How Long Does It Take? Timeline For Creating A Course

There are sooooo many creators out there telling everyone and their mother to create online courses to grow their business. I’m sure you’ve seen it - it’s basically unavoidable in the world of online business. 

And the truth is they are right! Creating a course is an incredible way to grow your online business or create a semi-passive stream of income. 

But what those creators are NOT telling you is creating a course is a huge undertaking! Especially if you are trying to create an online course that is truly transformative for your audience. 

So let’s dive into an *unsexy* topic that not a lot of online course creators talk about: all of the factors to consider when it comes to your timeline for creating a course!

How long does creating a course take?

The timeline for creating an online course is going to be different for everyone! If you’ve got your own team and your brand is going strong - then maybe you’re in the position to outsource your online course creation! But for others - you are flying solo & wearing ALL the hats! 

Here are some factors to consider when you are trying to map out your online course timeline…

1. Course Size

This is a big one. If you are designing a mini-course that’s five lessons tops, it’s going to take a lot less time than if you are designing an online course that’s 20 modules plus supplements plus Q&A calls plus Slack access, etc. 

And - if you are new to creating an online course, things will take you much longer to do than if you are a seasoned online course creation pro. 

When you are creating a course for the first time, we recommend that you take it easy. Don’t try to do everything all at once: all the supplements & deliverables, all the extra trainings, etc. Keep the first few lessons simple. This way, you can get some hands-on experience creating a course, learn your pace, and then go back and add in supplemental content and expand upon your course in a powerful way!

2. Your Work Schedule

I’m going to assume that you are already working hard in your business or at your job, and creating a course is currently a side-project for you. And you probably want your online course to become a continuous source of income for you - but for right now you are just trying to balance it all. 

Creating an online course takes a lot of time and effort. You’ve got research to do, planning, preparing, developing the curriculum, creating all of the deliverables, editing the course content (if you want more info on the steps for creating a course, check out our blog post about our 8 steps here). All of this is happening while maintaining your current workload, your family, your whole life. 

All this to say: be realistic. Be gentle with yourself. Be flexible - but don’t lose the vision of what you are trying to achieve. So take your life and job into consideration when creating a course and map out your timeline around that. Once you learn how to manage your working hours and other commitments, creating your online course will go smoothly!

3. Outsourcing vs. DIYing

Another consideration in your timeline for creating a course is whether or not you are outsourcing all or parts of your course creation process or if it’s a full on DIY project. 

Of course, if you are lone-wolfing it, it will take longer. And I know you’ll do a kick ass job! But if you can outsource certain tasks or the whole course creation process to a third party, then this will DRASTICALLY shrink the timeline for creating a course!

Let's breakdown a general timeline...

• Ideal Client/Market Research: 1 day
• Competitor Research: 4 hours
• Creating an Outline: 6 hours
• Creating Written Material: 5-20 hours
• Creating Video Material: 1 week to 1.5 months
• Editing Video Material: about the time it took you to record it
• Publishing the Course: 2-6 hours

This, of **course** (excuse the pun, please) - it only a generic estimation. The timeline is going to completely depend on your course structure, length, and depth. But these are some general guidelines for you when developing your timeline. 

So how long does creating a course really take?

Being realistic, it can take between 4-5 weeks to create a simple online course from inception to release. And if you reeeeeeally want an in depth breakdown of how long it takes to create an online course, check out this blog post here. But please keep in mind that this is just a rough estimation. We don’t know what your life and workload looks like. We also don’t know what the size of your online course is going to be. We can only go off of our industry knowledge and our clients’ previous experience with creating a course. 

So be flexible and give yourself more time than you think you need!

How can you minimize the time and effort for creating a course?

I mean… If you want to streamline your online course, ensure that it’s going to bring you BIG profit and create real world transformation for your audience, then Dreampro is the answer!

We have created over 300 online courses for our clients and save them on average 250 hours of course creation. We have tapped into the magic of the online course industry to bring our clients to the top of the game within their niche. 

This is the magic of Dreampro. 

So if you want to create an online course without the hustle - reach out! We’d love to chat with you about your course idea and our done for you course creation services. 

Till next time…