Our digital editor and career's specialist Jacqui Rudd has created a step by step guide to creating an online workshop that works for your audience.

Running workshops online rather than in person can come with a lot of obstacles, tech issues, unseen costs and logistics. Whether you hosted workshops in person and want to try moving them online or you’re completely new to hosting workshops and want to take to an online space, we’ve created a guide to help. We have covered idea generation, creating a lesson plan, choosing tech, pricing your workshop effectively as well as tips for live hosting and how to follow up.

What Are You Going To Teach

You probably have an idea of what you’re looking to teach, but if you’re struggling to decide which idea would work best online right now here are some things to consider:

• - What your audience wants to learn - think about your target customer, describe them and their current needs and wants. If you have an existing micro-audience on social media you can ask them directly which workshop piques their interest the most. Or ask a few people directly, existing customers or friends that meet your target audience criteria.


• - Your strengths - work with your strengths, what are you most comfortable teaching, you know the ins and outs of and will be more able to think on your feet if questions are asked that you haven’t prepared for.


• - Your audience skill level - hosting in an online space can make translating instructions trickier so make sure that if your workshop will require participants to have a minimum skill level in something that you address it. If your workshop idea is a bit advanced then question if it is suited to your target customer, if not how can you make it more suited to their skill level.

Create Your Lesson Plan

Although most creative workshops are informal, they do need a structure and order in how you are teaching especially in an online workshop. Map out your entire lesson, this is just for you, make it rough but be logical and realistic with your capabilities and those of your participants as well as time limitations.

Break down your workshop into actionable steps mixing theory with practical elements, setting times for each activity making sure there is enough time allocated for each step for the participants. Consider how many participants you can teach at the same time, this will be personal to what you are teaching and how technical your instructions are. Remember that learners will likely make some mistakes and may require extra time to make corrections. Additionally, if the session goes over an hour leave time for breaks.

Materials and Equipment

While creating a lesson plan consider what materials and equipment are needed for the workshop. Are they easy to come by? if not you might want to consider selling workshop materials and equipment package to be delivered to your participants’ address prior to the workshop so that they can take part. Alternatively, you could list places they can easily find the materials needed.

Choosing A Hosting Platform

There are a lot of online hosting platforms to choose from, but you need to choose which one is suited to you, your budget, your lesson plan and your target participant. Here are three great options to choose from on differing price points with some top pros and cons.

Skype

• Pros:


• - Skype is completely free.


• - One-click start video feature with no sign-up or download required, which is compatible on almost all devices a mobile app.


• - Up to 50 people on group calls.


• - Live subtitle capabilities make it more inclusive.


• - Has recording capabilities.
  Cons:


• - Skype calls can often suffer from quality issues and compatibility issues which has been known to hinder group calls.


• - Though Skype offers group video conferencing it appears to require more internet than competing tools.
  Price: 100% free

GoogleMeet

• Pros:


• - They offer a 14-day free trial.


• - Your participants do not need to download anything its just one link to click and runs through a web browser or the dedicated mobile app.


• - There are extra features including live polling for fast decision making.


• - File and image-sharing capabilities.


• - Users don’t need a google account to join.


• - Part of the Google Suite plan with added business benefits.
  Cons:


• - Overall few complaints about Google Meet, they are catching up with features fast, but it is not very intuitive in comparison to some competitors.


• - Google has a free option which is Google Hangouts but all participants have to have a google account to access and it is not good for large groups.
  Price: Google Suite £4.60/$6.00 per month

Zoom

• Pros:


• - Many of your participants would be familiar with this platform.


• - Intuitive chat messaging feature.


• - Admin control features - you can mute and unmute participants if there is distracting background noise.


• - Different views and display options are available for participants, including gallery view to see as many participants on one screen as possible.


• - There are recording options with some plans.
  Cons:


• - The free plan has a limit of 40-minute with groups.


• - If participants don’t have the most updated version of Zoom downloaded there can be issues on their side.
  Price: Zoom’s Pro plan starts from... £11.99/$14.99 per month

Pricing Your Workshops

Step One: Research Competitor Pricing - Search for similar workshops to yours, search on Udemy and Eventbrite and other platforms and compare them all to find an average price for workshops similar to yours.

Step Two: Calculate your Costs - Add up all your workshop costs, materials and delivery if applicable, hosting platform, and find the expected cost per workshop.

Step Three: Calculate your Wage - Price for your time as well as your experience and knowledge to find out how much you would expect to earn per workshop.

Step Four: Add your Profit - Add your costs and wages per workshop together and add extra for your profit. Now you have the amount of revenue you want each workshop to bring in for your business.

Step Five: Divide by Participants - You want your workshop to be profitable at 50% capacity because you won’t always sell out all the spaces. From your lesson plan, you should have an idea of your top capacity, so if my workshop capacity if 10 people max, I want to divide my costs, wage and profit across 5 people to find my workshop price per person.

Costs per Workshop + Wages per Workshop + Profit ÷ by your 50% Capacity = Workshop Price per Person.

Step Six: Compare to Competitor Average - Now compare to your workshop price per person to the competitor average price you researched, is your price more or less than that average? If it is more, look to see how you can reduce your costs. If it is less you have a choice, to keep your lower more competitive rate or increase your profit margin but raising your price to match your competitors.

Customer Journey Mapping

Your customers’ journey to finding your workshop and taking part is crucially important and a better understanding of it will help you find gaps in the customers’ journey that you haven’t considered.

You can map out your ideal workshop participants’ journey to being at your workshop step by step with the template below and find any issues you find along the way as well as where is best to promote to get the attention of your ideal customer.

Find a free template and example customer journeys here.

Filming and Hosting Tips

• - Familiarise yourself with your hosting platform, make sure you have good enough internet, audio quality works well and prepare for any challenges.


• - Practice your workshop in advance, do a free test run of your workshop with your chosen online platform with your friends and family. This is the best way to pick up on any tech issues that may occur and prepare for. You can also get there feedback on how it is from the participants perspective.


• - Consider additional tech, you might want a separate microphone especially if you will be at a distance from your computer. Additionally, test out the capabilities of your webcam, you might want a separate camera to focus in on art techniques if required.


• - Show your hands! Remember that you need to show your viewers the details of the techniques you are teaching. One of the benefits of an in-person class is that participants can move around the view to see the instructor work from different angles. You can replicate that online, you will just need to find what works best for what you are teaching.


• - Make your digital teaching more seamless by explaining to the participants the structure of the workshop, so they know when a break is coming and what order the teaching is in.
  Smile and show your warm personality, this will help participants engage with you more, it will make them feel happier and more confident.


• - Engage with participants, make sure you are asking how things are going, tell people to let you know if you’re having trouble with any task along the way so they know they can speak up and ask for help.

Follow Up with Participants

To get the most benefits out of a workshop for your growing business make sure to follow up with participants after the call ends.

The most popular way to follow up is over email, offer them screenshots of the workshop, a link to a recording maybe or a survey for what future workshops they’d be interested in participating in. Let your participants feel involved and appreciated by asking them what type of workshop works best for them and what other online art workshops they’ve attended recently.

Also, make sure to ask for feedback on the workshop and their experience taking part. This lets participants know that you are invested in creating the best workshop experience possible and that you will take their feedback and work with it.

Here are some example feedback questions to ask:
- What did you learn from this workshop?
- What was your highlight of the workshop?
- What were your learning expectations and were they met?
- What would you change about this workshop?
- Would you recommend this workshop to a friend?

If you host an online workshop soon let us know how it goes!

For more tips on online tools for productivity and collaboration check out this guide.