There’s a reason you’re seeing an influx of ecourses in the
blogosphere of late – it’s a fantastic way to share to a higher (and
sometimes more concentrated) degree your talents and knowledge. If you
have a niche blog, then there’s a good chance you can come up with an
in-depth and useful course that will be helpful for your readers and
profitable for you.
If an ecourse is something that’s been on your mind, then read ahead. Last year, Chantelle Ellem of Fat Mum Slim ran her very first blogging ecourse, the Clever Cookie School of Blog,
which was a huge success. I picked her brain about how she started the
course, what platforms she used, and what she learned. If you have any
questions, please ask them in the comments and we’ll try and get an
answer for you to start your ecourse journey off on the right foot!
The Overview
What made you decide you wanted to offer an online blogging course?
I was getting emails every single day asking me how to do things on
the topic of blogging, really specific questions that needed a lot of
time and energy to respond to. And of course I was responding to each of
them! I decided that there was obviously a need for a blogging course.
It was actually back in 2010 when I dreamed up my blogging course, and
it was a time when no one (or not that I knew of) was doing it. Over the
years I’d revisit the idea, write the content and structure for the
course and eventually I got my butt into gear and launched it this year.
When you began putting the course together did you have a specific outline in mind, or did it come together more as you were writing it?
Because I wrote it back in 2010, so much happened since then, like…
Instagram! So I knew that I wanted to cover off everything I knew in my
own head about blogging, and put it down into lessons. It definitely
evolved as I started writing the content, and realised that I had so
much more stuff I wanted to share.
How engaged have people been with it?
People have been amazingly involved. It’s been so well-received. I’ve
done blogging courses before and it felt a lot like we were dumped with
the information and left there to absorb it. I wanted to be really
available to the Clever Cookie students, and let them pick my brain
whenever they like. It’s been time-consuming, but good time-consuming.
I’ve loved sharing conversations about blogging with the students.
What was the motivation behind getting “guest speakers” in? Were they hard to source?
I don’t know everything there is to know about blogging, and I don’t
think anyone does… so I wanted to bring other people in to share their
knowledge. I also wanted to teach the students that there’s not just one
way to blog successfully. I wanted them to take bits of information
from all the different sources, decide what felt right to them, and then
make it into their own recipe for blogging success.
Has it been hard to fit it in alongside your regular work?
I’m not going to lie, yes it has. But I love blogging, so it doesn’t
always feel like work. And, who needs sleep anyway? I think if I’d just
created the content, scheduled it to go live and left the students to
it, I’d have more time on my hands… but I want to be there as much as
possible, and I wouldn’t be happy doing it any other way
What has surprised you about the course?
A few weeks before I did the course I read a quote that said,
“Obvious to you is amazing to others” and it made me realise that the
really basic general knowledge is something that I shouldn’t overlook
sharing. And that feeling was right, because the most simple lessons
I’ve taught in Clever Cookie have been the ones that have resonated most
with the students.
What has delighted you?
The community! I love the community that has already blossomed
amongst the bloggers. They’ll be their own support network moving
forward once the course has long finished. They have access to a
Facebook group for graduates and will be able to share, give advice,
help each other out and support each other on their journey. Also, we
sent out little welcome packs at the start of the course, and people
loved getting those presents. Seeing and reading their reactions was a
great way to kick off.
What did you learn about running a course like this that you will know for next time?
One big thing I learnt was with finances. The forum we run the course
in takes a big chunk of income, and PayPal takes some too. We factored
that in of course, but it was expensive, as were the welcome packs and
postage. Because my Paypal account hadn’t had income coming in before,
Paypal seized all the money (it’s a long story but they like to look
after customers so they’ve frozen half the income for the course for six
months in case anyone requests a refund). So I learnt those things,
which I never knew before. I also learnt that there is some pretty
amazing up-and-coming blogging talent out there. That’s exciting!
What would you advise other people if they wanted to run an online course?
I would say to do it! Be organised, set a schedule for the content,
make it as social as possible and easy to digest. I’d also have to
remind people of that great quote I read before we launched, “obvious to
you is amazing to others”.
The Nitty-Gritty
Platforms
The platform I used to host the course was CourseCraft: https://
Learning Curves
Tech-wise, we really only had to get to know how to use
CourseCraft, and that was hard when students would ask about
functionality but we didn’t know the answers to. A lot of the teething
problems we had were more around figuring out Paypal, grabbing people’s
addresses {we sent everyone a welcome pack in the mail}, and working out
international times for the Facebook chats that we had with experts in
blogging.
Social Media
We didn’t think that Clever Cookie required too many social media
platforms to support it, as we already had our own assets, but we
started a Facebook page and a new website. We also used MailChimp to email students, and to create a database to gain interest.
Useful Advice
Going into Clever Cookie we just tried to put into it what we’d
like to have learned 4 years ago, and went with that. We asked for
feedback from our students on completion of the course and it was
really, overwhelmingly positive. Over these past six months we’ve seen
lots of our graduates go on to achieve awards for blogging, grow their
audience, and really soar.
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