Create Your Own Online Course - How To And Where To Start

This year encouraged many entrepreneurs to start thinking about changing their business, upgrading, creating different offers…

Some have decided to move the whole business into the online world.

As online courses, workshops, lectures, training…

But when it comes to the technical part, they don’t know where to start.

Where to go?

What to choose?

What are the possibilities?

In this post, I share with you two (in my opinion) good choices: choosing a Third-party app for online courses or hosting on your own platform.

More on which is more suitable for you below…

Third-party app

There are quite a few providers that offer different platforms for selling online courses.

Some of the better known are:

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. What do you need to check and look out for with these providers?

Some very important criteria are, for example:

language (especially if your language is not English),

payments options,

requirements you need (e.g. if you want video formats, offer a monthly subscription…).

You can offer courses on your own platform – e.g. as part of your website.

The biggest advantage is that it is fully owned by you, there is no need to pay a monthly subscription and it is flexible to your needs.

What about weakness?

Maintenance and possible adjustments.

If you still don’t know which one to choose, here is a table that can help you with this:

	Third-party app	Own platform
Price	Monthly / annual subscription	Larger initial investment for installation
Design, flexibility	Limited	Unlimited
Installation and ease of use	Usually already installed (possible additional adjustments), fairly easy to use. No need to know programming languages.	Usually an external contractor is needed for implementation and design. Fairly easy to use when set up.
Support	Support according to the monthly subscription	Support by arrangement with an external contractor
Maintenance and updates	Not required (usually part of a monthly subscription)	Regular updates and maintenance are required as needed
Content ownership	The content is your property and access to this content is restricted by the provider	Content and platform is your property (unless otherwise agreed with the contractor)

I hope this post helped you make a decision.

Do you have questions about online courses? Write it down in the comments or [email protected].