Before You Hit Publish: Your Complete Course Checklist

Most courses that get sent back at review are missing one of a small handful of things, almost never something complicated. Run through this list before you hit Publish, and your course goes straight into review instead of bouncing back and forth.

Before any course can go live, your identity verification needs to be approved (or in its grace period). This isn't specific to this course, it protects students, and once it's done it also unlocks your payouts, so it's worth getting out of the way early rather than discovering it at the last minute.

Your title and description both need real content, not a placeholder. But more than a technical requirement, this is the very first thing a student reads. "Introduction to Marketing" tells them nothing. "Grow Your First 1,000 Customers Without Ads" tells them exactly what they're signing up for.

The About This Course section needs at least a short paragraph of real content, this is your actual sales pitch, not a formality. Describe what a student will be able to do by the end, not just the topics you'll cover.

A course can't publish without a thumbnail, and it's also the very first thing a student sees when browsing. A clear, readable image with a strong visual beats a generic stock photo almost every time.

It's not enough to just create an installment. Every single one needs at least one lesson inside it. An empty installment looks the same to a reviewer as it would to a student who just paid for it: like something's missing. If any of your installments are still empty, that's exactly what's holding up publishing.

None of these will block your publish, but they're what separates a course that gets found from one that doesn't: a short preview video, a few tags so students can actually search their way to you, and deciding who covers transaction fees.

Once everything above is in place, publishing is a single click. If anything's still missing, one screen will tell you exactly what, with a direct link to fix it, no digging around to figure out what went wrong.

Your course is held back briefly while it's reviewed, this keeps quality high for the students who'll be paying for it. You'll be notified the moment it's live. There's nothing else to do in the meantime.