Launch Your Online Course With 3 Simple Tools

Last week, I launched the beta version Systems School – a 5-week course for entrepreneurs who need help getting essential business systems in place without all the muss, fuss and hours of internet research.

Systems loving gal that I am, I spent time wracking my brain over how I’d not only market the course, but how I’d deliver it. I’ll be running the course again in January, but wanted to do a lean launch this Fall/Winter and work with folks who want to get a jump start on organizing their businesses before the new year.

If you’re looking to do a similarly lean launch, here are three great tools you can use to market and execute your course.

Thrive Landing Pages – I LOVE this plugin. I bought it months ago because making sales pages is not my thing. While I hate long pages that go on endlessly, I wanted to give my pages some punch, without special coding or hunting for graphics. This plugin comes with oodles of templates to choose from. I chose the one I wanted, dropped in my graphics and copy and minutes later, I had a beautiful sales page. Bonus – when you buy this plugin, you also get Thrive Lightboxes (lead capture/opt-in boxes) and Thrive Content Builder (make your posts and pages pop) at no extra cost. If you plan on creating landing pages or sales pages for your products and services, this is a great plugin to check out. In my opinion, the one time cost beats the monthly fees you’d have to pay with several other popular services.

Gumroad –  My weekly planner is there too! Gumroad is an easy to use platform for selling digital and physical products. I’ve sold my DIY classes, guides and templates there with no problem. In addition to one time purchases with Gumroad, you can also sell subscriptions and memberships. As I mentioned,  was looking for a quick and easy way to push out my course. My friend Jennifer Kennedy of Teach Good Stuff reminded me that I could push out the weekly course content through Gumroad to everyone signed up for the course. AND I can easily push all my student emails to MailChimp automatically. I was thrilled to be able to get my course out into the world without setting up another platform.

Canva – If you aren’t in the know already, Canva is a great free tool for creating graphics. You do have to pay if you use their premium graphics, but there’s plenty to choose from if you want to keep things free. You can even upload your own pictures to use on their layouts. For big design jobs, or important things like my logo, I seek out professionals. But, if I’m looking to create simple graphics for blog posts or social media, Canva is my go-to resource. I’m still learning, but here are some of the things I’ve created:

Total cost to launch my course? $59

Well, technically it was free since I already own Thrive Landing Pages. You can post products on Gumroad for free and you won’t pay any fees until they sell. And as I mentioned, Canva is free!

Even better – I’ve already more than made my money back on the course. That’s the beauty of keeping things lean.

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Questions about using these or other systems for your course or business? Get in touch.