As a fledgling freelance course creator, I’ve got a huge amount out of developing my first two editorial training courses. But the learning curve has sometimes been precipitous! Here are my top five lessons so far.
Over the past year and a half, I’ve been developing my first two editorial training courses. And wow, it’s been interesting!
Some aspects have been as I expected. Some have been way more complicated. And overall it’s been a fantastic experience.
I didn’t go into the process with my eyes shut. I knew it wouldn’t simply be a case of writing the content and chucking it onto a platform. I guessed that just like anything else, the reality would be far more complex than the breezily easy picture painted by the various training provider platforms (whose aim, of course, is to encourage course creators to use their services).
I was comfortable with this open-endedness and embarked on the process of creating my first two editorial training courses as a learning experience.
Here I’ll outline the five most important things I’ve taken from the process so far.
My reflections on creating editorial training courses as a freelancer
1. Start with one idea
You see the word ‘two’ above? Well, it turns out that developing two major courses, simultaneously, when you haven’t developed one before, is quite the undertaking. And on top of that, it became clear that one of the templates provided with the courses needed to be its own stand-alone thing, so I had that to manage too.
There were certainly advantages to developing two courses at once. It’s more efficient financially, as many of my costs would have been the same whether I was developing one course or two. And when I learned something worked on one course, I could immediately implement it in the other.
But overall, my advice if you’re developing courses for the first time is to stick with one. You’re already going to have to keep a huge range of things in your head at once (the core content, extra resources, images and maybe videos, reviewing and testing, which platform to use, marketing, selling and tax, and many other things). Duplicate that over two courses and the learning curve can become precipitous.
So do yourself a favour: pick your best idea and invest all your energy in it for now. Make a note of any other ideas and come back to them once your first course is bedded in.
2. Be ready to learn
The past year and a half has been the most intellectually invigorating since I did my initial editorial training over 15 years ago.
That old cliché about learning from teaching is spot on. There are so many things I do for my clients – both editorially and technologically – without really thinking about them consciously. But that’s no good when you want to explain those processes to others. You have to think about exactly what you do, and also why you do it.
And then there’s all the new software, marketing and financial stuff you’ll need to learn. Make no mistake: becoming a course creator isn’t easy. The various platforms might make it look like you can just purchase a subscription, upload a few bits of text and videos, and away you go. But there’s much more to think about – letting people know your courses exist, getting the courses tested, meeting your tax obligations and so on.
3. Estimate your effort. Then double it. Then double it again.
Writing the first drafts of my courses was the easy part. It was tempting to see the work as almost done.
But that would have been a massive mistake.
Then there was the reviewing and refinement process, which took probably half as much time again, thanks to the constructive suggestions of my fantastic reviewers (more on this below).
I also needed to develop all the images that would support the content. And the many resources I’m offering to help my students implement the content in their own work. I took the decision early on not to include videos, at least for now, but editing them would have been a whole extra task.
And then there was the work of choosing and learning a training platform, and designing my content within the platform.
And researching and setting up the necessary financial systems to sell globally from the UK.
And marketing.
And a million other things.
You get the idea. All necessary and good to learn, but a huge volume of work not to be undertaken lightly.
4. Find great collaborators
There will be some areas where you need advice, such as finances and maybe marketing. I got advice from an accountant that was worth its weight in gold, helping me understand my financial options and the ramifications of what I wanted to achieve.
I also knew that I wanted to get input from others on my content, even if I didn’t strictly need it. I was very certain from the beginning that I would put my courses through a robust peer-review process with Advanced Professional Members of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. I also got a thorough edit (which you can read about in my post on why I love being edited). And I’ve gained valuable feedback from user testers too.
I wouldn’t have been comfortable offering the content to the world without this professional and user support. To me, it is about respecting my students by doing my utmost to make the content worthy of their attention.
As a course creator, I know that my experience and personal perspectives do and should underpin my courses. But it would be a mistake to launch without appropriate checks and perspectives from other experts.
5. Accept that there’s no such thing as passive income
You know how they say there’s no such thing as passive income?
Definitely true.
Yes, once my courses are launched, it will be nice to make sales somewhat independently of the hours I put into marketing and maintenance. But it will be quite a while before my time and costs are balanced out by sales.
It’s also important to have some idea of the number of sales you need to make to balance out your costs and effort. To achieve this, you need to track your time, just as you would on any other professional project. Very early on, I made the decision that I wanted to make these courses the best I could, so I wouldn’t worry about setting a limit on the hours I spent. But I still want to be able to put a number on those hours, so I can calculate my return on investment.
Track your time for each individual course or product you develop, so you can assess the return on investment against other work you do (e.g. your day-to-day editorial projects for clients).
Was creating editorial training courses worth it for me?
Well, I’m still a little while off the launch of the first of my two courses, but I already know the answer is yes!
I’ve learned so much from the process of translating what was in my head into content that I hope will give students a big leap forward in their understanding.
But it’s been a very significant project – and will continue to be so.
We editors are very aware of the myths authors sometimes labour under. Publishing a high-quality book – and letting people know it exists – isn’t a case of just finishing a draft and uploading it to Amazon. You need revisions, editing, proofreading, design, a cover, marketing, distribution, financial systems and so forth.
Similarly, beware of myths about easily or quickly making a success of a training course.
If you want to give it a go, be clear about what you want to achieve and what it might realistically require – in time, cost and other resources – to meet your goals.
Check out Perfect Handovers for Editorial Projects and Handling Large Editorial Projects for editorial training courses that offer something different from the core editorial training options.
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