In my last post on courses I suggested that if you were a bit stuck creating your first (or next) online course, to try building a “micro course”.

A micro course is a short 10-30 minute course that's focused on one specific customer problem or goal.

It's much easier to get going to produce a very short course like this. You can do it in one sitting.

But if you want to sell that course (and I suggest you do as it's the only way to properly test the market) then you must do one key thing…

And that's to make sure your micro course is different to what people can get for free on Youtube or other sources.

A larger course is almost inevitably different to the free tutorials you might find on Youtube. But with a short course with very limited scope, there's a risk there's already a free tutorial or two out there.

You can make sure your micro course is different and something people will be willing to buy in a number of different ways:

Firstly, you can tweak the topic to really focus on pain points and frustrations.

Instead of a tutorial on website migration, make one that's focused on hassle free, zero downtime migration without needing tech skills.

By the way, don't make a micro course where the emphasis is on doing something for free. That'll naturally attract people who want to do things for free nand won't be willing to pay for your course!

Secondly you can teach the course in a unique way that helps them get better, faster results.

This could be by teaching your own unique methodology or giving them tools and templates they can use. Stuff they can't find anywhere else and that will make life simpler for them or get them better results.

Remember: busy businesspeople usually aren't paying for the knowledge you share. They're paying for the results they can get from it and they value getting those results faster and easier.

Thirdly you can add features to your course that they can't get with free courses.

A great example of this is to include a Zoom Q&A session where they can get all their questions answered. Or feedback on their work by email.

Adding features like this to a low cost micro course isn't really sustainable if you were going to be running it on an ongoing basis. But as a one-off to get your momentum going with courses it's well worth doing. You don't have to prepare anything in advance – just offer it as part of the course and wait for the questions to come in.

So for your micro course idea, take a look at what's available already for free and think:

How can I change the topic so it's more focused directly on the pain and frustration of my clients?
How can I teach it in a different way that's faster, better, simpler to understand, easier to get results from etc?
How can I add features that differentiate this from a free tutorial and make it worth paying for for my audience.
Or, of course, do two or three of them.

These simple changes can allow you to build a course that's easy to create and will sell well.