How to Start An Online School

How to Start An Online School

An online school is one of the cheapest businesses you can start, which also has an incredibly high earning potential. This means demand is high right now! But, here’s where the opportunity lies: the supply of online schools is still pretty low. There are more people looking to learn online than there are online schools to serve them. And, that applies to more than just “traditional” types of education. Your online school can be built around anything where you impart knowledge or skills to an audience!

The pandemic has also created some new categories of learners who need access to these resources. Namely:

Those looking to grow and adapt to different ways of working.
Those looking to escape the pandemicthrough learning new skills and knowledge.
Those looking to learn in COVID-19 safe environments.

More people than ever are looking for online courses to help them:

Learn new skills.
Reinvent themselves.
Escape the daily grind.
Educate themselves in a safe, online environment.

You create content which is:

Evergreen content: once they’ve created a video they can keep earning from it, and serving their audience, for years to come
Easy to scale: they can automate marketing and sales processes (or hire people to do them) and focuses on the creation
Affordable prices: the compound effect of subscriptions allows them to keep initial prices low, without compromising on their earnings
Passive income: they receive a payment every month someone is subscribed for no extra work
Easy to manage: they can update modules and lessons with minimal disruption
Longevity: users want to stick around for upcoming videos
Community: they can cultivate a community that interacts with each other and influences their future content decisions

There are 3 different business models you can use to monetize your online school.
They are:

The “night school” model: where students pay a one-time fee to access a specific course
The “academy” model: where students pay a subscription fee for access to a wide range of courses
The “combined” model: where students pay a subscription fee for access to your online school and have the option to pay for additional “premium” courses on top

The most profitable online schools use the “academy” or “combined” models. Why? Because they’re both rooted in the subscription business model, which provides a somewhat reliable monthly revenue and allows you to focus on retaining customers, instead of constantly chasing new ones. Having some sort of established online audience around the skills you want to teach before you start your own virtual school. This will make earning money and creating solid elearning content much easier in the long run!

Identify Your Audience
The first step is to identify the audience you want to teach.

Although this may feel like it’s obvious – if you teach magic, your audience is probably magicians – it’s worth digging down into the nitty-gritty of characteristics that make up your ideal student.

You should consider things like:

How old are they?
Where are they located?
What are they struggling with?
What do they want to do with the skills you’re going to teach them?

This will help you to identify the people within your existing audience who would be willing to become paid subscribers to your online school
The more niche you can get with your answers, the better.
Knowing this will make…

marketing
branding
pricing
creating course content

…much, much easier.

Pick Your Cornerstone Content
Your online school needs what I like to call cornerstone content.
These are the core skills you’re going to teach that you’ll build your school around. This will help you to attract new students, and focus on doing a few things that will bring value to them.

Let’s say you’re creating a business school for graphic designers. You might create content around these 3 cornerstones:

Research: how to find potential clients
Outreach: how to effectively contact potential clients
Sales: how to turn potential clients into paying ones

The most important element here is that these topics are evergreen. The skills should be relevant for a long time and need minimal updating. Why?
Because if you focus on teaching trends you’ll forever be chasing new content. And what you’ve taught in the past will become obsolete pretty quickly. That’s a hectic school to run.
If you’re unsure of this, think about the wants and needs of your tribe. What is the result they’re looking for, and how can you help them get it?

Plan Your Lessons
With your audience and cornerstone ideas in place, you can start creating your first lesson.
Before you launch, it’s good practice to have at least one “completable” lesson for each of your cornerstone ideas. This is a section they can start, finish and learn from before moving onto another topic.

Sticking with the graphic design example above, your first three videos might look like:

Research: how to find potential clients on LinkedIn
Outreach: how to craft the perfect pitch email
Sales: how to sell to a client on the phone

You may also want to add additional extras to these lessons. You can include elements like PDFs, audio tracks, and printable worksheets to add depth.
Now, you don’t need to have a “finished” school before you launch. Just enough to make it feel like your students have enough to get their money’s worth. You can then add (or remove) content based on their feedback.
You can learn more about how to find the optimal amount of content for your online school in this guide here.

Create Your Online School
The next step is to choose a platform to help you take your school online.
You might already be aware of some “education” platforms where you can host single courses, but I’m going to recommend you avoid them and look for a more comprehensive solution.

You need a platform that allows you to:

Build a standalone and customizable website.
Offer a wide range of payment options.
Set up recurring monthly payments.
Monetize in a way that suits your business.
Host your core video content.
Upload a variety of supporting materials.
Create a community area for your students.
Access detailed analytics.

Market Your School
The final step is to market your online school to potential students.
The quickest and simplest way to do this is to promote your new platform on your existing channels. Take to social media, YouTube, or your mailing list and spread the word!

You should also consider using YouTube as part of your strategy. You can create a simple “funnel” where you share:

Top-level videos to rank for keywords in your niche.
Middle-level videos to convince potential students you know your stuff.
Bottom-level videos to convert them into paying students.

You can create a YouTube marketing funnel. And, you can supercharge your marketing strategy and build more comprehensive campaigns by using the marketing integrations provided by your chosen platform.

Choose Your Course Topic
In all significant endeavors, you need to plan. Your plan for making an online course should begin with choosing the primary topic of focus. Making it up as you go along has a high chance of ending up with you flat on your face unless you’re dead sure you know what you’re doing. After all, you can’t just meander around a general breadth of a particular subject for your entire course. It would be a waste of time for both you and your students.
The course subject determines your audience, your method of teaching, and a lot more factors. It’s crucial that you decide on a specific course subject in the beginning phase of creating your online course.

Be as specific as possible. Don’t try to cover too wide of a topic in your first course. A common early misconception when creating online courses is that you should create one course per one topic. From a student’s standpoint – that’s a terrible idea. Students get overwhelmed by massive amounts of all-over-the-place information within a single course. And, from a profitability standpoint – that’s an even worse idea. Focusing on short courses rather than a single huge program enables you to sell larger volumes and to improve upon early iterations. When developing your first course, make sure to leave some room for the future.
These are some questions you should ask yourself when picking a topic for your course:

Think through these initial steps very carefully. They will be the foundation for the online course you will be building. Without a solid foundation, you course is doomed to fail.

Are you an expert on the topic?
Ideally, you should have demonstrable expertise on the subject you are teaching. That could be either by education or practical knowledge on the subject. Having real qualifications to show to your students makes a big difference in establishing trustworthiness for yourself.
Now, I’m saying “ideally”, because being an expert on the topic is not always necessary. There are plenty of massively successful online courses out there that were created by course instructors with novice-level knowledge at best. I would never advise creating online training programs on subjects you know very little about. However, credibility and authority are something that can be developed – work on that.

Is there enough demand for the topic?
Earlier, I told you to be as specific as possible with your course topic. While I firmly stand by that statement, it’s also worth noting that you should not pick too narrow of a course subject.
Developing a course titled “The Ultimate Guide to Salmon Fishing in Akhiok, Alaska” might seem like a great idea at first. After all, you have decades of experience as a snow-covered, big-catchin’ Alaskan fisherman. There’s not a single soul who can match your prowess on the sea and you’re the definition of an expert on the subject.

However, even with your best efforts you will struggle to find students for this course, as very few people will ever search for this topic.
Here’s a tip: instead of trying to guess what students want, go straight to the data. Use tools such as Google Trends to see what type of courses people are searching for. Or, check MOOC websites such as Coursera, edX or FutureLearn to see what courses are already popular.

How deep will you go into the topic?
Depth also affects matters. To use our previous example of fishing: “Beginner’s Guide to Fishing” should be easier to grasp and should be aimed more for newcomers. Therefore, you should not go very deep into the advanced details in such a course. Above all else, you should focus on getting the basic points across to the students in such introductory courses.
“Guide to Catching 1000-pound Bluefin Tunas”, on the other hand, may be a shorter, more concise course that can do with less hand-holding, as it’s intended for an advanced audience that already knows the basics of fishing. The ideal depth depends largely on the target audience you are developing the course for. Let’s explore target audiences and their role in a course development cycle in the upcoming step.

Identify the Target Audience
After choosing the topic for your online course, it’s now time to identify your target audience. The target audience is the group of people to whom you are writing your course. Once again, be specific. Identifying that the target audience is “anyone interested in my course subject” is too general and non-actionable. Instead, try to identify the following key demographics of your target audience:

Age. The average age of online students is 34. Depending on your course topic, this number could be different. Adjust your writing and teaching styles accordingly.
Gender. On average, the gender make-up for MOOCs is 53% female and 47% male. However, in some subjects such as engineering courses, the ratio can shift heavily, with up to 85% of students being male.
Level of education. The majority of online course students are highly educated with a Bachelor’s degree or higher. Adjust the complexity of your course to match the educational level of your target audience.
Employment status. Is your course for training already employed professionals? Or, is it aimed at job-seekers who want to start a career in a new industry?

Identifying all these demographics is not always a simple process. If you’re having trouble, try using social media for target audience research.

Using Social Media for Target Audience Research
Social media can be a goldmine of information during target audience research. Other platforms exist and can be used to the same effect, but nothing works so well in establishing contact as social media. Put up a post and measure the response. What defines a healthy response will depend on your field (British Tanks After World War 2 will have a different audience compared to How To Get More Instagram Followers), so adjust accordingly.
I will share you one excellent method of using social media for audience analysis:

Find Facebook groups in the topic area you are planning to teach.
Make a group post which describes your wish to make an online course
Ask the people who interact with your post for a one-on-one interview. Alternatively, you could setup an online course survey.
Gather data about the audience and their learning wishes
Analyze the data and try to find similarities between the answers from different people
Voila! You now know who is your target audience and what they want to learn.

Gather and Structure/Your Knowledge
To build a successful course, you need to systematize all the knowledge you have
Once you’ve determined what you’re teaching, that you do have people to teach, and that you can teach them something useful, then you can get started on the course itself. Which means you need to get your knowledge together. You’ll need to know enough that a newcomer to the topic can learn a good deal from you, plus a little bit more than that. There always will be those students quicker on the uptake than others, or those who need just a bit more of the picture to really understand the lesson. To help them out, you’ll need to have enough puzzle pieces on hand to give to them.

Knowledge alone is not enough. You also need to know how to deliver it in a way that makes sense to a student, in a manner that a student can understand. Just dumping facts doesn’t work for most people, otherwise, we wouldn’t need schools and teachers. So, once you do have the right amount of knowledge and understanding, you’ll have to package it up. What should be learned at the beginning, and what should be saved for later? What logically connects one subject to another? At what point can a student be considered as having learned enough about the subject? These are all questions you have to consider while making your online course structure. This is just as much for the student as for you. With proper structure and connections, you can teach with ease, and the student will have an equally easier time understanding what you’re trying to impart to them. The retrospective will also be much easier with more natural connections.

Create an Online Course Outline
Creating an outline for your online course will not happen in one day – be consistent!
So, you’ve got your knowledge all organized – fantastic! Now it’s time to think about how you’re going to deliver that knowledge to the students. Outlining, as Teachable explains, is similar to structuring, only this time, we’re going to start coloring in the blanks. You know what you’re going to teach, but now you need to decide how you’re going to teach it.
Put simply, this is how to create an outline for your online course:

Identify the primary learning outcome
List the skills necessary for achieving the primary learning outcome
Use the skill checklist to create course modules
Set learning goals for your course modules

Identify the Primary Learning Outcome
Ask yourself this: “After my students complete this course, what will they have learned?” What can they demonstrate after having completed your course? What skills can they now apply? This dovetails with the above two; having chosen your topic and gauged your audience, you then have to ask, what sort of value can they derive from your course?
This helps both you and your students. For you, it’ll help with organizing your material, since you should be asking yourself at every step: Will this serve the outcome I want? Is it relevant to what they’re supposed to be learning? This is key to designing an online course, as direction and a definite endpoint are key.
For students, it’ll give them a concrete goal to work to, instead of just flailing around with new information in their heads and no purpose to put it toward. Plus, if they know how your course is going to help, they’re going to be more motivated to complete it.

Create a Skill Checklist
In order to create an effective online course outline, you need to start by determining which skills are the most crucial for your students. Here’s where the previously determined learning outcome comes in handy. If you haven’t decided on a learning outcome yet, then take a moment to think – what is the main skill you want your students to take away from your course?
Once you have set the learning outcome for your online course, continue by asking yourself the following question:
What skills are necessary for achieving the learning outcome?
Answer this question by creating a checklist. A checklist which covers ALL of the skills, knowledge and competences which the student needs to have by the end of the course.

Use the Skill Checklist to Create Course Modules
After you have created a checklist of the skills necessary for achieving your desired learning outcome, you can start making online class modules.
Continue by grouping closely related skills in the checklist together, as this will enable you to create more effective modules within your course. Also, try to avoid bloating your course with more content than is necessary. When compiling the checklist, keep asking yourself which skills are truly necessary for achieving the desired learning outcome. Then, rearrange this checklist according to the complexity of the skills. Keep the basic skills in the very beginning, and leave the advanced skills towards the end. Keep grouping closely related skills together, and what you should end up with is groups of skills which act as steps towards an end goal – the final learning outcome. Once you have done all this, you will have created a basic modular outline for your online course. Great job!

Set Learning Goals for Your Course Modules
One of the most important components of creating an online course is setting a learning goal for the course. However, there’s more to it. Every online course consists of various sections, and each individual section also needs to have a clear learning goal. Try to view sections and lessons for an online course in a similar way as you would look at modules inside a university degree. For example, a degree in Medicine might contain modules on Biology, Chemistry, Nursing – all of which have specific learning goals. Online courses should be structured in a similar way, with each section having an individual learning outcome for the student. Each course section in your online course should transform the student in some way. Some transformations will inevitably be smaller than others, but even small transformations can make or break a student’s desire to continue through with your course. Make the sections of your course progress in a natural way, with each section building on top of the previously learned materials.

Brainstorming Ideas
When struggling with creating an online course outline, try to answer the following questions:

What underpins your subject?
What’s an introductory lesson that shapes the rest of the course?
How do you follow up from there?
Where does your course end?

Think about these questions, and see how they shape each of your lesson plans. Remember to keep your end goal in mind. You need to put in just the right amount of lessons to impart the outcome you’re aiming for. Too few lessons and you end up with students who haven’t learned enough; too many, and you risk putting irrelevant info, or worse, fatiguing your students.

Online Course Outline Templates
Below is a list of some excellent online course outline templates which are available for free.

Online course outline templates:

University course outline templates: (while these outlines were not designed specifically for online courses, they can still serve as an excellent foundation to build on)

Choose Your Online Course / Software or Platform
Where are you going to put your stuff? On a website of your own? Or on an existing platform like Udemy? Each choice has its own ups and downs, and considering your platform is part of how to set up an online course. Your own portal means you have total control: of your site, of your brand, your pricing. Of course, you also have to deal with the headaches of marketing, getting the word out, attracting students, dealing with payments, and a dozen other matters.
An existing platform has a different set of headaches. A marketplace will happily offer your course right next to a competitor, and its pricing options will be a lot more restrictive. You’re limited by the platform’s own capabilities. Even Udemy provides a unique problem; with so many successful online courses in its database and so many students already on it, it’s entirely possible you could fade into the mass of courses available, and never get another look.

Create the Course Content
Congratulations! With the structure out of the way, you’re all set to start building your online course! This section covers the nitty-gritty of the actual creation of the course.
In order to design an awesome online course, you need to focus on:

Types of Online Course Content
That is, how will you present your lessons? You’ve got a lot of means to choose from, each with their own ups and downs. There’s a wealth of options at your disposal, and how you want to do it is entirely up to you.
Here’s a little pro tip, though: If you want to create a truly engaging and effective online course, then you should try using more than one type of online course content.

Combinations of text, video, images, and screencasting make for the most engaging online courses. Screencasting content might not be necessary, though, depending on your course subject.
Now, let’s have a closer look at each type of online course content.

Text Content
There’s always classic lectures, which consist of text. The least effort possible would simply be to deliver a series of text-only lectures, ideally leavened with a set of recommendations for further reading.
Of course, this would be terribly boring; you’ve basically just written a book, or a series of blog posts (and can do it just as effectively if you went that way).
Not to say that you should avoid text entirely – text content is a crucial part of most online courses. However, you should add more types into the mix. Not because text content is boring, but because learning by reading alone isn’t particularly effective. To accompany the bread of text, we need other ways to add essential nutrients to our diet of learning.

Video & Image Content
An easy way to make online courses more engaging is to stimulate the student visually. This means pictures and videos. The simplest method of using picture and videos in an online course would be constructing your online class more like a PowerPoint presentation:

Toss in some relevant videos (or even better – create your own)
Add relevant images to accompany blocks of text
Talk through each “slide” with a good microphone and solid articulation

If you do all this, you’ve got the beginnings of something solid. Of course, the above treats the internet and an online course as a book. Which is valid, but it’s not taking full advantage of the capabilities you have on hand. While presentations are arguably more captivating than plain text, they still remind students of boring school classrooms.

Video is an integral part of how to design an online course, and these days, a half-decent camera and good-enough video editing software won’t set you back too much. Thus, you can film your own lectures and add your own voice to your visual element. With text, video, and the literal voice of a teacher guiding them, you can really begin to replicate the feeling of a personalized lecture. How to make a good video can take up an article of its own, like this one. Video-based online classes are some of the most popular types currently out there, and it’s for good reason. They are easy to follow and captivating. Plus, they allow teachers to form a stronger connection with the students.

Screencasting Content
And, of course, since you do have a computer of your own, you’ve got another option. Screencasting is still considered video, but this time it’s not video of yourself, but rather your computer screen. You can optionally have a second camera focusing on you if you have physical material you’d like to show the students as well. In this case, you will show your computer screen to the students while leaving a small window to show the teacher. We have found that combinations of screencasting and “teacher cams” work wonders for student engagement. Give it a try.
Screencasting works particularly well for courses dealing with online matters (How To Get More Instagram Followers, for instance), as you can demonstrate exactly what it is you’re lecturing about in real-time. You really can’t overlook screencasting when you’re thinking about how to make an online video course.

Writing, Recording and Editing Your Content
Once you’ve determined how you want to deliver your knowledge, you’re finally ready to start creating the lessons!
Strictly speaking, you don’t need to have the entire course material ready before you go live. Some teachers finish creating their course while running it for their first batch of students—basically, they put together a structure, and just improvise from there. This can be risky; if you seem apprehensive about your direction, your students may become dissatisfied. Some may drop out entirely if they’re not confident that you actually know what you’re talking about.
That being said, you don’t need to create all of the content for your online course before you start selling it. It’s always better to start off with a smaller batch of content, as this will allow you to take in feedback from your students and make improvements accordingly.

All too often, we have seen cases where course teachers create dozens of hours of content, only to find out that their camera lighting was set too low, or their voice was too quiet during the video creation process. Start off small, and make improvements as you go. It’s easier to remake 3 hours of lecture content, rather than 30 hours of content. Just as important, though – don’t procrastinate content writing! Some teachers get too hung up in course structures and outlines that they never leave enough time for planning the lessons individually. Your content writing can make or break your course, so you need to put a good amount of effort into its creation. It’s hard work, and it’s not something that’s just going to ‘come to you’.

Establishing Grading & Assessment Methods
Grades in typical schools rely a lot on tests because that’s how the schooling system measures how much you’ve learned. If you’ve been paying attention, a pop-quiz is a breeze; if not, then you’ve been slacking and need to pick up the pace. Assessments can take many forms, from a quick pop-quiz right after you finish the lesson, to the final project that determines your grade at the end.

What sort of assessment you choose to employ should depend on what subject you’re teaching, and how you would like your students to prove their knowledge. If you’re teaching a history subject that’s mostly about facts, then a by-the-books multiple choice quiz might be all you need. But if you’re teaching English literature, you might need to create something a little more engaging and demanding.
Of course, assessments are optional, and whether you choose to employ them depends entirely on your teaching style, but keep in mind that a little sense of accomplishment early on can keep a student engaged.

Make Sure Your Content is Engaging
Engaging the students who enroll in your online course is absolutely crucial if you want to become successful in the e-learning industry. In order to make create engaging online course content, make sure that you:

Focus on What’s Important
Remember, teaching is more than just imparting knowledge. Never in human history has so much knowledge been so accessible to anyone with such a low barrier for entry. Just on your phone, you can bring up a wealth of information about Nuclear Physics with just a few keystrokes. Fifty years ago, you’d have to break out an encyclopedia or a book dedicated to the subject, and it’d be just as much work to get another point of view on the same topic.
With enough effort and discipline, a person can self-teach, but not everyone has the time or will to do that. Your job as a teacher is not just to bring knowledge to your students: it’s to distill all the raw knowledge gathered from that very wealth of information and deliver it in a concise, structured manner to your students. Your value is that you know the good stuff from the bad, you’ve already sorted the wheat from the chaff, you know what works and what doesn’t. A complete understanding of the subject is the key to being an effective teacher.

Provide Early Results
The thing with online courses is that it’s a lot easier to drop out of them: you just stop, and there’s no consequences at all, nothing to bite you for not completing. This understandably damages completion rates. A study examining sixteen online courses offered by the University of Pennsylvania revealed that the average completion rate was 4%.

Now, that doesn’t paint the whole picture, but it’s a pretty grim reminder that you have to keep your students engaged if you want to create a successful course. One way to keep your students engaged is to provide an early return on their investment. If a student feels they’ve learned something just from the first module alone, they’re a lot more likely to stick around. Nothing gets someone down faster than them feeling stupid or unproductive, which is very easy to do in a learning environment. Give them feedback, and an ongoing sense of accomplishment, and they’ll stick around.

Set Measurable Goals
This relates to the last point. A student must be able to measure their progress so that they can feel they’ve learned something and not just wasted their time. Remember our point about structuring knowledge? This is why. Breaking down your body of knowledge into individual, learnable pieces means that students can look back and see actual progress. It’s also the reason quizzes and tests are a useful tool: they help to measure learning and improvement.
Plus, this helps in structuring lessons. Each lesson should be about teaching one skill, or about discussing one particular aspect of the topic. At the end of the lesson, a student should have learned something useful. Always remember to keep adhering to your online course outline.

Increase Retention Rates
Retention rates for online courses have been a subject of heated debate for many years now. A study by Techcrunch found that about 6.5% of students who enrolled in massively open online courses (MOOCs) actually ended up finishing the curriculum. A study by Katy Jordan sparked a little more optimism, with the average rate of online course completion hovering around 15%. However, retention rates should never be the primary indicators for measuring the effectiveness of an online course.

As this infographic demonstrates, many students who sign up for an online course don’t have the intention of finishing the entire course. Instead, many students enroll in an online course with the intention of completing only very specific modules. Therefore, don’t become demotivated when you see that your courses don’t have very high retention rates. With that being said, there are still many strategies to increase online student retention which are worth considering.

Create a Community for Your Online Course
Creating a community for students promotes interactivity and reduces social isolation
Humans are social animals. There’s no overlooking that in a learning environment; even introverts need their social time. This is where technology steps in once again. Whether it’s a Facebook group, a Discord channel, Udemy discussion group, or whatever other means you can think up, you should establish a community for your students. What purpose does this serve? A lot. A community beyond your lectures and modules gives the students a platform, and that is a huge advantage. Building a solid community is an important part of how to create an online class.

For instance, let’s say you’ve got a student who didn’t quite understand the last lesson. He’s got a few ways to solve that, but most are problematic. They might be hesitant about approaching you, the teacher, for a dozen reasons. Self-study has its risks, as he or she might not have the motivation to go ahead and re-teach themselves. But if you give this lost student a place to interact with fellow students, they can ask their peers to help them out with the gaps in their knowledge, and before you know it they are back on track.

Another reason is feedback. With a social platform, you can gauge how your students are doing. Check out who seems to be always lagging behind; you can see at a glance which student might need a bit of extra help. If there seems to be a lot of complaints about one particular lesson, maybe you should ask them what they found difficult and change it up. Everyone is learning, even the teacher.

Gather Feedback for Your Online Course
Teaching is a two-way street, and to properly gauge how effective you are, you need the means to check that your students are understanding your lessons correctly. Good feedback is an integral element of how to design an effective online course. Make sure to really listen to the feedback which your students give you.

When you’re dealing in a field where you’re an expert, it can be hard to recall the times when you were still new to the subject. What’s obvious and easy to an expert might not be the same to a new learner. This is why you should check with others. Ideally, you’d want two different people to look at it: First, a fellow subject matter expert, who can examine your material and comment on your approach; check if you’re missing anything, if you’ve accidentally provided incorrect information, that sort of thing.

The other should be someone who matches your intended audience. In fact, you could well do a trial run with a small crop of interested testers. Finding Facebook groups in your topic area is an excellent way of finding testers for your online course. However small or large you want this stage of checking to be, you need the student’s point of view to be sure that you’re transmitting your knowledge correctly.

It’s Okay to Be Unpolished
Like the title says – it’s totally fine to be unpolished – especially for your first run of things! What you need to be on the first go is feature-complete: everything important is there and it roughly looks like it’ll fit. You will want to change things up here and there, and respond to anything your pilot class tells you. Leaving it unpolished means that there’s more room to make changes, and the less there is set in stone, the better it will be for your efforts.
Besides, if you’re inexperienced in creating content, going through the stressful early stages is the only way you have of getting the seasoning you need. Don’t worry about it, just make sure you do take note of any criticism and recommendations for improvement.

Adapt, Improve and Update
Creating an online course takes a great deal of time and effort, and it requires a lot of flexibility. You’ll constantly be adjusting your methods depending on a multitude of factors. But if you’re willing to put in the effort, to pour your skill and your soul into your work, then building online courses is a great way to dip your foot into the world of teaching.

Getting everything perfect on the very first online course you create is practically impossible. Therefore, your workflow as an online course instructor should always include listening to the feedback of your students and improving your product based on that feedback. Analyze the results of your online courses and make improvements where necessary. Don’t take negative feedback personally – even if your face is on all of the video material in the courses. When students leave reviews for your course, you should always try to make the most of it. Successful course teachers take all feedback into consideration, and they are able to adapt to the needs of the students. Negative feedback is an unpleasant but necessary part of improving your online courses.

It should also be noted that no course will stay relevant forever. The learning needs of students change constantly, and so does the competition from other teachers. This means that course instructors can’t just put out one high-quality course and expect it to perform well for 10 years without making any changes to the material. Being ready to adapt, improve, and update your online courses on a regular basis is the single most valuable ability you can have as a teacher. Don’t take your students for granted!

What is Tribe Mentality and Why is it Important?
Tribe mentality is the human tendency to seek out and connect with like-minded people who share common interests, beliefs or habits.
According to Seth Godin, a tribe is a group of people who are connected to:

One another.
A leader.
An idea.

“For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another.
A group needs only 2 things to be a tribe:
a shared interest and a way to communicate.”
Seth Godin

When effectively leveraged, tribe mentality can be a powerful tool for growing your business around a loyal fanbase.

Why is Tribe Mentality Important for a Business Owner?
Business owners now have the opportunity to formloyal, profitable tribes.
Social media and other platforms have made it easier than ever for you to create an online area where you can support and interact with relevant communities.
Combining a streaming service and an online community is a winning combination for any video-focused business.

If you’re a video business owner, curating a tribe around your content has a lot of benefits:

Increased sales: especially word-of-mouth marketing and reviews.
Increased retention: your customers feel they belong.
Better engagement: customers leave comments and discuss with likeminded people.
Better content ideas: because you have more interactions with your customers.
Create better products: based on real-time customer feedback.

For these reasons, a devoted community can be an invaluable asset to your business. Without a community, some companies may find it harder to keep up with their digitized competition. Your customers also benefit from being part of your tribe. Why? It empowers them.

How Does Tribe Mentality Empower Your Customers?
Your customers now have access to millions of like-minded people outside of their physical location or language.
The result is a massive wave of niche interest membership sites forming around any topic you can imagine:

Kitesurfing.
Vintage sewing machines.
Japanese temples.
Non-edible uses of cheese.
Victorian ghost stories.
Miniature succulents.

These communities empower a part of who your customer thinks they are. It’s an extension of self. And, if your content helps confirm that part of them, they will live and breathe your brand.

Then, they spread the word to other people they know in their tribe who would benefit from knowing about what you created. And, the nicher, the better. Why?
When an interest is niche, people feel a tighter bond. Many people enjoy puzzles but when 2 lockpicking hobbyists meet, there’s a deeper connection.

They belong to their tribe.
And, there are stats to back this up. In fact, 63% of people say they are empowered by being part of a community through:

Asking questions (76%)
Providing solutions (68%)
Connecting (65%)
Being heard (61%)
Feeling seen (60%)
Leading (35%)

By fulfilling these deep human needs, you tap into something priceless: real connection with and between your customers.
For these reasons, creating a tribe around your business is as valuable to your customers as it is for your business.

How Does Tribe Mentality Look in Action?
You’ve already seen tribe mentality and are likely a tribe member yourself. Think about businesses that have a cult-like following.

How To Create Multi-Platform eLearning Courses

Make your mobile learning course a tactile eLearning experience.
One of the most notable benefits of using a tablet or smartphone to access eLearning is interactivity. While most eLearning courses rely on a point-and-click format, mobile learning courses can offer an immersive and fully tactile eLearning experience. There is a caveat to this, however. The “touch” elements within the eLearning course must be the right size, as learners need to be able to tap on them when using a variety of different mobile devices. For example, buttons that are too close together or too small may be “untouchable” for learners on smaller screens. You may also want to consider integrating swiping motions into your eLearning course design to take full advantage of device capabilities.

Research your audience to set minimum requirements.
While researching the educational background and experience levels of your audience is essential, creating multi-platform eLearning courses also calls for device usage statistics. What mobile devices are your learners using to access the eLearning course? The answer to this question will help you determine your minimum eLearning design requirements. If most of your learners are using more advanced phones or tablets, you won’t have to worry about designing for older models. It’s best to select a range that your deliverable will fall into. For example, you may choose to develop mobile learning courses that are targeted to iPhone 6 and Android 5.0 learners and above. Then you won’t have to stretch your resources thin trying to develop multi-platform eLearning courses for every device.

Opt for readability over creativity when choosing fonts.
If you have your eye on a fancy font that you think will boost the visual appeal of your eLearning course, make sure that it’s completely legible before adding it into your eLearning design layout. Keep in mind that your learners are going to be accessing the eLearning course on smaller screen sizes, which means that they need readability over creativity when it comes to fonts. Use larger fonts, if possible, and opt for more “traditional” fonts, and follow the resolution/text rule: lower resolution requires larger text.

Use a responsive eLearning authoring tool.
Many eLearning authoring tools now offer a responsive design feature, which gives you the ability to create just one master eLearning course that can be viewed on all platforms. When your mobile learners access the eLearning course, its elements, such as menu, text boxes, etc., all adjust to offer the best possible eLearning experience. Regardless of whether your learner is on an iPhone or a tablet, they’ll be able to interact and engage with the eLearning content and activities.

Focus on ease of navigation.
There are few things more frustrating than accessing a mobile learning course, only to discover that you cannot use the navigation icons to click through to the next page or activity. Make navigation icons large and clearly visible, and avoid using hyperlinks to supplemental online resources. Tablet or mobile phone learners may find it difficult to click on tiny text links to access useful articles, eLearning videos, and external eLearning content.

Give learners control over audio elements.
Many of your learners are going to be accessing your eLearning course on-the-go. The beauty of using a smartphone, tablet, or even a smaller laptop to access eLearning is that you can participate anytime, anywhere. However, if you include an abundance of audio elements that provide key takeaways, your mobile learners aren’t going to acquire the information they need. Include subtitles and use text to highlight key concepts of the eLearning lesson. If you do have audio, integrate controls your learners can use to lower or mute the volume.

Use one design across the board.
Regardless of what devices your eLearning course supports, make sure that the instructional design is the same for every version, including color scheme, branding, and design elements. Doing so keeps the eLearning course design consistent, professional, and your learners know what to expect when they access the eLearning course on various platforms. This is yet another reason why responsive design authoring tools are ideal. You can create one master eLearning course, and the responsive design feature adapts that eLearning course to fit the resolution and screen size of the device. It’s cohesive and streamlined design at its finest and easiest.

Track user data to improve your multi-platform eLearning course strategy.
Analytics is an important tool in any eLearning strategy, but doubly so for multi-platform eLearning courses. You need to be able to keep track of what devices your learners are using and how they are interacting with the eLearning content. This gives you the opportunity to fine tune your eLearning strategy based upon the device preferences and learning needs of your audience. For example, if your analytics reveal that many of your learners are using an older operating system, you can adapt your eLearning course to that system. You can also pinpoint weak spots in your eLearning strategy, such as interactive elements that are not easy to navigate on smaller screens. In addition to user data, get feedback from your learners via surveys and polls to determine what is working and what needs to be modified.SOME TOOLS

SHIFT: This toolbox has a huge wealth of features, ready for you to start creating training tools with them. If you want to just try it out, you can start a free trial and play around with it. One of the best things about it is that it’s cross platform compatible. You can use the tools on either a Mac or a PC, making life much easier all round.

Boom Essays: However you’re making your web based training materials, you need to know that they’re all easy to understand and follow. This writing service can proofread them for you before they go live, making any edits that are needed. An extra eye is always helpful where writing is concerned, so this service can be very useful.

TalentLMS: This web based training toolkit saves all of your materials to a cloud based server. This means that you can create them wherever you are, without having to worry about transferring them to other media. All you need is an internet connection to get started. It also offers detailed reports on trainees’ progress, so you can see who’s doing well and who needs some more input from you.

Smart Builder: This is a simple to use content creator that lets you drag and drop the components you need. It uses a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor, making the entire process as painless as possible. The best part is that it’s free to use, so there’s no initial outlay to make before you can start working on your tools.

UK Writings: All good web based training content needs good writing. Without it, your resources won’t be usable. This writing service can help you out if you don’t feel your writing skills are up to scratch. All you have to do is let them know what your resources need to do. They can create the right copy for you, and you can put it directly in your work. Your trainees will get a lot out of their training if you use this service.

MindFlash: This training company is trusted by top brands, and it’s easy to see why. You can create, manage and review your content all in the same dashboard. The UI is simple to use, and you can track every user’s progress. Once you’ve evaluated that progress, you can group them so you can laser target their training. This way, everyone gets the most out of their time with the system.

Digital Chalk: If you’re a start up, or a small business, you want to be watching every penny you spend. This tool is good for you as it offers affordable pricing plans, meaning you can train your staff with top quality online tools without breaking the bank. Their tools can be used on mobile too, so your staff can access them wherever they are.SOFTWARE
seems like 1 of the best deals

1.Elucidat.
Elucidat is a multi-platform eLearning content authoring tool delivering educational content in HTML5 markup. Its robust features include templates, layout themes, and collaboration tools that facilitate communication with other team members throughout the content design process. This powerful content authoring tool supports popular learning management system formats enabling designers to custom brand their courses. It also offers analytics tools to provide aggregated data related to student performance and use of the course materials. Elucidat comes with a free 14 day trial license. After the trial the license will cost $2475 per author.

2.Raptivity.
Raptivity delivers rapid course content creation by offering several templates that are easily modified by course authors. Their offering supports several output formats including HTML5 and Flash, allowing the course to be published to mobile learners and desktops supporting the Flash plug-in.The Raptivity toolkit comes with a media toolbox that gives content creators the means to add their own images, videos, text and buttons into their course interaction model. Raptivity comes with a free 14 day trial. The course tools are offered in several licensing models with the basic Essential version starting at $300 for a lifetime license. Educators, governmental and nonprofit organizations are offered a 25 percent discount.

3.EasyGenerator.
EasyGenerator is a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) content builder used for creating web based training solutions using a hierarchical workflow model. One of the more interesting offerings of EasyGenerator is its support for publishing course content to their hosted cloud. After the course is uploaded, the educatior is given a link to their course to distribute to their students. Pricing begins with a $0 entry level package that supports a maximum of 10 users and 10 courses. Their high end package is $59 user/month and supports unlimited courses and students.

4.Lectora Inspire.
Lectora Inspire is among the premium desktop software options for developing web based training tools . The software supports rapid content creation and deployment across mobile platforms. Their proprietary technology, Responsive Course Design, allows course authors to create the course once and make device specific customizations. Lectora comes with a free 30 day trial and pricing is $1595 for a single license or $2374 with the live technical support option.

5.M-Learn on the Go.
M-Learn on the Go comes with thousands of pre-designed courses giving content creators easily modifiable templates. Social engagement between learners and instructors is supported via M-Learn’s audio, video and text functionality. Business users with existing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations will find the support for embedding in Skydive or Vimeo a very attractive feature. The course creation tool supports multiple choice and true/false quizzes and a rapid survey creation tool. Real-time learner tracking support is also available. M-Learn offers customized pricing and promo models that are available directly through their sales team.

6.Adapt Learning Authoring Tool.
Adapt is an open source tool for developing web based training courses on desktop and mobile devices. The Adapt project is a consortium of approximately 31 developers, creative staff, designers and content managers. Their offering supports rapid and highly customizable eLearning content creation. Several components supporting various content types are offered to course designers including: text, graphic, narrative and a “hot” graphic component that supports interactivity with the learner. The highly impressive tool set is made even more attractive through its open source pricing model at no cost with open source licensing restrictions.

7.SmartBuilder.
SmartBuilder is a free-form, drag and drop, what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) course layout tool. After the elements are in place customization is managed through their object-based inter-communication functionality. The tool supports several content output options including mobile-friendly HTML5. This environment also comes with content management and course creation collaboration tools supporting enhanced productivity and version management. Pricing starts at $0 for the collaboration license that allows an unlimited number of lessons to be created. The professional edition, which unlocks all features is $1970 author/year.

8.LessonWriter.
LessonWriter delivers a literacy and critical-thinking solution available for instructional texts with the goal of assisting students to improve their reading and comprehension. The basic services, which are provided free to teachers, allows to create reading lessons and materials, a lesson plan, flash cards and question review sheets and unlimited lessons from teacher provided digital texts without requiring any Instructional Design training. Pricing starts at a basic free service for teachers and goes up to a premium model at $60 per year that supports video, advanced lesson design features and allows lessons to be posted online. All offerings support mobile and web based content delivery options.

9.Adobe Creative Cloud.
Adobe Creative Cloud is a SaaS offering of popular Adobe tools including Photoshop, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Premiere, Illustrator and Comp. While not intended as a suite of web based training tools per se, Adobe Comp supports designing mobile-based layouts that transform drawing gestures into professional graphics that can be used in learning material creation. The Adobe suite can be used to design customized course materials for use on mobile devices. Pricing starts at $19.99/month for students and teachers.

10.LCDS.
Microsoft Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a free of charge design tool that supports interactive, online course creation by Microsoft Certified Professionals. LCDS supports publishing e-learning courses by using their LCDS form-based design tool to generate customized interactive quizzes and game-based and other multimedia content. LCDS is available free of charge to Microsoft Professionals.

11.Articulate – Storyline
Articulate Storyline is a foundational elearning-authoring program for instructional designers, and Storyline 2 provides an improved user interface and interactive learning elements. Articulate Storyline is the industry’s favorite software for creating interactive courses. It’s simple enough for beginners, yet powerful enough for experts. And it lets you create virtually any interaction you can imagine, in minutes. With the new perpetual version of Storyline, you’ll be able to deliver mobile and accessible courses with enhanced interactivity faster.WordPress Learning Management Systems Outperform Standalone LMSs

1. Ease Of Use.
WordPress, being a more contemporary ecosystem, offers tremendous ease of access and a modern user interface as compared to the complexity of standalone systems like Moodle. This is evident while carrying out tasks as simple and elementary as adding a new course. Sample this:

Creating a new course in Moodle (as shown in Moodle documentation):

Go to Administration> Site Administration> Courses> Manage Courses and Categories.
Click on the category where you want your course to be.
Click the New Course link.
Enter the Course Settings.
Then choose either Save and return to go back to your course, or Save and display to go to the next screen.

That’s five distinct steps and an option that’s nested 4 levels deep, folks. May not seem like much, but what about when you multiply it with setting up and editing content for tens and tens of courses? I don’t imagine things to be any simpler.

On the other hand, we have Learning Management System plugins on WordPress like LearnDash which lets you publish a course in two clicks straight (it’s true!), accessible right from the dashboard. Or even WP Courseware, with a neat drag and drop interface to structure/re-structure all you eLearning content from a single screen.

Additionally, the back end controls are simplified and easy to use even by the standards of a novice user. All one would need to do is find his way around the dashboard and he’s all set to author content and publish them. Navigating through and configuring the settings is easy and intuitive, and even customizable to an extent when you consider the possibilities like coding in Meta Boxes for a quick access to options that you require often.

Configuring standalone Learning Management System to achieve an equally efficient back end UI will take hours and hours of coding and wishing you had chosen WordPress instead.

2. Front End Design And UX (User Experience).
The internet is a place where the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” does not apply. Netizens do, and will always, gauge your website in terms of design and user experience, no matter how great the content.

Not an area wherein standalone Learning Management Systems specialize.

The design offered my Moodle or Blackboard is pretty much standard and non volatile. Granted, there is room for personalizations, but it’s limited at the very best and nowhere close to what we have on the other side of the discussion. User experience on the front end of these systems echoes back end which, as we discussed, is cluttery.

WordPress Learning Management Systems have the distinctive advantage of being a part of the ecosystem which is primarily designed to develop great looking websites, and it excels at it. There are literally thousands of WordPress themes that you can choose from to glam up your eLearning site, and transform it in a visually striking internet entity.

And it’s NOT all looks.

A great WordPress theme not only improves upon the design, but also takes your website leaps and bounds ahead in terms of user experience. Smooth browsing, slick navigations, convenient widgets, tremendous ease of access and even awesome CSS animations are some of the things you get to incorporate to the front end of your eLearning site. This is bound to retain a significant amount of visitors as subscribed users, provided the content is relevant, of course.

You even have themes developed specifically the purpose of eLearning, that reduce the effort required for eLearning related customizations by manifolds.

With great design comes great traffic!

3. Less Demanding.
To give you an idea of how WordPress stacks up against conventional Learning Management Systems in terms of resource requirements, consider the installation zip file sizes for Moodle and Canvas, which are close to about 50 megabytes each.

WordPress, meanwhile, clocks in around a measly 4 to 5 megabytes of data. That’s about one tenth of the former, and should tell you how light it is when used as a LCMS. Even with 10 resource intensive plugins extending the functionality of your website, the size of the installation comes out to be less than 15 megabytes, which still is less than half of standalone set ups.

Additionally it can function just as well whether it’s hosted on a shared network or dedicated one. Moodle has been known to stutter on shared hosting and would cost you a small fortune in terms of the hardware required, when scaled for a large number of users.

Computational requirements are going to be just as high. While WordPress, no matter the scale, will work with virtually any contemporary operating system and processor with RAM needs as low as 512 megabytes (all you need is a server that run PHP and MySQL), system requirements for various stand alone set ups have been listed as high as 4 gigabytes of ram (for enterprise level set ups) along with 2 or more gigahertz of processing speeds.

Half the cost is double the profits.

4. Business And Marketing.
One of the USPs of WordPress is that it can be modeled as a powerful business and marketing tool with very high returns on investment.

When you’re looking to sell courses online, WordPress plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads offer a single step solution for all your ecommerce needs. Not only do these extensions set up an online store, ready for you to add a variety of products, but they also set up a payment gateway and provide you with business tools like shipping gateways, inventory management, CRM, invoicing… The list is endless really.

An added advantage would be the level of scalability that can be achieved with these systems. Consider the online store for WooThemes, the creators of WooCommerce (as the name might suggest). While the number of products is limited to under 500, the site itself has over 500,000 registered users and tracks up to 11,000 orders a month. That’s huge!

Of course their store is built on WooCommerce.

How do standalone Learning Management Systems compare, you ask?

Not particularly well. While systems like Moodle do let you sell courses online, things are nowhere nearly as efficient as ecommerce plugins. There are no payment gateway integrations, no ecommerce tracking and definitely not much of management. Tasks like building a course marketplace may as well be a distant dream.

In terms of marketing, plugins like WordPress SEO by Yoast or SEO Made Simple optimize your website to rank higher for organic searchers, which is definitely a marketing strategy you’d want to take up in a world where Google is a man’s best friend.

Other marketing tools would include extensions that allow users to share content on social media, email marketing integrations, web traffic analytics, Google XML Sitemaps and loads of other useful plugins, all of which can be found in abundance on the net.

5. Community And Plugins.
I recently had the good opportunity of interviewing Nate Johnson, founder of Fly Plugins and the brain force behind WP Courseware. Here’s a snippet from the same:

Me: WordPress, in a word, is?
Nate: Community.

Matt Mullenweg couldn’t have stated it better himself (he probably would have used the exact same word though).

What started a little over a decade ago as a personal blogging software built on PHP has eventually go on to become an extraordinarily powerful web publishing tool that powers over 25% of the internet as of 2015.

And it’s growing at astronomical speeds.

The WordPress community is undoubtedly huge, with hundreds of thousands of developers constantly innovating and contributing to the code base, being an open source platform that it is.

Take a quick look at the release history of WordPress and you’ll see what I mean. Till date, there have been over 98 versions or WordPress, that’s about 8 updates per year. With over 29,000+ plugins, the level of functionality achievable within the WordPress environment is unmatched. So much so that “there is a plugin for that” is an inside joke within the community.

Support is just as tremendous. WordPress Codex is a Bible-of-sorts when it comes to documentation. It’s a massive online wiki that contains almost about everything you would ever need to know about using WordPress. Any other queries you might have during the development process of your eLearning site, chances are it will have already been asked and answered in any of the numerous forums all over the internet.

WordPress For eLearning?

WordPress is a content management system that currently powers one fourths of internet today (27.5% of the top 10 million websites by traffic). It is an implementation of website-building tools which make the process of website-creation much more intuitive and user-friendly. Using the easy UI of WordPress for eLearning you can launch websites within a few days of conceiving the idea of your online course. For developing your online learning course WordPress would be the best tool when you are testing the waters for the feasibility of your content. The vast range of themes and plugins that WordPress offers could help you broaden the look and functionality of your website, so that you can handle and support learners in the range of a 100,000. Some of the most popular websites that use WordPress are TechCrunch and The New Yorker.

Features Of A WordPress eLearning Website
To build a great WordPress eLearning website without getting yourself involved in considerable coding will require you to integrate:

- Learning Management System to control your course and lesson pages.
- Theme for supporting the Learning Management System.
- Membership plugin to restrict and grant access to paying subscribers.
- An eCommerce platform to handle payments and promotions.
- Video hosting plugin for your video lectures.

What follows are plugin recommendations.

1. Learning Management System
Sensei
Developed by WooThemes, Sensei LMS integrates with the full suite of plugins that WooThemes offers. A single site subscription costs $129 per year. Sensei has an intuitive user interface, which makes the process of creating courses, modules, lessons and quizzes very easy..

Because it integrates directly with WooCommerce, Sensei does not require a separate membership plugin to control user access. A section on WooCommerce follows later.

Custom features can be enabled through a variety of shortcodes, such as videos which can be embedded into lessons using video plugin and shortcodes.

Learndash
Learndash is another popular WordPress-based LMS. Its main value offerings that set it apart from competition are good customer support and an active community to discuss their courses. They also support Tin Can API to integrate offline learning activities. To support Tin Can API, Learndash supports the GrassBlade Learning Record Store. You can gamify your course to incentivize user achievements by integrating the BadgeOS plugin.

LearnDash integrates with 2checkout for membership and JigoShop for eCommerce, and offers PayPal integration.

1.NamasteLMS

NamasteLMS is a free WordPress Learning Management System, with premium add-ons. For a free LMS it offers a lot of features. Besides creating courses, modules, lessons, and quizzes, this LMS offer various options for administrators to control user access. This includes a ‘To Do’ button for administrators to manage pending student enrollments, lesson completion, and homework assignment solution approval. There are free add-ons for integrating WooCommerce and Instamojo, making this an extremely useful free LMS to market your online course.

2. LMS Themes
LMS themes are a useful addition when you wish to customize the look of your online course website without investing too much effort into doing the design yourself. LMS themes are designed to integrate with specific LMS, so the following recommendations integrate with Sensei and LearnDash respectively. Most LMS themes include added functionalities, such as social login, through which users can login to your website using their Facebook or Google Accounts. Many themes also offer BuddyPress support. BuddyPress plugin helps you build community pages, to facilitate active discussions around your course.

LMS By Sensei
The LMS theme (yes, they named a theme ‘LMS’!) integrates with Sensei, and by extension, supports WooCommerce. You can use this to customize class pages, timetables, Course Page, and Quiz Pages.

LMS theme is the best option for course creators using language other than English. This theme integrates with WPML multilingual plugin, to support multiple languages. It also supports Right-to-Left scripts.

LMS theme also supports certificates and badges options for courses for gamification.

EduPro
The EduPro theme integrates with Learndash. The large variety of unique homepages that EduPro supports make it a highly resourceful theme. Additional customizations include custom font configuration, Drag & Drop Themes, and Revolution Slider for slider-based themes.

3. Membership Plugins
Managing memberships to your eLearning course is critical to monetizing your content, and ensuring that only the users you wish to grant access can view the course. The following are the most popular plugins in WordPress for eLearning.

WP eMember
WP eMember does the basic job of creating different categories of user access roles. Different categories means that you can create different membership levels, each of which will have varying level of access to your course. You can implement content restriction through configuring individual pages to allow access to only particular user role(s). Through partial protection within page you can display additional material within the same page for paying subscribers. This means that paying subscribers get access to more information without having to navigate to pages behind the paywall.

A useful feature for course creators is the ability to prevent multiple simultaneous logins. This is an effective deterrent against multiple users accessing your content via password-sharing.

eMember also enables drip-content – scheduling content periodically so that learners are not overwhelmed by information.

Membership 2 Pro
Membership 2 comes with a free version, which can be upgraded to a paid version for added functionalities and integrations. Because the base version is free, Membership is one of the most widely used memberships plugin.

Membership 2 has a great interface to guide users to use its features. This includes a New User Wizard, to help you get started. For each course/ lesson you create, you can set the membership levels that have access on the course/ lesson page itself. Likewise you can decide whether to release the content immediately or to delay it as part of the dripped content management.

The paid version of Membership 2 Pro offers a large range of integrations, including the payment gateways PayPal and Stripe.

4. Payment Gateway
An eCommerce platform is necessary to market your course, and to configure payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe.

WooCommerce
You can use WooCommerce to sell products. A product may be an online course. WooCommerce gives you a variety of options for selling your online courses. You may market individual courses online, or instead you may bundle multiple courses into a single package for learners looking for exhaustive subject-matter courses. The ability to tailor your course offerings for different users is a big advantage of using WooCommerce. Most Learning Management Systems and themes support WooCommerce, for which reason you are unlikely to find any compatibility issues with using WooCommerce for selling online course.

Both PayPal and Stripe integrate with WooCommerce. PayPal and Stripe offer different value offerings. The range of APIs that Stripe offers means that you can conveniently integrate Stripe with your WordPress online course website. PayPal on the other hand is largely popular for its reliability, ease-of-use and customer support. The transaction fees for both are roughly similar (PayPal charges extra for Pro and Business users)

5. Secure Video Hosting Plugin
The content and lights-camera-action in video production requires a huge investment outlay. Ensuring that the videos are not downloaded and shared illegally is critical. A video hosting plugin that is at the same time easy-to-use and secure is very useful. WordPress has an in-built video player, YouTube can also be used, but a dedicated video hosting for eLearning is recommended to allow viewers to view your content without glitches and at the same time ensuring highest security of your content.

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How To Create Multi-Platform eLearning Courses

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