5 eCourse Ideas You can use to Help Build Your List
By Domain Sam
eCourse ideas can warm up your audience and help you make money.
Have you ever heard of an ecourse? Is it a course for electric cars or bicycles? If you’re new to internet marketing chances are the term ecourse might be new to you. Ecourse ideas would have no meaning to you. On the other hand ecourse might be just another internet marketing term you’ve heard before.
In either case I’ll shed more light on ecourses and why its a good idea to use them.
What’s an Ecourse
An ecourse is an email course. Usually it is short, but sometimes it is many hundreds of words. Normally an ecourse is delivered in several sequential modules or sections sent in email by an autoresponder.
Of course you could already be sold on the idea of eCourses as a great moneymaker. If you’ve never written one you might be afraid of what’s required of you. You don’t know if you can actually create an eCourse or not.
You probably don’t have a clue as to what to teach. So even if you decided to outsource your ecourse you can’t even provide an outline at this point!
Well it’s not as hard as you might think. I’ll discuss some ways to cut through any self-doubt and negative self-talk about creating an ecourse.
Here are 5 Ways to come up with eCourse Ideas
1) Use Mind Maps
A mind map is a great way to overcome any type of inability to develop new ideas. You start with a clean sheet of paper. Write the main topic (your niche) in a circle in the middle of the paper. Suspend all judgment and start writing different aspects of your niche down. Make a line from the center, to subtopics. Then lines from subtopics to even smaller topics all related to the center circle that is your niche.
Want to do all this on your computer instead of by hand? Try downloading FreeMind – it works on both Mac and Windows.
Tip: You can find mind maps about almost anything already on the net. Do a search for your niche and “mind map”.
2) Focus on the Fear
The next thing you need to do in order to come up with good eCourses is to focus on the fear in your mind map. Within the mind map are going to be some frustrations that your niche will have. You need to find solutions for them. If you can come up with a solution to any problem you can create an eCourse about it.
Think in terms of “how to” do anything; how to write better, how to learn better, how to cook better, etc. It’s all very simplistic right now. However, you want to find one main idea from which you can create an eCourse.
You can also look to a few useful online sources to discover what the top fears are in your niche:
- Look at what people regularly discuss in forums,
- Search for questions about your niche on Yahoo Answers,
- Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. What do they care most about? What holds them back? And what frustrates them?
3) Ditch any Doubt
Right now it’s highly possible your negative self-talk is at an all-time high. You’re wondering why you should be the one doing this. Who are you to teach anyone anything? Well, the fact is, you are the right person. You can teach anything you already know about, or are willing to learn about.
Teaching can be daunting, but while you’re having doubts, why not write down all your doubts and make them into positives. That’s right, if you doubt that you’re the right person for this course, you can improve your situation by learning more about the subject. If you hate how your course looks, make it better. Just don’t stop.
4) Get eCourse Ideas from Others
Most teachers actually get their initial ideas from others. Then they add in their own personality to the mix. You can do that as well, even with an eCourse. No, don’t plagiarize. Read tables of contents in “how to” books.
They can to help you come up with your own list of ideas you can use.
It’s even okay to use someone else’s book to teach a course, that’s exactly what teachers do. You simply point your students in the right direction. You can use select quotes and suggestions for further reading.
5) Break it Down into Small Steps
Once you have an idea of what you want to teach, break it down into small steps. It might help you to actually go through whatever it is that you’re teaching. Take notes along the way.
That way you don’t miss any important steps. Name each step something creative that gets your student’s attention. Once done, focus on the minutia of each step. Don’t leave anything out.
For example, suppose you’re telling them how to make a delicious homemade cherry pie. Don’t leave out a lesson or section about the difference between using real cherries and canned cherries. You’re teaching someone how to do something they may have no idea about. Include all the information or steps no matter how minor.
(Bonus) Build in Interaction
To make your course even better, build in some type of interaction.
You could sending a survey to your students during the course to find out what they’ve learned so far.
This will help you create even better courses. This can all be automated.
While it will feel interactive to them, you won’t have to do anything but set it up. Once you do, create a thank you letter and send it out to them.
The students’ actions trigger the next automatic response from your autoresponder.
Your Ideas for an eCourse
Above I’ve given you a few ideas and information about ecourses. If you have any ideas for an ecourse or have created one for your members or list let us know about it. Enter a comment below.
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