How to Set Up a Course for Free
15 min
one of the most profitable ways to make income online is via an online course however, this section is going to teach you how to do it for free because you may be suffering right now from a layoff or similar due to covid 19 you see, there's a ton of places you can create a course for free, but there's one main problem with this it will need to be made public access, so it will show up in search engines and anyone will be able to access it how would that affect you if you're charging people for it and just about anyone can access it with a simple search or if one of your subscribers shares the link and you have no way of tracking it? making a free course private is not a services you can generally find for free online, and i can promise you that i spent quite a bit of time looking for it myself this is why i am going to show you how to build a database that can be used to share content that you can charge for and keep it private (so that it will not be indexed by google) \#1 we will be building this with airtable com (they also have an app but if you do upgrade and i will show you to do this for free) and you will want to sign up for a free account at https //airtable com/invite/r/eaipc4kf \#2 start from scratch make sure you are on the "bases" tab at the top left of the screen customize with a name, icon and color you can worry about integrations and all of that at a later time \#3 click on the icon you created (after confirming your email) and this is what you will see as you can see, it looks like a digital spreadsheet while it may not be the prettiest thing in the world, it will serve the purpose and there's quite a bit that you can do with it because it serves as a database that can be programmed to connect to a website or app! you can also use something like table2site com for only $19/m for 3 sites to connect the data to a website but you don't need any of that right now \#4 click on the arror next to "table 1" and rename it to be something else, such as a description or table of contents or information related to your course \#5 now we're going to set up the info that we need by changing the fields clicking on the arrow next to the "name" field will give you this menu \#6 choose customize field type and rename the single line field to "section" do the same for "notes", but this time you'll notice that it is a long text or multi line text; change the name to "description" for the 3rd field, you will see that the type is attachment but we will want to rename it to "section image" \#7 you can see that there are 3 rows you can create a 4th by clicking on the + or by putting your cursor in the 3rd row and pressing shift + enter \#8 if you recall in the 2nd video, i explained that you need to write down what you are really good at and can make an income from and that doesn't take a lot of time we are now going to put all of that down into a table of contents, create section images if yo uwould ilke and enter a description for each section this is what your table should look like now before we go any further, click on this icon and change the row height, either to tall or extra tall \#9 begin to enter your section names and descriptions this is just a draft right now and you can always fix this later you will want to break down your content into easy to digest pieces click the + next to your info table to create a new table this will be the 2nd section of your course (in this example, it is 'information') introduction what is it that you are going to teach or inform them about? where did you learn this info? (optional) general information and where to find help (link to your resources section) topic sections 1 10 each topic is a table lessons depending on your content type pdf, video, image, text, combo you will have anywhere between 10 20 lessons per topic each row is a lesson or each row is an example or variation examples (optional) closing resources and where to find help this is where you can put links to social media, websites, cta's for appointments, sales pages, affiliate links, etc to create section graphics (if you would like to), use canva com; it's free i will also note that this can all be accomplished using trello, but trello does not have all the features or automations or connections that airtable does and cannot be connected to as a database as you can see here, i've changed "info" table to "sections", added a new table called "information", added a new field called 'section links' and then created a link by clicking on the share icon copy this link and paste it to the section link field for the information section row this is how you can link to each of the sections from the main sections table these are also links that can be shared individually with your subscribers via an email drip or email course instead of giving full access to the entire course! how to share the entire course click on the airtable icon at the top left of the screen you will land on your workspace click on the white arrow at the bottom right of your app icon and you will see a drop down click on share click on create private read only link you will see a link share similar to the one created on the table itself difference between the 2 links to share a specific table use the share link on the table itself to share your entire app, use the option on your workspace on the app icon itself now it's time to explore the different field types that you may want to create so that youcan get to know how airtable works as you can see, there's a ton of different field types, ranging from regular stuff like email, phone, url, number, and then more complex such as lookup, rollup and formula the formula field is what i use to create all the magic in my applications, such as my credit repair software and then again for automation this is just how i would personally create a course on airtable (if i wanted it to be private, with link onlly sharing) to access airtable pro for free share your app link anytime someone signs up for airtable, you will receive $10 in airtable credit for free encourage them to use your link to pull up your app and then to make a copy of it using the "copy base" link that will show up at the top right of the page (you won't see it but they will) mention that it will give them the flexibility to customize the colors, connect it to slack and make it their own once you have atleast $30 in airtable credit, you can upgrade to the pro plan watch this video to see how to do it https //storyxpress co/video/k83w8a41fh33opr0m lastly, i will mention the power of airtable blocks once you have the pro plan, you can access blocks by clicking on the blocks at the top right of the screen, then 'install a block' watch this video to see all the awesome blocks that can be added please take the time to explore them https //storyxpress co/video/k83wds1fg8au3td47 how to charge for access and deliver the link use stripe and set up a shopping cart either directly through stripe or via a website you create and then connect a stripe shopping cart you may also use paypall (don't recommend it), jvzoo, payoneer, square, google pay, apply pay, etc i personally use stripe as well as my other merchant accounts you can also sign up for gumroad com and sell this as a digital product they charge $10 per month plus a % of your sales (on top of stripe's fees) you will want to create an optin form to collect emails and start building your email list (one of the most important aspects of internet marketing) and connect it to an autoresponder if the access to this course is free (because you are using it to first build your list or it is a mini course as a precursor to a paid course), you can create an optin form and automatically deliver the share link if the course is paid, use the optin form to capture interested parties, market to them by delivering valuable content and then give them the option to sign up for your paid course create a button that goes to your stripe payment gateway and set it up as that it auto delivers the share link there are so many ways that you can do this, but this section was not on marketing it was on creating a course we will specifically work on the marketing, advertising and payments in other sections you may also want to take a look at builderall they offer everything that i mentioned and if you separately paid for each of the services that they offer, you would pay $1000s today, you can start your business for only $1 https //office builderall com/us/franchise/share/784068/?p1=rd\&p2=https%3a%2f%2fbuilderall com%2f1dollardeal\&sd=1dollaroptin1
