Okay, let’s talk about Added Extras. And these are the additional bits and pieces that you can provide in your online course that I’m fond of saying can provide up to 80% more perceived value for just 20% extra effort.

But here’s the thing about any added extra that you supply, in addition to your online course, they need to have a job, they need to have a purpose, they need to fulfill some kind of need that you have, or your learner will have, in order to fulfill a role for you. Otherwise, they can be a bit of a waste of time.

Now there are different sorts of added extras that you can provide in, and one of the most commonly used ones is quizzes. And if you’ve read the book, you will understand my position on quizzes, I love them, I absolutely do. I think they can be brilliant, and they can really enhance the value of your course.

But only if they are used appropriately not if they are just chucked in at the end of every lesson just because you can. Now I explain more about quizzes and how to use them in the How To lesson that or How To video that accompanies this lesson. So definitely dive into that if you want to hear more about how to use quizzes effectively. 

Other things that you can include as added extras include downloads, and these are bits and pieces that you can give your learners to download to either use as they follow along with the course or to use to take a specific action that you are suggesting that they do with the course or again to use as bonuses that you might have, in addition to your main course offer, more about that in a minute.

But here are some examples of the types of downloads that you might consider having. So cheat sheets, templates, swipe files, worksheets, a bunch of worksheets together will make a workbook for you, some kind of calculator tool, which is normally a spreadsheet, and its grown-up brother, the app. 

You might also want to consider having or providing a level of support to your learners, this is becoming increasingly accepted as a basic must-have for online courses. And by support, this can be any sort of level of support that you are comfortable in giving. But support really is around providing a way for your learners to be able to get in touch with you to ask any questions that they might have. 

So the sorts of things that might be included in there you can see on screen now. And really, they sort of range from quite hands off sort of access from you all the way through to providing things like monthly sessions where learners can actually come and see the whites of your eyes, obviously online.  Bonuses I’ve mentioned.

And these are really usually the downloads or those sorts of things, or it could be additional courses, it could be eBooks, all of that kind of stuff. These are usually offered in addition to your main online course offerings. So you might have seen it in some online marketing where the online course is offered. And if you buy now you get access to all of these additional bonuses.

You’ll have seen it on the sales page for this course as well. And bonuses can serve a number of purposes. And we talk about those where, later on in this particular course. But bonuses themselves can add a lot to the perceived value of your course. 

Last but not least, certificates and as I’ll explain in the How To lesson that, or lessons that go along with this, certificates are the one sort of added extra where it’s really a win-win. People that aren’t fussed about them just aren’t fussed about them and won’t be bothered whether you offer them or not. But people that love them really love them.

So if you’ve got the option to add in certificates, I would definitely go ahead and use that option.  One rule of thumb though, that is really really important to remember is that these are extras to your online course. So if it is taking you longer to put together an added extra than it did to create the course in the first place then there’s probably something wrong with that equation somewhere. 

Alright, there we are. That’s the What and the Why of the Added Extras. If you’re fast tracking then I’ll see you in the next lesson. If not, I will see you in the next How To video.

Okay, in this first How To video, we’re going to talk about Quizzes and Downloads. And remember I was saying that it doesn’t matter what you do with your added extras, you don’t have to do any at all. But if you do do something, then they’ve got to have a job, they’ve got to have a purpose. And quizzes is a prime example of people including them without thinking about what job or what purpose they’ve got.

And there are an awful lot of platforms that will offer you, will sell as a benefit, the fact that they can offer quizzing functionality. But if you get into the habit of offering a quiz at the end of for example, every single lesson, just because you can, then that’s going to get pretty tired pretty quickly for your learners and they’ll get pretty annoyed by it as well. So what I would suggest is that you think about quizzing from the point of view of what you want to get out of it, but also from the point of view of how the learner is going to react to it.

So there are three different types of quiz that you can think about having; the first is to go with  something called a lead magnet. So  you will have probably seen these advertised  or come up in your social media feeds in some way where they’re a fun quiz to say find out what sort of animal you are or, or see what type of homeowner you are, or whatever it might be. And all of these are designed for people to take a usually fun, frivolous type quiz in order to get them into the sphere of the person who’s created the quiz in the first place.

So a lead magnet is simply something if you’ve not come across the term before, simply something that is designed to get people to want to give you their email address so that then you can communicate with them further and deepen the connection with them. And ultimately get them to buy something from you which in our case is of course an online course.  So the lead magnet type quiz usually works quite well, if you have some experience of using things like personality profiles You don’t need to be accredited in personality profiles per se, but have the knowledge of how to construct a quiz that enables you to put people in a particular bucket or a particular pot by the time they finish the quiz.

And then to produce some kind of explanation for what sort of whatever they might be at the end of the quiz. It can be a really fun way of getting people into your arena, as I say, obviously only works if you’ve got the right sort of subject matter for something like that. But most things I think can accommodate a lead magnet quiz, and they can be really good use of the tool.

For most of you, though, you’re gonna have probably the option to use a quiz as part of your online course hosting platform, in which case, you’re going to be tempted to want to put a quiz at the end of every lesson. Or you’re going to want to have a quiz in every section. Or you might have an overall end of course quiz. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with doing that.

But quizzes can be used for two purposes. The first purpose is to give your learner some kind of sense of how well they’re doing with their knowledge retention. So  you’re testing really  whether or not they have retained the knowledge you’ve been delivering within the lesson itself. Just be a little bit careful with these because sometimes, and I’ve seen some quizzes where it’s really quite harsh the way that the questions and the answer options are delivered.

And then if somebody gets it wrong, it’s “no, you’ve failed!”, or whatever it might be, and some people can get a bit upset by that. Also, you want to make it something that feels like it is a genuine test of people’s listening, and that they have actually genuinely been following along with what you’ve been saying If you’re trying to get them to learn a new skill as we are with this course for example – you’ll notice there are no quizzes in this course – and that’s because I’ve encouraged you to follow along and do as we’re going that I think is a much better test for you as to how you’re incorporating the knowledge and learning your skill set.

So quizzes for knowledge retention can be a good tool, as long as you make the questions have a suitable level of challenge quite a difficult one. The other way of using quizzes  is if you want to use them to see if there are any gaps in the way you’ve delivered the information. So they are there from the point of view of identifying lesson shortfalls.

And lesson shortfalls are really where you’re seeing a consistent trend among the answers that are wrong so that you know that you need to go back and do something about that within your particular lesson. Just be really clear to the learners that that’s the purpose of the quiz. It’s not there to make them feel bad about themselves if they don’t get something, that you might have forgotten to explain adequately in your lessons.  Alright, so that’s quizzes.  And then the next thing that we’re going to think about are downloads. And there are several different types of downloads. You’ll have seen that in the first video.

So first up, we’ve got what we call cheat sheets.  And these are  quite simply aide-memoires, they are ways for people to have a quick reference guide to something that you’re talking about. So you’ll have seen that if you go on to GetThatCourseOnline.com/Resources website page, you’ll have seen that I provide a 12 step guide to just an aide memoire to the steps for creating an online course If you haven’t got that, of course, you can go there and get that now, well after you finish watching this video, obviously. So that’s what cheat sheets are there for. The next one to think about is templates.

And this is where you just give people a sort of a fill in the blank type thing. So it works really well for scripts where people need to write something. So for example, email messages, that kind of thing, or marketing messages, having a fill in the blank, where they’re just putting in the relevant information to them can work really well, for having an added extra download as a set of templates, people will often pay money for templates just on their own. So you could include those with your online course.

The next one to think about is swipe files.  And this is usually screenshots of things from the internet that people have picked up and used as inspiration for people. So here’s a load of swipe files of sales pages, for example. So that will give people inspiration for how different people have done things. So that’s the swipe files just be a little bit careful with these and making sure that people understand that they can’t copy from something that has been taken from somebody else on the internet because of copyright infringement and that kind of thing.

So you need to make it very clear what the purpose of the swipe files is.  The next one is worksheets.  And several worksheets can also  be put together to create a workbook. And usually worksheets can be created really simply for  a course if you’re using PowerPoint slides, or Keynote slides, you could print off the notes pages of those, or you could have them quite easily created into some kind of worksheet where people fill in information as they’re going along that kind of thing.

If you have a worksheet for every single lesson, then of course, you can put them all together and call it a workbook. So that could be a nice easy way of providing an added extra for people.  The next one is calculator tools.  And their grown up, brother if you like apps.

So usually calculator tools are spreadsheets and I have a couple for you if you’ve got that level, or you’ve bought that level of this course. So there’s a couple of spreadsheets that I’ve used that calculate an answer for you needs a bit of manipulation afterwards, of course, and the grown up brother of those is apps where people have taken I mean apps really are a lot of the time where they calculate something for you they work something out for you they are really just an overgrown or grown up spreadsheet.

So yes, so that’s why those two go together. Needless to say, these are at the easier end of the scale, and these are at, these certainly are at the more difficult end of the scale. And to reiterate again, you don’t have to include any of them. But if you want to have some added extras, these are a really good place to start.

Alright, that’s it for this how to video. I will see you in the next one.

Okay, in this second How To video for Added Extras, we’re going to talk about Support, Bonuses and Certificates. And no I couldn’t fit the whole word on the flip chart. When we talk about Support, this is the level of additional support that you are going to offer your learners over and above the videos that they get.

And it doesn’t have to be onerous. But I would say that, increasingly, it is becoming more and more common to have a level of support. But there are different levels that you can choose from, as we’ll go through right now. So the first type of support that you can offer is if you offer comments or the ability to add comments or questions to each of your lessons. And more and more online course hosting options will allow you to switch on or if you want to toggle off, but I wouldn’t necessarily, the comments part of a page where you’re hosting your lesson videos, that kind of thing.

So all it means is that your learners are able to go underneath the video on the page that they’re watching it on. And just type in a quick question. And then they’ll know that somebody will come back to them, and give them an answer to that. So that can be a really good way of having some just really simple engagement with your content. If nobody wants to comment, then fine. Just make sure that you are have whatever is needed to be switched on to make sure you get notified when a comment or a question has been left.

Because the worst thing to do is to have somebody ask a question, and then nobody responds to that outside of sort of, you know, 24 hours later or something like that.  Another way that you can add support is using email, just be a little bit careful with this one, because people tend to assume that you are in the same timezone as them. And if you don’t respond to their email within the course of their working day, then they might think that you’re ignoring them. And of course, you know, you you will be working at whatever office hours you choose to work and be able to respond to emails in whatever way you choose to.

But just make that clear that if email is an option, when are your answering hours going to be so that people aren’t sitting back and thinking, Oh, well, she’s ignoring me. And actually, they are very well aware of the fact that if they send an email over a weekend, you’re not gonna respond until Monday, for example.  Next up is offering a community and as you know, we have that in this course. And this is more than just having comments and questions available.

This is a place where people can actually share and add in their thoughts and have sort of conversations about stuff. So different threads, and that kind of thing, it might just be a slightly more sophisticated version of a comments section. But if you offer a community, then this is where you’re trying to engage people outside of the particular lesson that they are in as well. So comments traditionally will normally only be attached to the lesson in which they are created.

Whereas a community will be a space where people can ask anything about anything, if that makes sense. So community, a community can be a really good way of fostering sort of a sense of  community and a sense of not being on their own. So people have that level of support and accountability that can be very important to get these things done. 

Next up, we’ve got things called drop in sessions. And drop in sessions, again, if you have bought into that particular level for this course, for the Get That Course Online course, then this is where you can come on to, for me a monthly Zoom meeting, which is a drop in session. And if you’ve got something that you want to ask, or you just want to come and say hi, then you can do that, and just drop in and drop out as you see fit. But again, you need to make sure that if you’re going to offer this, you are committed to offering it and you’re very clear as to when they’re going to be held. Generally, you want to pick a specific time and day on a regular schedule, instead of making it you know as and when you can fit it in, because people will get used to when they will be able to drop into that.

So if it’s going to be the first Monday of every month or the last Friday of every month, or whatever it might be, make sure that’s very regular. If you have to change that, then make sure you create lots of publicity about that for your community. But that can be a really good way of just engaging with your learners and also building up this connection with them so that they’re much more likely to want to buy more things from you in the future.  And then last but not least, you might want to do a sort of live spotlight type sessions.

The drop in will be live as well. Of course, spotlight just means it’s a drop in with a purpose. So you have a particular subject that you are definitely going to be discussing in that particular meeting. So live spotlight sessions are reserved for when you you could get guest experts in for example, or you could have a particular subject that you are going to discuss. There are other ways of delivering support as well but these are the main ones. There are pros and cons to each of them but I would suggest that you definitely want to pick at least one of them to be able to offer a level of support to your online course learners. 

Alright, so after support, we need to talk about Bonuses, and your bonuses or what you offer in addition to buying the online course. So if you’ve bought any other online courses, particularly from from some of the more well known names in online marketing, then you will see that they don’t just offer the online course, they will offer something else in addition, so it could be a set of templates, it could be some swipe files some of the downloads that we were talking about in the last last video, the last How To video.

Your bonuses can be anything you want but as a general rule, you want them to be something that complements your online course rather than very obviously makes up for a shortfall in online course information. And so it needs to complement not compensate, I guess, is the natty way of saying that. And what we mean by that, now, here’s going to be a job I have to spell both of these words comp-le-ment, not com-pen-sate yeah.  So, what I mean by this is if something is touted as a bonus, it needs to be something that is probably from your desirable list.

Remember that from from the EDPO exercise, or your possible list, it’s definitely not something that should have been in the course in the first place. So if you get to the end of your course, and you suddenly realize that you’ve missed out a whole section of information, don’t add that as a bonus, you’ve got to add that into your main course. Okay, so it needs to complement what’s going on rather than compensate. So for our perfect toast course, we might want to have a bonus which is on advanced snack toppings.

For example, as we were talking about with those sorts of bits of information, we might even include something around breadmaking. Although that feels like a little bit overboard, it feels like a whole extra course in itself, compared to everything else that we were talking about. So the other thing that your  bonuses need to do is to preferably not be of the same medium as the main offer, your main offer’s an online course. So preferably, your bonuses don’t want to be other online courses. This isn’t a hard and fast rule.

But if you’re going to have an online course, and then five other online courses as bonuses, that’s a lot of online courses, and people will get bored of that pretty quickly. So just have a little think about, okay, what is the nature of the bonus that I’m offering.  Alright, so your downloads, as I was talking about can work really well here as bonuses as long as they have a perceived value. So your bonus needs to have some kind of perceived value. You will have seen people adding arbitrary values to bonuses.

As you’ll see in the pricing lesson, that there’s very little formula that goes into working these things out. So that’s fine, as long as it feels realistic, and it feels, it feels like it’s not a reach. So you wouldn’t, for example, have a one page PDF, I wouldn’t take my 12 steps to create an online course PDF and assign it a value of $997 or something, because that’s just ridiculous. So you know, just think about that from from that point of view You might also want to reserve your live options as a bonus.  So my pricing structure for this online course is slightly different to that. But what some people will do is say, look, the course is this price. And then the live options are extra.

So you can see that in the difference between the first two tiers for this online course. But there are other ways of doing it as well. But offering some kind of live option usually is something that has quite a big perceived value. So you might want to think about that in terms of actually having a different pricing tier, as opposed to offering it as a bonus, but it’s something that you can do.  Offering bonuses is absolutely not compulsory. Okay? So you don’t have to do it at all. So let’s see if I can add that one.  Don’t have to. 

You see my writing gets worse the further down the page we go. You don’t have to offer bonuses. It’s just if there is something that you feel you want to stretch yourself with or you want to add into your online course entire offer, then bonuses can absolutely be a great way of going about doing that. The final thing to talk about your certificates and really a certificate is something that is what I would call a win win.  That’s a rosette obviously.  And I’m going to call it certificate. This is to certify that bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla and then a signature at the bottom.

So certificates are something that for people that they don’t mean anything to or have or place no value on them, it kind of doesn’t matter, they’ll just ignore the fact that there’s a certificate. But people who love certificates, love certificates and something that they can print out and put on their wall. And isn’t that brilliant? Even if all it says is this person took this course.  Okay, so a certificate of attendance.

Rather than anything else, it doesn’t have to confer a qualification, you can still offer a certificate and more and more platforms are offering certificates for people to as an automatic thing, so as soon as they watch the last video, their certificate is already in the making and being sent to them electronically. So this is something that is absolutely a win win. So when I say you don’t have to include any of this stuff, I would say if you have the option to include a certificate do do that. Because it will absolutely make a difference for a lot of people. And for those that aren’t fussed by it just won’t be fussed by it. 

Alright, there we are that’s the end of this second How To video for this lesson. I will see you next one.