When starting a business creating and selling courses there are usually two distinct tasks that need to happen at the same time.

1. Research & build the course
2. Market the course

In an age of “outsourcing”, I often come across people who look for ways to decrease time in both of these areas in order to get to market quickly.

Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to get to market as quick as possible – but cutting corners is a sure way to waste both time and money.

There are some proven ways to speed up content creation so those are worth pursuing if you are looking for a boost.

However, when it comes to marketing you will be hard pressed to effectively outsource unless you have the financial means to do so. From my experience, most people traveling down the online course route are doing so as a way to initially earn extra income so it’s very much a side-project. Side-projects often don’t have very large budgets.

The alternative to paying a lot of money for someone to market your online course is to “roll up your sleeves” and do it yourself.

Pick an avenue that works best. You can pursue paid advertising or go the grass-roots way of content marketing. Whatever you choose, be consistent. You won’t see results in the first week, month, or even couple months.

This is discouraging for some, and they quit. I have found that if you set realistic goals you can achieve “mini-wins” along the way to keep motivation going.

Focus on blogger outreach for example and get featured on someone else’s site. They don’t even have to be super famous (we all have to start somewhere). It will add up.

What I am trying to say is that no one in this world will care about your business as much as you do. Affiliates aren’t going to drive sales to you. Press releases or occasional blog posts won’t do much either. Put in the work and reap the rewards… but put in the work.