Create and Sell Your First Course with Tella and Teachable

The only way to know if you like something is to try it. But some things require a lot of effort, even just to try. Creating a course can feel a bit like that.

There's a lot of work that goes into making a course. Planning, preparing its content, purchasing new equipment; recording, editing, uploading; designing a website, building it — and then you've got to sell it! All that work can take away from the fun of starting and trying something new.

But with the right approach creating a course can be simple.

This is a blog post, and a short video guide, to show that you can try course creation without much hassle, minimal preparation and no new equipment. The goal of this post? Help you record and publish the first lesson in a course using only your web browser. The process will be split into four steps:

1. Planning
2. Recording
3. Creating (the course)
4. Publishing (the course website)

This guide is for anyone thinking about making a course, working on their first course, or just curious about the space. Here's what you'll need.

Physical equipment:

1. Computer
2. Microphone (the one built into your computer will be fine)
3. Webcam (optional, but a very good idea — the one built into your computer will also be fine)

Virtual equipment:

1. Slides (we'll discuss making these)
2. Note taking app
3. Tella account (this is the app we'll use for recording)
4. Teachable account (this is platform we'll publish our course on)

Let's begin!

Planning

Start with an outline ✍️

When you draw a picture it's best to sketch the main shapes then make sure they connect together before adding more detail.

With a lesson you write down its main topics then re-order them until they follow a logical order. Use your note-taking app to do this (or pen and paper). Under each topic write any subtopics that should be covered. This is where you add the detail of your lesson.

Flip the script 📃

Next, turn your outline into a script. You can use your script to read from while recording, but you can also use it as an exercise to organise your ideas further or rehearse. When you're writing a script, make sure to keep it original. If you're unsure try running a plagiarism check. Before recording a video I'll often write a script just to help me memorise what to say — sometimes that's enough.

Nice deck 📊

Now you can turn all this raw written content into something visual. Use whichever slides app you're most familiar with and build a deck of slides. The trick with slides is to keep them simple. Try to limit each slide to one or two pieces of information. If this means you need to make more slides then so be it. Your viewers will be happier with more memorable slides than a few slides overloaded with information.

Show don't tell 🎭

If your lesson involves demonstrating something then you'll want to factor this into your plan too.

Decide where in the lesson screen recordings need to be added. If you're working on a coding course or design course then most of it will probably be showing your students how to do something.

But even your course is about writing, or maths, or analytics, or marketing, or anything you can do on a computer, there will lots of opportunities to show how something works rather than explain it. Keep this in mind when planning your topics and creating your slides.