Education is no longer confined to the walls of a classroom. Today, it is pretty much everywhere. People want to learn in the most convenient way possible and are willing to pay for it. This is why creating and selling online courses has become a pretty lucrative venture of late.
- Experts predict that online learning platforms and the e-learning market will be worth $325 billion by 2025.
- The most recent data from 2018 shows that digital education and e-learning made $46 billion in sales over the year.
- E-learning and course consumption has increased dramatically since the pandemic began. Many experts expect this trend to continue.
Why should creating online courses and selling them matter?
First, and arguably most important, is the money. The numbers show that selling online courses is an excellent way to make money.
And the best thing about this is that once you have established a customer base, you have a great source of passive income in your hands.
Selling online courses can also help establish your brand as an authority in the niche.
It is an excellent way to connect with your clients and show them what you’re all about. This helps you build strong relationships that will extend beyond the courses, helping your other related ventures to grow.
You should also create an online course if you’re passionate and knowledgeable about a particular subject. Seriously, if your main goal is to share your passions with the world, you might as well make some money while at it.
Ready to start?
Great! Let us look at how you can make money selling courses online. The first two points will briefly touch on creating the course.Choose a subject with potential
Before you sell courses online, identify what your niche will be.
Your choice here paves the way to a successful online course that people would want to purchase.
Some of the most profitable online course subjects include:
- Business and entrepreneurship
- Science and mathematics
- Computer and technology
- Health and fitness
- Arts and crafts
- Lifestyle and personal development
- Writing.
Social science and entertainment are also quite popular.
If you’re unsure what exactly you want to cover, looking at what motivates people to buy online courses may help you decide. These include;
- Wanting to learn a new skill
- Preparing themselves for a career change
- Refreshing their college/university knowledge when first starting a career
- Continuing their education
Once you know your audience and their desires/problems, you can create a course that caters to that.
And whichever subject you pick, make sure you narrow it down to a niche topic since each is quite broad. Trying to cover everything in one particular category will make you seem less of an expert. It also exposes you to a whole lot of extra competition.
Create your course
This is where you create a course that caters to your target audience's needs. It will involve refreshing your knowledge and assembling all the course materials.
You will also have to do some further research on your target audience. Once all that is done and you have created an outline, you can start making the course material.
Today, most courses are presented in video since its the most engaging and interesting format. It also allows for high production levels that convey an air of expertise.
So if you take video as your path, you will need:
- A good HD camera and a recording environment with excellent lighting. While getting a great camera can be expensive, professional lighting is relatively cheap. You can find lighting rings online for a couple of dollars or buy a studio lighting kit that comes with everything for about a hundred dollars.
- You’ll also need video editing software to give your videos a professional touch. If you have little editing skills, software like Wevideo will allow you to do that with little stress. Alternatively, you can always hire a freelance video editor on Legiit.
- A green screen to help you add and swap out background images, b-roll footage, and graphics.
If you can’t afford a professional setup, use whatever equipment you have. You can also swap out some video parts for text/reading material until you can finally afford such a setup.
And speaking of text and reading material, some online courses are presented entirely as that. This is especially the case with writing and marketing courses, where recording videos is minimal.
Choose the courses’ host
Next we need to host your online course.
Depending on their features, most online course platforms can cost anywhere from $49 to $399 per month.
However, you can now create a course at Legiit for FREE.
Aside from allowing you to sell your services, Legiit is a fully-fledged online course platform that lets you create modules, set up a store front, and sell courses at your desired prices.
First you need to create an account. Then go to https://legiit.com/courses And from there fill out the information you see in the screenshot below. In the content section, you can then upload your videos.
4. Price your online course
One of the most significant challenges a course creator faces is deciding how much they should charge for their online courses.
This is especially true if it's your first time setting up an online school and selling your courses there.
The price of online courses ranges from as little as $5 to $ 2,000. How much you price yours will depend on the topic, audience, and your level of expertise.
It would help to consider your competitor’s pricing, how much you spent creating, hosting, and marketing the course, and how much your target audience will pay.
Note that if it's your first online course, there is no way you could charge $2000.
Anything above $500 will be considered expensive. Therefore, most people charge between $50 and $200 for their first course.
There are also several ways you can structure your payments. These include:
- A lump-sum payment for full, lifetime access to the course.
- A payment plan where the total cost of the course is spread out across multiple payments spanning over a period of time.
- Recurring membership fees, e.g., monthly payments. This is a good option if you’re selling a platform with multiple courses and are constantly creating new ones and updating the existing ones.
Fortunately, your current price doesn’t have to be your forever price.
You can increase the value of your online courses in several ways so that people will be willing to pay more for them.
5. (Optional) Increase the price and value of your online course
- Bonus materials with a high cash value. You can do this by creating content through collaborations with other experts in the niche and marketing it as bonus material. You can also make extra lessons or offer referral bonuses to students inviting others to take your classes.
- Additional products during purchase (upsells). These include coaching and live group training via monthly webinars or in-person meetings. Such a strategy creates an extra purchase opportunity during the initial transaction, allowing you to sell premium packages at a higher price than you would have sold your primary course material.
6. Seed launch your online course
You are now ready to launch your course. However, before you go public and full-blown marketing, you may want to seed launch it.
This step allows you to gauge how well your course will be received in the mainstream. It's also the perfect opportunity to identify and iron out any errors in your material. So, what does it involve?
Seed launching involves releasing a free trial version of your course to a small section of your audience. These can be friends and family, names from your email list, or social media followers.
It is basically testing the waters to check whether there is a profitable market for your product. During seed launching, you will be able to;
- Communicate with your audience.
- Identify what the market wants and is willing to pay for.
- Prepare for your complete marketing strategy.
7. Market and sell your online course
How did the seed launch go? Did people find value in your online course? If they did, you can go ahead and upload and activate your online course on Legiit.
Once that’s done, it's now time to market your program to the general public. Fortunately, on Legiit, this is a relatively straightforward process.
We have many marketing options, including an official Facebook group with 25k plus members where you can advertise your course. You will also interact with and learn from other freelancers doing the same thing.
Meanwhile, outside of Legiit, you want to:
- Create valuable marketing content like blogs and marketing videos.
- Optimize your website since this is where much of the course interaction will occur. Having a good, professional design allows the website to be its own marketer. You should also include a sales page where you talk about the course and why people should buy it.
- Keep building your email list using your website and social media accounts. People on your email list are actually more likely to buy your course.
- Take advantage of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and even Instagram. This allows you to grow your audience and communicate with them conveniently.
- You can also partner with other entrepreneurs in a mutually beneficial way.
8. Get those who purchased your course to recommend it
Social proof is one of the most powerful marketing tools, especially in the business of knowledge.
So, you want to give your students the best experience possible so that they can leave positive reviews and are confident enough to recommend their friends and family to spend their time and money on it.
To do that, you should focus on the student's experience.
Ask yourself, how accessible are the course materials? Do you explain concepts in a way that is easy to understand? How do your customers feel throughout the course?
You can also review the course outline to see what it's missing.
Another way to do this is by fostering a community where students can interact and support each other throughout the course.
For example, create a Facebook or Telegram group or a Discord server dedicated to your students.
You also want to keep track of your student’s progress. Send them an email from time to time asking how the course is taking them, and even follow them on social media.
That way, they will feel adequately catered for. Doing that also allows you to flag potential problems with your course.
Launch your course on Legiit today
Creating your own online course can be a grueling process. But once you have it up on Legiit, everything should get significantly more manageable.
This is why Legiit is the number one platform for business owners and freelancers looking to start their online tutoring careers. You can turn course content creation into an online business in itself. Make as many courses as you want and monetize them as you see fit.
Sign up for a Legiit account to create an online course today.
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