Examples and Strategies From Our Creators
Whether you are just starting out with your online course or you’ve been creating online for years, it’s always helpful to hear other creators’ strategies and learn from their experiences.
We asked creators around the world to share their tips and tricks that led them to the success they have today with their business on Heights Platform.
From launching an online course to marketing it, you’ll discover their secrets to success and learn from their mistakes. So keep reading below to find out!
We help our community of creators grow their knowledge businesses and get their learners results.
Creator Climb is a community and collection of courses designed by the Heights Platform team as a space for creators, coaches and solopreneurs.
In addition to the community to connect with other creators, Creator Climb includes courses, interviews, live workshops, and learning materials to help you build and grow your online knowledge business!
Creator Climb is 100% built using Heights Platform, so it is a great example of what you can also achieve using this course creation software.
If you are a Heights Platform customer, you can access Creator Climb from your Heights account from the menu on the top-right side of your screen. If you are not a customer yet, you can join Creator Climb for free and browse around the site!
Join the Creator Climb Community
Creator Climb is a private community to connect with other course creators, training, courses, interviews and learning materials to help you build and grow your online knowledge business!
Inside you will find our online course, "T-30: Launch Your Course in 30 Days", that teaches a step-by-step process designed to help creators build and launch a successful online course in 30 days!
Michelle creates online courses about podcasting. She teaches entrepreneurs how to create successful podcasts and leverage them for their businesses.
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
One thing I believe really contributed to the success of Practical Podcasting for Beginners was doing a beta test with a small number of customers and working closely with them to make sure I understood how the course worked with live students. This let me check that the content of the course answered all their questions and I added in some extra elements to the final course as a result. It also gave me testimonials that I could use in my marketing.
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
If I was starting my online course business from scratch today I'd spend less time worrying about which course platform to use, pick one (Heights obviously) and get course building!
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Without a doubt, three key things I'd recommend to any new course builder are:
- Build an audience BEFORE you create your course so that you have people to launch to
- Test your course with a small number of customers before you actually launch it
- Ask for video testimonials from these customers that you can use to market your course - that social proof is a game-changer.
Shelly is the Owner of Humble Seed Yoga. After her career in management and employee development for over 20 years, Shelly left the corporate world to pursue her passion for yoga. She brings her skills of leadership and mentoring into her online courses, where she teaches yoga and yoga nidra to other yoga teachers.
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
The one thing I did right, was simply "get started". It is so easy to get caught up in analysis paralysis on "how" to build the course. However, the Outline within Heights Platform makes it easy to visualize the structure of your course. So, just get started!
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
Take advantage sooner of the amazing Bundle Options that are available. Heights Platform truly is a company that listens to their customers and did amazing work to create the bundles with various pricing options so that creators can offer their programs in many different ways!
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Just put it out there: you don’t need to have the perfect course! As you gain more insight into your course you will build upon it. So, don't let perfection be your enemy. Put your course out there and allow it to evolve!
Paris is an online course creator who chose Heights Platform to teach students about online marketing and writing. Let’s see what is her advice to new creators:
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
I have a ton of advice for newbies in general but this is probably my top one:
Act before fear. There is no greater skill to have as an entrepreneur than to just get things done. The longer you wait to act, the more time you have to convince yourself it's a bad idea, that you're not capable of it, that you should put it off and wait for a better time.
99% of the time this is just the anxiety in our brain trying to stop us from doing something new and scary. So if you're thinking about making an online course, just start. Don't wait for a time when you're less busy, or when you have more money, or when you're not juggling so many things because that time won't come -- if it had, you would have changed your life years ago! Be brave, and take that first step.
Dino and Micol created a membership site with Heights Platform where they teach Italian cooking. They have structured their course in many different lessons, each of them dedicated to a single recipe. Let’s see what these two master chefs can teach you:
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
As a tip, we've opened an Amazon affiliate account initially to recommend kitchen-friendly tablet/phone holders to allow people to comfortably cook without having their device use up counter space, and we have now added a bunch of kitchen gadgets to the list - all this has generated an additional revenue stream.
Our program is completely non-linear - members can start in any section, or skip any lesson they wish…Right now we have over 100 Lessons and we are adding 4 to 6 new lessons every month. We feel this constant addition of new content will help retain members. But with that large number of lessons, organization is key so that the members can find what they need easily.
The fact that each lesson can have its own image is invaluable - it is much easier for subscribers to visually scan hundreds of pictures compared to text when searching what they want to learn next. When we first joined Heights, this feature (thumbnail picture per lesson) was not available, we asked the help desk if it would be something they would consider adding, and within 48 hours, Heights had made that feature available. That is pretty stunning customer service! Together with how fast the interface responds and how easy it is to put a program together, we'd recommend Heights to anyone. We are certainly hooked!
Barb is an successful entrepreneur who owns online courses about digital marketing and helps business owners master their online marketing. Today, she offers a practical suggestion to fellow creators:
The absolute #1 task I wish I'd completed sooner is a Course Creator Master (CCM) file! A CCM is a single control document or specs sheet, to track all of the important details related to your course. When you get busy with other parts of your course, or your business; it's a huge timesaver to quickly reference your setup, effects or automations. You can include just about anything in a CCM! Here are a few of the items I include:
- Login information for each of the tools related to course creation
- A brand overview with fonts, color HEX codes and logo usage guidelines
- Direct links to ad accounts, Google Drive or Dropbox folders
- Checklists for recording audio & video including video effects, recording quality and intro/outro screens
- Sample templates for social media, course and lesson images
- Specifics on the automations created in Zapier, Integromat or another tool
- Pricing information for tools with features on your wishlist
- Paid ad results including audiences, cost per click and click thru rates
- A CCM will ensure your course is consistent start to finish, your brand voice is clear and you can see your success!
Paul is a Behavior and Relationship Coach and host of two podcasts. His Love and Abuse podcast is where you can learn about poisonous communication, toxic behavior, and how to recognize and deal with emotional abuse. His other podcast The Overwhelmed Brain will help you become emotionally intelligent and personally empowered so that you can make decisions that are right for you.
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
Put a meaningful image at the beginning of each lesson or section if possible and if appropriate. Pictures can help frame the emotion and mindset of students. Pictures are also useful to break up lots of text as well, lowering the overwhelming feeling of too much information.
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
I'd create the course from inside Heights Platform. As it was, I created most of the content outside of the program. Copying and pasting was not only laborious, it was unnecessary. Heights had all the tools I needed to make it look just the way I wanted.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Repurpose blog posts and email newsletters into lessons. I am in the middle of creating my second course but I am doing so by sending email lessons out and receiving feedback. Any changes because of the feedback will end up in my course.
Mary Lynn is a hammered dulcimer player and teacher and Laurie is a book designer, musician and photographer. They both share their passion for the hammered dulcimer and in their online course they teach students how to play this ancient musical instrument.
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
One thing that I believe really contributed to our online course's success is focusing on a relatively small but passionate audience. In our case, we tapped our existing community of hammered dulcimer players.
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
I would start a free weekly newsletter immediately to build audience and interest and then transition it to a free/small fee for an extra content model as soon as my first courses were set up. I am setting this up now, but it would have helped to jump on it right away.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
I recommend just starting! It doesn’t need to be perfect, and you can pivot and adapt as you go. We began in June 2020 and gradually offered short classes and tutorials over 6 months to understand what our peeps want and need. We launched our first big course in December to great success.
Together with a physical store that specializes in selling sewing machines, Judi owns an online course business where she teaches the art of sewing. She told Heights:
"Our dream of a digital learning platform was and is a big dream. Big dreams are not always easy. You have to be willing to learn more, learn more and learn more again… Plus, you have to find the right people to help you with a solution that helps the dream transform to reality. Having the realisation that you can never stop improving on what you begin will help you towards success."
Let’s see what are her tips for a successful course:
1. Map it out: having a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and a roadmap to how you want your platform to look helps to develop your program more effectively. Map it out on paper until you are happy with how your students/customers will eventually see the program. This will give you a clearer picture of what you are working towards. You can tweak this after publishing, but don’t get too caught up on the look or you will never get started!.
2. Keep yourself on a timeline: working to a deadline can be, for some, a way to keep your mind focused on a task. Course creation, whilst interesting, can get monotonous if you have a lot of modules to complete. Not everything has to be in a single lesson. You can break more complicated items into modules with smaller content.
3. Include some Video: video is an integral part of capturing your audience. Whether it is curated content or video that you produce yourself, the addition of video can make your platform more personal, and help to convey special items that you would like to reinforce. Pictures are a great resource too.
4. It doesn’t have to be boring: people want to be engaged, so have fun whilst you are completing your platform- it will show.
5. Complete it before you publish: Having your modules ready for a delayed release is much easier to manage than catch-up. After many weeks of course creation, you can get a bit laid back with new production if you are not careful, so be prepared.
6. Always look to improve on what you have: Consistent improvements help you add value to your courses. Especially if you are still in early development/publishing of your course.
7. Don’t forget to publish: It happens…..!
Kevin is a bachata instructor and lover. With his online course, he specializes in teaching his students how to dance the bachata and inspire them to become the best dancers they can be.
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
One thing that I believe really contributed to my success is the difference in delivery. Rather than a transfer of information, I focus on inspiring people and motivating them to take action.
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
I would get a partner or an expert who can review the content creation along with me and plan more with video creation using scripts, etc.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
If you are just starting with your online course, I recommend having an accountability partner or coach to make sure you release the course because you can always make edits later.
Emilio is a psychologist-psychotherapist and a personal development coach. Through his courses he helps people feel confident and comfortable in their skin.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
I recommend starting small and testing in a safe way all the issues that make you uncertain, uncomfortable, and anxious. Otherwise you'll be blocked and not move forward.
Understand what needs to be clarified and then proceed in order, step by step, focusing on the results you're looking for.
I started with an internal launch with my clients, for example, and that's for sure one thing that helped me feel more confident.
They already learned to trust me, and can tolerate a sort of "beta version" and not something that is already flawless or mature, and that won't reflect reality, knowing the value they will receive.
Tammey works with private, public and nonprofit organizations providing consulting services and executive mentoring that helps guide organizations to new levels of sustainable growth. She uses Heights Platform to deliver online courses designed to help businesses grow and overcome difficulties.
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
Thinking outside the box, I am using Heights for a course membership platform that integrates group mentoring, a mastermind, and monthly doing labs. Every month there are new courses for members.
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
I would have started sooner. Heights has such a clean design and is so feature-rich. I wish I had started sooner.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
The primary piece of advice I would give to someone starting out would be to map out your business plan and course flow.
Randy E. Moore is a Doctor of Chiropractic and a Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer. His online courses are aimed to prepare other professionals to excel in their MSKS exams. Here is what Dr. Moore recommends to other course creators:
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
Breaking down the course into bite-sized portions. Makes it more enjoyable for the students!
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
Record our videos in higher resolution!
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Try not to get overwhelmed. Building out quality course content doesn't have to be hard. Start small, and build from there!
John has been delivering Personal Development courses for over 30+ years: he started before there was the internet. Once the internet started to become a more established reality, John saw a huge potential in online education, and had the visionary idea of bringing his work online. The biggest struggle for John was finding the right vehicle, the right platform for his online courses. In fact, he tells us: "for 15 years or more I could never find the right vehicle that would allow me to do that until I found Heights which helped me realize a long-time dream and goal." Here are four course creation tips according to John:
1. The first most important step is to have a platform that you’re going to use to build your school and a big note here, not all platforms are the same. I tried several other platforms before I found Heights and never produced any completed courses and became very frustrated.
Heights is like a visual editor you can see what you’re creating as you build and it's easy, intuitive and no tech skills needed. I was able to create my entire online school in a matter of weeks and it looks professional and easy for my students to navigate which is also particularly important.
2. Once you have your program set up in Heights, have your content created and ready and a map or plan of how you’re going to deliver the content. If you can’t do this yourself then use online freelancers to do the tech stuff for you, which is what I do especially creating graphics and banners for my pages, look at websites like Fiverr.com.
3. Your courses will evolve and change many times before you are happy with the result. I am constantly changing and tweaking the text and content of my courses and I have found many other ways of packaging my content and coming up with new courses I never thought of before, Heights helps you be creative and do more.
4. Once you have your courses loaded and ready to go you can develop your marketing and start driving traffic to your courses. I already have my web sites up and running for a long time, however knowing what I know now about Heights, if I had to do it over again, I would not have a web site and instead just market directly to my Heights landing pages or create landing page funnels and then direct to your Heights pages for signup. I am slowly converting and transitioning to this process and will fade out my websites one day which will save a lot of maintenance time and cost."
Gagan is a High Achievement Business Coach, Abundance Manifestation Expert, Chinese Astrologer & Feng Shui Master, Founder of Abundance Academy & Abundance Academy Podcast. She is also a great online course creator and teacher, let’s see how she does it:
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
I believe that my 21-day Abundance Challenge online course’s success is designing the course-curriculum and layout of the program to accommodate various learning styles. Most often, course creators teach in their own preferred learning style, which may not serve all your course attendees, participants, and students. Mapping out the course content and outcomes I wanted to achieve helped me put all the pieces together faster. Heights Platform’s course creation "climb outline" mode allows me to quickly create course structure and strategize to see the big picture to systematically add the content and resources for student learning and success.
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
2021 is my 10th year building and running my online business. Like many, I have had my fair share of business mistakes and have tried to learn from them. Success in life is about your energy and timing. If you can learn to manage both and cultivate self-discipline, commitment and determination to solve problems, everything is possible. Most people are scared of their own success. They are fearful of dreaming big, and then they don’t have the willpower to follow their own goals and desires.
If I started my online business from scratch today, the advice I would give to my younger self would be to keep self-care on the top of your business and personal list. And not wait too long to start converting your knowledge and experience into online courses. I wish Heights Platform existed 10 years ago when I started building my online business.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
I believe there are 4 significant parts to any successful online course content:
- Content that you are passionate about that helps solve a problem or a pain point.
- Content that is enhanced with visuals, videos, and/or audio.
- Content that encourages higher-order thinking skills.
- A course that supports the larger vision and growth of your students and your business as well.
Ensure you understand the setting up of your online courses in context and relationship to the 4Ps of Marketing — Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. Creating course systems can be overwhelming. Self-discipline, commitment, and breaking it down into daily steps for course creation can help you launch your brilliance! Do not be afraid to work with an expert in helping you create your courses.
An excellent online platform like Heights Platform takes a lot of technical pressure off of your chest. Still, no platform will write your content and design branded courses automatically. I have helped many clients birth their soulful projects into books, online courses and design branded programs to monetize their knowledge.
Cristina owns an online course business specializing in personal development and spiritual growth, she mainly sells her courses to the spanish-speaking market.
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
I have spent a long time creating a solid website with a lot of free information and a blog filled with relevant articles for my audience. Besides that, I reinforced it with a free program in my YouTube channel and talked about it in other media. Because of all this previous effort, the course now sells itself.
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
Yes, it was hard for me at the beginning to understand that I had to communicate as simply as possible. I wish I could have started my YouTube channel earlier uploading daily or weekly!
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Create a community interested in your free content. Create interactions with them and search for places online where you can give talks that will help you build an image of authority around you and your brand.
Janet is an online entrepreneur who focuses on helping people reach their goals through personal development and leadership. Her online course inspires students to succeed in their lives and become their best selves.
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
I believe patience and knowing the overall direction I'm heading when creating my online courses are crucial to the long term success of this alternative stream of income.
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
I would spend more time understanding the needs of my target audience.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
As you're able to create multiple courses and lessons in one program, it is good to have an overarching idea of what your program will be about and who your target audience is. Once you have decided on the program focus area (eg. Health and Wellness; Career Success; Entrepreneurship, etc,) it'll be easier to utilize the Heights Platform's "Climb Outline" to start creating the "skeleton" of your courses, the modules and the lessons within.
Sophia is a Vision Creation Mentor and Inspirational Trainer from the UK. Over the past decade she has trained women worldwide on what it takes to turn an idea into streams of income. Sophia’s advice below can teach you an important lesson when it comes to new software:
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
If I was starting out again from scratch, I would have made it so much easier for myself by setting up a sales page and landing page within Heights when I started. I hadn't anticipated that this option was available. And so I was manually importing my students into the platform when it could have been done automatically. So all I am saying is that where there is an automated system in place, it is going to be so much easier for your students and lead to better sales and better flow and less work for you!
Jorge chose Heights Platform to host his specialized courses. He teaches 3D printing and design to professionals, and below he lets you in his secrets to success.
What is one thing you did right that contributed to the success of your online course?
I think the main thing I did is to write a great sales page. Then, you put a button directly to your platform and the rest is ready!
If you could start from scratch, would you do anything differently?
Probably I would make a smaller course. My current 3D printing course has 123 lessons!
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
To invest in a great program to learn how to promote my course: run away from the $3000 dollar marketing course, most of them only show you how to sell other $3000 marketing courses.