E-courses are excellent sales tools and a great way to get your knowledge out there. It is very simple to create your course and either sell, or give it away as a give-before-you-get sales technique. If your course is designed to be a freebie, youll want to give a portion of good information; but dont tell them everything or theyll have no reason to make a purchase. If you are selling your course, make sure to jam pack it with everything you know, that way your customer will feel like they are getting a lot for their money (depending on how much you really know.)
E-courses are simple to create because there is no need for fancy formatting, heading tags or conversions. E-courses are made in the same fashion as E-zines; by using plain text. For a sample of my 7 Day Mini Course, send an email to: minicourse@aweber.com. You will receive the first portion of the course in just a few minutes, and then for the next 7 days you will get an email with a new section attached. *AOL USERS BEWARE: The only complaints I have ever received about the course not being delivered were from AOL members.
Heres a quick check list for creating your course:
Pick your topic of expertise.
Divide your material into specific sections. These topics will be your lessons. I advise starting out with a day-by-day course rather than splitting your material into weeks.
Write an introduction to the course and a list describing upcoming lessons.
If this is a free course: make sure to weave subtle hints throughout about all of the information that they are not receiving to give them incentive to purchase something (anything!)
Once you have written your course, set up an account with a sequential auto-responder company. Every company will have different instructions for set up, but basically you will be cutting and pasting and they will deliver the e-mails/lessons at the appropriate time.
Promote and advertise your course on your website, and send out a notice to your distribution list: let people know about it any way you can.
