How To Create Your First Online Mini-Course (In 8 Simple Steps)

Building an online course doesn't have to hard (here's how you can do it in 7 - 14 days)

Photo by Mia Baker on Unsplash

Mini-courses are one of the best products to monetize your knowledge and skills online.

Over the past 4 years, I’ve generated multiple six-figures with simple mini-courses (in the productivity niche) that my customers love and help them get real results.

Here’s what makes mini-courses so special:

• Mini-courses are only 1-3 hours long and focus on one specific problem, skill, or topic (rather than an ‘ultimate’ 10-hour course that tries to cover everything about a topic)

• Mini-courses can easily be built in 7-14 days (while traditional courses take weeks or months to create)

• The average completion rates of mini-courses are +50%, while those of traditional courses are less than 10%

• Mini-courses help your customers get quick wins instead of overloading them with hours and hours of information (and quick wins lead to happy customers who provide testimonials and want to work more closely with you)

• Mini-courses don’t require a huge investment of time or money, making them an impulsive purchase (and if someone has bought from you once, they are 76% more likely to buy again in the future)

• Mini-courses are scalable digital products, so once you’ve created the content you can sell it over and over again without additional effort (and generate income even while you take a few days off or focus on other areas of your business)

All in all, I believe any coach, expert, content creator, or solopreneur should have at least one mini-course as part of their online business.

But how do you build (and launch) your first mini-course? Where do you start? What are the best tools to use? 

In this article, I’ll show you my 8-step process to build and launch your first mini-course (even if you’re a complete beginner or don’t have any technical know-how).

---

Step 1: Choose A Highly Specific Topic

What makes a mini-course unique compared to traditional courses is that it focuses on a highly specific problem, skill, or topic rather than trying to cover an entire broad topic.

For example, my bestselling mini-course Procrastination Antidote focuses on procrastination, which is a specific subtopic within the productivity category.

Instead of trying to cover all things productivity (which takes 10+ hours), it specifically helps people conquer procrastination (which can be taught in just 2 hours).

When it comes to choosing the right topic for your mini-course, I ask these two questions:

• What’s a painful problem my audience faces?

• What’s a highly desired result my audience wants?

The most profitable mini-courses form a bridge that helps customers move away from this painful problem and toward their desired outcome.

When your mini-course offers that transformation, it’s likely to generate a lot of sales.

A snapshot of my Thinkific account.

For example, procrastination was the number one problem my audience struggled with. 

As my mini-course specifically addressed that pain point, people were lining up to purchase this course (versus a more expensive and time-consuming ‘ultimate productivity course’), which is why Procrastination Antidote generated $50,000 in just 18 months.

All in all, think of your mini-course as a workshop that teaches one specific skill that helps your customer solve one specific problem and/or accomplish one specific result.

The more specific your mini-course, the better.

---

Step 2: Validate Demand For Your Course Idea

The last thing you want is to spend your time and energy creating a course that nobody will be interested in.

That’s why it’s key to test your course idea before you start building it.

I found this out the hard way…

One of my first courses was on morning routines. I spend weeks writing scripts, creating PowerPoints, recording lessons, editing videos, and writing a sales page. 

But it totally failed.

Why?

Because I approached it with a creator-first mindset, not a customer-first mindset.

I created this product because, back then, I was passionate about morning routines myself.

I didn't survey my audience if they wanted this product... 

I didn’t set up a waitlist page or do a pre-order launch to validate demand…

I just blindly created this course because I liked the idea (which is a common mistake course creators make).

Here’s how you can validate demand for your mini-course: