How long should an online course be?
One of the biggest misconceptions about online courses is that the longer the course (more videos), the better.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The truth is that the length of an online course is not really that important.
The number one priority of an online course creator should never be the length of the online course. It should be the on the effectiveness and speed of taking the prospective student from their pain point to the solution.
One of the things online course creators have to understand is that people don’t come to them like how they would approach a university or a formal education institution.
In fact these people come to online coaches to get the kind of raw, real and rare information which is not available in the “formal” world.
People who come to individual online coaches are more interested in a real life solution rather than a professional validation (certificate/degree).
This means that a longer course wont necessarily benefit such a student since the focus of such a student is on FINISHING the course quickly to get the intended benefit.
Therefore, a shorter course actually will appeal more to such a student since a shorter course represents an easier journey from pain point to solution.
This is of great benefit to the course creator too since he/she can create a course quickly and not expend too much energy.
But this doesn’t mean the course has to be deliberately kept shorter either.
The correct length of the course is only determined by the time taken to arrive at the intended solution it offers to the student.
But this intended solution has to be offered at the fastest possible rate. The course should be devoid of any filler material.
Once this is the case, this efficient approach will result in the correct length of the course. For some this may be 10 videos. For others it may be 100 videos. Both are short in their own way.
The term short is relative to the efficient nature of the course curriculum.
Just don’t make the mistake of adding unnecessary videos just to make the course appear larger in “volume” in the hope that it will look more attractive and will result in more sales.
It might just actually backfire and discourage the student as the course may come across way too vast.
As far as online courses go, size does not matter.
Results do.
