When you are an expert, you sometimes forget that others don't know as much as you do. Not only do you understand your topic at a higher level, but you also know what's important for a novice to know. By providing your insight to those at a basic level, you can save them time in learning and applying their newly acquired knowledge.

So how do you share your expert information with prospects and clients in order to showcase your expertise while providing them with desired knowledge? Why not offer a course via email?

Your course will consist of several lessons, delivered at pre-set intervals. You'll compose the lessons once so that you're ready to deliver them to anyone who signs up for the course.

Now won't that be a bear to administer, you ask? Not if you use one of the online services that is designed to do this. This category of service is called a sequential autoresponder. There are several services to choose from.

In using one of the popular autoresponder services, for example, you have up to 52 lessons. Your first lesson is set to go out immediately after your new 'student' sends an email to the course address (you set this address!). Then each lesson goes out automatically on the day you prescribe. It may be daily for the first 3 days, then every 3d day thereafter. Or it may be weekly.

Regardless of the interval, you enter each lesson as you want it to appear to the enrollees. Since you don't know when someone will sign up, the system tracks each enrollee individually so that they receive their emails on schedule, regardless of when other people sign up. It's like having a private secretary to track all of the enrollments and
mailouts!

You can opt to receive a notification each time someone signs up to take the course (fun at first, but overwhelming in the long run). At any time you can log into your control panel and see who is enrolled in your course, which email they have received and when they last heard from you.

Why would you want to offer an email course?

Maybe you have a complex subject on which you need to educate prospects. Why not create a course? - with a small commercial in each lesson?

Maybe you delivered a great seminar and you now want to keep in touch with audience members. Why not create a series of reminder emails to be sent at regular intervals?

Or maybe you want to offer an online course, but you're not sure how well it will go over. Why not pilot some of the content with an email course to test the market?

Or perhaps you sell a product or service online and you want to entice more people to share their name and email with you. You can offer the free course as the incentive to share their information.

What's a course like this cost? Fees vary, but you can offer an email course for less than $20 per month. In some cases you may already have the sequential autoresponders you need built into another feature of your website.

So go ahead and add an email course to your online strategy on an ongoing basis.? You won't be sorry. You'll probably find yourself back starting a new course shortly! And each time you do, you'll enhance your credibility.

For an example of an email course, send an email to elearning@techtamers.com

Dr. Jeanette Cates is an Internet strategist who works with experts who are ready to turn their knowledge and their websites into Gold. Her reputation as a speaker and trainer has earned her the title of The Technology Tamer. With more than 20 years in instructional design and elearning, Jeanette shares her news and views in OnlineSuccessNews.com