Launching a course shouldn’t feel like building the Titanic with a toothbrush, burning 100’s of hours each month.
If you want to accelerate your impact, most gurus will tell you to
- Email your list 3 times a week
- Post on social media every day, several times
- Go live every 4 hours
- Start a weekly podcast.
- Spend thousands of dollars on video equipment, green screens
- Run at least $1000 of social media advertising each month
- and more. Lots more.
For some people, that’s their mojo. For you? It feels brutal and overwhelming.
But everyone seems to be doing it. Perhaps that’s just the cost of doing business?
Maybe it’s time to throw in the towel and find a new hobby?
No, not at all. All those activities are good. And if you have the money, go for it. Online learning is one of the fastest growing industries, projected to surpass $181B by 2025.
So there’s a massive need for courses. Beautiful, accessible, practical courses. We need to leverage the spread of knowledge, not gate it.
Online courses help students save time, energy, and resources. And lets face it. We all want to learn on demand.
An online courses positions you as a thought leader. Someone worth following. And if you have video, 60% of everyone prefers it. (Check out the online education trends.)
But guess what?
If you’re like most Catholic impact-makers, you’ve written a book. Or you blog regularly. Or host a podcast.
You’ve probably created enough content to launch a course right now!
If you wanted to, you can close this tab right now and head off and start your own course on Udemy, Coursera, Thinkfic, or Podia. They can work really well – depending.
Depending on if you can target the right audience. Or if you can grow your own.
But I want to help you see a new future.
- Imagine instead… launching a free, mini course to a pre-built Catholic audience.
- Imagine each month, your course gaining new members. And you did nothing.
- Imagine your course promoting you every month, helping you reach new people while you focus on other things.
My name is Dominic de Souza, and I’m the founder of SmartCatholics.
SmartCatholics is one of the fastest-growing communities to support Pope Francis, help Catholics regroup, and create resources to renew our hope. Our community is built on a culture of kindness and learning.
Starting your first free course is so easy you could get it done in 2 hours.
- The interface is beautiful.
- You can update or add to your course any time.
- You can promote anything you like as an upsell, like your book, or your consulting services.
It’s the SmartCatholics Academy. We believe it’s going to change the world for Catholics everywhere.
Most course platforms are built for global markets. And most courses cost anywhere from $25 to $80. To be fair, they’re worth it.
But there’s are millions of Catholics starved to go deeper. They don’t know where to go, and many around the world can’t afford expensive courses.
SmartCatholics is creating a home for free Catholic courses, of any size, for Catholics everywhere.
We’re doing the heavy lifting for you – building the audience, handling all the costs and support, and helping get you in front of new people.
No one out there is doing something this crazy. Building a platform to give your course free marketing and promotion.
Now you’re thinking, there’s no way it’s free. And if it is, there’s no way it’s actually any good.
I’d think the same thing.
But it really is.
SmartCatholics is built on a world-leading, membership platform. Courses are built right in.
We’re not interested in building in a silo. We believe in collaboration with Catholics everywhere to build the Kingdom.
So give me a minute to show you how launching a free course could start something incredible for you.
Because right now, you’re probably thinking: this won’t work for me.
You’re imagining all the Catholics with degrees and letters after their names, and how they’ve earned the right to offer courses. “How could I have something to offer?”
That’s a perfectly normal question.
Let me share with you something. People like to learn from people who are like them.
So it doesn’t matter if your course is 90% identical to someone else. It will still have an important difference. What is that?
You. Your stories, your experiences, and your way of thinking about things are unique. Some people want to learn from a human being who looks and thinks like you.
So if you’re already creating content, you’ve probably already published a course! It’s just not set up in a way that gets people to lean forward and pay attention.
So what’s so special about a SmartCatholics course?
Let me tell you.
- First of all, right now you’re producing all kinds of video, audio, or written content. Maybe your actual engagement is almost nothing?
- Second, you’re paying for expensive course software that’s coming out of your bank account, whether you have members or not.
- Third, you don’t have the budget to run advertising to your course to reach more people.
- Fourth, you’re trying to figure it out on your own.
Launching your course on SmartCatholics helps you solve all these problems.
As more and more Catholics around the world come online, we need to build the future of free Catholic education.
That means…
- Catholic catechists can share your course with their class.
- Catholic parents can pull up a website and instantly start making progress in their education.
- Catholic students can start a journey to get smarter and fuel their faith-life with solid lessons.
Imagine this with me.
Imagine 100 Catholic impact makers like you launched a free course within the SmartCatholics community.
Each course ends with a promotion to purchase your full course, or your book, or your consulting services.
Thousands of Catholics start exploring courses, trying out the ones they enjoy. Starting new ones as soon as they’re done.
- Your mailing list grows.
- Your social media followers grow.
- You start making more income.
- That frees you up to be more successful, and spending more time with people.
- You now have more free time to make an impact.
And all this activity means Google starts paying attention. More people googling for catholic education start finding your course.
People you’d never thought to meet are now reaching out to learn more from you.
I’m serious. I’m so excited about what this means.
This means that in 3 years, or 5 years, we could change the face of Catholic catechizing and education for Catholics everywhere.
Learning and sharing our Catholic faith should be as easy as ordering toothpaste on Amazon. Easier.
But here’s an added benefit.
Someone who starts your course can see the comments and insights from other Catholics. These Catholics often come back and respond. Which means your course is build an online community.
Let’s recap for a second.
What would it cost you to do all this on your own?
- Paying for your own course software is around $100 per month.
- Running ad campaigns or boosting posts to find people could be easily anywhere from $300 to $1000 a month.
- Passive marketing (where other people promote you) is almost impossible to find, or pay for. Especially for Catholics.
- Getting professional advice and cover design easily costs $100 per session.
- Plus, you’re spending almost three hours a day just on growing your audience.
All that could be costing you around $700 each month, plus all your own time.
But we’re changing all that.
Imagine how valuable it would be to get help with all of this.
- Repurpose all your free content into a course, and drop it into a river of people already looking for your leadership.
- Imagine other Catholic impact-makers all helping to promote the same platform and grow their courses right along with you.
- Imagine collaborating together, instead of fighting for attention.
You can even afford to go on holiday for a few weeks. Your course will go on promoting you – because I will be promoting it!
Here’s what you pay to launch your free course in SmartCatholics Academy. Zero.
Nothing. No cost at all.
Seriously.
Why am I doing this?
Because I’m more interested in helping you grow your audience. I believe in paying it forward. And I believe that a rising tide raises all ships.
So when we all work together and support the Kingdom, everyone wins.
And it’s all your content. You can leave any time. (Of course, you’re giving us the right to promote the fact that you’re with us.)
In the last lesson, you can ask for donations. Upsell your services. Promote your complete course, where you charge whatever you want. Ask people to follow you on social media.
And you can ask your students to join your emailing list. In fact, you really need to do that.
So what do you have to do to start?
Easy. Send me a message to apply.
Let me know if you plan to repurpose content, or create it brand new. Tell me what kind of audience it’s for. And give me a super brief outline of what your lessons will cover.
I’ll respond with ideas and suggestions, and set you up with a free account to get started.
When you’re ready to launch, I’ll look it over with you, create the promotional graphics, and promote it in my monthly newsletter that goes out to 15,000 Catholics.
Want to offer a paid course? Or want deeper help with editing and design? Let me know!
So here’s what you get when you launch your free course:
- Offer a mini course or a complete signature program
- Mobile access through the SmartCatholics app
- Trackable progress for each student
- A beautiful interface for adding text, pictures, video, and audio
- Organize your lessons into sections
- Build an online community
- See individual progress
- Unlocking and completion features
- Instant promotion within the SmartCatholics community
- Promotion to 15,000+ Catholics worldwide
- Include upsells for your additional services or full course
- Marketing advice and cover design
All this, for free. Just apply today.
Seriously, how is it all free?
After launching a couple of free courses, you may decide to host a paid course with SmartCatholics. Keep reading.
SmartCatholics hosts a private membership group called ‘Catholic Impact Accelerator.’
Members are active, busy, and non-techy speakers and creators, like you. Each month we meet to discuss and explore ways to share invites and insights.
We’re here to help you succeed and thrive, so that we can build the Kingdom together for our generation.
Because when you’re successful, SmartCatholics gets better. Which means more people show up and stay. Which means I can send you more students.
Which makes everything better for everyone.