How to create a course in 2025?

12 Dec, 2024

Creating an online course can be a great way to reach a bigger audience faster AND generate more income in your business. If you’re considering creating an online course, this post will help you explore how to create a course in 2025!

These days, we can notice a big shift of people transferring from the offline world and in-person teaching to online courses.

This has happened in many different niches. And the closer you look at the trends, the more clearly you can see – EVERYONE can turn their experience into an online course.

The good thing though: you don’t need to be a teacher to bring your knowledge online.

Coaches, designers, writers, photographers, wedding planners and even recruiters have used this time to turn their offline experiences into online income. If you haven’t hopped on this train already, learn how to create a course in 2025.

If you seek more personalized support, explore done-for-you course creation!

How to create a course in 2025?

Create a course to uplevel your business in 2025

The concept of online courses

Online courses definitely are on a winning streak these days.

It’s a chance for experts to scale their businesses beyond 1:1 offers and for others – to learn plenty of different skills from the comfort of their home.

While a typical online course will be mostly video content focused, there are other variations to explore as well. For example, audio or email courses.

The best part of it all – creating a course is not as complicated as it might seem at first! With the demand for courses growing, there are now plenty of great tools to use to make this experience a lot simpler for you as a course creator.

Why create a course in 2025?

One of the biggest game-changers in the industry of online courses was Covid.

Those who worked online before might have heard or maybe even tried creating a course or two. But for plenty of people, this concept was still a mystery. Who can create an online course? What does it take? Who will buy? And the time and resource investments might have seem unbearable.. (which is not true!)

However, as Covid took most of our freedoms away, keeping up with our lives online became the new normal. More and more people actually started exploring both teaching and learning online.

Hair salons got shut down so people seemed courses on how to cut their hair at home.
Tons of unexpected free time drove people to learn new hobbies online, from taking painting or guitar lessons to learning how to bake or garden.
Schools and universities transferred their courses into online world.
1:1 professionals turned their experiences into courses others could take instead of meeting them 1:1.

It was a wild time to experience but it changed a ton in the world of online courses.

2020 showed that not only all the “normal” things can be taught online but almost ANY business can turn their experience and knowledge into something useful people can learn online.

And this will stick well beyond the misery of 2020. Just the simple fact that online courses already WERE a big deal in the earlier years proves this. 2020 just made us even more used to this.

Related read: Courses vs memberships

How your business would benefit from having a course?

If you have already been thinking about creating an online course, you probably know the answers that are about to follow! But if you are just considering this as a possibility for your 2025, here will be a few things to recognize:

You can reach more people more easily. Courses work beyond borders and without limits of distance or timezone. If you currently have 10x 1:1 clients, imagine how many more people could be out there, gaining value from what you know!
Your income won’t be time-bound. Most “hands-on” tasks, either it’s 1:1, freelancing or a regular 9-to-5 job have a limited earning potential because you have only as many hours in your day. With online course, there won’t be any income ceiling!
It can support your 1:1 work. Your course doesn’t have to be the endgame of your business. You can use it as a helpful learning material for your audience before they start working with you or a supportive follow-up AFTER you’ve helped them 1:1.
You can offer a more budget-friendly way to work with you.

How to create a course in 2025?

STEP #1: Come up with the idea

My favorite formula to consider when coming up with a course idea is the following:
your passion + experience + your audience’s needs covered

For example, my passion is creating online courses, my experience includes course creation, design and marketing, and my audience wants to learn how to turn their ideas into passive income. For my offers, I have courses like Kickstart Your Course Challenge and Evergreen Funnel Formula – both of which cover it all.

Here’s the path to follow –

Usually, this part starts with a bit of brainstorming. Either you have many ideas or none at all for now, just put out a big piece of paper and dive into topics you’d like to cover.
Then, clarify your niche of expertise and see how you can become even more clear in these topic ideas.
After all, reach out to your audience and bulletproof your idea – make sure they’re actually interested in what you’ve come up with!

You can also include your audience in the process earlier. For example, create Insta polls regarding the topics they are the most interested in.

Related read: How to choose a profitable course idea?

STEP #2: Create the content outline

Once you have your topic in hand, create an outline of what you’d want to teach.

Here it’s important to keep in mind the following points:

Your content should have a clear goal
The outline should make sense and create a clear sequence

On average, an online course would consist of around 4-6 Modules with several lessons within each Module. The actual outline really depends on how big your course will be and how specific is the topic.

It’s important to not stuff too much info within one course. If you feel like you’re going extra, try to clarify your goal and maybe create a bonus or additional course instead (you can sell them as a bundle later!)

Related read: 4 Steps to create a course curriculum

STEP #3: Choose the best platform

Oh, the almighty question of platforms!

I’ve tried and tested plenty of different course creation platforms and there is never an easy answer to “which is the best course platform to use?!” But here’s my free Course Platform Guide you can get to explore your options!

A few of the best options I suggest for starters:

Thinkific is cost-effective, easy to use and with a great offer. You’ll have a chance to sell your digital course, along with having a community space. Besides that, this platform also provides great landing page templates for simple sales page setup.
Kajabi is a great option if you are looking for an all-in-one course platform. It’s a bit more complex than other options and will also require higher investment to get started with but if you need a solution for all of your offers – this is it!
Payhip is another all-in-one platform to consider. The offer is a lot simpler than Kajabi, therefore it’s also a lot more budget-friendly.

If you’re unsure about what it is that you need, make sure to check out that free Platform Guide that will help you to make the best decision FOR YOU.

STEP #4: Set your course branding

One of the most important parts of having a well-looking course is creating coherent brand that will work all through your online presentation: your social media, website, course and any other products.

If you already have branding you’d like to use – make sure to do so!

But if not, you should do some research and brainstorming before you start designing your course.

Biggest design mistake? Just taking the first free Canva template you like and making it your brand…

You want to have a clear branding vision for your offers and your business. This will mean making decisions about questions like:

The feeling you want to evoke with your branding. You want to consider the first impressions and associations people will have with your brand. Will it be elegant and luxurious? Or are you going for friendly and colorful? Maybe simple and minimal is your vibe?
Colors and fonts you want to use. What colors and fonts are well aligned with the feelings you want your brand to evoke?
Images and patterns that align with your brand. If you’re going for a luxury feeling, you don’t want to use colorful balloon images in your presentations. Part of having a coherent brand is having all of the elements aligned: your colors, fonts, images. It all should work with the feeling you want to evoke!

You can start by researching some samples you like on platforms like Pinterest or CreativeMarket and take it from there.

If doing this seems too much, you can always outsource your branding and design work before you start working on your course!

Related read: Design your own online course

STEP #5: Create the content

Next up: the most exciting but also the most important part of the process. Content creation!

There are different types of content to consider:

Presentations
Video content
Screencasts
Worksheets
Readable PDFs
Quizzes
Tasks

The final decision depends on what will work best for your content and audience. For example:

Highly technical or in-depth info should be shown in a video or described in easy step-by-step tips
Design, art or how-to related topics should always be shown in videos or presentations – if that makes sense
Theory-based material can be provided in a written way
Keep in mind what your audience might prefer (don’t hesitate to ask them too!)

STEP #6: Plan for your launch

Once your course is done, start planning for your launch!

Launching is one of the most important parts of creating a course in 2025. To have a highly profitable offer, you have to consider how you will be selling it, how will your audience get to know about the offer. And if you have little to no audience – you want to consider what social media and other marketing methods you will use to reach them?

To learn more and stay connected: