3 Costly Mistakes Course Creators Are Making

Digital course creation is one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative corners of entrepreneurship and digital marketing. 

This means A LOT of people are creating online courses, hoping to find a passive income stream.

It also means there are a lot of people who are doing it wrong, and it’s costing them. 

It can be tempting to farm out course after course without regard to the student experience. After all, more courses = more money, right? 

Not if your courses aren’t providing results for your students.

These mistakes won’t just lead to student dissatisfaction – they’ll cost you money, your reputation and your sanity.

This post will cover the top 3 mistakes course creators are making and what to do instead to ensure your course continues to make you money AND keep you fulfilled for years to come.

Whether you struggle to get your students to take action, you’re not seeing enough traction in your course, or you’re not sure where to even start, this post will at least help you avoid some common pitfalls. 

#1: Spending more energy on marketing than on the actual course

This is the number one mistake I see course creators make. 

It can be tempting to pour all your time and money into marketing. After all, you want to sell your course, right? 

Of course, you do!

Marketing is an extremely important part of the course creation lifecycle, but the trick is to have the same kind of energy in your course as you do on your sales page. 

A lot of courses creators tell me that they plan on putting the bulk of their time and money into marketing, and when they’ve made enough sales, they’ll reinvest the money back into course development. 

The problem is it will be hard to market your course effectively if it isn’t getting results for your students.

In the end of the day, your most powerful marketing tool is a referral. You will lose those valuable testimonials and word-of-mouth referrals when you don’t put enough energy into creating a truly transformational course. 

Let’s put it in numbers. Let’s say you put 80% of your budget into marketing and get 20 sales. 

From those initial 20 students, you receive no referrals and only 2 mediocre testimonials. The next time you run your course, you only get 10 sales. And the next time? 5. You can see where this is going. 

Instead, imagine you commit from the beginning to creating a truly transformational course that gets results for your students. You invest 60% of your budget into course development. 

In the first round, you make 15 sales. 

But 10 out of your 15 students refer 3 of their friends EACH, and you get 5 fantastic testimonials for your sales page. 

The next round? You make 40 sales, 30 of which are from simple word-of-mouth referrals. 20 of your students refer 3 more people each, and by the next round, you’re making 60 sales. And then 100. And then 200. 

In this model, your return on any marketing investment is magnified and allows for organic growth! 

When you create a course that brings results for your students and transforms their lives, your students become your free ambassadors.  

#2: Constantly creating new courses instead of focusing on a signature programme 

No one is a master of everything. 

Students pay for courses to learn from a master, not a jack of all trades.

So many course creators get excited about developing content for profit that when they finish one course, they immediately develop a new one. They enter a cycle where they run their course once and then start the process again. 

The problem with this approach is that it takes time and a lot of trial and error to master something new. So if you’re starting over from scratch to develop a completely new course, you’re not actually building on your skills and expertise. 

Instead of getting stuck in the creation cycle, commit yourself to creating and mastering ONE signature course first!

This signature product will allow you to be known as a thought leader in your field, and that kind of expertise is a powerful marketing tool. 

When you position your masterful course as the foundation of your marketing, the only cycle you’ll be stuck in is selling out of your course. 

Part of positioning yourself as a master is consistently underpromising and over-delivering. Of course, you want to promise some results to entice students to take your course, but when your students get results far beyond what they expected, they’re much more likely to recommend your course AND buy from you again and again. 

#3: The course doesn’t rise above the noise because there is no thought-leadership or forward-thinking content

The digital course market is oversaturated, and there’s a lot of rubbish out there. 

Some entrepreneurs are okay with putting out subpar content because they’re only looking towards making a profit in the short term. If that’s you, then you can stop reading right now. 

But you can't think about your short-term bottom line if you’re a conscious entrepreneur and want to establish yourself as a thought leader. You need to be in it for the long haul. 

I’m now talking directly to the visionaries that care about the world and have a global consciousness. 

The biggest mistake you can make in creating a course is not implementing that vision and consciousness into your course creation. 

It can be tempting to follow the same course templates and marketing schemes as everyone else, but you’ll never make a difference. Your course will never rise above the noise. 

Because in this information age, we can learn most things on YouTube or Wikipedia. 

Information isn’t what sets your course apart; it’s the ability to get students transformative results that will set your course apart and make a difference. 

And the truth is? If you’re not creating courses that truly create change, you’ll find yourself unfulfilled with the process of creating and marketing your course time and time again. 

When you avoid these 3 mistakes and commit to creating transformative courses, your business will run like a well-oiled machine. 

When your products are so revolutionary and transformational, you’ll watch as your business grows organically, through word-of-mouth referrals. 

I know because that’s what we’re doing at Aligned Vibration. 

We help course creators develop new and innovative ways to get their students from points A to B for a truly transformative learning experience. 

Our clients have seen a tenfold increase in their return on investment, and we’re constantly booked with new clients ready to work with us. 

All through referrals. And all because we truly believe in the power of transformation.