Okay, let’s talk about hosting options.

And to reinforce the point that I’ve already made, the best doesn’t exist. This is particularly true when it comes to hosting options. And I see people put a post in a group all the time saying, “What’s the best hosting platform for my online course?” And it just doesn’t exist, there is only what’s right for you right now. And I can promise you that I’ve used every single one of the options that I’m about to go through with you. And I’ve used them at different times for different reasons, mainly, because at that point, that was what suited my business the best.

So there’s no such thing as the best overall, there is only what’s right for you right now.  The first type of hosting option that you might come across is something called a Marketplace. And this is you’ve probably heard of Udemy, or maybe Skillshare, perhaps even LinkedIn Learning, although those last two have a slightly different model to the standard Udemy model. And this is essentially where there is a big gathering of all sorts of online courses, and people can go there and shop for online courses on all sorts of different subjects.

And these marketplaces can make it really easy for you to get your online course up and running. And there are situations where this will be the best choice for you right now.  Alternatively, you might look at one of the Software as a Service platforms. So you’ve probably heard of Teachable, Thinkific, Podia, Learnworlds, those sorts of things fit into this category. And these are platforms that are specifically set up so that you can host your online course on them, but they don’t do any kind of marketing for you.

Next up, we have Plugins and when I talk about plugins, I am absolutely exclusively talking about WordPress website plugins here, as opposed to websites that have been built on any other type of platform. Part of the reason for that is that there is a bigger variety of plugins for WordPress websites than any other type of website out there. So when I talk about plugins, that’s what I mean.  And then there are the Hybrid solutions. And these are the solutions that either provide more than one type of service.

So it might be that they offer online courses and membership and email automation and all sorts of other bits and pieces, funnel builders, that kind of thing. So you’ve probably heard of Kajabi, in this group, New Zenler, Kartra, maybe FG Funnels, there are lots of me too products. So FG Funnels is actually built on the same software that Kajabi is built on. But Kajabi has been around a little bit longer, and is better known. So these hybrid solutions will have started life usually as one type of solution, and then added either bolt ons to extend their functionality, or they will have been built from the beginning with all the functionality. And then that’s what you get as part of either your monthly or annual fee.

Now, all of these things you need to take into account when you are working for corporate organizations, because you might not need to actually use any of those platforms at all. It might be that the corporate organization, if you’re working for them, if you’re providing an online course to them, they might have their own LMS or learning management system, in which case, you can upload your videos to that.

There are pros and cons, obviously, and of doing that or taking that route. And all of these things I will go through obviously in more detail in the How To part of this lesson.  Last but not least, you might want to think a little bit about content protection. So how you protect your content from being abused. So people perhaps downloading it and uploading it on what’s called a torrent site, which is essentially piracy, where people get hold of your course for free or that kind of thing. Please don’t worry about this stuff. There are some things to be aware of. But it is not as big an issue as you might think, you just need to take a few steps to protect yourself and your content.

Alright, so that’s an overview of hosting options. If you’ve already got something set up and you know exactly what you’re doing, then you don’t need to worry about it. It is worth every now and again just doing a quick review a quick sweep of the marketplace for hosting solutions for sure. But if you’re already set up with something, then you can go straight into the next lesson. If not, I will or if you want a refresher I will see you in the next videos where I talk about more of the hosting solutions in more depth really, and really go through the pros and cons for each of them. So if that’s for you, I’ll see you there.

Okay, in this How To video, it’s less of a how to and more of a be aware, I guess. So explaining some of the pros and the cons of using each of the different hosting options for your online course. So we’ll start with Marketplaces. And on the pro side for Marketplaces, they are really, really  easy to get up and running, they’ll make it so easy for you to follow along, to know what to do next, how to upload your information, all of those bits and pieces.

And in addition to making it really easy, they have a number of excellent tutorials  around what it is you need to do and when you need to do it. And therefore making it as I say, very easy for you to get your course up and running in next to no time.  It really is a sort of a set and forget type thing. Because once you have  put it up there,  barring a few sort of tweaks and checking things, and perhaps responding to any comments, or reviews, or that kind of thing, it really is set and forget. And I hesitate to say watch the money coming in. Because that’s one of the major downsides.

For Marketplaces, you are the commodity.  So what I mean by that,  if I can spell commodity of course, what I mean by that is they are in the business principally, of getting as many instructors in so that they can get as many courses in so that they can get as many learners in or students in as as possible. So your course is the commodity here, nothing else, which means that they aren’t necessarily interested in helping you achieve reaching your specific or desired target audience, they’re not necessarily interested in anything other than getting people to sign up for your course.

But the problem with that is that they won’t promote your course, unless they feel like you are in a strong position to bring them lots more students. So because of that, you’ve got quite a lack of control  with different marketplaces, and certainly in terms of how your courses promoted, and how it reaches people, and how it’s put in front of people, you control what’s written when people land on your landing page or your sales page, but you don’t necessarily control how they get there, or how often it is promoted to them in the first place.

And because of that, there is also a very low commission rate.  So it’s not unheard of, for particularly the biggest player in this marketplace is Udemy, instructors will get 25%, maybe, of a course, and the majority of courses sell for usually 999. Now it’s about 1499 1599. They’re playing around with prices all the time, but it wouldn’t be unheard of, for you to see 25% of that as a rule for your courses being sold. Now, if you’re not fussed about making money, it’s just something that you want to have out there and have available for people then Marketplaces can be quite a good option to choose.

But as I say, it’s something that I wouldn’t necessarily say is the right choice for you if you’re looking to build online up as a part of your business. It’ll do you good for pocket money. But in terms of really building up your audience and building up your pool of people who want to buy online courses from you, or who want to engage with you perhaps in other ways, then it isn’t necessarily the best option for you. But like all of these things, do your research, find out what’s going on, and see if it feels like something that will be a good fit for you. Major players in this area are Udemy, Skillshare, and LinkedIn Learning. 

Alright, so then we’ll move on to the SaaS platform Software as a Service platforms. And again, you can sort of  repeat the first two here, very, very easy to set up. And again, they have lots of really good tutorials to talk you through everything. So that’s on the plus side. In addition, the one big thing that the SaaS platforms will do for you is take away a lot of the admin burden. So things like working out what taxes need to be paid, and so on and so forth.

Dealing with things like lost passwords, making sure the tech is always working, all of that kind of stuff, you kind of get what you pay for with SaaS platforms and more you pay the more features you get. The other thing that you need to be aware of in terms of the cons for SaaS platforms is that all of the marketing is down to you.  There are some minor moves here and there with some of the platforms but honestly, it’s really they are set up for you to put your course on there and then for you to do your marketing which you know, is a good thing as well, because it means it’s your audience unlike the marketplace’s where the audience really belongs to the marketplace.

But with the SaaS platforms, the the marketing is something that you are responsible for,  you need to watch out for changes to various plans. And all of the big players in particular, have a habit of every now and again, just throwing in a change to their lower tier plans, and not for the better. So the more you pay, the more stability and security you have that your plan isn’t going to suddenly change. The less you pay, the more likely it is that they’re going to change something. And it’s in their terms and conditions when you sign up so you don’t even have any recourse to them.

Because you signed up saying yes, you’re happy with that. So just something to be aware of there.  I think as well, what you want to be thinking about with the SaaS platform is the sort of model that you’re getting.  And what I mean by that is what do they do for you on the admin side of things, and what will you need to do for yourself. So if you want to use your own payment gateway, will they give you an opportunity to be able to calculate, for example, VAT or whatever tax is applicable in your area of the world or who you’re selling to.

Some of them will give you a business model where you actually need some bolt ons to deal with those sorts of things. So if your business doesn’t fit in the model that they are in the market for exactly, then there may well be some other bits and pieces that you need to bolt on or add on or certainly be aware of. So big players in the SaaS platform market Teachable, Thinkific are the two biggest ones, Learnworlds and Podia are fast becoming some really good sort of scrappy, newer additions to the market and definitely worth checking out as well on this one. 

Okay, now we get to Plugins. And when I talk about plugins, I think I’ve already mentioned I mean WordPress plugins.  And the thing about WordPress plugins is there is a huge amount of choice for you to be able to add online courses to a WordPress website. And because there’s so much choice and competition, then you can get some really good deals out there. So that’s really good news. You also have much more control  over what is going on in your plugin, and therefore how your course is presented, what branding there is, and all those sorts of things. S

o the more you do, the more control you have over it. So that’s definitely something to think about. The other thing to be aware of is that  there is a lack of  commission to be paid. So both of these options will take  a commission. And so here where it says low commission, that’s the low commission that you’re paid it’s high commission for what they take from from your course, it’s lower with a SaaS platform, the amount of commission they take, but they will take commission from you, if you’re on a certain level, and you’re using their payment gateway. So again, check out the latest on there.

With a WordPress plugin usually you just play for the pay for the plugin, and there isn’t a commission on every course sold that kind of thing.  However, with plugins,  the admin burden is very squarely on you. So if you are the person that deals with your website, and deals with the tech side of things, then you’re also dealing with the admin of online course takers. And there’s all sorts of other bits and pieces around there.

If you have somebody that does does that stuff for you, then obviously there is going to be a higher admin burden, the more people there are to deal with. So if you have a particularly successful course, then the admin burden is definitely going to go up on that.  You need a certain amount of tech savviness in order to deal with the WordPress plugins. Again, if you have somebody that does that stuff for you, then that’s fine. But if it’s you doing it, then there is going to be a learning curve for the different plugins that are out there, just working out not only how they’ve set things up, but also the sort of various bits of jargon that they use for different things. So I talk about sections and lessons as to how you carve your course up and how you lay it out. S

ometimes they will call a section a lesson and a lesson is a topic. And it can be a bit confusing if you’re not familiar with those. So again, a little bit more savviness that is required to deal with those. And then the other thing that you have to think about is security because obviously it is your website that you will be having this information on, people’s information, payment gateways, all of those sorts of things. Now WordPress plugins will normally require you to sign up to either PayPal or Stripe, to use the plugin to take payments so they don’t do the payments themselves.

But you still need to make sure that your website is nice and secure for anybody entering information and also to keep your content secure at the same time as well. In the second How To video of this lesson. I will talk more about keeping your content secure.  Alright. And then finally, last but not least we have our Hybrid solutions. And with a hybrid solution, you get, obviously a huge amount of functionality. And as I’ve already discussed, sometimes this is not always functionality that you want or need, but you will be paying for. So lots of bells and whistles on there in terms of the functionality.

But again, they can  make it relatively easy  to get your online course up and out and into the world. But they, in particular, the big players here, like the likes of Kajabi, will make it very, very easy for you to get your online course up and running. And of course, if you are using all the individual bits of functionality, you can make some big savings by combining it all into a hybrid solution.

So you’re not paying for all the different bits and pieces. But a word of warning here is that it might sound too good to be true that they have everything in one, it usually is, the bigger you get, the more likely you are to want to bolt on  stuff, even though they say they do everything in one. So Kajabi for example, the most successful course creators will also have a separate email automation system, because Kajabi can’t handle the sort of sophisticated email automation that they want to do. 

The other thing is that these hybrids  in the cons section can be something of a false economy if  you don’t want  all of the additional bells and whistles that they offer you. So you might be paying for stuff that you’re just frankly not using. So you might be better off going to a SaaS platform instead, which will be cheaper by comparison, because it doesn’t have the same amount of functionality. But if you’re not using that functionality anyway, then there’s no point in paying for it. And also the depths of the functionality.

So I’ve previously mentioned that a lot of course creators, for example, will have a separate email automation system, even though it’s supposed to be built in to what they’ve got there. So the hybrids, the sort of big players are Kajabi. As I’ve mentioned, there’s New Zenler, FG Funnels, although FG Funnels is actually built on Kajabi, or sorry, it’s built on the same framework that Kajabi is built on so Kajabi is like the the biggest example with the most functionality of this particular open source framework FG Funnels and others are built on the same framework that Kajabi is but without quite the same functionality yet, who knows where they’ll go in the future for that one.

I don’t think I mentioned the types of plugins for that are out there, but certainly I would recommend LearnDash there’s also Lifter LMS and various others as well. But again, with any of these, do your research, find something that works. Remember, only fossils are set in stone, pick one, go with it for a while, and then reassess after that.  Alright, there we go. A swift overview of the pros and cons of the different types of hosting solutions.

Alright in this second How To video, there are a couple of things that I want to cover off in terms of your hosting considerations, just things for you to be aware of and to think about. And first up is if you are working with corporate organizations, and even if you aren’t, it is worth knowing this stuff anyway. So if you’re looking to work with corporate organizations, which is a way of describing anywhere where you want to sell your online courses, but not to individuals, to organizations that are perhaps going to use it for their staff, employees, volunteers, whatever, then you need to be aware that you might be working with an organization that already has its own LMS, its own internal Learning Management System. 

And if it does have its own LMS,  then this could actually be a really easy solution for you in that all you need to do is supply your videos, and any workbooks, any materials, anything extra that you are giving to them. And that’s it, it’s up to them to put it on their system. Now, there are some additional things to think about in terms of pricing, and in terms of licensing your material, and having some control over how it’s used and with however many people, we’ll come to that in later lessons.

But certainly one of the things you want to think about is if they do have their own LMS, then great, but you need to establish that upfront, because  that might be something that they want you to provide, particularly for smaller organizations, they might want you to host for them. So it could be whatever your solution might be. And  working with your solution can be relatively easy, because you have control over who gets to see the information and how long they have access for, and all those sorts of things but it can be very admin heavy.

So if you’ve got an organization that has couple 100 people working for it, and it turns out, they want 150 of them to have access to your online course, and it’s on your solution, then somebody’s got to be responsible for the admin of getting them onto the platform, and also dealing with any tech queries and what have you. Now it’s possible that your solution could be one of the SaaS platforms that we talked about in the previous lesson or previous video in this lesson.  And that could  potentially make life a little bit easier.

However,  I would say just make sure that you are aware of this upfront when you are in discussion with an organization.  And also so that you can put that into your pricing model and into your proposal for them as well. It can work really nicely to use your solution if you’re using online courses, either a pre workshop warm up or a post workshop refresher, that kind of thing. So it’d be relatively easy for that to be a good solution for you to use. But again, if it’s their LMS, you just need to know that so you know what you’re dealing with.

The other thing that you might come across  when working with corporate organizations is something called SCORM.  And  this is actually now quite an old model of compliance for videos for eLearning content. So Shareable Content Object Reference Material, I think, for that one, nice and easy trips off the tongue, doesn’t it? But this really means that your videos are able to be used interactively with specific platforms that are there that use a technology that allows people to change things around within a video to interact with the video.

So it could be touch screen, it could be mouse clicking to choose different options, and that determines what they are delivered next as a video. So SCORM compliant videos are something that you need to be aware of before you start creating. And if it is something that you need to provide, then you need to know that. The authoring tools to offer SCORM compliant videos are relatively cheap. However, the software to show and have interactive videos be available is very expensive, relatively speaking, compared to what you will pay for a hosting platform.

So if they want SCORM compliant materials and your solution, this is a significant investment on your part, which you need to obviously make sure is passed on to your corporate organization through your proposal.  Okay. So  the second thing that I wanted to talk about in terms of hosting considerations, so we can draw a line under that one, is content protection. And this is something that I know is a worry for lots of people  because you worry that people are going to get hold of your online course and then they’re going to download the material or record it in some way and share it around and you won’t get the money and all the rest of it. 

Okay, so first things first,  it will happen  at some point,  unless you are hiding your light under a bushel, and you’re hiding your online course away and you don’t want anybody to ever see it. Or if you actually, that’s not true, it could happen with corporates as well, somebody at some point is going to use a screen recording tool to record something that is a paid for product of yours and then they’re going to use it for their own nefarious purposes. Not everybody is going to be a victim of courses being downloaded and then put on up on one of these torrent sites, which are sites that are basically pirate material. 

Some people, particularly the the bigger, online course providers, will almost certainly have this happen to them. And they can take steps and certainly will have the legal backup to take steps to do something about it. But honestly,  for the stage you’re at, if this your first or second online course or even your first half dozen online courses, you really don’t need to worry about it as much as you might think alright, call it a cost of business, it’s not going to be as bad as you think the people who are your real customers will not worry about this, they certainly won’t be the ones that are doing that.

You really want to make sure  that your content is secure, as far as you can, as far as is reasonable and practicable for you without being overzealous about it. Okay, you don’t need to go to the nth degree to make your stuff so secure, that people have to jump through hoops to just get to it. And I’ve already talked about how that can be really off putting for people if they have to jump through too many hoops to actually get to the thing they’ve paid for. Make your course accessible and secure for the people who are your ideal customers who are prepared to pay you for the content.

And don’t worry too much about those who are  trying to circumvent your payment systems. If you have a real problem so for example, you come across a website that is hosting your content without your permission and you’re not getting paid, you can do something called a DMCA takedown. And this is where you apply to Google for them to shut the website down, basically, that has your content on it. But if that starts happening, then I mean, this could take you as much time as it takes to make your course to be honest. So you need to think about that, I would set up some Google Alerts just for your online course name, and your name, and then you’ll see if it if it happens, it’s not happened to me yet. Touch wood.

But I’m sure there’s some stuff out there at some point that is paid stuff of mine that, that I  wouldn’t like people to be able to access for free, but honestly, the sort of people that try and get that stuff for free, are not the sort of people that are going to be good, good learners for you anyway.  Okay, one thing that you can do is you can withhold benefits, if you think that you are likely to be liable to this sort of being taken advantage of. So for example, with this online course, anybody buying the course, at the lowest level will get access to the course and the community, and that’s fine.

But what you don’t get unless you’re paying for higher levels is access to the Zoom calls, and you don’t get access to the six week accelerator program. Okay, you have to pay the appropriate level for that. And it doesn’t matter to that extent, if the course itself the videos are pirated, and available. The bit that contains the biggest amount of value, as far as I’m concerned is my live interaction with people.

So there’s a ton of value obviously packed into these recorded videos. And of course, I don’t want anybody having that information without having paid me for it. However, if it happens, I know that they’re not getting the best part of the package. The best part of the package is obviously access to the community and access to me via the Zoom calls and six week accelerator program.  Okay, there we are. So just some considerations for you to take into account with your hosting and I will see you in the next lesson.