I started my eLearning journey back in 2009. I was teaching college-level courses in China, and my company offered a train the trainer course to teach online. Five years later, I taught over 25 courses in seven different topics in a faculty development program.

I was hooked.

Helping others gain the skills they need to improve their career is one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. I also appreciated the global community an online course creates. Even though I was the instructor, the international environment also made me a student.

With my new found passion and experience, I decided to venture out on my own and create the Wine Learning Hub. It was an online training for the everyday wine drinker.

I had the best pitch, “Learn about wine while playing candy crush.” The courses had games, where fun and easy. Students also earned points for learning (as if learning how to read a wine label wasn’t enough!).

Three months after the launch date, I had to close the school because I didn’t have enough students and I ran out of money.

I failed for 2 reasons — and they had nothing to do with my professional background or ability to teach online.

Reason 1
I launched the Wine Learning Hub without a marketing strategy. I organically had over 1,200 pre-sign ups, and I thought that was a lot or at least enough to turn into sales. The average conversion rate for eCommerce is 3–5%. In my case, that meant that 36 out of 1,200 people would have purchased the courses. That’s not even a good number for a free course!

Reason 2
I aimed for perfection. Before inviting my pre-signups, I wanted to have the best platform with all the bells and whistles, a fancy marketing video, expensive microphone, etc. I was also continually making tiny changes to the content. I spent over $5,000 to set up the course. Now that I have produced more than 250 online courses, I know that if you spend more than $150 to launch your first course, you are wasting money.

How can you avoid failure?

1. Build your marketing strategy while creating your course. The plan should include pre and post-launch. We have a course that teaches you the basic steps.

Instead of building the perfect course, outline your course and get feedback from potential students. Ask them what they expect, what they want, and most importantly, what do they need. You will learn that they don’t care about the things you care about (e.g., having professionally made videos or tons of content).

Use this framework to get started. Again, do not spend more than $150 on your first online course.

Image Source: Learn By Design School

Thanks for reading and let us know if you need help launching your course.

Monica