaching program without doing anything else.
How can I create an online course for free?
Creating an online course does not need to be a time or money intensive project.
You can use a free video platform to record your video lessons. For example, you can use Zoom to record and then you can upload your videos to YouTube – both or which have free capabilities available to you. By using YouTube, you can make each video unlisted so that people can’t just stumble across it and watch your content for free but you can sell it instead and provide the content only to those who purchase it.
Then, if you have any kind of exercises, homework assignments or activities, you can create a PDF document with links and descriptions of each lesson. If you choose to deliver your course as a coaching program, you’ll also want to have a way to create accountability, engagement, and homework assignments. Coaching Genie is the platform that allows you to do all of that.
What is the best online course platform?
There are many online course platforms, such as Teachable, Thinkific, and many others. Most of them offer similar features that allow you to upload content, deliver it to students, and then sell courses that will be hosted on the platform.
To increase the value of your course and increase revenue, you may want to turn your course into a coaching program so students can get access to you, ask questions, get feedback, and feel a sense of accountability. For group programs, clients gain access to the community for additional, ongoing support.
Turning your course into a coaching program allows you to increase the course price by two to five times or more, depending on your topic, because courses are typically priced lower than coaching programs. Coaching Genie offers the ability to easily turn your course into a high ticket coaching program because it has all the features necessary to facilitate that.
Do all course creators include sales pages and landing pages part of their package?
Most course builders do have a simple page for you to describe and sell your course to potential students. Coaching Genie will guide you, for example, through a simple template for building your sales page by asking you about the biggest benefits of your coaching program or course and allow you to set the price point.
Should I use a course builder that includes the ability to deliver content in real time even if I’m not sure I will use that feature?
It is so easy to teach classes in real-time using Zoom, other video conferencing tools, or live broadcast features of social media platform. You can avoid requiring a course builder or delivery platform to have this feature for that reason. For instance, Coaching Genie allows you to simply bring your recordings into the platform and deliver that content over and over if you want.
It is important to use tools that will grow with you, but in this case, there are supplementary tools easily available that integrate into most platforms that I wouldn’t worry about it if it isn’t critical to your counseling program model.
What are the best learning management systems for teaching online to content creators?
Some of the best tools to teach your content online would be Teachable, Thinkific, and similar learning management systems. They’re all great and they have a lot of features for creating courses.
If you are a content creator and you want to leverage, package and monetize your content, Coaching Genie is the best software because you can deliver your content in many formats, from online digital courses and evergreen programs, all the way to one-on-one coaching programs, group coaching programs, and email-based coaching programs. Coaching Genie allows you to create a diversified series of offers from the same content.
Do most course builders require or include revenue share?
Many course builders do not charge to create or host a course on their platform. However, the way they make money is by requiring a percentage of the revenue for each course that is sold. This percentage rarely includes applicable taxes or fees and can vary greatly.
For example, depending on how the sale occurs, an instructor offering a course on Udemy can earn anywhere from 37% to 97% of the revenue generated by their course. The rest of that revenue is kept by Udemy. As you can see, this can make a big difference in the amount you can earn from the course you’ve created.
What do I need to know about transaction fees when selecting an online course builder?
Depending on the monthly fees you will pay to the course builder, you might end up paying extra. Regardless of whether you have a course builder that does revenue share or not, there is still a payment processing fee that can range anywhere between 2% and 15% in any course builder software.
Coaching Genie does not take any money from you when you sell your courses. You are free to use whatever service you would like. The next version of Coaching Genie will allow you to use Stripe to sell courses and you’d be responsible for fees required by Stripe. Coaching Genie does not retain any revenue that you generate.
How can I be sure I use a course builder that gives me the customer support I’ll need?
Many course builders have large teams and are available for customer support online. Some offer immediate online chat support, whereas others are only available to reach through an online contact form or via phone. The accessibility of customer support is important to look at when choosing between online builders for your course.
At Coaching Genie, we take it further. We offer live customer training webinars twice per month where you can ask questions and receive answers directly on Zoom from the support team. The Coaching Genie help desk answers your questions on the day you send them. Our team loves getting on Zoom to show you around and helping you tackle your challenge or your question when email is not enough. We pride ourselves on great customer support. Customers are usually delighted and surprised at how much we care about their success.
What are some ways I can use marketing tools like email marketing and affiliate marketing to sell online courses?
You always want to market to your email list because you own the list and nothing can get in the way of your messaging. When you use social media for marketing, you are at the mercy of an algorithm and other interference methods that determine who, when, and how your message is delivered. By taking advantage of email marketing to your subscribers, who you already know are interested in your products and services, you have a higher chance of selling your online courses to your target audience.
One of the easiest ways to gain financial reward from the use or promotion of a product, including course builders or online course platforms, is through being an affiliate. Affiliate programs are a relationship between you and a merchant in which they pay you for referral links that result in sales of their products or services. For instance, if someone signs up for a service with a merchant using your affiliate link, you will receive a percentage of the sale or a flat fee.
Many merchants, including Coaching Genie, affiliate programs. This means that by simply spreading the word about Coaching Genie, you have the opportunity to generate passive income by supporting products that work for you.
Coaching Genie itself can be used as a marketing tool because you can actually show your potential clients what they’re going to be receiving. It offers a 14 day full experience trial and demo. Clients love having the confidence in what they are buying and when they can see what’s available.
Coaching Genie facilitates and improves the sales process because clients love hearing that they will be able to report on their progress, prepare for their coaching calls, receive training content, and document their challenges and progress through client journals. If it is a group program, they love knowing that they will be in a supportive community environment where everyone, including the coach, can see how they are doing and offer support.
Milana Leshinsky is the author of “Coaching Millions” and “Simplicity Entrepreneurship” and the originator of telesummit. She is also the creator of Coaching Genie, a coaching platform that allows you to deliver coaching programs and scale your business with simplicity. She’s passionate about helping coaches, authors, and speakers leverage their expertise through creating programs and overcoming fear of technology. Milana came to the US as a music teacher from Ukraine almost 30 years ago. When she’s not working on her business, Milana writes music and enjoys Latin ballroom dancing. To learn more, visit Milana’s website at https://CoachingGenie.com
