Using Existing Course Platforms to Deliver More Content with Mark Shust

09/12/22 • 25 min

If your main interest is to actually get straight into producing content and start selling it, you probably don't want to jump into developing a custom platform.

Mark Shust has seen many people get into building there own platforms and have all their time sucked into getting it running, when they could've been delivering a course.

It can take much longer than you might expect. Over a year even depending on if you are working full-time or not. There's a ton of things that you'll have to deal with yourself such as payments, refunds, subscriptions, upgrades, authentication, streaming video, and more.

Mark also chats about how he designs his courses by reverse-engineering projects, tax compliance, and how to look beyond what people are saying and figure out what they're needing.

Links

If your main interest is to actually get straight into producing content and start selling it, you probably don't want to jump into developing a custom platform.

Mark Shust has seen many people get into building there own platforms and have all their time sucked into getting it running, when they could've been delivering a course.

Mark also chats about how he designs his courses by reverse-engineering projects, tax compliance, and how to look beyond what people are saying and figure out what they're needing.

Links

Previous Episode

Starting a Training Service Before Producing Courses with Marissa Goldberg

If you are wanting to become and independent educator, you don't have to jump straight into trying to produce a recorded course.

Marissa Goldberg's approach has been to start as a service based business and then use the skills and knowledge that you gain there to transition into producing courses.

By doing it this way you can know exactly what problems people are facing, and you can refine your teaching style since you'll be able to get live feedback and see if people are seeing results in real time.

Marissa also chats about how she is able to effectively build a reputation without doing any kind of hustle culture style marketing, the problems people face when they are promoted from a skilled technical position into a management role, and how she made a sustainable transition into self-employment.

Next Episode

Researching to Teach and Testing Your Ideas with Chris Biscardi

Once you've got an idea for a course or some other kind of educational product, there are a number of steps you can take to make sure that it's a good idea and to refine the instructional design before you spend the time recording.

Chris Biscardi uses multiple mediums to try out new ideas. A great starting point is Twitch since the format isn't expected to be as refined and there's more interaction between you and the viewers.

Next you might consider recording a YouTube video or writing up a blog post. These are more refined but nearly the same level of commitment as a course. You'll also be able to gauge interest based on how people react to it.

Not only will you be able to gauge interest, you'll also be to use the questions and feedback you might get to adjust the design of the course.

Chris also discusses creating good example projects, course maintenance, thinking about your content as various streams, and how he deals with people finding ways to access his paid content for free.