Confessions of a First Time Online Course Builder
A survey of 1,128 online course builders revealed that if they could go back and speak to themselves the day before they started building their online course, they would tell themselves,
"Please don’t skip the up front important steps that actually make a course work for our business."
You can easily create an incredible training program, pack it full of value, polish up slides, include compelling videos—then you get the dreaded...
Crickets!!
Your course doesn’t sell.
You can’t find buyers.
But, why?
It's because you missed some critical up front steps that are a must for the success of any online course.
Here’s What the Numbers Tell Us
A survey of 1,128 entrepreneurs, course creators and freelancers conducted by Mirasee cited that 34.5% of their respondents cited “marketing-related problems” as their biggest challenge.
One blunt quote from the survey even said:
"Developing the course is easy for me; the marketing is the challenge.”
And it doesn’t stop there. The next-largest challenge (18.5%) was “narrowing their focus and teaching method.”
These courses builders learned the hard way that even though you have the know-how to teach something dear to you,
- Do you know who, why, and how they want to learn it?
- Do you know how many people are looking to learn that?
- Do you know how many customers you need to be successful—and where do you find these people?
What You’d Do Differently If Starting Over
Let’s walk through the big “I wish I knew this first” items taken from this survey.
1. Lock in your audience and messaging
Too many trainers jump into course-creation thinking “I’ll teach what I know,” instead of “I’ll teach what someone needs and will pay for.”
The key here is test, interview, and validate what you plan to teach before creating any content. Ask the questions:
- Who exactly needs this?
- What outcome are they chasing?
- What are they currently doing that isn’t working?
When you reverse engineer from their problem, your message to them becomes clear—and the marketing becomes simpler.
2. Build the marketing engine first, then the course
The survey shows that marketing is the #1 struggle. Given this hard face, why not flipped the order? Sell what you plan to offer before building the course. Build a mini-version of your sales journey. Build a lead magnet, write an email nurture campaign, invite real users to your course and pilot your program.
What I recommend to every first time course builder is sell your course before you build it.
What?
You heard me correctly. Confirm the demand for what you plan to teach so when you build your course you know you have a live audience, momentum, and feedback confirming you have something people will buy.
You can consider having a “pre-enrollment” step. That alone gives you valuable feedback. Your focus BEFORE anything else should be aimed at reducing your risk of going to market with something nobody wants.
3. Structure for completion, not just content
It’s tempting to record an entire course, upload modules, and call it done. But completion matters. The survey points out that even those who built courses were disappointed with student numbers. Members started their courses, but didn’t quite finish them.
The message here is chunk the content into small wins (15-20 min lessons), use milestones and check-ins so learners don’t stall, and build in live Q&A, community, or peer-support to keep motivation high.
This is really important because learners that succeed and credit your program as the key to their learning become your biggest advocates.
4. Choose tech with care—and plan for support
The survey also flagged “managing technology” (16.8%) and “time to create/maintain” (16.0%) as major hurdles.
Tech is not that sexy getting you into hosting, integrations, memberships, updates—but it matters. The message here is to pick a stack that scales, integrates cleanly (LMS + CRM + community), and build a support plan before you launch so you're not scrambling.
Our team specializes in building online courses on a number of platforms using LearnDash, BuddyBoss, HighLevel and many others. If you want a free call to go over your technology stack, schedule a call with me. There's no charge and no obligaion. I’m happy to advise you before you make tech decisions that may not be the best for you.
5. Think beyond the launch: recurring revenue, membership, ecosystem
Launching a course can feel like a hero mission. But what happens after the launch? The real value is in continuity: repeat sales, membership retention, upsells, community-based models.
The message here is to build the funnel not just for “buy once” but for “stay, engage, refer.” You want a model where your clients (trainers/consultants) don’t just build a course—they build a business.
Why Does This Matter?
It matters because the pain is real. Creators build great content—but get stuck in one of these traps:
- Low enrollment (because marketing/accountability missing)
- High drop-out (because structure/support weak)
- Tech horror stories (because integrations weren’t planned)
- Burn-out (because creation was under-resourced)
- One-time sales (because no retention or membership model)
The research wraps it up well:
“Online course creators need help launching and filling their courses … And yet more than half (55 %) have had fewer than 50 students.”
If you address these five mistakes—audience, marketing-funnel, structure, tech stack, continuity—you’ll avoid the biggest potholes.
Your next step
If you’re a trainer, coach or consultant who’s been thinking about packaging your knowledge into a course (or turning an existing course into a membership model) — start smart.
To get you started, I’ve written the free Profitable Online Course Builder Starter Guide. Inside I give the simple steps every course builder needs for a quick and success online course launch.
Click here to grab it: Profitable Online Course Builder Starter Guide
If you’ll invest the time now to build with a system—not just passion—you’ll save time, avoid frustration, and be positioned for long-term recurring revenue.
See you on the other side of your successful launch.