All the Tech You Need to Deliver Your Online Courses (Part 2 of 3)

In the previous post, you learned what tech you need to create your online course videos.

In this post, I’m going to lay out for you everything you need to actually DELIVER the videos to your learners in the form of an online course. (The next post will be about the tech you need to sell and get paid for your course).

First, host your videos in the cloud …

Your videos need to stream from somewhere in the cloud and be available for your students to view on-demand. Here are some of the most common ones:

• YouTube - Free and works with everything but displays related videos
• Vimeo - Starts with a no-cost, basic plan but when you outgrow it, you’ll need a paid plan

Note: You may not need a video host if you choose to create your course in an all-in-one platform. Read on.

Next, create your course site …

There are lots of ways to create an online course site that’s password-protected so that only paid students can get access. And all this work needs to be fully automated. 

My favorite way to create an online course site is with an all-in-one platform. It saves you the headache of managing a tech stack (a set of applications) and making sure they’re all integrated and playing together nicely. Not an easy feat for someone who’s just starting out and doesn’t have a dedicated IT person or team! The ones I recommend are:

• Kartra hosts your videos and allows you to deliver everything from physical products to digital products (e.g., ebooks), and memberships sites for your course. It also has marketing tools built in (more on that in the next email).
• Podia is another all-in-one platform for all types of digital products, including online courses. Its easy-to-use interface is best for newbies and its unlimited everything offer (even unlimited video hosting) is pretty compelling.
• Heights Platform isn’t as full-featured as either Kartra or Podia but may be a good place for you to begin if you don’t want to commit to a monthly subscription yet.

I like these platforms because you fully own your course. That means you don’t pay any transaction fees. Your customers pay you directly and you get to keep 100% of your course sales.

If you’d rather host your course in your WordPress site then you’ll need a WordPress plugin, such as:

• Thrive Apprentice (which you can access as part of Thrive Suite)
• Wishlist Member

WordPress plugins don’t offer all the functionalities of all-in-one platforms. All they do is create a gated section in your WordPress site and automatically grants access to paid customers. Depending on which plugin you choose, you will need other plugins to take care of other things from processing payments to managing an affiliate program. 

I’ll touch on that in the next post.

Not sure which way to go?

Relax.

Pick something right now, knowing that you can always move your course to a different platform later on as you and your business grow. It’s not a marriage, lol!

The thing is, you won’t know exactly what features or interfaces you like unless you try something first.

By the way, you’ll also need tech ...

For getting in touch with your students …

You’ll want to email your students en masse—don’t use Gmail or Outlook!