The Ultimate LMS Guide: How to Create Online Courses? Where to Start & Where NOT!
Master this science & art to create online courses that sell, by learning from the best courses out there. Beware Udemy, TeachableU, Kajabi & Uthena — cause we’re coming your way!
We conducted this research to answer the question: what & where to learn, to master online course success. We reviewed nearly hundred online courses, by over 20 marketplaces and academies of Learning Management Systems (LMS) .
We were challenged by broken links, misleading promotions, outdated content, bias affiliate-based advise, and sometimes by plain simple dullness.
Eventually, we’ve found the holy grail of creating online courses and we are ready to share this with you- the Goldmine of Online Course Success.
Creating Online Courses
How to create, promote, and launch online courses is far from being just a simple question. When such questions arise, most likely a stiff learning curve is ahead, one of which shall be tackled in a clever manner! What to learn and in what order, and where to find this knowledge-base?
Sample Questions (and answers)
Let’s start with better understanding the ecosystem of course creation & LMS. By asking questions, we’d recognize the challenges and assess our level readiness, or perhaps areas of weakness.
Questions re Course Creation
How long shall a course be? (mini course: <30 minutes give or take, flagship course >10 hours); how long shall the course name be? (~40 characters); Shall my audience and course topic be broad or targeted? (targeted, i.e. specific); How many modules / sections shall my course have? (<7); how long shall each lesson be? (2–10 minutes); How to choose my 1st course topic? (conduct a keyword research, and check Udemy’s marketplace Insights); Shall I develop all my courses in the same field? (yes, for marketing effectiveness or up-selling to your audience); And what’s a good validation process? i.e. how to assure that my content is appealing and leads to the intended transformation? Teachable has a lot to teach you about that…).
Marketing & Sales Questions
How to assess the demand vs. supply regarding a certain course topic? Would my course sell itself as I upload it to Udemy or Skillshare or wherever? (most likely not); Should I upload my course to Udemy or Skillshare or keep it solely within my LMS-based school? (your mini-course shall be everywhere, to increase your audience-base and social proof. Udemy and YouTube included); How important is it to build an email list? (it’s a critical part of the sales funnel); Should I blog, or have a YouTube channel, or launch social-media campaigns? (yes and yes, but beware of overspreading your attention); Where shall I host my blog — e.g. Medium, or Wordpress or via LMS such as Podia , for example? (Medium lacks lead magnet, while Wordpress may be complex to setup. LMS-based blogs are limited with design or SEO capabilities, thus there’s no straight answer).
Funnels & Lead Magnet (Kajabi/MailChimp)
Shall I work with Kajabi for their lead magnet, funnel and automation? (not necessarily); How to create email campaigns and automate such funnels? (MailChimp, ConvertKit, AWeber);
EU VAT Collection (Teachable/Quanderno)
Shall I work with Teachable for their unique EU VAT handling and collection? (not necessarily, you could use Quanderno, for example; and regardless, that’s a valid question only when you exceed €100K in revenues).
How to launch and presell my course? (with a 7-day step-by-step pre-launch plan).
Affiliates, Enrollment, Membership, Bundles & Conversion
Shall I work with affiliates? Shall I close the enrollment for my course? (yes, to create a sense of urgency); Shall I sell courses or aim toward a membership site? What about bundling courses to increase revenues? (that’s probably a good idea); Oh, and which LMS provides the most converting course pages or landing pages? (that is certainly a valid question!)
Overwhelmed? Overpower the Challenge!
It might seem overwhelming, but no worries, we got your back! LMS and marketplace academies aim to teach almost everything there is about creating, marketing, pre-selling, launching and selling online courses. All in a well-structured manner. Collectively, such online courses provide interactive videos, text books, templates, roadmaps, workbooks, checklists and what’s not!
The Top-3 LMS Academies
The top-3 LMS schools, in terms of training programs for creating, marketing and selling online courses:
What about Ruzuku, Thinkific, Podia or Other LMS Academies?
With over 18,000 claimed creators, we wish to have listed Podia here. But unfortunately, at this stage Podia does not have a training system in place :(
In contrast, Thinkific which has a training program in place, did not make it to our shortlist of winners. We were badly disappointed with numerous issues regarding Thinkific, including their poor service. At one time, their head of partnerships scheduled a conference call with us, only not to attend. This did not appear as a one time occasion but rather like a characteristic behavior.
Unlike Thinkific, the Ruzuku school should be mentioned positively, as lots of good effort has been put into its training program. However, the Ruzuku course player, page design & course content are outdated.
While many LMS academies make their online courses accessible only upon sign-up for their paid-plans (subject to enrollment with a credit-card), Wistia and Udemy make their official courses available for free. Shall we go ahead and start with the Wistia Learning Center or Udemy Instructor Team courses? Maybe yes! But…
Why Money is NOT to be a Key Consideration?
When selecting an academy, the monetary expense shall be the least of our concerns. Rather, spending our time effectively and obtaining the right insights shall be our main (and only?) priority at this stage. The difference between a good and a bad training program could result in a successful online career, or no such career. The stakes are high!
Developing and selling online courses is a transformation. It would cost us in months of our lives! In the long run, avoiding mistakes in our earlier steps, would prove itself to be invaluable.
In oppose to that, the monetary cost of a training program is negligible, compared with the value it shall provide. If we only knew where to learn…
Point being: we’d rather focus on absorbing the best content, and if we have to pay, that’s totally ok!
Learning Paths — The Options
Where is the best place to learn — Marketplaces? LMS Academies? YouTube?
Learning Path 1: Free Udemy Official Courses
From the perspective of viewing tens or perhaps even hundreds of courses in the field of online courses success, we can say: Most of the Official Udemy courses are great! All of which are free!
With that said, unless you are going to sell courses solely in marketplaces such as Udemy and Skillshare, we recommend that you do not depend solely on education provided by Udemy. The Udemy school is kind of marketplace-centric, which only makes sense.
Rather than relying solely on Udemy as your source of education, we suggest that you also attend a more comprehensive training program, designed for LMS-based courses.
A complete training program would cover topics such as: launching and selling your course, the purchasing funnel, organic vs. paid marketing campaigns, blogging, bundling courses, membership and subscriptions, affiliates, coupons, popup lead magnet, email autoresponder, and characteristics of landing pages which convert.
Choosing your course topic may bring different answers, depending on the course destination. Try Udemy Marketplace Insights for Udemy-based courses. In contrast, for LMS-based courses, you’d rather conduct a keyword research.
Actually, even if you plan to host your course solely with Udemy, most likely your course will not sell itself. Rather, Udemy would support your own marketing efforts by reacting to your course success.
Simply put: you’d rather market and promote your own courses, regardless. Accordingly, make sure to learn how to market online courses.
Pros: Well-structured, good reviews of topics, insightful, intuitive, Free!
Cons: Marketplace-centric, limited topic coverage, some outdated content or raw footage, broken links to worksheets or other downloadables. Production is good, but does not compare with premium courses and productions by Teachable or LearnWorlds.
Bottom Line: Without hesitation, Udemy’s training is worthy of your time.
Learning with Wistia
Yes! As far as Wistia goes, they do offer great free content. While their training materials are insightful and fun to watch, acknowledge that they are not meant to make you an expert in all aspects of course creation! We recommend them as inspiring and motivational tools though.
Learning Path 2: Free & Paid Marketplace Courses
How about attending both free and paid courses at Skillshare, Udemy or YouTube altogether? Theoretically speaking, I could find everything I need for dirty cheap or even for free, so why would I look anywhere else?
Quality of Courses
After reviewing hundreds of online courses, we concluded that most of the videos in the wild are not worthy of our time. Here is why:
1. Sometimes, we may be sold-to indirectly, without even knowing! Affiliate marketing is one such way. Many blogs, YouTube videos, free courses and even marketplace-paid courses are involved with affiliate marketing.
Sometimes content is only a byproduct to the “real” product which is rather indirect income options for the content creator. As a proper disclosure we’d mention that some RNL blogs may have affiliate links, though we do our best to give the most honest advise, through quality content, regardless.
2. We’ve also experienced contents which simply were, how to say? not that great? That would be an understatement.
Let me illustrate through a personal experience:
At one time I wanted to better understand a marketing niche. I was happy to find 24 Udemy courses on the topic, which I was already enrolled to! I reviewed all of them just to learn that neither one was even remotely great :( I had a similar experience searching for SEO content, where I reviewed 39-some courses. In this case I managed to find quality content eventually. Was it worth it though? You can probably guess how much time it took or how much frustration was involved with sorting nearly 50 poor courses…
Structuring a Well-Designed Program: If we managed to overcome the bias out there, and find good courses and content, wouldn’t it be great!?
Yes, it would. And yet, we might not really know what to look for. We could miss on important topics. Building a complete and well-structured training program is not trivial. It’s like putting together a large & mysterious puzzle…
Pros: Getting everything for dirty cheap or even free.
Cons: Frustrating and time consuming. Constructing a training program and finding good courses is not trivial. We may miss key topics or follow a bad advise. A sense of being “sold to” with affiliate links. Unlike premium courses, marketplace courses put less emphasis on practice, worksheets, roadmaps, quizzes, production and strategy.
Bottom Line: Structuring a highly mixed training program - unrecommended.
Learning Path 3: Top LMS Academies
As mentioned earlier, just recently we reviewed a large number of courses re SEO. The research we conducted revealed that top SEO courses are offered by SEO solution manufacturers, including market leaders.
The same holds true also when it comes to LMS: Top courses and training programs are indeed offered by leading LMS providers such as Teachable, LearnWorlds and Kajabi.
LMS academies such as mentioned above offer well-structured programs, which consist not only of “watchable” videos, bad rather provide us with exercises, workbooks, templates, timeline, roadmap, links to other resources and beyond.
Some LMS courses were developed with exceptional investment, not only in terms of money but also in terms of strategy and thoughtfulness. For instance, Video Based Learning by LearnWorlds, blew us away! It really did! The course reviews topics from so many different perspectives or angles. It starts with a TED talk, continues with showcasing a broad range of independent experts, giving a taste of what’s out there, from some of the very best.
Teachable has also invested endlessly in their training program, resulting in the most comprehensive and complete training program we’ve seen to date, supplemented with plentiful of downloadables.
Pros: Premium courses, comprehensive, strategically structured training programs, quizzes, templates, downloadables, focus on your success.
Cons: Costly but not outrageously; what some promotions provide can be unclear; Some important content is lacking (e.g. SEO); Frustration due to promotions which reveal themselves to be expired only upon enrollment! But — We can help you with that :)
Bottom Line: Unmatched premium content by the Top-3 LMS academies: Teachable, LearnWorlds & Kajabi.
Do Top LMS Academies Offer Complete Training Programs?
In one word: No. Most training programs do not form an end-to-end training solution. However, some LMS offer more comprehensive and engaging training programs than others, with courses being more inspiring and insightful. So what is the best option?
The Winning Training Program / LMS
Let’s review the top training programs by learning management systems:
#1 TeachableU by Teachable
Teachable’s academy came up 1st, for its comprehensiveness, with 7 premium courses, over 30 recent pre-recorded workshops, and 5 additional workshops coming up in May/2019. They do not only win for their extensive amount of content but also provide with premium courses which include plenty of downloadables, templates, and a 30-day day-by-day walkthrough.
Topics range from Choose Your Course Topic through Build Your Audience to Increase Your Reach, Results & Revenue on Facebook. Special attention is given to the course launch, through a well explained formula and funnel.
Does this mean that the Teachable Academy is bulletproof?
Certainly not. There’s always a place for improvement. Some topics are such as SEO, Content Writing or Keyword Research could have been covered. Other topics could have been discussed more in-depth, such as more step-by-step guidance or exercises.
And just like with other academies, also with Teahcable we found broken links or other types of “impurities”. However, the Teachable support appears to be effective, and highly motivated to resolve issues in a timely manner.
TeachableU however, is kind of an enigma: Rather than offering its courses, as a strategy TeachableU hides its content.
How does Teachable determine which courses you are eligible to? According to the specific promotion you singed-up with! Meaning TeachableU presents every user only with the courses he or she are eligible to. The remaining courses — are hidden!
Though Teachable is imperfect in many ways, Teachable Academy certainly has a lot to offer. In our opinion: The most and the best.
#2 LearnWorlds Academy
You cannot go wrong with LearnWorlds. Whether you select LearnWorlds as your LMS platform, or as your training program, satisfaction is guaranteed.
In our opinion, LearnWorlds pushed the limits, with its cutting-edge course player and top-notch contents. Rather than inventing the wheel, LearnWorlds did something very interesting: First they structured a strategic training program, and then filled it with the best content they could get. Even if that meant embedding a YouTube video that someone else has made.
Doesn’t this mean that Youtube may show ads? yes it does. And what about broken links to YouTube videos which were perhaps removed? Yes this happened, but as soon as we notified LearnWorlds of such an error, they went straight ahead to fix that. LearnWorlds can take pride not only in its well designed courses, but also their effective support and high level of maintenance.
One of the things that got us hooked with LearnWorlds is their fine balance between videos, images and text. Their page design is pleasing to the eye which only adds to LearnWorlds unique features: highlighting text and writing comments within the course player itself!
Perhaps few more quizzes or assignments could have been added, to improve content absorption. But with that said, we’ve never experienced online courses better than what LearnWorlds offers!
How Much Does it Cost ($)
Gaining access to LMS Academies is not always straight forward. At least not with Teachable and Kajabi, which heavily depend on somewhat aggressive (yet effective) promotions, as their main sales strategy.
With LMS such as LearnWorlds or Thinkific, things are clear: Some academy courses are free of charge whereas others are sold for premium pricing, ranging from $149 with LearnWorlds up to $497 with Thinkific.
While you could purchase individual courses, you could also gain access to them by enrolling to either LearnWorlds Pro Trainer plan or Thinkific Pro plan. Either LMS pro-plans go for ~$99/month or $79/month annually.
With LMS such as Teachable and Kajabi things get more complex. First, you cannot directly enroll to either academy: TeachableU or Kajabi Hero. Rather, you must sign in with a paid plan. Notice that Teachable’s paid plans start at $39/month, whereas Kajabi’s basic plan starts at $150/month, giving Teachable a clear edge.
To make things a little more complex, the training materials you receive with either LMS, vary according to the specific promotion you enroll with.
With Teachable, all paid plans provide access to the TeachableU Core Bundle. However, gaining access to other courses is subject to specific promotions. For example, not all promotions come with Passion to Profit Pack (with 3 courses and 13 webinars) or the 2018 Teachable Live Recorded Workshops (with 13 webinars).
The same holds true with Kajabi just as well: Some promotions would give you more, some less. However, unlike Teachable, Kajabi does not offer a free plan, and even to sign up for their 28-day free trial, you’d have to provide them with credit card information.
Top *Free* Online Courses
So far we reviewed learning paths, and then the top 3 LMS-based academies. Now let’s review the top free courses for course creators:
- Udemy: The entire program available for free, i.e. all Udemy official courses
- LearnWorlds: 4 of 6 premium courses are provided at no charge.
- Wistia: All video productions are free, with 1 compilation @ Udemy
- Thinkific: Previously offered 1 course ==> direct link below!
Ruzuku provides access to their entire LMS training program, with a 14-days free trial (no credit card required). But we believe the courses listed above to be more engaging.
Other Learning Management Systems Academies
We highly encourage other leading LMS to develop comprehensive training programs, for online course creators. As we wrote this article, we reviewed: Podia, Learnyst, Kartra, Zenler, Teachery, WizIQ, IndieLMS, PluralSight, CourseCats among others. None of which provides with a comprehensive training program re creating and selling online course.
One exception is Uthena — a hybrid LMS-Marketplace. Uthena does provide free quality courses re online course creation, by Jerry Banfield, as well as as a bundle of 40-some courses re creating online courses & digital marketing (currently selling for $49).
Closure — What Have we Learned?
We started by raising questions, to reflect the challenges ahead, as well as our level of readiness toward online courses success. We acknowledged that marketing and selling online courses is a specialization of its own.
Perhaps more importantly, we discarded a common belief, that courses sell themselves. Unfortunately, they most likely not.
This is where the sales funnel and email auto-responder take place, as they are of the heart of selling online courses. Accordingly. marketing & promotional activities shall be in place, as we put together our courses contents.
We listed the top academies, a goldmine for learning how to create, market and sell successful online courses: TeachableU, LearnWorlds Academy, and Udemy. Additionally, Uthena, Thinkific, Kajabi and Wistia provide courses and videos full of insights.
We presented 3 different learning paths, and discussed the pros and cons of each. We discussed the importance of following a well-structured training program. This in contrast with watching YouTube videos or taking unrelated courses (free or paid). Why? Cause when we create our own training program, we can skip important topics; or suffer from bias advise due to affiliate marketing, or tackle materials which are dull or simply bad.
After reviewing all alternatives, we concluded that a good training program worth its cost. We reviewed top notch courses which are provided for free, by LearnWorlds, Udemy, Wistia, Thinkific, and last but not least Uthena.
We understood the difference between just a collection of videos vs. premium courses, including: Exercises, worksheets, templates, roadmaps, daily challenges, quality of production and beyond. We also acknowledged that some academies refer to raw webinars recordings as courses, which we think is not the case.
TeachableU stands out as it has developed a complete training program. However, its contents are only selectively available for paying users, depending on the specific promotion they enrolled with.
In similar with Teacahble, also LearnWorlds provides top notch premium courses. In contrast, with LearnWorlds their offerings are rather straight forward: 4 premium courses are available at not cost, and the remaining 2 courses can be accessed subject to enrollment at $149 per course; or with the LearnWorlds pro plan.
Regardless of academies, LMS differ from one another in their entire offering: cost, course players, themes, page templates, blog, etc. However, we believe that first the selection of LMS shall be according to its training program. Later on, if your experience is not what we expected, try another.
To compare between promotions, and find the best one, see LMS Promotions by Courses & Contents.
The Next Steps
Now you’re ready to pick the promotion or offering which fits you best, and master online courses success…
Either start with the №1 training program by Teachable, or take free courses first (direct links below, at the Bonus section).
Bonuses
Below are several courses we highly recommend, which you may enroll right now, at no cost, no trial, no credit card asked.
Bonus 1: Direct Link — Thinkific Free Premium Course (unlisted)
Until just recently Thinkific has offered one of their premium courses (which is quite good, though a bit short), at no cost. Unfortunately, just recently they have unlisted the course.
Luckily enough, the direct link for Thinkific Create the Perfect YouTube Video is intact as of the day of publishing this article. Use this link to enroll to the course for free.
Bonus 2: Direct Links — Udemy Official (Free)
Udemy Instructor Team has launched a fine series of great courses, to walk you through your first steps as a course creator. The program walks through the journey of: How to Create your Course Outline, How to Film your Videos, How to Edit Your Videos and more. One “course” which we actually liked less is Udemy LIVE 2018 — Official Conference Recordings. This is not really a course but rather a raw recording footage of a conference.
Whereas some contents of the Udemy official courses are a bit outdated (e.g. broken links to downloadables, or links to products which do not sell anymore), most content is absolutely valid, regardless of whether you’d launch your course with Udemy or elsewhere: whether a marketplace (such as SkillShare) or an LMS (such as Kajabi or Teachable).
The Official Udemy courses would not take you through the ins-and-outs of marketing, sales funnel, affiliation, course launch, etc. However, the program would provide with a great value regarding online course design and initial understanding of the worlds of talking head, screen cast, curriculum, course goals, as well as recording equipment such as lavalier or condenser microphones, lighting kits, pop filter and beyond.
Bonus 3: Direct Links — LearnWorlds Free Courses
- You may enroll to all 4 premium and free courses by LearnWorlds here.
- We especially recommend the course Video Based Learning which you can enroll for free here (no credit card asked).
Bonus 4: Direct Links — Wistia Courses (Free)
- Wistia Course Creation Compilation is an awesome, fun and insightful collection of videos re: setting up an improvised home video-recording studio and beyond. Though this is fun and reflects their endless amount of expertise, I wouldn’t take their advice regarding building an improvised home studio, too seriously. In our experience, following their tips showed itself to be cumbersome. But yes, it was charming, motivational and fun…
- One, Ten, One Hundred by Wistia — Documentary series of 4 episodes re: making a promo video via minimal, moderate, and large budgets (of $1K, $10K, $100K). Again, this is NOT your complete training program, but rather a fun video series with lots of added values.
- The Wistia Production Tutorial Videos would answer many of your questions such as regarding: what is a wide shot, ISO, frame rate, aspect ratio and much more. Though we have not watched all of Wistia’s videos, we can assure that all of them are bright and fun!
Now feel free to continue reading our next blog articles, attend online courses, or go straight to creating your own awesome online courses which would sell!
