Using E-courses to List Build

   E-courses are becoming ever more popular as people get more and more comfortable with the internet. Now you can learn just about anything from your living room! This all works to the benefit of webmasters like you who are trying to build their opt in email list.

   Your e-course should be related to the theme of your website. For example, if you run a recipe website, you might offer a course on how to compile your own family recipe book, or a cooking techniques e-course. That way, you can promote your products and website within the course.

   When planning your course, you need to decide how many days to run it. This will depend partly on how much information you have to share, but you should aim for at least 5-7 days. I've seen some courses that are as long as 50 lessons, but that would be the extreme!

   Once you know how long your course will be, write a basic outline. This would just be the titles of each day of the course and what information should be contained in that lesson. For example:

Day One: Gathering Recipes

-         family

-         friends

-         getting permission to use recipes in a book

Day Two: Writing Your Cookbook

-         Anecdotes

-         Recipe format

-         Standard abbreviations in recipes

Day Three: Publishing Your Cookbook

-         Ebook vs. Real book

-         Where to publish a paper book

-         How to publish your ebook

Day Four: Promoting Your Ebook

-         where to promote

-         free promotion

-         How much to charge

Day Five: Promoting Your Real Book

-         where to promote

-         free promotion

-         How much to charge

Day Six: Recap

-         brief summary of course,

-         Call to action: buy ebook or product

   Now you just need to fill the outline in, bulking out each lesson. Try not to make them too long. You'll want to keep each lesson to about 1,000 words maximum.

   Once you've written your e-course, it's time to get it in front of people. You'll need to plug it into your autoresponder and then start promoting. The first place to begin is your own website. Give the course a big space on your main page.

   Free promotion of your e-course is easy. There are directories that you can submit to, and you can post in forums with the e-course in your sig line. Just be careful to follow the forum rules and don't spam, add valuable content to the forum and more people will check your course out.

   Of course, if you want to pay for advertising, that's even better. Ezine ads, traded banners, and ads on websites are a great way to go if you have the cash. More people will see your e-course and every time they sign up, you gain a member for your opt in list.

   By offering free information that your visitors want, you can easily start building your opt in list today. Just write your own e-course!