I'm a course creator just like you, and I've been creating and selling online courses since 2016. And I've kept a close eye on the course creation space, to learn as much as possible what works and what doesn't.

And I can tell you, I have seen these mistakes and this thought processes over and over again regarding online course creation - these are extremely common.

If you are just getting started creating online courses, chances are that you are at risk of making at least several of these mistakes yourself.

Let's then go through these mistakes one by one. We will approach them in no particular order, so I recommend that you read them all.

By the way, if you are looking to learn more about online teaching in general, you can find all of my guides on the Academy home page, in the recommended reading order.

Mistake 1 - Searching For The Best Place To Publish Your Online Courses

This is one of the common mistakes beginners' online course creators make and it's a dangerous thought process, that could even compromise the success of your course creation journey, right from the start.

Tirelessly you go around the internet looking for that one elusive single place where you want to publish all your courses. If only you could find that one best place, everything would work.

This is something very human and very tempting. Where is the best place to publish online courses?

The truth is that there is no single place on the Internet where it's best to publish your courses.

You need to get your course in front of the largest number of people that could be interested, and communities gather in all sorts of different places on the Internet.

You need to get to your audience wherever they are, and if this means publishing your courses in 4 different places plus your website, then that is what you need to do!

Every marketplace has its built-in organic community, that might be well adapted to your audience.

For example, web development courses tend to do great on Udemy, creative skills courses tend to do great on both Udemy and Skillshare, art courses tend to do better on Skillshare, and business and marketing courses tend to do well everywhere.

If you want to learn a lot more about how to choose where to publish your courses, I've written about it in detail here - Online course self-hosting vs marketplaces: pros and cons

So for most creators, the correct answer is that you should publish your courses in multiple places, including your website.

Mistake 2 - Dividing a course Into huge chunks

No one wants to commit to a course that takes hours upon hours to go through.

And, for course creators, the biggest mistake is dividing their work into chunks that are too lengthy and intimidating for their students.

If your course content is in huge chunks, break it up into more digestible pieces. Whether it's using chapters or subheadings, organize your material so that users can easily find what they're looking for.

Additionally, if you have supplemental material or resources you'd like to offer as part of your course, consider making those optional – this way, your introductory readers aren't bogged down with too much information at once.

Furthermore, don't be afraid of breaking up long lessons and lectures.

Instead of forcing participants through one two-hour session, break the larger lesson into two parts and give them an opportunity to practice and digest the information before continuing on their learning journey.

This ensures that they are actually able to absorb the material, instead of glossing over it quickly because they feel overwhelmed by the amount of information presented in one sitting.

Mistake 3 - Not outlining course goals

Making a course without clear goals can be a disaster.

When you don’t outline your course goals, you’re essentially trying to teach without a plan, and that means your course could become disjointed, hard to follow, and less effective.

The biggest mistake new course creators make is not setting clear and measurable goals before they begin designing the curriculum.

Without objectives, it’s hard to make sure that each lesson builds on the last one, and that student learning is progressing at a healthy rate.

Before you start making your course, it’s important to define big-picture objectives like:

• What are the tangible outcomes that students should have after taking the course?
• What do you want students to learn?
• How will this course enhance their lives or current knowledge?
• How can you ensure this training will benefit their future?
• Will students be able to apply their knowledge immediately or in the near future?

By answering all of these questions before designing your syllabus, you can ensure that your curriculum aligns with those goals, which ultimately makes it easier for you and your students to succeed!

Mistake 4 - Not utilizing engaging content

Creating a course is no small feat and there’s no doubt that it’s a huge investment of your time and energy. But one of the biggest mistakes new course creators make is not utilizing engaging content.

The truth is, if you want to make your course stand out, you need to work hard to make sure that the content you create is as captivating as possible. Here are some tips on how you can do that:

Make use of visual content

Including videos, images, infographics, charts, and graphs in your course can go a long way in making sure it’s captivating and engaging for your students.

All of these types of visuals help break up the text, which can become tedious if there’s too much of it.

Diversify the types of activities

Make sure to diversify the types of activities within your course so that people don’t get bored just reading or watching videos all the time.

Think about using quizzes and polls to assess student knowledge, as well as discussion forums where students can share their ideas and learn from one another.

Utilize storytelling

Stories are incredibly powerful tools for inspiring learning, so try to think about ways you can use them in your courses.

Whether it’s case studies or example stories from successful entrepreneurs or professionals in a particular field, you can use them in creative ways to bring your topics to life.

Bottom line: Don't be complacent with just lecture-style teaching—think creatively about how you can incorporate other interactive elements into your course so that it's more captivating for your students!

Mistake 5 - Not incorporating assessment

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when creating a course is not incorporating assessment.

Assessment is how you evaluate and measure student learning, and it's essential for course creation.

Without assessment, there isn't really any way to gauge what your students are actually learning and retaining from the course.

Types of Assessment

Assessments come in many forms and can be adapted to fit insights on how students learn best, so it's important to think about how each type fits into your course design plan:

1. Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs): These are great for assessing a student’s overall understanding of content or their proficiency in a particular subject area.
2. Essay Questions: Essay questions are useful for deeper dives into more complex topics, allowing you to capture more than just basic factual knowledge.
3. Short Answer Questions: These allow for a “two-part” question, where an instructor can ask an open-ended question followed by a prompt that requires reflection, analysis, or application of the information in question.
4. Group Assignments: Assignments that require collaboration between multiple people allow instructors to evaluate teamwork skills and communication ability as part of the assessment process.
5. Performance Tasks: Performance tasks offer instructors the opportunity to assess whether or not students can effectively apply the knowledge they’ve learned in a practical way by engaging in specific tasks, such as coding or making other tech-related projects, with tangible outputs being created as evidence of their proficiency with the material covered throughout the course.

OnlineCourseHost.Com allows you to add different types of assignments and quizzes to your courses to make them more interactive.

By incorporating assessment into your course design plan, you'll be able to ensure that your students understand key concepts and have learned.

Mistake 6 - Not providing adequate support

When you launch a course, you want to make sure you provide adequate support to your students in case they have any questions or need any help.

Not providing enough support is a big mistake that many new course creators make.

You don't want to leave your students feeling lost and confused, you want them to be successful and feel supported along the way.

Here are some ways to make sure you provide the best possible support for your students:

• Set up a dedicated customer service or help desk; this could be a dedicated email address or even an online chat feature
• Offer multiple support channels, such as live chat, email, phone, social media, etc.
• Respond quickly to customer queries and issues
• Have FAQs and tutorials available
• Create discussion forums where students can ask questions and receive feedback
• Check-in with your students periodically to gauge their satisfaction with the course.

By providing adequate support for your course launching, you can ensure that your customers get the best possible experience, resulting in better reviews and more repeat orders.

Mistake 7 - Not staying up-to-date with trends

When you create a course, you want it to be relevant and valuable to learners.

To do this, it’s important to stay up-to-date with learning trends and topics that are popular at the moment. You know the saying, “out with the old and in with the new.”

But not only do you need to pay attention to what's popular now, but you also need to pay attention to what new tools, techniques, or information is out there that could be beneficial to your course.

If you don't keep your content fresh and up-to-date with trends, your course will quickly become outdated.

The good news is that making sure your course content is timely doesn’t have to require a ton of extra effort on your part.

Start by setting aside time each month or quarter where you can review any new developments in the industry or any updates to existing trends.

Once identified, incorporate them into your content as appropriate. This can help you ensure that your course remains relevant and valuable for years to come!

Mistake 8 - Not being open to feedback

You'll never know everything about creating a great course, nor will you be able to anticipate every user's experience.

Feedback like this has helped me improve my courses because by reading a few of them, I can easily understand what my courses missed or what my audience didn't like. That's why it's so important to open up your course to feedback.

Asking Your Target Audience

Most experienced course creators understand that the best way to achieve success is to start with their target audience.

Before launching your course, ask those who you're marketing it to, what they like, what they don't like, and if there is anything else they'd like to see. Doing this can give you invaluable insight that creates better experiences for your users.

Getting Constructive Feedback

You should also seek out feedback from colleagues or mentors who have taken courses themselves and can offer fresh perspectives on their experiences.

What mistakes did they encounter? What would they improve upon? Taking the time to get constructive feedback and translating it into actionable items will improve the overall quality of your course.

Also, don't be afraid of criticism, you might learn something new or find an area ripe for improvement.

Feedback from others can have a powerful effect on the final product of your course, making it easier for future users to engage with and benefit from it in both obvious and subtle ways.

Mistake 9 - Not building a strong personal brand

Creating courses isn't just about the content you offer, it's also about your personal brand, and if you don't make sure that your brand is strong, you could be making a costly mistake.

Why is building a strong personal brand so important?

Builds trust

Building a strong personal brand will help build trust because people trust people.

When you have a strong, recognizable personal brand and presence in the course market, your potential customers will be more likely to purchase from you.

Attracts more sales

By having a recognizable personal brand, potential customers will be attracted to your courses because they know what to expect from them, and this means more sales for you.

Good reviews

When people are familiar with your brand, they are more likely to leave good reviews about it.

So by having an established presence with an awesome online reputation, think high ratings on course review websites, you'll attract more customers and entice them to purchase from you.

So if you want to create courses that stand out from the crowd and attract more customers than ever before, make sure that you focus on building your personal brand and reputation amongst potential clients.

Mistake 10 - Rushing your course

When you're getting started creating courses, it can be tempting to rush things so you can get your course live and start earning money.

Don't do it! Rushing only sets you up for failure, since it creates an inferior product that won't make your students happy.

Think about it. Have you ever taken a course or read a book where the content was thrown together?

Chances are the author didn't take the time to explain concepts thoroughly and make sure everything was easy to understand, right?

You don't want that reputation for yourself. So make sure that you plan out how much time each step of the process is going to take and commit to sticking with it.

Some other specific things you'll want to avoid when rushing your course include:

• Skipping the research phase - researching what topics people need help with in your niche will help serve as content for your course
• Not creating an outline for each video or module - this way, you stay on track and don't include any unnecessary information
• Not proofreading - typos and mistakes make people think the quality of your course is low
• Not asking for feedback - get feedback from friends, family, or potential students throughout the creation process

Mistake 11 - Not pre-selling their online courses

You may have heard the term pre-selling but don't know what it means.

Well, pre-selling is when you let potential students know about a course before you launch it.

Not only does this create hype and anticipation around your new course, but it also gives you valuable insight into whether your course would be successful or not.

When you pre-sell your course, potential students have the chance to ask questions and get answers, so they’ll feel more comfortable investing in the product when it launches.

Just make sure that you’re providing accurate information and setting realistic expectations.

Also, if you want to get more people interested in your course, create an opt-in page (also known as a squeeze page) where people can sign up for notifications about your upcoming launch date and any discounts or bonuses that may be available.

This will help drum up excitement about the course and make sure that more people sign up for it once it’s available.

The bottom line is that if you don’t pre-sell your online courses, then you’re missing out on an opportunity to get valuable feedback from potential students as well as create anticipation around the launch of your product.

Mistake 12 - Seeing negative reviews as a bad thing

It's often human nature to view negative reviews as a bad thing, but this is a mistake for course creators.

They're actually a valuable opportunity to assess what you can do better and make changes that improve your course for future participants.

The key is to look at negative reviews in the right way: don't take them personally, and use them to inform your decisions moving forward. If a reviewer notes that their experience with the course was lacking in structure, it could be valuable information that encourages you to provide more structure and clarity with future iterations of the course.

Rather than ignoring constructive criticism, embrace it as an opportunity to make improvements that can help you create an even better learning experience for all participants.

This kind of self-reflection can help ensure your course and all its subsequent versions become increasingly successful over time.

Mistake 13 - Not building an online community

Another mistake you might make when creating a course is not building an online community.

Think of an online community as a place where students can share their ideas, ask questions, and find help and support.

It's important to create an online space that lets students get to know each other and form relationships with each other, as well as you.

Research shows that having a sense of community boosts engagement and learning, making it one of the best ways to ensure your course is successful.

We have an amazing community of online course creators, and they always give me ideas to improve the platform or new course ideas I should work on.

Benefits of an Online Community

An online community can provide many benefits for your students, including:

1. Easy access to resources related to your course like books, articles, webinars, or podcasts
2. The ability to ask questions and get feedback from instructors or fellow students
3. A way to connect with potential mentors or even potential job leads
4. A supportive group of people who can help encourage each other in the learning process
5. The opportunity to build relationships with people who share similar interests

Creating a vibrant and supportive online community will encourage collaboration among learners, foster a sense of camaraderie among those taking the course, and ultimately help students achieve success while they are learning, and long after they’ve completed it too!

Mistake 14 - Trying to market to everyone

If you think that creating a course that appeals to everyone is the way to go, think again.

It’s not only impossible to please everybody, but it’s also an inefficient way of doing business.

After all, if you’re trying to target everyone, it’s highly unlikely you’ll get any real traction as far as engagement and sales.

Instead of aiming at a vague audience of “everyone,” niche down and focus on a much more specific market when creating your course. That way, you can hone in on the needs, wants, and desires of this target audience, which will help you create a better course that meets their exact needs.

When narrowing down your target market for your course keep these things in mind:

1. Your ideal customer should already have expressed an interest in the subject matter that your course covers.
2. Research what content already exists in the market and think about how yours adds value beyond what is already out there and answers any questions or problems that people may have in this area.
3. Do a bit of testing with people in that niche market to ensure that there is interest and demand for what you are offering.
4. Get clear on who is your customer: define their age range, gender, place of residence, job title, etc (you can find helpful data from surveys).
5. Define their attitude: try to determine the biggest challenges they have with regard to the topic at hand and how they would most likely approach it?
6. Determine what social media platforms they use frequently which will help with setting up effective promotional campaigns later on.

Mistake 15 - Failing to Test Your Course Thoroughly

Of all the mistakes you might make when creating a new course, failing to test your course thoroughly is one of the most common, and most costly.

Even if you've done everything right, it's still possible that something could go wrong due to a bug or glitch in the system.

To avoid these headaches, here are a few tips for testing your course:

1. Test each lesson separately before putting it together with the rest of the course.
2. Get feedback from external testers to make sure your course is working properly and is easy to follow.
3. Be sure to test each component of your course, from audio files and multimedia elements to quizzes and assessments or other interactive activities.
4. Take time to conduct multiple tests before launching your course live. This will help ensure that everything works properly so that there won't be any surprises when people purchase it.
5. Finally, practice patience and take the time needed for each stage of the testing process, this will ensure that you have quality content for your audience and help minimize any unexpected issues or surprises once the course is live!

Testing your course may take some extra time upfront, but it will be worth it in the end, both in terms of better user experience and fewer headaches down the line!

Mistake 16 - Not Building An Audience Upfront

Not having an audience before creating and launching your online course is another huge mistake new creators make when starting.

So, you spend months creating your first online course, learning about video editing, lighting, and setting up a professional studio, and you make a 20-hour course.

Then you create your website and publish it everywhere on social media. And what happens next? That's right...

... Crickets .... 😊

This is a very common problem because many course creators had never had prior experience running a website or selling a course online.

To make course sales, you need to bring enough traffic to your course page, and only a small percentage of that traffic will turn into paying students.

The problem is, if you don't have a pre-built audience, your course pages will start with essentially zero traffic, meaning that you won't get any sales.

In this scenario, you will only be able to generate a few page views out of social media, and make hardly any course sales at all.

The only way that you can get a new audience upfront without previous effort, would be if you publish to a marketplace with a pre-built audience, and that audience is looking for courses on that topic, and no other course creator has created a course on that topic yet, which is all highly unlikely!

The only way that this could work is if there would all of a sudden a new trend that came up out of the blue, that a lot of people are interested in.

For example, Apple released a couple of years ago a new language called Swift, and there was no prior warning about this, it caught most people by surprise.

Then there was a course creator on Udemy that created a course in a couple of days where he was learning the language and trying things out on the fly, and that course was a success because it was the first to market, on a new hot topic that lots of people wanted to learn.

Needless to say, this is just not very reproducible at all! Do be on the lookout for new hot topics in your niche, but other than that the best and most realistic way is to build an audience slowly over time.

In my case, I started writing a blog two years before launching a single course. And I was not even planning on doing courses, it was just a hobby and for learning purposes.

If you are curious, here is my blog, this is one of the highest-rated blogs in the space. Thanks to this blog, when I launched my courses I had over 2000 page views per day from day one, and it has increased a lot since then.

But make no mistake, growing an audience is a slow organic process that simply cannot be rushed, there are almost no shortcuts.

Whatever channel you choose, like blogging, YouTube, or social media, give yourself at least one year of audience building, maybe even as a side hustle while you are still employed.

You can learn a lot more about how to grow an audience from scratch in this guide How to promote your online course - complete guide.

But you don't have to have an audience of millions to go full-time, many YouTube channels of 10k to 20k subscribers have a viable course business behind them, capable of providing a full-time income.

Remember, online courses can also be a way to do other higher ticket sales, like one on one coaching, etc.

Whatever channel you choose, make sure not to fall into the next common-related mistake on this list.

Mistake 17 - Not Building an Email List

When you start building an audience for your online courses, you might be hesitant to build an email list, despite all you have heard.

But make no mistake, your email list is by far the most important asset of your online course business, other than the courses themselves.

By asking for the email of your students, you will be able to reach many of them over time and send them new content, either free or new premium courses.

You will be to establish and nurture a relationship with your audience over time, and they will grow to see you as an expert and reliable source on the topic that they want to learn.

This perception takes multiple times to learn, and cannot be created with just one interaction.

Another reason for asking for a student email is simply to be able to bring them back to your site. The Internet is a busy place, and there are distractions everywhere.

Even for the most successful websites, most visitors every month are brand new, as opposed to returning visitors, especially if the website is a blog.

People simply get distracted and forget about your website and your courses, so it's essential to ask for their email so that you can reach them later.

But once you have their email, what do you do with it? That takes us to the next mistake in our list, which is way too common.

Mistake 18 - Not Using Your Student's Email to Teach Them

Watching tutorials on generic email marketing advice and applying the same to their emails is a common mistake beginner course creators make.

And with this, they end up not seeing the value on the mailing list as they get very low open and click rates.

This doesn't have to be like that, and as an example here are the statistics for the first 3 emails of my latest email sequence:

As you can see, it's possible to get your students to read your emails consistently, at rates well above the industry average, but it has to be done right.

This is worth a whole blog post, that I'm going to link here in the future - Email marketing for course creators: Complete Guide, make sure to subscribe to the blog via the Newsletter button on the top menu in order not to miss it.

But I'm going to give you the gist of it here: many course creators think that the open rate of an email is determined solely by the email subject, and they try to come up with all sorts of clever subject lines.

The thing is, your email open rate is mostly determined by your previous email, or better by the combined experience of the last few emails that you sent.

If the emails that you send to your students are only pitches to convince them to click on a link, be it educational or not, but the email text has no value, guess what will happen when your next email comes around?

That's right, they won't open it! Because they will think: there is this guy/girl again trying to convince me to click on some link, another useless email - Trash!

To avoid this mistake, make sure that the email text itself has value. Students have subscribed because they want to learn from you, so go ahead and in a couple of paragraphs simply teach them something useful, right there on the email!

Not some nice story (unless it brings direct value and illustrates a point), or some other clever gimmick that they can easily see through because everyone else is doing it. Instead, just teach them something.

That small "light bulb" moment that they will have when they finally grasp a concept that they were struggling with, they will remember that feeling and associate it with you and your content.

The next time that an email from you comes around, they will think to themselves: that's an email worth at least opening and reading, for sure.

Remember, nothing convinces a student more that you are an effective teacher worth learning from than actually teaching them something that they don't know and want to learn, right there on the email.

Another common error that course creators often make early on is to overthink the equipment part.

Mistake 19 - Thinking That You Need To Invest A Lot In Equipment

This happens all the time: you start recording your course, and get yourself a professional recording studio (or almost)!

You get all sorts of lighting, a $400 microphone, an external web camera, get a new desk and chair, hire a makeup artist, etc.

Well maybe not that last part, but you see the picture: you spend way too much money and spend way too much time learning about how to buy and how to use all sorts of equipment.

And guess what happens after a few months of recording courses? You will see that you hardly use most of the equipment, except your microphone.

It turns out that creating online courses, as you might have been led to believe, is much simpler than you think.

Yes there is a place for all those things in a studio, and they are worth learning just in case, and there is value in that. But that should not be your top priority.

Your top priority should be thinking about the content itself, and how you are going to best communicate the information to your students.

I've taken all sorts of online courses on all sorts of subjects, I'm a big believer in the effectiveness of self-education through online courses.

And let me tell you, some of the courses that have marked me the most and have stuck with me throughout the years, those courses were not particularly well produced.

The audio might not have been ideal, there was no green screen and the instructor many times did not even show up on camera.

But it was the quality of the information, and the quality and the clarity of the voice explanation and maybe a few diagrams, it was the concepts that I learned that made the course memorable.

I've also purchased courses that were beautifully packaged, with high production value, and even quite long, that were just full of fluff and I never bought from those course creators again.

Yes, equipment and production value are also important, but if you are just getting started, my best advice is to just get yourself a microphone and start recording your first course.

And don't spend more than $100 on a microphone, the rest will follow naturally. If you still want to learn all the details about the necessary equipment, I've explained it in detail here - Affordable online course equipment - a complete practical guide

Another thing that trips a lot of new course creators over, is dealing with sales and marketing in general.

Mistake 20 - Not Learning Some Basic Marketing Principles

I've seen this mistake a lot of times in online forums. I see some online course creators posting their landing page for a course, and asking for reviews from other instructors.

You will see the reviews saying that the page is not very appealing, and the creator will reply: "Well I don't want to come across as sales, I'm a very honest and to the point person, etc. "

This is great and those are of course great qualities, but this mental association between marketing your course as being something dirty that is to be ashamed of, that belief is holding you back.

Notice that I'm not saying to overpromise and underdeliver, I'm saying that there are ways to take some general marketing principles like AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) and use them ethically to show your students why they want to take your course.

I've talked about some of these course marketing practices in this guide How to promote your online course - complete guide.

It's essential to take some time to learn some basic marketing principles, otherwise, your online course journey might come to an early stop.

Things like writing titles and descriptions to highlight the benefits that the student will get with the course rather than just listing what is inside, setting the right expectations, knowing what makes a title or a thumbnail a good choice for increasing sales, knowing how to price correctly your courses and other offers, and so forth.

If you don't take a good portion of your initial time learning and getting good at many of these things, success is unlikely even if your course is great and you manage to capture a sizeable audience.

And this is because, if your marketing is not good, it will take a lot longer to grow an audience big enough to compensate for the bad marketing in terms of course sales volume.

You might launch the course, see a very low conversion rate, and then simply give up assuming that the course was not viable (more on this later in this post).

Mistake 21 - Charging Way Too Little For Your Courses

This mistake could also be rephrased as not pricing your course correctly, but I think in general new course creators tend to underprice their courses.

If you get everything right, meaning the course content, the audience growth, and the email marketing, but you get the price wrong, chances are that the selling volume will be disappointing.

Luckily, this is one of the easiest problems to fix. All you have to do is take an afternoon to go over for example Nick Kolenda's guide to Pricing Psychology, and you should be OK.

I'm not going to repeat what he explains there, but as a summary for an English speaker (yes the best pricing depends on language), the prices $19, $49, $89, and $99 are great prices for a single course, while $9.99 or $19 are great prices for typical recurring subscriptions.

I've written about this in much more detail here in this guide How to sell online courses? A complete marketing strategy, but to summarize, don't underprice your courses, that is just killing your online course business right at the start.

Mistake 22 - Not Creating Your Website

If you are just getting started on the online course business, then no one knows you, right?

So you think to yourself: there is no point in creating a new website for my courses, it would get no traffic, I'm just going to publish them in that one marketplace and hope that it works.

This is a huge mistake in my opinion, that I almost fell into myself. This would have been the difference between giving up after just a few months and having taught over 100k students since 2016.

Creating your website to sell your courses is today more important than ever. And this is because on your website, far from the distractions from social media and marketplaces, you will be able to do value-based pricing, which means that you will be typically able to charge higher.

You will also have a higher customer lifetime value, meaning that you get more from a customer than in a course marketplace.

You can get the student's email, and establish a long-term relationship that includes teaching them more over time and sending them new courses that you create as well.

On your online course website, you will be able to do higher ticket sales. This includes sales to teams if it applies to your course subject.

You will also be able to do sales of course bundles, which can easily cost $89 or more. You can also run promotions on your courses, as well as create a subscription-based model which is one of the biggest advantages of having a course website.

OnlineCourseHost.com lets you create a free website where you can launch your courses (decide your pricing) and build a personal brand. Sign up for a free trial now!

You can read a lot more about how selling courses on your website is the way to go with examples included in this guide - How to sell online courses? A complete marketing strategy

But for your course website to work, you need to first bring traffic there, which leads us to our next mistake.

Mistake 23 - Giving Up Too Early

And finally, last but not least common errors new online course creators make.

This is maybe the biggest problem: people give up way too early, and there is a good reason why this happens.

The problem with becoming a course creator is that you often never had previous experience running an online business or even any previous entrepreneurship experience at all.

Many times, course creators are former employees who decided to quit their jobs and give a try to this online teaching thing, to see how it goes.

And then, after a few months, without sales or much results to show, they end up quitting, which is a pity because they could have added so much value to other people.

Summary

The problem with creating a successful online course business is that it's like building a house of cards:

• you have to get the content right
• you have to be able to grow an audience
• you have to know how to build a website
• you have to learn where to publish your courses
• you have to learn how to market and promote your courses
• you have to learn how to price and sell your courses

And if any of these things are done wrong, the whole thing collapses, but you will never know why, and that is the scary part.

How many course creators have given up on their journey just because they had not learned how to do marketing, have not built a mailing list, did not create their website, and chose to rely only on marketplaces, etc.?

But for many cases, if they had kept trying for a few months more or even a full year, they would have found at least some level of success, as they gain experience and give time for their audience to grow.

There is a saying that says that most people give up just before they become successful, and in my experience, this is exactly true when it comes to online course creation. I've almost given up multiple times, especially in the beginning.

So don't be that creator, realize that you are in it for the long haul. Get yourself at least one year or even more of a living budget before you take the plunge to become a course creator, and give yourself the best possible chance for succeeding.

I'm here to help! If you have any questions, post them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you, you can also post them in our Facebook Course Creator Community if you prefer.

To get notified when I release new content here in the Academy, you can subscribe here to our weekly newsletter:

Also, you can find all my in-depth guides with everything that you need to know about course creation on the Course Creator Academy Home Page.

And if you are looking for a platform to host your online courses, create an account at OnlineCourseHost.com and start creating your courses using our Free Plan.

Check out also any other posts that you might be interested in on the blog home page.

That's all I got for today, see you soon and meanwhile, I wish you Happy Teaching!

Course Creators Academy, a community by OnlineCourseHost.com

Founded by Vasco Cavalheiro

Online Course Creator

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