Hello there! We’re still talking about the process of packaging up your course as a sellable digital product.
In the last lesson we looked at choosing a course platform, just in case you hadn’t done that already.
In this lesson we’ll cover the steps you’ll need to take to get your course up and running on that platform.
The low-level details will vary depending on the platform you choose but it’ll be very useful for you to understand the areas that you’ll need to tackle.
5 Main Areas You’ll Need to Set Up
To make it easier to understand how the different steps break down, I’ve divided the setup into five high-level areas:
- Site Setup – the basic configuration you’ll need to do immediately after creating an account on your course platform
- Integrations – the setup you’ll need to do to get your course platform working smoothly with any external tools like payment processors
- Course Setup – the steps you’ll complete to get your course content uploaded and correctly configured on your chosen platform
- Community Setup – the configuration to get a community up and running (if you’re providing a community inside your course)
- Onboarding Content – the additional content and configuration you’ll need to welcome new students into your course
If this seems like a lot, try not to worry. I’ve broken it up to make it as clear as possible, but that actually makes it seem like more work than it is. Many of the underlying steps are quick to do.
1. Site Setup
Let’s start with the site-wide setup you’ll typically do soon after creating an account on your course platform.
Step: Configure your basic settings
Certain basic settings will need to be configured right away and some of this setup may happen as part of the process of creating an account.
For instance, you’ll need to give your site a name and maybe upload a logo. You may also need to set things like your default language and time zone.
Most platforms support multiple courses so there’s a distinction between the course site and the course which may be reflected in the branding.
For instance, you might use your personal or business name and branding for the site as a whole and then have your course’s branding live inside that.
Step: Customise your site design
Most course platforms allow a degree of design customization. At the least you should be able to specify one or two brand colours and choose a font.
Although you can leave this step to the end most people like to do this early to get a sense of what their course will look like in practice.
Step: Create your privacy policy and terms of service pages
There are a couple of legal pages your course site should have:
- Privacy Policy – just as your main business website has a privacy policy telling people how you handle personal information and cookies, your course site should have one too.
- Terms of Service – you should also have a Terms of Service (or “Terms of Use” or “Terms & Conditions”) page explaining the terms of using your website and course.
In both cases, your platform may give you some generic content you can customise or you can visit one of numerous sites that will generate the text for you based on your answers to a set of questions.
Note: If the platform doesn’t pre-create these pages for you, you’ll need to add them manually.
Remember, these are legal documents and you may need to seek legal advice to make sure you are fully protected.
Step: Configure your email settings
Most course platforms will handle essential outbound emails, like purchase confirmations and password reminders, on your behalf.
This means configuring your preferred email settings, for instance personalising the sender name and “reply to” address.
Make sure you do this to avoid your course related emails seeming generic and impersonal.
Step: Configure your course domain
The domain is the public URL of the site where your course will be hosted.
It’s where potential customers can discover your course and buy it, and where buyers will log in to access your content. You have a couple of options here.
The easiest is using a “subdomain” of your platform provider.
So if you have a course called “Email Power!” running on Podia then your course domain might be “emailpower.podia.com”.
Alternatively you can create a custom domain that’s an offshoot from one you already own.
So if your main website is “www.unicorncoaching.com” then your course site could be “courses.unicorncoaching.com”.
The second option looks a little more professional but requires extra setup. (Your platform should have instructions on the steps.)
2. Integrations
Next, let’s look at the setup for connecting external tools to your course platform.
Step: Set up online payments
Assuming you want people to be able to buy your course via your course site, you’ll need to set up at least one payment integration.
The most common integrations are PayPal and Stripe. (Setting up both will give customers both options at the checkout.)
Note: Your platform’s help documentation should walk you through the process of setting these up.
Another important aspect of enabling payments on your site is deciding whether or not to collect taxes from your buyers.
(We talked a little about sales taxes in the previous lesson.)
If your platform supports taxes, you’ll typically need to add each jurisdiction where you want to charge tax.
You can usually also decide if your prices include tax or it is added on top.
Step: Set up email integrations
We already talked about how most course platforms will handle the essential (or transactional) emails for you.
But if you already use an email provider like MailChimp or ConvertKit for sending marketing emails you may want to connect it to your course platform.
Here’s why:
- Your platform can automatically add course buyers to your email list (or update existing contacts) so that your customer data is kept up to date
- A few course platforms don’t have any built-in capabilities for outbound emails and will need to “piggyback” an external provider
Note: even if your course platform handles the essential emails for you, you may still need to use an external provider for marketing and user onboarding.
Ready for Part Two?
Okay, that’s Part One of my list of platform setup steps.