What is best for online courses: evergreen or live? (and do you need different Ts & Cs for each?)

Launching your first online course is such an exciting time for both you and your potential students.

There’s plenty to consider when it comes to the content you’ll create and how that content will help to educate or transform the lives of the students who sign up.

But how about the content delivery method you choose?

Online courses can be delivered on a variety of platforms but before making the leap, you must first consider whether you will launch the course as an evergreen or live course.

What’s the difference?

Let’s start with an evergreen course launch

Evergreen courses are available to buy all the time, 365 days a year and you don’t have to deliver them, that happens on the interwebs while you go about other business or having fun. After the initial launch of the course, students can sign up when they’re ready to and often access content immediately, in a self-paced way.

Once you have created the course on your online platform, such as Teachable or Kajabi, you can then sell your course all year round.

Perhaps you’ll conduct a big launch event to create hype, and relaunch the course throughout the year, however students can still sign up any time.

This is great if you are looking for a steady income stream as after the course is created, you can focus all your time on promotion, as well as serving the students who sign up.

However, without a ‘close’ date, there is no urgency to encourage students to buy now. A way around this is to have periodic launches and relaunches of the course and to add bonuses that early-bird students receive if they sign up in the first few days.

After that, the bonuses disappear but students can still sign up for the standard course package.

What about live launches?

Live courses typically have a window when students can sign up in. This is often referred to as the ‘cart open’ and ‘cart close’ dates and they can vary between 48 hours and two weeks.

In the run up to before the cart open date, the course creator will start to create hype around the course opening soon – with their current and prospective audience of students.

The idea is to create a buzz and excitement so that when the cart opens, many students take the plunge and buy the course before the cart closes and the opportunity is taken away.

This can be a phenomenal way to boost revenue in a short period of time but can be entirely dependant on the success of the promotion and how much time, effort and money is allotted to this.

Without the hype, no-one signs up and the launch ‘fails’. Plus, after the cart has officially closed, that particularly revenue stream is cut off until the next launch date.

However, even a ‘failed’ launch can be an asset and provides data for you to work on next time you launch.

For example, did you launch your course to enough prospective students? Did the sales and checkout page convert well enough? Could you try more social media promotion, Facebook ads or enlist affiliates to help spread the word?

Having a full debrief after each course launch, whether evergreen or live, will allow you to make improvements and changes before your next one.

Which is right for you?

There is no ‘right’ way as such as it’s entirely dependent on what best suits your students, course and your own business and revenue requirements.

You could also switch between running your program live to evergreen down the track to create a steadier income source.

Whether you choose an evergreen live course launch, it’s imperative that you have online terms and conditions in place.

Can I use the same terms and conditions for both types of courses?

In typical lawyer style, the answer is “that depends”…. It depends on whether the offerings are similar, the way you are to be paid for the courses and whether both courses have any other live or physical product components (for example, you send out affirmation cards or a book with your course purchases). But generally we try to work with online course creators to make sure your online course terms and conditions can cover all of your offerings, but to do so we need to have a consult with you to work out your exact needs.

Contact Emma Heuston to arrange a consult now at www.readytobosslegal.com/contact and get a bonus Facebook Group Rules with online course terms and conditions by mentioning this blog