How to make money selling courses online (best practices – 2024)

In the era of digitalization, making money selling courses online can get tough if you don’t know the correct steps. Alongside this, you will also need the right tools to engage more audiences. To make your path easy there are plenty of platforms to share your knowledge by selling courses online. Also, you can start your own learning platform to sell courses online. The cost of starting an online platform is pretty low when you have your hands on the right tools. Whether you want to sell courses online on other platforms or create your own platform this blog post is just for you. In this blog post, you will get to know

1. Benefits of selling courses online,
2. Choosing popular course topics,
3. Picking a course-selling platform,
4. Creating your own online course-selling platform,
5. Pricing your courses properly for getting profit,
6. Techniques to promote online for selling courses.

1. What are the benefits of selling courses online?

The eLearning market is expected to be worth $325 billion by 2025 according to Forbes. This market has expanded dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people got interested in online courses and the number is increasing. The possibilities are endless if you can make valuable courses and publish them online. You will get a strong passive income source by selling those courses online.

Online courses not only help you make money but also help to spread your knowledge. You can teach others without even meeting them in real life. Also, hundreds if not thousands of people can benefit by enrolling in your courses.

The best thing about selling courses online is that you won’t need to spend a bunch of money on any establishment or venue. You can simply submit your courses on popular platforms and start getting revenue with smart techniques. Also, you can help others sell courses online by creating an eLearning platform using a learning management system – CoSchool.

Starting an online learning platform and selling courses is free using CoSchool LMS. When the revenue starts to roll in you can further expand the platform using the add-ons offered by this WordPress LMS plugin. CoSchool and its add-ons can make the job smooth and help you to grow your platform vastly.

2. How to choose popular course topics?

Do research on Google to figure out the hot online course topics. This technique can get you revenue by selling courses online quickly. You need to make a draft of what topics are in demand. Look for courses that are selling well already on popular platforms. Choose the best topics that you have the confidence to create and stand out in the crowd. Do keyword research to learn which topics people search for, how often they search, and how the trend is changing over time. You can do it for free using the keyword research tool by Ahrefs.

Competitor analysis is another great tactic to find popular course topics. You can check the existing course topics on your competitors’ websites. List the best-selling and popular topics on their website. Do an in-depth analysis by checking their website traffic. Try to get an estimation of how many students they have. Go through the course reviews to understand what type of courses people like most. You can also buy their courses to get a good understanding of their offering. Look for subjects and contents that can be improved. Learn from their lackings and mistakes to create a better resource for your audiences.

3. Which platforms are good for selling courses online?

Popular course-selling platforms are good channels for selling courses online. The reputed platforms have a huge student base ready to welcome your courses. These platforms also have all the necessary tools to create and manage your courses. You will be featured on these platforms when the content and course value are good. Which will eventually bring more traffic and revenue. Top platforms for selling courses online –

• Udemy – Best online learning and teaching marketplace. It has over 2,04,000 courses and 54 million students.
• Coursera – The top education platform that partners with top universities and organizations worldwide.
• Skillshare – This online learning platform has thousands of creative courses and classes. You can join the experts to teach the students new skills.
• Teachable – Self-hosted platform for creating and selling courses online. It manages everything from web hosting to payment processing.
• Kajabi – World-class platform for creating online courses, membership sites, and digital products.
• Thinkific – A highly rated platform used for creating, marketing, and selling courses online.
• Podia – This platform lets you create and sell digital downloads, coaching, webinars, and bundles along with selling courses online.

4. How to create your own platform for selling courses?

Creating your own online platform for selling courses is a great decision. It’s the ultimate choice when you wish to manage everything by yourself. You can start creating your own platform instantly with the help of some simple tools –

• A good hosting provider such as NameCheap – Using Namecheap is one of the best decisions to get a lightning-fast website with zero downtime. The hosting provider has all types of prices for individuals to agencies. Also, they have a great support team always ready to assist you.
• The Best CMS (Content Management System) – We recommend using the best CMS, WordPress as the base for starting your journey. This CMS is highly customizable and has an ocean of resources available online.
• Plugins and themes to customize your website – You can scale your platform using awesome plugins available on wordpress.org and on other websites. There’s no need to worry about designing the site from scratch as there are thousands of themes available. The majority of WordPress themes available online are fully responsive. There’s no need to hire a developer to make your platform responsive across various devices.
• Complete LMS solutions like CoSchool – CoSchool has all the tools to create dynamic courses, chapters, lessons, quizzes, assignments, and more essential functionalities for selling courses online.

You can offer free useful downloadable material including eBooks, and courses in exchange for the visitor’s email address. Use the leads on popular CRM for WordPress Fluent CRM for sending regular newsletters. Also, you can create campaigns on various occasions with offers and limited-time discounts. This technique will highly increase your revenue in selling courses online.

5. How to set the price of a course?

Pricing your courses properly plays a huge role in generating massive revenue from selling courses online. How much you are going to charge totally depends on you but you should also think about the audience. Pricing the courses incorrectly might lead to lost revenue. If the pricing is too high then people may not buy the courses. On the other hand, if it’s too low then your audience might think that the courses are not up to the standard.

The pricing for every course can differ. You should set various pricing on the courses and keep testing. Create subscription plans, one-off payments, and charge for extra downloadables. You can also create course bundles using the CoSchool LMS. Course bundles add more value for money and attract visitors to purchase. You can offer free yet valuable courses to your visitors. Also, give paid certification for the free courses. By experimenting with various pricing models you will find what works for you.

6. How to promote courses online?

Promoting your courses through digital marketing can bring out the best outcome of your efforts. You can not just rely on publishing courses on popular sites or self-hosted platforms for selling courses. If you want to make more revenue by selling courses, you must promote the courses online. This can be done through digital marketing. This marketing strategy can reach out to a large number of targeted audiences within a short period.

There are various ways to promote your courses online. First, you need to know about the best digital marketing channels. Then you need to sort out the targeted audience on each channel. The best type of digital marketing channels include –

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Writing blog posts
• Guest posting
• Facebook groups
• Google ads
• Forums

Facebook

Facebook is the largest online platform with over 2.93 billion users according to Statista. This number is continuously growing each day. You can easily find a large audience on Facebook. You can run targeted Facebook ads to reach your audiences. Create a page for social media identity. A highly professional and well-maintained page will help you achieve the trust of your audience.

Instagram

Instagram is another great social media platform for promoting your online courses. This platform has over 1.4 billion active users according to Datareportal. It’s a great platform to display high-quality ads and posts about your courses. Also, you can create an Instagram profile to upload daily content, reels, and posts to attract your targeted audience.

Writing blog posts

Blog posts have been one of the most favorable promotion channels for decades. Writing blog posts and publishing them on your own website can drive a significant amount of traffic to your courses. If your blog posts have proper SEO and contain enough value then they can bring a significant amount of traffic. You can get organic traffic from various search engines by writing blog posts on your website.

Guest posting

Guest posting is another great marketing channel to drive traffic to your courses. It can help you increase the domain authority of your website through backlinks. Also, you can increase your popularity and authority by writing blog posts on other websites. Always remember to post on high-quality sites to engage potential audiences.

Paid ads

Paid ads help you to get immediate visitors to your courses. Google and Facebook are the best platforms to run ads. These platforms have a massive number of users that can turn into potential leads for you. Set precise keywords and target audiences to get the best results through paid ads.

Facebook groups

Promotion on Facebook groups relevant to your course topics is a great way to get more enrollments. Building your own community can then engage with more people on a regular basis. You can also create your own Facebook group for course discussions, welcoming new students, creating polls, updating on new courses, etc. Sharing useful tips and tricks and answering questions can create a better connection with your audience.

Google ads

Google ads help you to target your audience all over the internet. Your ads will be displayed on all types of relevant channels. The ads will appear on AdSense configured websites, searches, YouTube videos, and other forms of channels.

Forums

Forums can help you find people interested in your topic pretty easily. You can join conversations with others, share your suggestions, help them by solving problems, and promote your courses. You can participate on popular like Reddit and Quora to promote and sell courses.

Other strategies

There are many other forms of digital marketing strategies to sell courses online –

• Promotion on other social media accounts – Twitter, Linkedin, etc.
• Participation on podcasts
• Make a YouTube channel
• Host webinars

Wrapping it up

If you have expertise in an area then you should definitely try creating courses to share the knowledge. You can help people and yourself by selling courses online. It will take time, proper planning, and effort to get handsome revenue from your courses. The process is simple and easy if you can follow the steps mentioned above. Hope this guide helped you understand the process and techniques to sell your courses online. Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any queries!