How to Monetize Online Courses
Online course selling business (yes, it is a lucrative business) is unique in its own way as you aren’t selling any goods. Your product in this business is your KNOWLEDGE, and your only investment in this business is your time. The reward is limitless!
There is no limit on how much you can make selling online courses. The more courses you create, the more revenue you can generate.
How does that feel for a surprise? You don’t have to be a well-known personality or a university professor to create and sell online courses. I know I got you there.
So let’s begin on this blog on how to monetize online courses.
Step-by-step guide on How to Monetize online courses
Are you an online educator who is trying to make money through contemporary means but is not successful? Or are you someone who hasn’t yet experienced the luxury of earning massive financial gains with minimal investment of time and effort by teaching online?
No matter who you are or what you are, you can make money selling online courses regardless of age, qualification or experience.
The only requirement you need to possess is your KNOWLEDGE in the online course topic you will sell.
So let’s look at the steps you need to take when monetizing your online courses.
Locating a lucrative niche
When trying to monetize online courses, you must make sure you get the fundamentals right. Find a lucrative niche, and start validating your online course topic to ensure it has potential customers. Now, there are different ways by which you can validate your course topic. You can use market research, conduct surveys, interviews etc.
You can also look for online course-selling platforms to sell published eBooks on the same topic to determine the profitability of your niche course topic.
When choosing a niche, make sure the niche you choose doesn’t have many pre-existing courses. Make sure no big players dominate the niche with multiple courses with hundreds of enrolled students.
Building your platform to sell courses
While it makes sense for you to decide whether or not to have a website of your own, most course creators don’t understand the significance of selling online courses from their own website.
The heart of your course-selling business is your website. Maybe you already have a website or do not have one yet. In fact, if you don’t have a website, you should create one right away because it serves as the entry point for your potential customers.
There are many ways to create your own website to host your online courses. The quickest and most cost-effective way is to use a self-hosted online tutoring software like Pinlearn to build your course-selling platform that can host self-paced courses and live online classes.
Pinlearn features cutting-edge tools that help you implement essential and advanced functionalities to build a course-selling marketplace with your desired customizations.
Here are some of the best things about Pinlearn:
- White label solution
Pinlearn is a whitelabel solution that gives you access to 100% open and unencrypted source code for complete ownership without any dependency on the software provider.
- 100% independence and access to source code
With Pinlearn, you can choose your hosting solution and be free from script vendors’ dependence on code customization.
- One-time purchase
Buy once and forget about the recurring monthly or yearly fees. You just have to pay a one-time fee and get 100% ownership.
- Customizable
Pinlearn allows website owners to customize the identity of their course selling marketplace imparting a unique brand identity.
Keep publishing online courses
Don’t stop after publishing your first online course; be consistent and post more courses related to the same topic. The main idea here is to maximize sales by presenting your target audience with several choices.
If in case the courses offer value that interests your target audience, you end up buying both. If you give your prospects the choice to select from a broader range of courses, they will buy multiple courses, which will increase your sales exponentially.
The best way to do this is to target a niche and break it down into multiple that you can later use to create your online courses.
Spread your risk and make more money
Have you heard of this- Don’t put your eggs in one basket? You can apply the same strategy when trying to monetize online courses.
I suggest you duplicate your content and upload it to other online course-selling platforms (other than your website) like Udemy and Skillshare. This potentially increases the chance of getting higher traffic volume and also spreading risk helps in not depending on one platform to sell your online course.
Upsell for profit
If you are looking for how to monetize online courses, you must consider upselling other related products along with the course content.
For example, if you have coaching programs, you can promote them on your course. You can do this by creating a bonus section where you can invite your students to join a Facebook group, sign up for webinars, or book a call with you.
This is a great way to make money with online courses; you can either make the course affordable and get more people to sign up for the premium webinar or coaching program for a significant profit.
Tips to making money selling courses online
To make money selling online courses, you need the best revenue strategies to maximize the revenue. Before choosing the revenue model, check whether it matches the audience preference and your business goals.
With that said, here are some of the ways by which course creators make money selling online courses.
Pay per course
The simple and the most commonly adopted revenue model of online courses is the pay-per-course model, where you can sell courses individually. People would love the revenue model as there isn’t any commitment that they should pay for a subscription or a bundle.
So here is an example of how online courses are priced:
- First online course or a mini course- $10 to $50.
- A full-length online course on an in-depth topic- Starts from $100.
- Premium-priced courses or high-value online courses- $200 to $450 or more.
If you check popular online course-selling platforms, you can see most 0-1 hour courses are priced at $15 to $18. The price can vary between $15 to $59.99, with most courses priced at $20.
For longer courses, that is, courses that come around 1 to 3 hours, the average price is $25.50.
Subscriptions
While subscriptions aren’t commonly used in online courses, you can sell your courses as a bundle for a subscription fee or as a bundle of 4 or 5 courses. Not just bundles of online courses, you can also add live sessions, a webinar, etc., along with courses for a subscription fee.
If you offer courses with multiple levels like beginners, intermediate, and advanced, you can offer subscriptions or bundle them and sell them for a discount as it is a premium product.
Sell corporate package
Haven’t you seen Udemy business, an exclusive service of Udemy for businesses or corporates where they sell courses as an entire package to corporate companies for empowering training or other purposes?
Generally, corporate packages are sold at batch discounts and perks for customers.
Selling extras with course
If you want to learn how to monetize online courses, you must understand the horizon is the limit when it comes to the opportunities you can leverage. Along with online courses, you can sell extras like eBooks, printable revision lessons, PDFs, handy video tutorials, or any resources that your students will benefit from and would be willing to splurge some money on.
Conclusion
Given the lucrative and reliable growth of the industry, selling online courses is a great business, making it the right time to invest in a course-selling business.
When starting out, carefully do your research and create your business strategy to monetize online courses.
Online courses bring in recurring revenue with less effort meaning you create the online courses once, and money starts following in. Apply these proven techniques to monetize online courses, and choose the strategies that match your business goals.
