Online course creators have a lot to consider. Creating captivating content, setting up effective marketing, reaching the right audience, developing a trustworthy brand and standing out from the crowd. On top of this, you need to keep yourself highly organized to ensure your online course runs smoothly and that students are satisfied with their experience. Without the right tools, this can cost you a lot of time and money, and knowing where to find them can be tricky.
To help you with your research, we have compiled a list of some of the most essential, time-saving and cost-effective tools available for you to create and sell your online course professionally without committing to a costly subscription.
Here are six tools that do just that!
Grammarly
Never worry about your grammar, spelling or punctuation again
Everyone has their own unique skills and talents. If writing is not yours (or even if it is) Grammarly might just be your new best friend. Getting your writing right can be essential to the success of your online course. Would you trust the authenticity of a course if it’s marketing copy was riddled with typos? Probably not.
Grammarly gives you the ability to create consistent and mistake-free writing for your online course or marketing copy ensuring you deliver high-quality content to your students over and over again. Whether it be content for your online course, emails, social media or more, Grammarly does it all.
Grammarly works by giving suggestions on your writing to fix any mistakes, suggest clearer sentences and ensure you communicate effectively. You don’t have to do anything except click ‘accept’ or ‘dismiss’.
The free version of Grammarly is seriously a no-brainer! But if you want a more premium experience for your online course, such as brand tones and full-sentence rewrites, there are more subscription tiers to meet your needs for as little as $15 per month for premium, and $45 per month for enterprise.
Rebrandly Buzz
Promote your brand by customising simple, easy-to-remember URL links
Have you ever been put off clicking a link when you see a URL full of random numbers and letters? You’re not alone. Trusting a link leads to more clickthroughs by 34%. Rebrandly Buzz allows you to customise URL links so your online course appears trustworthy for your students, leading to more clickthroughs.
Customising a URL link lets you communicate your brand with branded links to show that your online course is trustworthy and reliable, leading to more clickthroughs and sales.
Here are some examples that identify a brand and its topic:
You can do the same with your online course.
The free tier allows you to customise 5 links and 5 domains for free. When your course grows, there are reasonable pricing tiers to suit your needs, and if you want to test them without committing, Rebrandly Buzz even has a 30-day money-back guarantee!
Notion
Easily keep yourself organized
Keeping organised is crucial to run your online course smoothly, whether it’s to-do lists, calendar alerts or sticky notes stuck to the fridge. So what better way to keep yourself organized than to have your personal and professional notes all in one place?
Notion does this entirely for free. You can personalise Notion’s dashboard to take notes, manage and organize your workload with straightforward features, ensuring you’ll never forget important tasks again.
See Notion’s Workspace for example:
Notion is free for personal use; you can create unlimited pages, sync across devices, and even share with 5 guests. The priced tiers are a great option if you want to upload files for your online course and share them with your students, and it’ll only cost you $4 to $8 a month!
Carrd
Build a one-page responsive website in minutes
As an online course creator, you need an attractive website that will build trust with your audience. One-page websites with Carrd are clear, easy to navigate, and a great solution for online course creators who don’t have a dedicated website.
Carrd lets you easily create a responsive one-page website, landing pages and more from dozens of stylish and easy to customze templates to market your online course. Better yet, it’s completely free.
You can upgrade to the Go Pro! option for only $19 a year. These features include:
- forms
- widgets and Embeds
- no branding
- high-quality images and videos
- Google Analytics
Yep, you read that right. Carrd offers online course creators a straightforward, easy-to-use marketing tool with everything you’d ever need for as little as $19 a year.
Buffer
Schedule and manage social media content from anywhere
Social media is one of the most effective ways to attract students to your online course – so making it easy to post on multiple platforms can save you lots of time. Thankfully, the days you have to go from one platform to the next are gone. Buffer is the #1 social scheduling platform that lets you manage all your social media posts on one dashboard from one place.
With Buffer, you can create and schedule posts, interact with your audience and easily monitor your marketing success.
For free, you can connect 3 social media channels and schedule up to 10 posts per channel. If you need more, you can try different pricing options for free for 14-days.
Zapier
Save time with straightforward customized automation
You’ve sold your online course. Now you need to input their details. Then you’ve got to email confirmation, and the list goes on… That’s a lot of effort. Automation is a must-have to run your online course smoothly and save you bucket loads of time.
Zapier is straightforward automation software that connects thousands of apps to save you the trouble of carrying out manual tasks that are crucial to run your online course smoothly.
Zapier runs on zaps and tasks:
- Zaps connect one software to another e.g. Carrd —> PayPal
- Tasks are an action that Zapier completes e.g. a student fills in a form —> Zapier creates a contact
The free version of Zapier is a practical option for online course creators with fewer products. It includes customisable automation, 5 single-step zaps and 100 tasks per month. However, this isn’t much if you want to get the most from Zapier.
That’s why Zapier offers a 14-day free professional trial for more advanced zaps, connections and other features such as multi-zaps and premium app automation. Subscription options range from $19 to $799, so you only need to pay for what you need.
Final Thoughts What next?
We hope these six cost-effective and time-saving tools have given you the peace of mind that you can create a successful mistake-free online course with great marketing, automation and more without it costing you an arm and a leg.
To summarise:
- Grammarly is a fantastic free tool that allows you to focus on your online course whilst ensuring quality content
- Rebrandly Buzz gives you free URL customisation to encourage clickthroughs and promote brand trust
- Notion gives you the power to be highly organized for your online course venture and personal life
- Carrd creates effective marketing through one-page websites that are easy to design
- Buffer is the #1 social media platform to create and manage all your social media posts from one place
- Zapier is your assistant that takes care of all the automation needed to run your online course smoothly
Finding the right tools can help you make a course and sell a course with ease, and these tools are a stepping stone on your way to success. But when it comes to generating high revenue, blockbuster online courses having a team of experts at your disposal makes all the difference.
Get in touch with the team at Class Growth, today!
