Transcription
Thanks for checking out my Thinkific tutorial for beginners, where I'm going to be showing you how to create an online course with Thinkific. If you'd like to follow along, you can click the link down below in the description of the pin comment. Or maybe you have never used Thinkific and you'd like to try them. That same link will actually allow you to get an extended 30-day free trial for Thinkific. My way of saying thank you so much for checking out this video. Let's begin.
All right, so here I'm going to be starting with a fresh account. And what we want to do here is click on create a course right here. So this is going to be the part where we can describe your audience and what they will learn. Now, this is going to be powered by AI. So if you don't want to go this route, you can do skip. However, if you want to make your life a little bit easier, you can definitely do this.
So I will give you kind of the main detail here, or the main point is that if you already have a curriculum in mind with your chapters and lessons and everything is all pretty much scheduled to go, you just have to go in and create it. I wouldn't recommend doing this because it's going to be work that you don't need. You already have it all set up. However, if maybe you do have your course or your course idea and you want some more ideas to go with it, this will be fine. So, with that in mind, I will use the AI here. And of course, you know, if you want to just do it yourself, I'll show you how that happens when we move forward. So, give me one moment and I'll give you an example.
All right. So, here we go. As an example, my course is for online marketers who want to leverage organic traffic from YouTube in order to find their perfect audience and generate leads and sales around the clock, all while closing clients and making high ticket sales. So, a bunch of things, who it's going to be about, where it's going to be on YouTube, the benefits, the traffic, the sales, leads, and so on and so forth. When you are done with that, simply click on create. And of course, make sure you put your description in there, which is pretty obvious, right?
All right. So, the course has been successfully created. So, this is going to be the landing page. And the cool thing about using AI is that it's automatically going to put in the specific info based upon what you use for your description. These are going to be some of the big benefits here about the course, about the creator. Obviously, you probably need to change that around a little. And another cool thing is that the course curriculum is going to be created for you and it's auto-populated right here. Now, keep in mind we are going to be changing this around and when we do change it around, it still is going to match up with what we use, but I think that's a nice little touch there. We're actually going to do this last. I just kind of wanted to showcase what goes on when you use AI.
So, what we can do here is go to curriculum and we're just going to move through the settings at the top when it comes to creating a course. So let's click on curriculum.
All right. And so here we are. These are going to be the chapters and underneath it are going to be the lessons. So we have getting started with YouTube, creating engaging content, optimizing your videos for organic reach, engagement and community building, turning views into sales, and so on and so forth. So it is very straightforward. And let's just say for some odd reason there's something here you don't want to use. You can click on it right here and just simply do delete. And it says yes, delete chapter and lessons. You can delete everything in it just like that. Oops. Let me click on it. There we go. Clicked on it twice. That's why I said that. But nevertheless, if you wanted to delete all those, you can certainly do that. I'm just going to keep them in there to add some filler.
Okay. So, now you can actually pretend maybe that's not even there. If you were starting from scratch and you didn't use AI, this is what you can do. So, click on add chapter. Let's call this the introduction. With a lot of the courses that I've done, uh, I usually like doing an intro just to kind of let them know what it's going to be all about. It has been created. Excellent. It's going to be down here. If ever anytime you want to move this, you just drag and drop it up to where you want. Ideally, the introduction should probably be the first one, not the last one.
Okay. And now that we've done that, we simply click on add lesson. So, there's a variety of lessons that you can utilize. Video and text being probably the most popular. As you can see, many others, PDF, quizzes, audios, downloads, and so on and so forth. A lot of them are going to be self-explanatory. I'm going to do video here because that's probably going to be the most popular one. So, let's click on video. And I'm also going to call this the introduction. I like doing that as well. Like the chapter can match up with the lesson in terms of what it's called. If you already have a video file here, you can select it. But if you don't and you're just getting started, you simply click on browse files. You upload it and then you can go from there. After your videos are uploaded, you can always choose from the videos from your library right here as well.
All right. And I just used one of my videos that I already have in my library. So, there it's going to be. Okay. So, now we can move down. Here's going to be the text. So, this is going to be anything you want to put down here. Thanks again for picking up my course and so on and so forth. This is going to be a standard text editor here. Not too much going on. You have never seen before. You can add images and videos. You know, bold, italic, underline, bullet points, and so on and so forth.
Okay. As we scroll down, this is going to be where we can add downloads. So, this can be very important depending on what you have in your course. Maybe this could be, you know, a little gift. It could be an ebook. It could be a cheat sheet. It could be a walkthrough. It could be the 40,000 foot view of your course showcasing where they are now and ultimately where you want them to get when they are done. Okay, so that's how you can just upload and browse files and it can go right there.
Now, we have a few other things that I quickly want to talk about. So, really depending on how much you want to add spice, I guess you could say, to your course, you can make this a free preview lesson. So, this will just be for this only lesson specifically. And this is good. This is kind of I always talk about if you go to the grocery store and they give you a little piece of cheese. So if you like it, it incentivizes you to buy more. This is going to be the same thing here. I would use this sparingly if you do it. You know, give away maybe a lesson that showcases what your teaching style is going to be. If you're witty or you have a funny sense of humor and you want that to showcase when people actually get an example of your course, that could be something you do. Obviously, just don't make everything free. Then your entire course is free and no one needs to pay for it, right?
Uh make this a prerequisite. So students will be required to complete any lessons set as prerequisites before they can access the next chapter. So they have to actually go through click on the complete button and then move through. It's up to you if you want to use it. So that option is there. You can enable discussions for this lesson or you can just simply do apply to all lessons in this course if you want to make that easier. Click on okay. And of course what you would need to do is click on this first. Let's do that. Okay. You can manage your discussions here and then click on apply. Okay. There we go. Discussions have been enabled for all lessons and so on and so forth. And you can see that now that we have the little uh discussions enabled little emblem there, just so you know that make this video downloadable. Uh I wouldn't recommend this unless it's something that you're actually giving to them that you want them to download and maybe put on their computer. When you do this, it allows shady people to do things with your videos that you probably don't want. So that is something to keep in mind, especially if you have a really high value course. And a lot of the information should only be for people who pay for it. So that is something to keep in mind. It is at least nice that they have the option. And of course, we just have lesson icon and label. I think that's going to be fine. And when you were done, make sure you click on save lesson.
So that's going to be what that looks like. And I don't need to do too much more because it's really going to be the same process. If you had another lesson in this section, you would click on add lesson. If you were done with that, you go to add chapter, obviously name it, and then you add a lesson to that as well. And you're just repeating the process. So here you know how to actually go about and make any changes if needed. Like for this one, if you wanted to use this, you can go in here, change this around, the text, the video, and so on and so forth. So that's going to be overall the curriculum and how you set it up. Whether you use AI or whether you don't, it is pretty straightforward, and you can continue on by simply adding each of the chapters and lessons that you need for your course. Let's move on over to the settings section right now.
All right. And we have our course name. I probably wouldn't put YouTube in it. So something like mastering organic traffic. Sure. Marketing I for marketing island is fine. You can change around the access if needed. If you really want to add security to it, it says disabling text copying makes it more difficult for students to select and copy your content. This would probably be more beneficial if you write a lot of text in the text box. So if you want to use that, you certainly can. in the future. Maybe you have a course and you don't want it around anymore. This is going to be where you can delete it.
Now, we have image and description. This is going to be your course image and obviously the description as well. This is about as simple as clicking on here, uploading it, and then going from there. So, that's an aesthetics thing. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that, especially when you just click on it and do it right. Course player appearance, whether you want it light theme or dark theme, primary color. Every time I do this, I'd probably go to something that's greenish just for the marketing island aspect. Once again, font in case you want to change that around. Course player logo, which is always nice to do if you have one. And these are going to be some miscellaneous details like the video lesson autoplay if you want that. Chapter completion. There is the ability to go with the course completion. You have certificates and a custom completion page where you can actually kind of just, you know, give them something if needed. Given the fact this is a text box, what you can do here is maybe link to somewhere else. You can embed a video, you can add an image. uh the world is going to be your oyster if you want to go about that. We have social sharing. So at chapter completion or at course completion if you want to do that that's up to you. It is an option that's going to be um available to you where you can also add the text in as needed.
Drip schedule. This is an important one and it's pretty imperative when it comes to any type of course platform because some people just want to enable a drip schedule. If you're not familiar with it or if you are familiar with it, I will show you how it's done. So I'm going to click on this right here. It says if enabled, the drip schedule tab will appear in the top navigation menu which will be right here after we hit the save button. Okay, these are going to be some other things about admins, revenue partners, and affiliates. But that's overall going to be like the miscellaneous settings details. Let's click on save settings. Perfect. It has been successfully saved. As you can see, the drip schedule is right here.
So now, let's actually skip over here. We can I can show you how this works. All right, so let's create a drip schedule. Click on the big blue button. All right. So, this is the drip type. So, when a student enrolls in the course, which is probably going to be the easiest one to do, right? You can do it when a student accesses the course for the first time or select a specific date. Like I said, I think this one is overall going to be the best. When you make a change, just make sure you click on save so that it does save. And then all you need to do is go over to the introduction right here. So, introduction will be released. I highly recommend that if you're creating a course and doing drip schedule, the first section is always zero because ideally you don't want them to purchase something and go into the course and then nothing is there. They're going to think like, you know, they got scammed or something. So, make sure that the first one at least is going to be zero. Okay? And make sure if you are doing drip schedule, let them know saying like, you know, something will be dripfed every single day just so that it's much more digestible or easier for you to consume and take in and so on and so forth. Okay. Now we move to the next section. So let's just say like this could be one day after. Okay, everything in this specific section and this is after enrollment. Okay, so let's click on save. Then we could go to the next one and this could be like two days, right? And so on and so forth and you can just continue on doing that. However, I'm just going to set this back to zero for this example. But that's how you can go about using the drip feed schedule. It's pretty straightforward. you know, make sure you just do it in a way that would make your students proud and happy based upon what you're going to be doing and letting them know when you would be dripping content in the first place.
Now, we move on over to the pricing section. All right, so if you want to do a free course, you certainly can. Aside from that, there's one-time payment, subscription, and membership, monthly payment plan, and that's going to be that. So, a lot of courses were mostly going to be onetime payment, so I will go with this. If you are just getting started, it is going to showcase something like this, which is fine. But nevertheless, let's do I was going to do 90. I always do 97 as an example. It's and of course, it always has to be 97 just because that's the magic internet marketing number that ends in seven and so on and so forth. You can do an enrollment duration. So you can leave it blank for unlimited access. So if you want to add some more scarcity to it, you can add something like this if needed. When you are done, simply click on save primary pricing.
And what I'm going to do is open this up in a new tab very quickly. So click on setup payments. All right. And eventually when you arrive on that settings page, you just simply click on a button which will say like you know connect to Thinkific Payments which is going to be powered by Stripe as you can see right here. And this is going to be what it looks like. Now this is something that you will have to walk through on your own because this is your personal and private information. But upon completion, this is going to be what allows you to actually accept payments and get paid with Thinkific. It's very straightforward. I just wanted to make sure you knew where it was and what to do. Obviously, just following the steps is going to be what you need to do here.
All right, let's move back. All right, so after everything has been saved with the pricing section, let's move on to the landing page. So, this part's actually pretty straightforward. And what we want to do here is simply click on the edit page section.
All right, so here's going to be the editor. And when I did my Thinkific review, I I looked at this. I do have to say this is probably one of the weakest aspects of Thinkific, which isn't that big of a deal in my opinion. There is nothing advanced going on here, but at the same time, it's not too bad because it's very easy to do. Anything that you want to change, simply click on it and you're going to be good to go. Okay, so even like this with the banner image, you're probably not going to want that there. Do you want to change it? Click on it and there you go. Upload an image, you know, using to your banner right here. And you can change things around once you do it. I'm not going to upload an image, but that's going to be the process. As we scroll down, mastering YouTube for marketers. You click on it right here to simply add, delete, do anything that you need right there. This is going to be description in case you wanted to change that around. And then on the right, a lot of this is going to be auto-populated. Like we have five chapters, five lessons, enroll now. In case you want to change that around, you certainly can. But this is going to be the course title and the price. Moving down, once again, have some images you want to change. Upload them right there. These are going to be some of the biggest benefits or features that you can turn into benefits. You know, closing high ticket sales, lead generation strategies, discover organic traffic, and you can actually use AI here to actually select a tone of voice, add more context, make it shorter or longer. So, you can kind of play around with that if needed as well. So, about this course, you know, you know your course better than anyone else. So, if there's a template here that you kind of want to use, you can always change it around. You can use AI to make it better. Once again about the creator. No one knows you better than yourself, you know, for the most part. So, this should be pretty easy to talk about. Maybe you had a specific story or something that changed you and that's the reason that you are starting to coach or teach, whatever it might be. A smiling picture of you, of course. And this is going to be the curriculum right here. This is going to be all auto-populated. Remember, we kind of added in the introduction here and so on and so forth what people are saying. Now, this is something that comes up very often, especially if it's your first time creating a course and you don't have any testimonials. You know what happens here? It's not a big deal. If you were just getting started, that's completely cool. You can always get testimonials, come back and add to it. So, that's something to keep in mind. If you did have some, simply go in there, change around the text, change around the name, obviously add the image of the person, and you're going to be gold. But, as talked about, if you are new and you don't have any yet, you can always just delete this section or use it for something else. So if you do want to delete it, make sure you click on it and you can see like the testimonials box. Click on this trash can item and you are good. Ready to transform your marketing strategy and roll now and that is going to be fine. So a lot of the edits here just simply need to be made about like the text, you know, the icons and maybe some of the pictures. When you are done, make sure you do click on the save button right here at the top right.
And something I have noticed with the Thinkific editor, like which I also talked about before, I think is a little weak. I have yet to find an undo button either. I can't find it. I don't see it. Like there's page settings right here. There's going to be the landing page theme, which you can change around, and then just desktop and mobile. So, if you do something that you really like and it takes time, make sure you click on save, okay? Because if for some odd reason you go in here, you delete an entire section. I am unsure how to just hit an undo button and get it back, you're going to have to manually go in and say like, you know, insert section and then do it over again, which isn't going to be the biggest deal, but I still think there should be an undo button. Like I said, unless I'm just missing it, I don't see it here. So, that's going to be the landing page overall. Let's click on save here. You can even preview it, too, if you want. Let's give it a preview. All right. And that's going to be the random like banner. Let's just say that's not even there. It'll probably be something different. Okay, this is going to be what that looks like. That's where they can enroll. These are going to be benefits about the course, about the creator. So, it's pretty straightforward. You don't need a lot of like sales copy here, especially because a lot of the things that are here, you can kind of like plug and play. So, that's a good thing. But, that's going to be an example of what it looks like without editing like any of the colors or the aesthetics or anything. Okay. And with that in mind, let's click on the X button right here. And great. So we can go back to curriculum.
And here's the cool thing. Now we can actually preview it. So click on preview right here. And then I want to do all lessons including drafts. Okay. So just about most of these are going to be a draft. So that's why I want to do all lessons. I'm going to click right here. All right. And keep in mind autoplay was on and there is going to be a setting where you can turn that off. Uh we talked about that in the settings, but just kind of showcasing what it's going to be looking like. So this is going to be a video. This is going to be like the little bit of text that you might have under it. And anytime someone is done, all they have to do is click on complete and continue. And you're going to see that this percentage is going to move up. So let's do that. And as you can see, it's now at 11% complete. That's going to be based upon how many videos you have, obviously. So like if there was 100 videos or lessons or whatever and you just created one, it's going to be 1%, right? So this is just dependent on what you have in here. These are going to be the other sections. A lot of these are just draft and text based upon what AI created for us. And as said previously, you can delete these, you can change these, you can add to them. But overall, that's going to be what it looks like on the inside when your students and customers are taking your course. And of course, we change around some of the green vibes here, but you can change that around as well.
And the last step now that we are here is simply clicking on the publish button right here and clicking on publish now. You can do set to pre-order, but that is going to conclude this tutorial overall. So, I hope that you enjoyed this Thinkific tutorial for beginners. We went about creating a course with AI. And even if you don't want to use AI, showed you how to change around the curriculum, add chapters, add lessons, change around the settings, the pricing, the landing page, and showcasing what your course can look like when you are ultimately finished. If you got any value out of this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up as it helps me out a ton. And maybe you're just watching to see how you can create a course with Thinkific. If you haven't gotten to test it out yet, you can click the link down below in the description of the pin comment. That'll take you to a page that looks very similar to this where you can get an extended 30-day free trial with Thinkific. Once again, just a way of saying thank you so much for watching my tutorial. My name is James. Thanks again for watching and enjoy.