Making a small mini-course or email course without fancy gear

A mini-course is a short set of lessons that teaches one skill. It might be a handful of short videos, a few written lessons, or an email course, which is a series of lessons sent to someone's inbox one at a time over several days.

You don't need a studio, a fancy microphone or a big course platform to make one. You need a clear topic, a phone or computer, a quiet room and a plan.

By the end of this lesson, you'll know how to plan a small course and choose between video and email. You'll also know how to record or write the lessons with basic gear and get them to buyers.

The short version

• Keep the course small: one skill, a few short lessons, and a clear result at the end.
• An email course is the easiest place to start because it's just writing, and your email tool can send it on a schedule.
• If you do video, a phone, window light and a quiet room are enough. Clear teaching beats fancy production.

Keep it small on purpose

The biggest mistake with a first course is making it too big. Fifty videos covering everything about a topic takes months to build, and most buyers won't finish it anyway.

A mini-course should teach one skill well. "Learn photography" is too wide. "Take sharper photos of your craft products with your phone" is a mini-course.

Start by writing the result in one sentence: "By the end, you'll be able to ___." Then plan only the lessons needed to get there. A handful of short lessons is plenty for a first course.

Plan your lessons

Each lesson should do one job. If a lesson covers two big ideas, split it into two lessons.

Step 1: List the steps

Write down everything a beginner has to learn or do to reach the result. Then put it in the order they'd actually do it.

Step 2: Group them into lessons

Bundle the steps into lessons of about the same size. Each lesson should end with the student able to do something they couldn't do before.

Step 3: Add a small task to each lesson

Give every lesson one thing to try. "Take three photos of the same item near a window and compare them." People learn by doing, and small tasks keep them moving.

Option 1: The email course

An email course is the simplest kind of course to build. Each lesson is an email. Someone signs up or buys, and they get lesson one right away, lesson two a day or two later, and so on.

This works through an autoresponder, which is a feature in most email tools that sends a set series of emails automatically, on a schedule you choose. If you haven't set up an email tool yet, start with starting an email list from zero.

Writing the lessons

Keep each email short enough to read in a few minutes. Open with what this lesson covers, teach the one idea, and close with the task.

Write like you're talking to one person. Plain words, short paragraphs, and no walls of text. People read email on their phones, often while waiting in line somewhere.

Free or paid

Plenty of people use a free email course to introduce themselves to new readers. Others sell an email course as a small paid product. Either way, the building process is the same.

Option 2: Short videos with basic gear

If your topic is easier to show than to tell, video makes sense. Here's what you actually need.

1. A phone or a computer with a camera. Most modern phones record clear video.
2. Light from a window. Face the window so the light hits your face. Don't sit with the window behind you, or you'll look like a witness on the news.
3. A quiet room. Sound matters more than picture. Rooms with carpet, curtains and soft furniture echo less than empty rooms with bare walls.
4. Something to hold the phone still. A cheap phone stand or a stack of books works fine.
5. A simple microphone, if you want one. A small clip-on mic that plugs into your phone helps, but it's optional for a first course.

Screen recordings

If you're teaching something on a computer, you can record your screen instead of your face. Many computers have screen recording built in, and there are free tools for it too. Talk through each click as you go.

Recording tips

Keep each video short, ideally under ten minutes. Shorter videos are easier to record, easier to redo, and easier for students to finish.

Don't aim for perfect. If you stumble, pause and say the sentence again, then trim the mistake out later. Students care whether they learned the thing, not whether your lighting looked professional.

Getting the course to students

Once your lessons are done, you need a way for students to get them. Here are the simple options:

• Email course: your email tool's autoresponder handles it. Test the whole series by signing up yourself first.
• Videos: you can upload them to a video host that lets you keep them private or unlisted, meaning only people with the link can see them. Then share the links on a simple page or in an email.
• Course platforms: these are services built to host lessons and track progress. They're nice but not required for a first mini-course.

For more on handing over files and links after someone pays, see delivering a digital product. Whatever you pick, test it like a buyer would.

Test it before you sell it

Take your own course from start to finish as if you were a student. Click every link, watch every video and do every task.

Then give it to one or two people who fit your audience, for free, and ask where they got lost or bored. Fix those spots. Their feedback is worth more than any upgrade to your gear.

Be honest about expectations, too. Results vary, and most first courses earn little or nothing. A small, finished course still teaches you a lot about what your audience actually wants.

Do this next

• Write your one-sentence result: "By the end, you'll be able to ___."
• List the steps and group them into a handful of short lessons.
• Add one small task to the end of each lesson.
• Decide between an email course and short videos.
• Write or record the first lesson using what you already have.
• Take the whole course yourself, then have one or two testers go through it.

Nobody remembers the camera. They remember whether you actually taught them something.