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Testimonials & What Questions Did We Not Answer?
Leave a Testimonial
If you enjoyed this course and found it to be a great value and would be willing to write a testimonial that we will possibly include on our website, it would be so greatly appreciated!
*By submitting this form, you are authorizing permission for us to post your feedback on our website.
What Questions Did We NOT Answer?
It is very important that we don’t leave our customers hanging or unable to complete the full process this course outlines. So if you feel there is something we have missed or that would be valuable to include in this course, we would love to hear from you!!
*If this is a matter that requires our help, we will do our best to respond in a prompt manner. Although this course does not include individual customer service, we do not want to leave anyone stuck or unable to finish, and we appreciate your feedback so we can make improvements to this course down the road.
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Thank you! We hope you enjoyed this course!
BONUS- Become an affiliate for this course!
Now I would like to offer you the free opportunity to become an affiliate for this course!!
Did you find this course helpful and affordable?
Do you feel it would provide value for your clients as well?
If you feel this course was a great value and it is something you would like to recommend to your clients in a newsletter, blog post, webinar, or in your own e-course- you can earn a $30 commission every time someone purchases this course for $49!
That is a FANTASTIC commission rate on an already FANTASTIC value for your clients! It’s a win/win/win!
If you are interested in becoming an affiliate for this course, please complete the form below.
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Testimonials >
BONUS - Adding Videos To Your Course
There are some things that are just WAY easier to explain in a video rather than through writing. Let me explain…
Remember, when it comes to video, so long as you are delivering the high-value information you promised, you are allowed to be normal. Carly and I give you permission!
what i use to Make Videos Like The one above
This tripod adapter to hold my cell phone on the tripod
This ring light for filming up-close tutorials
This adapter (or dongle) when I upgraded my phone
And IMovie for editing.
*If you are completely new to creating videos, the best place to begin learning is YouTube. I learned everything I know from looking up YouTube tutorials based on what I needed to learn (for example: How to film a tutorial with your Iphone, Best microphones for vlog beginners, Filming tips for beginners, How to feel more comfortable on camera, etc.)
Okay Audry, thank you for the Pep-talk and product recommendations, Now how do I actually go about putting videos into my course?
Well, I’m glad you asked!
In Squarespace you cannot physically embed a video into your website.
That means you need to first upload your video onto a platform like YouTube or Vimeo. (*Note, your video setting must also be set to public in order to ensure they play correctly on your website.). The bummer is that means you videos will be floating around for anyone to watch.
There may be other platforms that offer more privacy, and if you plan to make the bulk of your course video-based, or plan to use video as a major player in your business, I would recommend doing more research as I’m sure there are some more options out there.
Here is what I use:
Vimeo - Vimeo is my go-to platform for inserting videos into my courses. I’ve chosen to use Vimeo’s Business Plan at $7 per month (or $12 if you pay monthly), because I feel there are less people likely to just come across my video. I don’t know anyone who spends time just browsing around Vimeo the way we do on YouTube.
YouTube - is a FREE alternative and you can take comfort in the fact that your video will just be one very small fish in a VERY big pond, and is unlikely to be found by many people (especially if you don’t go through the trouble of adding in keywords and doing all of the things to TRY to be seen.)
Also, if only bits and pieces of your course are in video format, than anyone who happens to come across your video might not be so interested (especially if you’re doing it Carly-style😜).
Loom - Loom is another awesome FREE resource (although they do offer a paid upgraded version.) I’ve only recently begun dabbling with Loom, and actually used it to record my screen-capture videos for this course. I did download the videos to my desktop and then upload them to Vimeo, just because I like having all of my videos in one place. I did notice a slight downgrade in video quality through this process (maybe highest quality is something Loom reserves for paying customers?) I’m not sure. But from what I can tell so far, Loom is very generous in their free usage and doesn’t come across as sceezy
It’s very simple, user-friendly and from what I can tell does not seem to have
Again, if you are concerned about the privacy of your videos, please do more research about privacy and password options for videos. I did not do a deep dive into ways around this, because I didn’t have this concern.
inserting a video into your course
To insert your video, go into the editing feature inside of your blog page or “lesson”.
click where you would like to insert a block.
select the video block, and follow prompts to insert your video.
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Lesson 6- Setting Up E-Mail Welcome & Password Protection
There are two different methods for initially leading people to your course, and which one you use will depend on if people are PAYING for your e-course or if you are offering it for FREE.
Regardless of which you decide, the first step is that you need to password protect your Table of Contents page. Here is how you do that:
Under your Home tab, click the gear wheel next to the Table of Contents Page for your course.
Under the General tab, scroll down to where you see it says Password, and enter the password you would like for your users to use to access your course.
Try to think up something clever that goes along with the theme for your course. For example, in my Give A Shape to Your Dream course, I used the password: DREAMINITUP.
When you have finished putting in your password, click SAVE in the upper lefthand corner.
Now what you’ve just done is made it so that when anyone goes to your Table of Contents page, this is what will come up:
Don’t fret that it will get annoying to your clients to have to put in the password every time they go back to your Table of Contents- Squarespace has made it so as long as they have put in the password once, they can scroll back to that same page for about the next half hour or so.
So now the next question becomes:
How do I provide my customers with their login password?
Well, I’m glad you asked!
I will show you two different methods based on if you are offering a PAID COURSE or a FREE COURSE.
Setting up your welcome page and opting in to a free class
how to direct your customers to their paid-for class after payment
Links I mentioned in this video:
And that is it, my friend!
Now all that is left is to go back and put a little more time and effort into refining the details of your message, the style and how your course flows- so you really have something you are excited to present to your clients!
I know they are going to love it!!
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Lesson 5 - Clean-up Coding Hacks
CLEAN-UP CODING HACKS
Here I want to show you just a few simple coding hacks (I found these on Squarespace help threads, and have used them on my own website).
Messing with your website coding is definitely NOT something I would recommend, because you can do serious and irreconcilable damage to your website. BUT Squarespace has a nifty little section where they allow you to add in code, without exposing you to ALL of the code you could potentially mess up. Pretty cool right?
So what I’m going to show you here is how to input code that:
Removes the date from each blog post (or “Lesson” in our case).
Removes the “like” heart and share symbol at the bottom.
I believe these small tweaks helps the course look more professional.
But there are a few caveats:
Not all Squarespace themes show the same things. There is a chance that your theme might not show the date or author’s name under each blog heading. Even better! No need to remove them!
There is also a chance that your particular theme might show additional items, like an author bio, or something else. If there are other items you would like removed, you can do research on how to remove them here. (Again, I would not recommend making any major changes to your code, but only using small tweaks inside the Custom CSS section.)
Inserting these codes will also remove these features from other Blogs on your website. I personally do not mind, as I don’t like having these on my main blog anyway.
There may be a coding hack that allows you to only remove these features from a certain blog, but I’ve not looked into that, and I image it might be a little trickier.
This will not remove the author’s name from under each blog heading. Personally, I am fine with having my name listed under each blog post title or “lesson”, but you might want this removed. If so, I would suggest finding a solution inside of Squarespace forums, or asking customer service directly. I image it’s an easy piece of code, just like removing the date.
Removing The Date Under Each Post Title
Under your Home feed click Design
Click on Custom CSS
Copy in the following code:
.entry-date { display: none !important; }
Removing “like” heart and share symbol
In the same location as previous instruction, go down a few lines and paste the following code:
/* Remove Share Buttons */ .squarespace-social-buttons { display: none !important; } .sqs-simple-like { display: none !important; }
All in all, here is what my Custom CSS looks like with all of the above codes pasted in.
I like to leave a couple of lines in-between in case I ever want to go back to add or remove code. This helps me differentiate what is what.
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Lesson 4- Styling Your Course (Oh What Fun!)
Picking colors and images for brand consistency
Perhaps you are far along in your business venture and have already established a basic color scheme and “look” for your website. If so, it is probably obvious to you that you want to create your course with a style that fits your brand.
What’s great about Squarespace is that it already has a very clean, high-quality and professional look built into the design structure. And in addition to being beautiful, fluid and user-friendly, it’s responsive design makes your website look great on any device!
But EVEN STILL, creating a beautiful, fluid and brand-consistent website is not completely foolproof. We do have to put some time and effort into the design process in order to create a great-looking website.
If you’ve not already gotten to know the design program Canva, I would highly recommend it! I use Canva to create everything from my pins on Pinterest to covers for e-books and courses. It’s an awesome tool! And the best part is, it’s FREE!
This is an image I created inside of Canva which I have saved to my desktop- not only to help me keep my brand colors in mind when I’m working on my website, but also to be able to use the exact same colors when I’m designing something in Canva!
I also have a Pinterest board called Brand Identity, where I like to save designs and images which coincide with my brand or images I particularly love. This is a great place to go for inspiration!!
I would recommend keeping your course simple and clean with a few high-quality photos, graphs and maybe even videos scattered throughout!
My Secret Weapon
This tip is so good, I almost didn’t even share it. But then I remembered when someone shared this with me and what a game-changer it was!
Have you ever wanted to do something on your blog or website, but just don’t have the skills or (the time to learn a whole new skill)?
Enter UPWORK.
This is a magical little website that allows you to outsource any-size job to freelances looking for work. And the best part? It’s FAST and CHEAP!
All you do is upload the specific job you are looking to have done, and then open-up the bidding process. So long as the amount you’re willing to pay is reasonable, within minutes there will be people bidding on your job. Of course you need to be fair, kind and clear on what you are looking for- but if you can play by the rules, this is a tool I think you will LOVE and use over and over!
Here are a couple of things I’ve had done on Upwork…
I really loved this picture and wanted to use it as a headshot. (Of course, without my husband and whatever sort of weird thing was going on with my dress.)
So I posted the job on Upwork, hired a freelancer, and here’s what came back…
Woohoo! This is awesome!
But Dude, my left arm kind of looks like
Sméagol…
(I found a polite way to ask if she could fix my arm, and she did.)
I really loved how the image looked in black and white, so I ended up using this for several things!
Ka-chow!!!
I paid $10-$15 for this.
Here’s another one…
This is an image I created in Canva to be the cover of my most recent free e-mail course.
Below you can see the cover “photo-shoot”, all created on Upwork for around $30. This gave me some great images for my website and social media!
You’re welcome.
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Lesson 3- Table of Contents & Linking
This video will show you how to create your Next Lesson and Table of Contents buttons for each lesson, as well as the lesson buttons within your table of contents.
We will be using the free version of Canva in order to create these.
* Also, feel free to add in some small elements to help dress up your buttons. As you can see, I added birds to my Table of Contents buttons for this course!
In this video we will be placing the appropriate links into the buttons we just created, as well as scaling down the buttons in our table of contents a little bit!
Adding an additional Table of Contents in Your Sidebar
If you wish to add in an additional table of contents as a sidebar, this is something I would recommend coming back to after you have completed all other steps- simply because it will require some extra learning and effort.
Creating a sidebar for courses is not something I have personally done, but I do know that it requires a different approach depending on which theme you use on Squarespace. Some themes have a built-in sidebar and others don’t, in which case you would need to purchase this sidebar plugin.
To learn more about how to utilize the sidebar feature, and whether or not your Squarespace theme comes with it, check out this official Squarespace tutorial.
I would recommend making it look similar to your original Table of Contents, by using the same blocks but adjusting them to be smaller.
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Lesson 2- If You Build It They Will Come
Okay, we are going to move quickly here so get ready…
*If you have never used the Blog feature on Squarespace, please take some time to familiarize yourself with the process using this guide.
1. In your Home Menu click Pages, and then select the + icon in the NOT LINKED section.
2. Select Blog from the pages menu.
3. Title it with your course name. (This will be the framework in which your course is built.)
4. I have titled mine My Dummy Class, for the sake of this tutorial.
Once you have done this, you are now ready to start setting up each lesson.
Each lesson will be it’s own Blog Post. So if you are familiar with using the Blog feature inside of Squarespace, this part should be easy for you.
(If you’ve never created a Blog Post in Squarespace, this guide will help familiarize you.)
Select the arrow next to your Course Name.
This screen will come up next.
Now, you can begin adding Posts or “Lessons”.
Be sure to tile each post as “Lesson 1- Name of Lesson”, like I’ve done in this image.
Feel free to begin adding your content into each post!
For now just click Save, not Save & Publish.
(but don’t sweat it if you accidentally hit publish. These links are not yet viable or linked to anything on your website).
Don’t worry about them coming up out of order! This will not be what your table of contents looks like!
Before moving on, I want you to create a new POST for each lesson- fill in your titles, as well as the basic/rough content for each lesson.
Inserting Images
I would also recommend Inserting some high-quality, brand-consistent images throughout your course to brighten and break it up a bit!
I’m going to assume that you already know how to insert images in your posts. If not this Squarespace Tutorial will guide you.
These are my two favorite websites for high-quality, royalty-free, FREE images:
Inserting Videos
We will cover how to insert videos into your course in one of the BONUS sections, so for now just mark out where in your course you would like to insert a video (and what it will be about).
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Lesson 1- Roughing Out Your Content
Let’s start simple!
I am assuming if you are reading this, you already know your topic, and have a rough idea of the content you want to put into your course.
Maybe you’ve even written it all out. If so, congratulations, you are ahead of the game!
Wherever you are in your content-creation process, before we dive into the nitty-gritty, it is helpful to have a rough outline of what you would like your course to include.
So before you move on to the next lesson, I would like you to spend some time “outlining” your course.
In the format we will be using, each “lesson” in your course will actually be it’s own blog post- and you can have as many or few lessons as you would like!
Your outline can be as broad or as detailed as you would like and can be done in a notebook or digitally, whichever you prefer.
I am a notebook kind of gal and do my brainstorming best on paper, so here is what my rough course-outline looked like before I started creating my mini-course called, “Give A Shape To Your Dream”.
There is another page, but you get the point!
If you don’t quite have your idea nailed down, here are some questions that might help you better define what you’re looking to create:
Do you want to call it a “course” or a “mini-course”? In my estimation, a full course should have 5+ lessons and should cover a topic in-dept. A mini-course could have anywhere from 3-8 lessons, but not be such a “deep dive” as a full course.
How much are you hoping to sell this course for, or will it be a freebie? I would encourage you to offer a very good value to your customers. If you are charging a high-dollar amount for your course, it should offer a very high-value take-away.
Who is your client, what is their style, and what are they looking for? All great questions to keep in mind as you are “etching out” your content.
So before you move on to the next lesson, I would like for you to have a rough outline of what your course will include- even if it is just separated into topics with thoughts and ideas scribbled under each one.
As you can see from looking at mine, it doesn’t have to be detailed or perfect! It just has to be enough to get your general format built. You can always go back, edit and fill in the details later!
And remember, people are not looking for perfection! You audience will enjoy feeling like they are connecting with a real person. As long as you are offering them the value you claimed upfront, and you are able to present it in a relatively organized manner, you have nothing to fear.
