The Great eCourse Adventure

The Way of the Mini Course and the Future of Online Learning

Humans consume media differently than we did ten years ago, or a year ago for that matter.

We want thinks short and snappy.

We get satisfaction from instant gratification.

We have shorter attention spans than ever, which means we can’t handle long, drawn out processes.

We have less time, and therefore need our transformation delivered in Twitter-sized nuggets of wisdom.

These are just a few of the reasons for why we believe Mini Courses are the way to go.

The Great eCourse Adventure took us 9-months to build, working on it full time. 

It was a behemoth-sized project.

14-checkpoints, 90+ video lessons, a storyline, a fully gamified experience, characters, script writing, an online community, a complete reinvention of how to facilitate transformation online altogether. Kind of a big deal…

We had no idea how long it was going to take us when we started building it.

But when you try to make the greatest eCourse you can possibly imagine, you tend to get carried away…

After successfully building a course we’re truly stoked about, we now realize that mini courses are the way to go… at least when starting out and building your online audience.

Here is a short audio clip on why we believe Mini Courses are the way to go:

Here are 5 more good reasons for why you should focus on making Mini Courses:

1. Lower price point and more students: 

Most people are trying to build the $1,000 – 2,000 courses because that’s what the ‘big fish’ do. In fact, that’s exactly where we started too.

However, we learned there is another (possibly better) way.

One of our first eCourse clients has sold nearly 100,000 fitness courses in the $10-40 price range in the last year and a half on a website we hooked her up with called, The Daily Om. She’s likely made more than a half a million dollars in passive income.

The funny thing is, her most successful course started out as a $300 course. It wasn’t until she changed the name and lowered the price that she gained the momentum she’s now experiencing.

She now has a huge following of raving fans who purchase every course she creates.

Mini courses with lower price points, open you up to a whole new ocean of hungry students.

2. Less work for you, which means time for higher production value:

Let’s be honest. Most of the courses out there are super uncreative, uninspiring and lacking in the production quality.

It’s understandable too, building courses is hard work and takes quite a bit of time. Especially those giant $2,000 courses.

So if instead you build a mini course, with fewer lessons and moving parts, then in theory you should be able to invest that extra creative energy into crafting a wildly creative, innovative student learning experience that inspires people to participate.

You should be able to build a course that’s worth sharing and talking about on the internet.

3. It’s a great way to test eCourse ideas on your audience:

One of the most heart-crushing things we entrepreneurs can experience is to pour our souls into a project or product, only to find out the world doesn’t want it.

This is actually one of the biggest reasons most creators go back to getting a 9-5 job. They just cant’ handle it.

But building a mini course that takes you say 1-3 months, allows you to create something beautiful, share it with your audience and find out how well people respond to it.

And when you create a mini course that people go bonkers over, then you can always create a more in depth, higher priced course.

Imagine if you created 4 mini courses per year that you sold for under 100 dollars. In the next 5 years, you’d have 20 courses all making you money online. That’s enormous potential!

But most people start out making a big course, only to find they aren’t able to sell it.

Or worst, they get overwhelmed and never finish making it…

4. Feeds the need for instant gratification:

People are intimidated by those 90 day vision quests. They’re an enormous commitment that only the truly ready will sign up for.

They don’t have 90 days, they want the result now.

Obviously, transformation takes time. But that’s why you need to break it down into digestible, doable chunks.

 

Start them small.

Make them love you.

Then bring them on a bigger journey.

If you give them a transformation or result in a short period of time, they’ll tell everyone they know about you.

You get really good, really fast:

By going through the process of coming up with ideas and turning them into courses again and again and again, you eventually get really good.

Creating an online course becomes second nature, just like writing blogs does after your 500th one.

So if you see yourself making a living online, then start mini and grow up from there.

Below are the 4-types of eCourses you can build (we mention them in the audio clip above):

Screen Shot 2017-07-06 at 10.20.56 AM

Here is an article that goes into the four types of eCourses (in image above)

Join our Great eCourse Adventure July challenge and build a mini course in 30 days. 

We’d love to hear how this article lands home with you. Have you had success with a mini course before? Share your story, questions or thoughts below!

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Rather than building boring courses that nobody wants to go through, we'll teach you to create courses that engage, inspire and transform your student's lives. 

Here at eCourse Adventures, we treat eLearning like an art-form.

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