Preview course workflow
A paid course with a few lessons open to everyone, so visitors can judge it before buying.
Why previews sell
A course description tells people what they will get. A preview lesson shows them, in your voice, with your production quality. For anything sold at a serious price, one free lesson does more than a page of copy.
What a preview is
A lesson marked This lesson is a preview. Anyone can open it, regardless of the course's access rules — it is the one deliberate exception to the access model.
That is worth stating plainly: a preview lesson is published to the world. Do not mark a lesson as a preview to test it.
Build it
1. Build the paid course first
Follow the paid course workflow completely: product, course, sections, lessons, the paid setting, the no-access message.
Test that it blocks correctly before you open anything.
2. Choose the preview lessons
One to three, and choose them deliberately:
| Good preview | Poor preview |
|---|---|
| A complete, self-contained lesson | Half a lesson that ends mid-thought |
| Something genuinely useful on its own | An introduction that only says what is coming |
| A lesson that shows your teaching, not your welcome | The best lesson in the course |
The introduction is the tempting choice and the weakest one. A visitor watching Welcome to the course learns nothing about whether you are worth paying.
3. Mark them
Open each chosen lesson and enable This lesson is a preview. Update.
4. Decide whether previews need login
The course has a field, Preview lessons also require login.
| Setting | Preview visitors |
|---|---|
| Off | Anyone, no account |
| On | Must sign in first |
Off maximizes reach; on gives you an account for every viewer. Off is the right default for a preview whose job is to sell to strangers.
5. Make the previews visible
A preview only works if people find it. Link it from:
- The product page — Watch a free lesson.
- The course's no-access message, alongside
{related_product_links}. - Your catalogue page.
A preview lesson nobody links to is a lesson you gave away for nothing.
6. Put the purchase route inside the preview
The preview lesson's own content should end with a link to the product. Someone who has just watched and liked it is at the peak of their interest; do not send them back to hunt for the buy button.
Test it
Signed out, in a private window:
- Open a preview lesson directly. It should play.
- Open a non-preview lesson. It should be blocked.
- Open the course page. Confirm the outline shows the structure with the preview accessible and the rest disabled.
- Confirm the preview lesson contains a link to the product.
Then as a signed-in student without access:
- Confirm the preview still opens and the rest is still blocked.
Step 2 is the one that matters. If a non-preview lesson opens, the paid setting is not configured — check the course before you publicize anything.
Maintaining previews
- Review them when you update the course. A preview showing an outdated interface sells an outdated course.
- Audit which lessons are previews before each launch. Open Lessons, filter by the course, and check. A preview flag left on after testing is a lesson given away permanently.
- Do not preview the whole course. If most lessons are previews, you are not selling a course.
What previews do not do
- They do not expire. A preview stays public until you turn it off.
- They do not count differently in progress, and anonymous visitors accumulate no progress at all.
- They do not capture anything about the viewer unless you require login.