It’s no secret that courses are the latest and greatest product on the digital entrepreneur scene.

You’d love to possibly make some more money by creating your own course, but you’re feeling kinda stuck. You don’t have near the resources to create your first course, and you feel like you’ll never have them being stuck doing client work and not making enough money to pursue it.

If this sounds like you – perfect! Keep reading.

This guide is for anyone itching to create a course, but you don’t have all the fancy tools that all the gurus recommend. It’s created just for you – the broke entrepreneur that has all the knowledge but is constantly feeling left behind due to lack of pro tools and funding.

I have broken down every tool you need to create and sell a course for free – complete with a budget-friendly upgrade. When you start choosing where to invest money, you might be surprised at what you already have access to.

Pre-Course Tools

Before you start creating a course, you need a decent list of raving fans. You’re going to need a way to contact people and ask specifically what they’d like to see from you. If you want to create a course that sells, you need to have an audience primed and ready for it.

Your first focus point should be building your list.

Email Service Provider: MailerLite

This is a great tool for collecting email addresses, and unlike some of its competitors, it offers robust features including automation and landing pages for free. Seriously, if your list is under 1,000 subscribers, you don’t pay a dime. Even as your list grows, the price remains much more affordable than the alternative options.

Upgrade: ConvertKit

Landing Pages: MailerLite

Sometimes, all you need is a simple landing page to send your audience to where they can sign up for your email list. Mailerlite offers this feature for free meaning you don’t have to bother with a third-party service like LeadPages.

Upgrade: Custom Page with Divi Page Builder

While the landing pages with MailerLite are great, you may hit a point where you need more customization. This is where a page builder comes into play. With Divi Page Builder, you can easily create any page with a drag-and-drop feature. It even allows you to host webinars on your website without redirecting your audience to another site.

Webinars: YouTube Live

One of the best ways to build your list and validate your course ideas is with webinars. This gives you the chance to reach a new audience and give them a taste of your course to come. You can also do this for free, so there’s no need to break the bank. The easiest way is to host your webinar via YouTube Live and embed the video directly onto a blank page of your website.

Workbook/Worksheet Design: Google Docs

If you’re serious about growing your list, I’m sure you’re already creating supplemental products for your peeps to download, and the easiest things to create are worksheets and workbooks. They can even be used with a webinar.

But you’re broke, right? Well, guess what?

You don’t need to hire a designer or buy expensive software to design great-looking PDFs. For real. You can totally create them for free using Google Docs or Microsoft Word.

My point is this – you don’t need to invest money to make pretty downloads for your audience. There’s tons of ways to get the most out of what you have access to.

UPGRADE: Adobe InDesign.

Once you are ready to learn another program and want to create workbooks with a bit more ease, I recommend investing in Adobe InDesign.

Slide Decks Creation: Google Slides

If you are serious about webinars and course creations, then you will probably want to create some slides to share with your viewers. While there are some fun programs you could utilize like Prezi, they aren’t necessary. You can create slides for free with Google Slides. It’s extremely similar to Microsoft PowerPoint, but you may miss a few features if you have been an Office user for a while.

UPGRADE: PowerPoint. …PowerPoint also allows useful add-on features for a screen recording program called Camtasia.

Course Creation Tools

Some of the aforementioned tools can be helpful when creating course material like workbooks and slide decks. However, you’ll need to put in more work for the full-feature course that your audience craves.

Screen Recording: OBS

Almost any course you could create would, at some point, require you to record something you’re doing on-screen such as presenting slides or giving a detailed tutorial for a specific program.

Luckily for you, there is a free (yes, another free one!) tool you can use to get this done. OBS (or open broadcaster software) allows you to record your screen and even do LIVE streams if needed. It’s not the easiest program to learn to use, but it gets the job done.

UPGRADE: Camtasia

My screen recording tool of choice is Camtasia. Not only does it record your screen, but also offers editing right there. There’s no need for additional tools, and Camtasia works great with PowerPoint since the add-on gives you one-click recording from right within your PowerPoint document.

Microphone: Apple EarPods or other cell phone headset with mic

Recording sound is important when you’re teaching. Not only does it need to be professional, but it needs to be comprehendible. Your audience won’t gain much from a shitty recording they can’t understand. However, microphones can be quite expensive, but you probably have a cell phone headset with a mic on hand. While it may not be the best quality, it’s a good starting point until you make enough cash to invest in better tools.

UPGRADE: Blue Snowball

I see tons of mic recommendations, but the one I personally use and love is still in a low-budget price range at around $60. The Blue Snowball is a USB mic that offers a few different features. Once again, this isn’t a top-of-the-line mic, but it’s an excellent step up from the headset you may be using.

Webcam: Built Into Your Computer, Phone, or Tablet

You most likely have a standard webcam staring you right in the face on your laptop or mobile device. It might not be the best quality depending on the age of your computer, but it should be perfect until you’re ready to upgrade.

UPGRADE: Logitech C920

If you don’t have access to a webcam, or you just want to go ahead and invest a little, I personally use and recommend the Logitech C920. There are some new models that offer 4K, but since most devices aren’t optimized for that yet, there’s no need to invest that much right off the bat.

Course Delivery

Once you have your course created, you should be ready to deliver it to your audience.

Now, you may feel the need to invest in a program to do this for you, but I have a great alternative that lets you start for free and upgrade as your business grows.

Course Hosting/Sales: Teachable – Free Plan

This is the same platform that I use for The Creative Boss Academy and love it. It allowed me to start with the basic features and start selling courses for free. However, if you want more features or don’t want to pay as much in fees, you’ll need to upgrade the plan.

Teachable handles everything for you from the sales page to the checkout process to hosting all of your course content including videos. It is an all-in-one solution to get you started with ease.

Payment Processing: PayPal

If you are using Teachable, they easily integrate with PayPal to process payments. There are processing fees with any credit card processor, but you don’t need to pay up front to use the service. I use PayPal and recommend it, especially if you’re using Teachable. There’s a 30-day refund policy with Teachable, so you can only expect payments to be sent to you once a month. Waiting a month for payments may not be ideal when you’re just getting started, but once you have a steady income, it won’t bother you so much.

The most expensive investment you’ll make in creating a course will be your time. It does take time to build a targeted list and validate your idea. But once you do the grunt work, you can be on your way to creating steady streams of income without doing much more work. Therefore, you can start investing your time and resources on finding your ideal audience and bringing them on board.