Developing Tutorial Courses for Auto-responder Delivery

Developing tutorial courses to offer at your web site is an excellent way to promote yourself, business and your web site.

A good tutorial is one that is unique in some respect and must contain valuable information or your reader/s will unsubscribe.

There are thousands of free tutorials on how to create an ezine, email marketing etc so brainstorm for something unique that represents your site, your product, or a specific skill you can teach people.

Always keep in mind that the aim of any tutorial course is to teach, inform and provide quality information of interest for your target audience through the sharing of your knowledge on subjects you are familiar with.

These courses *can* be invaluable for pre-selling your readers on your products if they are done right... 

Developing your course

Decide on your subject then create a lesson plan.

Begin by making a list of topics and then depending on the number of topics separate each into your individual course lessons. 

For example: five topics become five lessons, ten topics ten lessons and so on. 

Follow the same format for each lesson using plenty of white space to make it easy for people to go back and find information they may like to review again.

In the first lesson outline the course contents and what they can hope to learn during the course of your lessons. 

Give each lesson a number.

Give each lesson a title.

Then follow with the actual lesson.

Throughout your course you can refer to your product/s and how it can help solve a problem within the context of the topic under discussion. Never however, use your course for the blatant advertising of your products and services or it will be a quick click on the un-subscribe button.

At the end of each lesson give highlights of what to expect in the next lesson. Keep it interesting so subscribers will look forward to the arrival of the next installment. 

Once you have completed your written course the next step is to sign up for a follow-up auto-responder capable of delivering your lessons at pre-determined intervals. This can be every day, or perhaps every second day for as many days required. 

Auto-responders are available from

http://getresponse.com (free)

http://aweber.com 

Follow the instructions given when you sign up. Do a trial test to ensure that the delivery options are set correctly.

Next place your course information on your web site with your course description and the mailto: link to your auto-responder. 

After mastering this type of auto-responder course consider providing workshops via email or...

Self-learning training courses delivered via email  Note: Training courses contain no advertising for products or services ... they are the product. 

These courses are structured the same way as offline correspondence courses and tend to do well year in and year out as the market for the course information always constantly replenishes itself. 

Self-learning training courses require structured lesson plans, a course outline and set objectives for the knowledge the student can expect to gain from the course. Often this type of course includes a self-knowledge quiz at the end of each lesson for self-evaluation purposes by the student of how well they have understood of the current lessons content. 

Popular topics include... 

Business and money making courses Public Speaking courses Language courses Salesmanship courses Writing courses Interior Decorating courses Inspiration and self-improvement courses Computer Programming Stress Management courses Massage courses Astrology courses

"How to"... Just about anything that can be adapted for delivery via auto-responder that will provide people with the information and knowledge they are seeking. 

Develop a prospectus for interested students to download (PDF format gives a more professional look) then create a course outline and sign-up enrollment form page at your web site. 

Set your auto-responder to automatically deliver lesson installments to each of your paying students at weekly or fortnightly intervals.

Tip: Many students like recieving the whole course upon signup. As an alternative offer the course in PDF ebook format. Making this option available will increase the number of student enrollments.

Many "how to" ebooks can be adapted or broken down into course lessons and presented in this way providing an extra source of income for your business (or as a business in itself) or to be sold offline via direct mail to capture both the online and offline markets.

Copyright © 2001 J Black