A complete guide to creating actually useful courses | Hacker News Reader

A complete guide to creating actually useful courses

schoolmaker.com

138 pointsAlexandruGlv23 comments

Thanks for sharing that.

I was expecting the usual "spammy" stuff, but this is legit good. I wish more outfits marketed this way.

I wish you the very best.

I really tried to create something useful without fluff because I hate it as well, glad you liked it and thank you Chris! :)

No, it was very spammy, content free, marketing drivel full of empty promises and bad abstractions.

This is so comprehensive, much thanks.

Obviously it's some great marketing for SchoolMaker - but either way, as someone that possibly wants to make a course in the future - thank you!

Thank you! Hope you'll find it useful :)

Thats very comprehensive-- not the 500 page "essay" with a link to buy I was expecting -- well done!

Edit: That said, your actual product is very expensive, at least compared to Teachable/Thinkfic etc (though it similar in price to products like Kajabi-- is that who you are competing with?)

Thank you!

We're aware of this and a revamp of our pricing is planned to have cheaper tiers or a freemium model in the future.

But yes, the product itself is more on the premium side because we're mainly targeting already established course and content creators who want a really advanced course platform for their students, not just an all-in-one tool like Kajabi or Podia that doesn't go in depth on the education side.

Related: Rob Fitz (of The Mom Test fame) is building a community of people who write actually useful nonfiction books https://writeusefulbooks.com/community/

Funny you mention it, reading his book "write useful books" is what initially inspired me to create this guide :p

Great book, I highly recommend it!

Is this a course that teaches you how to make money making courses?

It's a completely free guide teaching content creators how to make courses. For some context, the company I made this for is a course creation plateform like Teachable or Podia, so we want to make the best resources for our customers and potential customers :)

Let me know if you have any feedback or questions about it! :)

If no ads, whats your main marketing strategy (As schoolmaker)?

At SchoolMaker, we used our French audience at first to get PMF and a lot of feedback to improve the app.

And now that the app is translated in English, I'll start doing more SEO and content on social media, as well as creating useful resources like the guide to market it!

astroturfing

Dude I literally wrote on the landing page, and said in the trailer video that the guide was to:

1. Help people build great courses (which is 99% of the content, took me 5 months to research and write, and is totally free)

2. Promote our software (1% of the content, and any course creator can still apply the guide, even if they don't use our software)

What are you talking about :')

Don't take it personally. There are so many bad actors today that it's easy to misjudge.

Just be confident in your conscience about what and why you do stuff.

The virtual world seems to push people (generalizing) towards negative states of mind as well. If you're using the internet as a medium, be prepared to encounter this from time to time.

I've spent a lot of time on the project so that's probably why I took it a bit personally, but you're right I shouldn't fall in the trap of getting into internet fights.

i read your thing, and i find it unbelievable that so many people here would have such nice, similar things to say about it. Who comments that a thing is "comprehensive"?

Are you insinuating that I created fake accounts to give myself pats on the back?

Let's look at the profiles of the 2 accounts that used this totally normal word:

1. @shantnutiwari, with an account that is over 1-year-old, who has 2 websites that he seems to still maintain.

2. @chrisrickard, who directly linked his Twitter account, and to me seems like a pretty real human being.

Would be a lot of effort creating all of this for some engagement on a post don't you think?

If you don't like the guide it's completely fine; I don't expect everyone to like it, but don't make false accusations.

Wow. That just looks completely scammy. I am not judging your ethics, just the appearance. I wouldn't touch that site with a ten foot pole. Everything about the design looks like your average scam site.

It's a topic I'm very interested in, and I couldn't make it past the beginning.

I tried to work in the UX and make it easy to navigate, while still promoting the company I work for without making it too intrusive but I’m open to feedback.

Could you please tell me what did you find looked scammy specifically?

Are "complete" and "actually" missing form HN's clickbait headline word filter?

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