My book – Carrie Kenner: Doula Trainer. Writing Coach. Sacred Feminine Guide.

Anatomy of an Online Course Launch

Carrie Kenner — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 05:43:41 +0000

Social media has changed the face of marketing.

And the pandemic changed the face of learning.

It's Not Optional

Any business knows they must have an online presence if they want to capture their slice of the 70% of the world’s population who use the internet.

And any business owner who works with clients one-on-one — coaches, healing professionals, educators, consultants — knows they have to reach more than one person at one time if they want to grow their reach (and income).

Thus, the explosion of online courses that shows up in your social feeds.

Thinking about jumping on the bandwagon?

As an online course creator, business coach, and marketing consultant, let me give it to you straight:

You’re in for a world of surprises if you don’t go in fully informed.

Therefore, I present to you...

The Anatomy of an Online Course Launch

Maybe you're thinking of transforming a course you’ve been offering in person into a passive producer (an on-demand course that people can buy and watch anytime while you rake in the money as you sleep)...

Or you have an idea for a series of short courses that provide bite-size chunks of your premium course to tire-kickers...

Or the pandemic finally vanquished any doubts about what could be taught online and you’re ready to share your intricate whatever method with the world.

All of these are great ideas that have their unique benefits, challenges, and pitfalls. Ready to learn how to take them from conception to birth? Let’s go...

An Idea Is Born

Okay, you have an idea for a course. The next step is to turn it into a curriculum. Don’t know what that word means? That’s your first homework assignment. (Download my free Curriculum Template here to get you started.)

Why is a curriculum important? Because, no matter how intimately you know your subject matter, when you are delivering content online you have to follow a few important rules. Rules designed to get people to start your course and to keep going.

Outlining your content in a curriculum forces you to organize what you know in a way that keeps online learners engaged. (If you don’t know much about adult learning theory or learning styles, now would be a good time to learn about it before you get too deep into your curriculum design and create a course that doesn’t work for a lot of people.)

Your curriculum will also get you thinking about how you’ll deliver your content (talking head presentation, video demonstration, narrated slides, etc.) and how you might structure any interactive components (Q&A session, breakout rooms, live demo, return demonstration, etc.)

Also, if you intend to get Continuing Education hours for your course, your curriculum will be a start to the information professional organizations will require from you.

Now that you have your course outlined, the next steps follow, but not in any particular order:

Create the Course

Since your course is online, it must be delivered either live or via a recording form some technology platform. Zoom is the easiest, more familiar option for most people and it will do the trick when you are starting out. You will make your life easier if you get a paid account with all the professional options you need to deliver and record your course.

If/when you want to upgrade the professionalism of your online courses, you can hire a professional videographer and go into a slick-looking studio to have your teaching sessions recorded and edited, with branded slides and music added to enhance the quality.

Your online course will either be delivered live online to a group of people, or pre-recorded. You can also mix and match with some pre-recorded content (typically called ‘modules’) and some live sessions.

Regardless of which format you choose to offer your content, you will need a platform to house it. Even if your course is all live, and you email students from your gmail account, you’re going to need some place where your content “lives” so students can access recordings, handouts, articles, etc. at any time. Yes, you can do that with Google Drive, but it’s not the most efficient or professional platform so I recommend you research online course platforms (Thrivecart, Kajabi, and Thinkific are some options with a wide range of price points).

The Marketing Plan

Where (and how) will you market your course? For an online course to be successful, you likely want to sell it. Lots of it.

(If you don't have plans to sell lots of your course, and are creating it for some other reason, you can skip the rest of this section. Lucky you.)

If your current email list is a few dozen or a few hundred people (likely people who met you through your in-person work), they aren’t likely to buy from you. Why? They already got your goodies.

So you need to reach more people, and once those people buy your course (you can plan on that being about 1-2% of them according to industry standards), you have to reach even more people. It’s an endless cycle.

Are you starting to see one of the big pitfalls of online courses? Yes, you make the course once. But you market it forever.

Online courses are a great addition to your array of products, but you have to keep finding people who might be interested to show them what you got. And that, my friend, is the #1 Challenge of creating online courses: Marketing.

Your People-Attracting Funnel

If you’re still on board, your marketing plan is going to need a strategy for attracting new people continually. Most marketing strategies for online courses consist of a funnel.

A funnel is designed to get many people’s attention (with a free offer that shows off your skills) and then continue communicating with them (usually via a series of emails) so they get to know you, like you, trust you, and ultimately buy from you.

I know you’ve seen funnels in action. You’ve likely been a part of one or many. So I recommend that — right now — you make a list of funnel traits that you like (do you like free training webinars, 5-day email challenges, training videos, checklists, Top 10 guides, etc,) and think about which ones a) you’d most like to create and deliver, and b) which ones would work best for your audience.

That, my friend, is your lead generator.which you use to attract potential new clients. Now you need to create it. And then decide where it lives and how to deliver it.

This is kind of like a snowball turning into an avalanche, huh?

And we haven’t even got to the emails part...

Wooing Your Audience

Now that you’ve got your lead generator created, you’re going to release it to the world.

But you’re not just going to post it as a download on your Facebook account (and you can’t even do that from Instagram), so you have to come up with a way to get people’s email addresses so you can send it to them. Say ‘Hello’ to a new pop-up form.

Why go through that extra step?

Because you want to keep emailing those folks who just became your potential clients.

You’ll hear this over and over again in marketing: You own your email list. Social media accounts are just rented space. In other words, you can get kicked off social in a heartbeat and lose everything that’s there. It’s happened to the best of us.

Instead, you must get interested people on your email list and start the nurture process. This is where you woo a potential client from a ‘first date’ to a second date and on to a committed relationship.

The easiest way to do this is with a series of interesting, informative, personality-filled, content-rich emails that move your readers from ‘I just wanted the free thing’ to ‘Hmmm, this person has some really good ideas’ to ‘I can’t wait to learn more from them’ and pulling out their credit card.

If the thought of writing a bunch of emails that are “interesting, informative, personality-filled, and content-rich” makes you break out in a sweat, you’ve just arrived at Online Course Creation Challenge #2: Copywriting.

But Wait, There’s More

Now that you have your charming emails going out to woo your audience (and hopefully you’ve automated those emails, which is another project in and of itself), you have to send folks somewhere to sign up for your course.

That could be as simple as sending them a link to your PayPal account, but a wiser, more professional approach would be to send them to a sales page to seal the deal.

A sales page is a single web page (aka ‘landing page’) that provides more information — and many more reasons — why someone should buy your course. It talks about the problem your course solves, your unique solution to their problem, the benefits your students will receive from the course, how their lives will be improved after they take your course, why you are the one and only person to teach them this, and why they should buy now.

You can also add bonuses to increase the value of your course and make it irresistible for people to buy it. Bonuses can include additional training videos, handouts, interviews with experts in a related field, access to another course of yours, you get the idea...

Your sales page will include the big BUY NOW button to register, which will either take them to an order form on your course platform, your PayPal account, or some other magical technology that will collect their payment and add them to your student list.

The Order of Things

You may wonder why I said you could do the above steps in any order. Because it’s true. You can start marketing a course before it’s created. You can create the course and market it later.

You can create your sales page first, your emails second, your lead generator last and reverse-engineer your funnel.

Whatever works for you, your interests, and your energy. You might do what you think are the hardest things first to get it done with. Or you might start with the easier, more enjoyable parts first to get your momentum going.

However you do it, you should absolutely have a plan in place that accounts for all the details. We call this a launch plan and it shows each step of your marketing funnel and course creation process with associated action items and any deadlines.

It might look something like this:

On With the Show

Finally, now that you’ve got your students enrolled, you have to deliver your course.

If it’s an evergreen or on-demand course that requires no involvement from you, you just give them a way to access it.

But if it’s a course that has a live component, you’re going to need more emails to remind them of the live calls, provide Zoom links, add to calendar links, and generally keep them engaged.

Why on Earth Would Anyone Do This?

After reading through all this, you may be wondering why anybody wants to create an online course, once they’re fully informed.

Because it’s the best way to serve more people than you can one-on-one.

When you can teach to a group, you get paid more per hour of teaching. When you expand that group to include people around your state, country, or the world, you can reach a huge audience with your gifts (and get paid way more per hour).

An important consideration that I haven’t mentioned yet is the cost of producing an online course. There’s a saying in business: You can either have time or money, but not both. Or put another way, You’re either going to spend time or money in your business, but not neither.

For most people creating their first online course, they’re going to invest a LOT of time and a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

If you are in a position to pay top dollar for all the things to create your course (pro videographer, Kajabi, launch strategist, marketing consultant, web designer, copywriter, VA to set it all up for you), it will take some of the time burden off you, but there is still a lot you will have to put into your project. It will just be a lot easier.

Whether you are in the time or money camp, you can hire me to guide you through the entire process and do much of the work for you.

Many professionals were forced to move their work online during the pandemic. Some found they liked it. Some found their customers demanded it. So whether they want to or not, it’s where they need to be.

For most people, the appeal of not commuting, renting space, or hauling work supplies around is enough to get them to consider the investment in creating an online course.

In the birth world (my niche), the temptation of reaching more expecting families and not being on call is a biggie. Way more convenient. Way less disruptive to one’s life. But also maybe a bit premature.

Be Choosy

The influx of courses on any and every topic is overwhelming. People looking for a quick course on how to bake the perfect birthday cake don’t know if they’re learning from Jo down the street who just finished taking their own birthday-cake-baking online course, or the inventor of the cronut (Dominique Ansel if you’re wondering).

So here’s my caveat: If you are just starting out in your field and don’t have the chops yet, spend your time developing the nuanced skills that come only from working in person. Earn your place in your field before crashing the online world (even if you have the money or the social media following to do it). My motto is: Always be ethical in what you’re offering.

People who are truly skilled at what they do (massage therapists, doulas, yoga instructors, personal trainers) can teach inside a box. They honed their skills over years — if not decades — to be that good.

They have the language, the embodied knowledge, the stories, and the charisma to communicate what they know in any format. You feel their energy from across the airwaves. They can describe, explain, and demonstrate a technique for any style of learner.

If you’re looking for a course, do your homework and find out about the trainer’s background. How long have they been in the field? What’s their special sauce? Do they have lots of training under their belt or did they skip that part and go right to being a ‘pro?’ Have they taught anywhere else before (or worked with many people individually)?

Virtual learning can be a boon to the teacher and student alike. Just make sure — if you’re the trainer — you have the goods to deliver a quality product to your audience and — if you’re the student — you’re getting the best trainer possible.

There you have it. The Anatomy of an Online Course Launch all laid out for you to pore over. It’s a lot and you probably have lots of questions. Schedule a free 30-minute call with me if you’re contemplating the leap and I can answer all of them.

I also have many free tools so let me know what you need help with and I’ll send it over. Leave your request in the comments or see my email address in the Junk Drawer : )

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Publishing & Your Dripping Faucet

Carrie Kenner — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 20:08:41 +0000

DIY, Hire an Expert, or Hybrid?

Most of our personal and work projects aren’t rocket science, so we actually have a choice of how much we do ourselves or hire out. Whether it’s a dripping faucet, creating a website, creating a garden, or launching a space shuttle (wait, that one is rocket science!) you have options galore for how to find help. There are consultants for every imaginable topic, instructional videos, webinars, books, or a quick local search to find someone to come and fix that drip.

Right now, my big project is deciding how to publish my book. As I mentioned in my last blog post, there are three main publishing options: Self-publishing, hybrid publishing, or a traditional publishing house.

Want to take a look and see how my process could help with your leaky faucet?

DIY

Pros - As you can guess, the more work you do yourself, the least costly the project will be. And another added benefit is that you will know a lot about how your sink, website, garden, or book works, which can benefit you in the long run.

Cons - The project will likely take a lot of your time, and the learning curve may be quite steep.

In DIY self-publishing, it’s relatively inexpensive to get your book published but you have to learn how to format your book, find a self-publisher, hire a cover designer... and you are on your own for marketing and promoting. Self-publishing is not free; at a minimum you have to pay for an editor and proof-reader (see all the potential costs below). And you won’t have access to typical book distribution channels so your book may not be widely available.

The good news: you get to keep the most royalties - up to 70% of each sale!

Hybrid

Pros - Knowing something about how your thing works is important, so hiring someone who can guide you, or do parts of the project, is the perfect solution. When I was converting my van, I did most of the work myself after watching YouTube videos or reading manuals. But when it came to the electrical system, I wanted someone to hook it up and test it to make sure I wasn’t going to electrocute myself. Hybrid at its best!

Hybrid publishers are typically ‘expats’ from the traditional publishing field and know how the industry works. They can provide lots of guidance to an author, and do the final steps of proofreading, design and formatting in house. You, the author, get a larger percentage of each book sale (you can expect 25-50% royalties on print books, up to 70% royalties on ebooks). Oh, and they have standard distribution channels so can get your book into book stores. Big plus!

Cons – You are going to pay for the services of professionals. Sometimes it’s not as cheap as you expect, even if they are only doing a fraction of the job for you.

Hybrid publishing costs vary widely: $5,000-20,000. They don’t perform all of the functions of a traditional publishing house, and you often have to pay for their services up front.

Hire an Expert

Pros – If you pay someone to do the entire project for you, you save time and brain cells. And you usually have some guarantees that they will do it right.

In traditional publishing, the publishing house typically takes your book and decides on the title, formatting, and cover so you don’t have to worry about any of that. They may give you an advance, or at least not charge to publish your book.

Cons – This option is either going to cost the most - or return the least - to your wallet.

With traditional publishing, you may not pay up front, but your royalty payments will be smaller since the majority of sales will go back to the publishing house. You also give up a fair amount of control – they choose the title, book cover, and many editing decisions. And they offer no guarantees on sales, marketing or promotion, or doing a second edition.

Be sure to review your contract carefully when you are handing over a project to someone else. Be certain about what you are paying for, what is included, what is excluded, guarantees or warranties. Most consumers are surprised by something they expected but wasn’t included in the contract!

Determining what is most important to you - time, money, or know-how - will help you find the right balance and make the best decision for whatever you trying to accomplish.

Curious how much it costs to Self-publish a book?

Developmental editor - $1500+

Copy/line editor - $600-1200

Proofreader - $500-800

Book cover designer - $300+

Book formatting - $500-1000

Marketing - $50-$1000

Total: $3000-4500 to self-publish

Go give a local author some love for figuring out how to get their book in your hands!

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NEWBIE AUTHOR LEARNS THE TRUTH ABOUT BOOK PUBLISHING!

Carrie Kenner — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 18:45:17 +0000

How many of you thought - like I did - that to get a book published you:

Sit down and write the book
Edit your book – once – after you’re done
Find a publishing house
The publisher edits your book one final time and gets it ready to publish
The publisher promotes your book
You make a lot of money from your book sales

If you have never published a book before, you wouldn’t know any different, and you can join the “oh my god there’s so much more to writing a book” club. In fact, there are many more steps, and half the steps above don’t even happen anymore!

Here’s what I learned (and am learning) about what it takes to get a book published:

First, let’s start with the untruths..

Publishing houses don’t promote your book for you. Wah wah. They expect you to have a following (and if you don’t, you better start building a following before you even try to find a publisher because they probably don’t want you without one!), and to do your own promotion.

Publishing houses don’t necessarily edit your book. They usually have a professional proofreader on staff (which is a final step after numerous edits). They might format or design the cover. All these things are ‘maybe’s that you need to check out before deciding on a publisher and knowing what you are spending your money on.

And speaking of money, unless you already have a huge following or are a famous author, you are not going to make a lot of money off your book. You will get anywhere from 5-70% of sales (called royalties), depending on the publisher (which could be YOU, that’s how you get those higher royalties), your contract, and if you received any money from a publisher up front.

Now on to the half-truths...

It is true that you do need to sit down to write your book. But you don’t write it from start to finish. You just write stuff. And write. And write. And write some more. At some point, you say “I’m finished.” But you’re not. You have to review, and revise, and add some here, and take away (a lot) from there.

At this point, you could send your manuscript to beta readers for their review, input, and edits. Or you could wait until after your developmental edit (see next paragraph). Beta readers are a group of folks who like to read, and may or may not be your target audience; they are often friends and acquaintances who are willing to do you a big favor. You have to beg them to not be nice to you, and to give you honest feedback on what works and what doesn’t. They also catch all your bad grammar, spelling errors, and typos. Basically, beta readers are angels.

Most of the big editing is done by professionals, who have enough distance from your book (and expertise) to tell you what is good or not. A developmental editor will help you develop your book into a cohesive masterpiecemanuscript. That means it will flow well, the characters will be well-developed, the dialog will be tight, the story arc is intact and complete.

You will revise some more based on their feedback.

And by now, perhaps earlier, you will start to promote this book of yours that still isn’t close to being done.

How do you promote a thing that doesn’t exist yet?

You start building interest in it. You tell all your friends and family. And you start doing things to attract your target readers – things like posting on social media, blogging, offering free chapters of your book in exchange for getting on your email list, running contests, appearing on podcasts or YouTube or Oprah!

After you do a few more rounds of reviews, you send it back to your beta readers for their final input and make it as good as you can get it. You are now ready for your copy or line editor. These professionals go through your manuscript line by line and whittle it down to just the right words, said in just the right way, and hopefully no more. They are supposed to refine your manuscript into a masterpiece.

Cool. Are we done now?

Nope. Now your book gets proofread. Then it is formatted with fonts and headers, and illustrations and side boxes, so it looks clear and organized and interesting on the page.

And you get your cover designed; that part is fun! You want it to look and feel good in the reader’s hands, right?

Now can it be published? Yes! But who did you choose to publish your book? Learn about the process of choosing a publisher in next week's blog post...

Carrie Kenner is a first-time author of a forthcoming book on how to be a birth doula. The first draft of her book is complete and she is now in the revise/beta reader stage. Her book will be published in 2022. Click the orange link below to get newsletter updates on her book's progress.

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Gestating My Book

Carrie Kenner — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 18:41:59 +0000

The response to my book announcement has been overwhelming! The concept of putting a book out into the world had been abstract for me, until now. All the positive feedback has made it so much more real. Thank you readers!

So, let me tell you a bit about the journey my book and I have been on...

In March 2020, instead of writing a book, I was supposed to be embarking on a 6-month counter-clockwise road trip from Seattle, WA: down the West coast, across the South, and up the East coast of the United States, crossing through Canada, and ending in Alaska, with a ferry ride home through the Inside Passage back to Washington State. I intended to teach along the way, and check out places in the country that I might want to set up a homestead.

Instead of going on that road trip, there was a pandemic.

I didn’t have a home other than my van, and nowhere to park it to live in it, so as news of a lockdown spread, I spent the weekend - which grew into weeks, then months - on my son’s couch (thanks again, Rahsaan and Sonnie!). Surely the pandemic would be over soon, right?, and then I could get back on the road...

While waiting for the pandemic to wither away, I wrote. Every morning I would wake up on the couch, turn on my laptop, and write. I wrote nearly every day until May 30.

After two months of taking over my son’s living room, I decided to make my way to a friend’s house. She was sheltering in place and had a spare room I could stay in (thanks, Margaret!).

As I settled in and we established our Golden Girls routine, my writing waned. It became apparent that the pandemic wasn’t ending any time soon, and the work I had been doing – traveling around the country training childbirth educators and birth doulas – was not coming back. I needed to find new work. I gave myself permission to put my writing on the back burner until I had figured out my next career.

In July 2020, I trained to become a Certified StoryBrand Guide. Over the summer, I launched my new business, Storyline Marketing. I also found a beautiful place to park and live out of my van on Whidbey Island.

And my book patiently waited until all the necessities of my new life were settling and I could focus on writing again.

In March 2021, I opened my manuscript, read through the 32,460 words I had already written, and picked up where I had left off. To give my book the chance it deserved, I enrolled in a 9-month coaching program for writers called Get Your Book Done. The program has been incredible. I have learned so much about the craft of writing, the process of creating a book, and the industry of getting books to market (editing, cover design, promotion, publishing, layout, and more). I chuckle at my naiveté when I started writing - how I though I’d just sit down and write the book from start to finish, and then get it proofread - yet so grateful I had that beginner’s mind or I may not have ever started writing.

Now that I'm settling into the role of being a writer, I see the rest of this journey unfurling before me. It is a long one. I hope you will follow along and celebrate with me at the end.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for being you!

One of the lessons I learned during the pandemic is how precious time with my family is; I can’t bear to live too far away from them. Prior to the pandemic I assumed I could fly home once a month to visit; now, we can’t take flying anywhere for granted. Do me a favor and tell someone you love - especially if they are far away - how important they are to you today.

You can subscribe to this blog, or sign up for my newsletter to be updated on the book’s progress. All the links to take action are below.

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I Wrote a Book!

Carrie Kenner — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 18:33:48 +0000

On March 22, 2020, one week into lockdown for the COVD-19 pandemic, I decided to write a book. I’d been thinking about writing for many years and had a few ideas. Being stuck at home seemed like a great time to start.

That day, I wrote the first 1,751 words of my book. And today, I wrote the last of 119,668 words, the first draft of a book that has been on quite a journey with me.

In the coming weeks, I’ll tell you more about that journey, but for now, let me tell you about my book...

It doesn’t have a title yet, but it does have 31 chapters and nearly 120,000 words.

It’s a ‘How To Be a Birth Doula’ book, based on the doula training I developed and taught for 16 years. I am no longer training birth doulas, so this is what I offer to the world instead. I know how crucial doulas are to changing birth in our culture, and I want folks who want to be a doula to be able to access training in a book.

My book will be published sometime in 2022, I’m hoping for March.

There’s still a ton of work to be done: deciding if it’s going to be one book or two, developmental edits to put the book into a more cohesive structure, adding stories from my years of attending births, a round of edits to put it through an anti-racism lens, read-thrus by my beta readers, more edits, promoting it, and creating a forum to support the community of readers who want to become a doula or support others at birth.

I wouldn’t have known I had to do all that if I hadn’t decided to join a 9-month writing program, one of the best decisions I ever made! Cami Ostman and The Narrative Project, and my critique group (thanks Dana, Isabel, Lauren, and PJ!) have been invaluable in helping me become a better writer and helping my book come to life and find its shape.

I waited to make an announcement about my book until the first draft was done and - yay! - here I am! Now I’m going to be talking about it a lot! I hope you will be cheering me on from the sidelines, and I ask you to share this blog post with anyone you know who is interested in becoming a doula.

Please follow along in the coming months as I share the progress of my book, along with lessons I learn about the publishing journey, tips from my marketing and copywriting business, and tales from life on Whidbey Island.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading. If so, please subscribe to my blog at the bottom of this page, and get my blogs delivered right to your inbox.

Thank you for reading, and thanks for being you!

My book – Carrie Kenner: Doula Trainer. Writing Coach. Sacred Feminine Guide.

Anatomy of an Online Course Launch

It's Not Optional

The Anatomy of an Online Course Launch

An Idea Is Born

Create the Course

The Marketing Plan

Your People-Attracting Funnel

Wooing Your Audience

But Wait, There’s More

The Order of Things

On With the Show

Why on Earth Would Anyone Do This?

Be Choosy

Sign up for my email list to receive all the updates.

Rather view this as a vlog? Click here.

Subscribe to my blog.

Publishing & Your Dripping Faucet

DIY, Hire an Expert, or Hybrid?

DIY

Hybrid

Hire an Expert

Sign up for my newsletter to receive all the updates.

Subscribe to my blog.

NEWBIE AUTHOR LEARNS THE TRUTH ABOUT BOOK PUBLISHING!

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Subscribe to my blog.

Gestating My Book

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Subscribe to my blog.

I Wrote a Book!

Subscribe to my blog.