Coach and Collab

Courses, communities, and events: choosing the shape before the platform

When you want to teach more than one person at a time, it comes in three shapes: a course, a community, and an event. Here's how to tell which one you're building, what each needs besides the platform it runs on, and why the shape is the decision to make first.

Three shapes, and what each one is for

They get talked about as if they were the same thing. They aren't, and the difference decides almost everything after it.

• A course is something one person works through. At their own pace, from the first lesson to the last, whenever they have the time.
• A community is where your people are in one place together. They can talk to you and to each other, and it doesn't have a last lesson. It keeps going for as long as you run it.
• An event happens once, on a date. A workshop, a class, a talk. Lots of people at the same time, with a page, and a ticket or an RSVP.

They overlap, and they can sit inside each other. But each one asks something different of you, and of the people who sign up.

Listen for the question people ask you

You can often tell which shape fits from how people already ask for your help.

"Can I go through this on my own time?" is somebody asking for a course. "Is there somewhere I can talk to the others?" is somebody asking for a community. "When's the next one?" is somebody asking for an event.

Whichever you hear most is a sensible place to start. If you hear all three, start with the one you can keep up. That turns out to matter more than which platform you pick.

The platform is one line on a long list

Comparing course platforms feels like the big decision. The launch article in this category makes the case that it's one decision among dozens.

Before anyone can start your course, there's a sales page, a way to pay, a login, a welcome email, and access that opens once the payment goes through. While they're taking it, there's what they see first, whether the lessons arrive all at once or a piece at a time, and what happens when somebody stalls halfway. When they finish, there's whatever you'd like them to do next.

Each of those is a page, a setting, or an email. When they live in separate tools, each tool needs its own setup and its own connection to the rest. Your students feel that too, because every separate tool can mean another login for them to keep track of.

So map the whole thing before you record a single lesson: how the content is organized, what help people get, how you'll know they're progressing, how they pay, and what comes after. Then choose the platform that holds all of it, rather than the one that holds the lessons best.

Support is work you keep doing

Every way you offer help is ongoing. A group for questions, email support, live office hours, worksheets. Each one means somebody answering, every week, for as long as the thing is on sale.

So choose the support you'll still be glad to give in six months. People who get stuck and stay stuck don't finish, and people who don't finish rarely become the testimonial, the referral, or the buyer of the next thing.

This is also where the shapes start to help each other. A community can hold the support: the questions, the live calls, and the files people need, in the same place the course lives.

Fees, limits, and the tools you'd still need

A platform's monthly price is the easiest number to compare, and often not the one that decides what you pay. When you're weighing course or community platforms, look for three things:

• Whether it takes a cut. Some platforms take a percentage of each sale, or charge more when you use your own payment processor.
• Whether the price climbs with your list. Contact and member limits decide how soon you move up a tier.
• What you'd still need to pay for as well. Email, a sales page, payments, somewhere to run the live sessions.

The course platform comparison runs those numbers for a few well-known platforms, as they stood when it was written. For events on FableForge, one fact is simple enough to state here: on a paid ticket, the only fee is the card processing. There's no platform fee on top.

The shapes can work together

On FableForge, courses, communities, and events are all part of the same software, and they can share. The same course can be sold on its own and also sit inside a community you run, without being built twice. Inside the group, it can be open to everyone, unlock once somebody's been a member for a while, or be bought right there in the group.

Events split the same way. A live session just for members can run inside the community. A public event, with a page anyone can find and a ticket or an RSVP, is for people who aren't members yet.

None of that is required. Plenty of people run one of the three and nothing else, and that's a complete setup.

Decide what comes after before you build

The part of a course or an event that pays off longest is what happens once it's over. Who finished? Who came? What would you like them to do next: the next course, the group, a review, a call?

That's much easier when the people who bought, joined, or registered are already in your contacts, rather than sitting in another platform's export. Here, they are. Somebody who enrolls, joins, or registers lands on a contact record in the same account as your email, so the next thing you offer goes to people who've already worked with you.

A useful habit: write down the one thing you'll ask of people when they finish, before you build the first lesson. If you can't name it yet, that's the first thing to work out.

Where to go from here

The two articles above go further: the course platform comparison on what platforms cost once the fees and the extra tools are counted, and the launch article on everything a launch needs besides the course.

For what each shape looks like here, there's a page for courses, one for communities, and one for events. Each is part of the software. You can set it up yourself, or hand it to the team.

Questions about courses, communities, and events