So, if you are reading this article, it is likely that you have purchased a subscription to Teachable or you are using the free version of the online course platform, and now you want to know how to set up your own course.
While most tools that you are given to create an online course could be quite complicated, you should be relieved to find out that Teachable is actually quite easy to use, and modifying your course once it is made is also going to be easy.
While Teachable gives you all the information you will need to create your course, we thought it would be useful to collect all of this information in one place so you have all the steps you need.
So keep reading: Teachable make your own course!
It is worth noting that if you are using the Teachable free plan, you will only be able to publish a single course at a time. (Check out ‘Can You Create A Course On Teachable For Free?‘)
Some people only want to create a single course, so this is all they need, but if you want to make more than this, you will need to start paying for Teachable.
Now, if you are looking for information as a course creator on how to create your course with a Teachable subscription, keep reading to get all the information you need!
Setting Up Your Course With Teachable
The first thing you will need to do when setting up Teachable is to create your school, and once this is done you will be prompted by the service to immediately start setting up the first course to sell online courses within this school.
Selling online courses is not something you actually need to do immediately, and one of the best things about Teachable, is that you have the freedom to do everything at your own pace, whether this is creating, or changing your course.
However, after you have set up your school, we recommend the next thing you should do is set up your course.
Teachable make your own Course
The first thing you need to do to create online courses in Teachable is to go into the admin section of your school, and from there you can click on the courses tab which is found on this sidebar.
If you want to enter this page in a different way, you could go onto the plus icon by the products page and then select a course from there, this will skip you ahead a little though.
After this, you want to select the new course option which will be in the top right corner, and this will lead you to a page where you can select the course name and change the course author as well.
After this has been done you will want to fill in all the information about your course, and then you need to click on the create course button.
Once you have done this, you will see a modal popup, which will show the course has been created, and now you will be able to see it on the courses tab instead.
After you press continue, you will go to the curriculum tab which is where you can add more content to this course, or you can go back to the information tab instead.
Publishing And Previewing The Course
When you are using the information tab in the course, you will have the option to either publish, unpublish, or instead preview your course, as well as the sales page, and the curriculum page, as well as delete or duplicate any pages on the course, and you can do this whenever you want.
Once you have selected for your course to be published you will be making it available to be purchased and then enrolled by any customers, customers will not be able to do this if the course has not been published.
If you want to publish your course, you simply select the option to publish the course, and then you will be greeted by a popup that asks you if you want to publish your course alongside any lectures which are unpublished which are in the curriculum tab.
If you select yes, with the publish all option, you will then publish your course, alongside the sale, the checkout, the thank you pages, as well as the lecture pages as well.
However, if you select the no, just publish course option, this will publish the course, sales, thank you pages, and checkout, but will keep any of the unpublished lectures in your curriculum tab.
You can also cancel out if you do not want to select either.
As mentioned earlier, as well as the publish course option, there is also the more tab which is next to it and this gives you some more options as well.
For example, you can preview all of the sales pages your students might see if they land on the page, you could also preview the curriculum from how a student would see it on the landing pages.
You will also be able to duplicate your course to make a copy that includes all content from lectures, as well as compliance settings, assignments, and media.
All of these can of course be edited after you have duplicated them.
Finally, you also have the option to delete your course, this will take it off your school and is permanent, so if you want to temporarily delete a course from your school, instead unpublish it instead of deleting it.
Course Product Visibility
On all of your courses on Teachable, you will also have a toggle option to view your product visibility.
This will ensure that your visible products are shown in your product directory, this means that anyone who has enlisted in your school will be able to browse and enlist with these courses.
It is worth noting that hidden products are not visible when looking into your product directory.
While students can actually still enroll in these products, they will need a URL provided by the course administrator to the sales or the checkout page.
Branding Your Course
Another useful feature that is included with Teachable when it comes to course creation is full control over the branding of your course.
If you want to control this on the online course creation platform you want to go to the branding section.
This will allow you to set a custom thumbnail that can serve as your logo, as well as a promotional video for your school or course.
You also have options to set images that will be different in how they appear on the iOS application.
Details And Author
There is then the details section which will let you change any of the information which is displayed throughout your school, there is plenty of different information which you can edit here.
For example, this is where you can change the title of your course, and this will edit the title wherever you have used it.
On top of this, you can change the course subtitle which is the extra information about your course which will appear alongside it.
The final piece of information you can control in the details section is the categories that are used in your course, these are used by students to make it easier for them to find specific course content in the course or in the products page.
Very close to the details section is the author section, which is dedicated to assigning an author to different parts of your Teachable school to be the author of a specific course.
This will attach the name of the author to the products which appear on the ‘my products’ page as well as in the featured products space.
You can also control the information which will show up when you click on the name of the author, for example, an image and short biography which can also be accessed in the ‘my instructor’ tab.
SEO
It is worth noting that the SEO editor is only compatible with Teachable courses that have been built using page editor 1.0, and if you have a course that was built with page editor 2.0, you will have to edit similar details in the page settings.
Using the SEO area you will be able to edit your sales page for your course to make it much easier to access using search engines which will usually help boost your sales, however, this will only work if you are using the legacy editor.
For example, you can make your page have a friendly URL this means the web address will be easy to read to make it more accessible and will include words that are simple and accurately describe the content of the page.
This is also where you alter the title of the page which will appear when the page shows up on a search engine, as well as the meta description which is the short description that appears under the title which is limited to 160 characters.
Course Compliance
If you are using Teachable’s Pro or Business plan, you will have the option to use and edit course compliance settings.
These are requirements you can set for your students.
These will be things that your student will need to do between lectures to be able to access the next one.
This is useful for ensuring that students actually complete all of the online course content.
Default Pages
If you use the post-purchase page menu, you will have the option to change the page which your customers will land on after they have completed a purchase of your course.
There are plenty of different options for making a better course landing page.
For example, some people want their students to immediately be able to see the course curriculum so they can start right away and see the proof of their purchase, while others might want their customers to see a thank you page which will make access to the course more seamless.
There is also the option to set a completely custom URL so you can send the student to whichever page you want.
Editing The Layout
There is a setting on Teachable which is accessible for any online courses which were created before early June 2022 wherein you can limit the width of the content from lectures to just 760px.
If you do not know what this means, this means that the content from lectures like text, images, or videos will not be stretched to take over the whole browser window to make sure it is properly viewable on all devices.
Progress Bar
Another option you have when creating a course on Teachable is to edit the visibility of the progress bar.
This progress bar will usually display how much progress has been made through the course after a certain lecture or lesson has been completed, however, if you are making a course that will update regularly, having a feature like this can be pretty distracting, so being able to hide it is a great option to have available.
Course Advice
When it comes to creating a course on Teachable there is some simple advice to follow when it comes to more foundational and less technical advice. (See also ‘Teachable Prices: How Much Does It Cost To Publish A Course Online?‘)
One of the main examples of this is to go for a course idea that you see as profitable.
You do not want to jump into a space that is full of competition, especially if you are not a particularly reputable source, so instead of working to fit into a busy space, create your own space building on your niche to stand out.
You will also want to dedicate plenty of time to identifying your audience so you know exactly who you are aiming your content towards.
If you go to the effort to do this, you will be significantly more successful.
Summary
Hopefully, this guide has exemplified just how easy it is to work with Teachable when it comes to creating your course.
The only difficult thing to do is organize your course material into lessons, but this is something that should not be too difficult if you put effort into putting your thoughts in order.
We hope we helped you with choosing the best online course platform for yourself!
