HOW TO MAKE MONEY SELLING ONLINE COURSES

Creating online courses is a great way to share your valuable knowledge and skills with poeple. If done right, it's also a tool ke you can use to make money selling your courses online.

We started selling online courses in 2016 and have since sold over $400,000 worth of courses.

Success didn't come instantly, it took some time before we learned how to successfully sell online courses and make money in the process. In this guide, we'll teach you how to make money selling online courses and share some tips and tricks we've picked up over the years. You will learn:

• How to choose which course to create

• How to strengthen your course idea

• How to understand what students are looking for when choosing a course

• How to create a successful online course

• How to sell a course online and make a profit

• How much money you get

How Much Money Can You Make Selling Online Courses?

Do Online Courses Make Money? Yes, they do. How much you will earn depends on several factors.

To calculate how much money you can make by selling digital courses, there are a few steps you need to take. First, you want to estimate your sales. Start by adding the number of people scheduled to the course landing page.

Multiply that number by the exchange rate, then multiply the result by the estimated conversion rate.

The formula looks like this:

Landing Page Visits X Course Price X Conversion Rate = Sales Revenue

Below is an example of what it might look like:

1000 visits X $100 Price X 2% conversion = $2000 in sales

After you've calculated your sales revenue, you'll want to determine your profit. You can do this by deducting business expenses from the sale of your course.

Continuing our example from above, if you have $2,000 in sales and $500 in expenses, your profit from online course sales would be $1,500.

Costs can vary greatly depending on how much you invest in creating courses. Common costs associated with selling online courses include web hosting, software subscriptions, advertising costs, maintenance costs, and content production costs.

10 Steps to Make Money Selling Online Courses:

1. Choose a popular course topic

2. Validate your idea

3. Pick your course creation platform

4. Create your course

5. Decide your course pricing structure

6. Build your course sales page

7. Optimize your course sales funnels

8. Promote your course using digital marketing

9. Make money selling your courses on popular e-learning platforms

10. Make money upselling other courses or services

1. Choose a popular course topic:

The first step to making money selling online courses is to decide what topic you want to cover.

The topic of your course affects everything from how much you can earn to how you should design your sales page.

When looking for a good course topic, demand should be the first criterion you evaluate.

The reason is simple. If there is high demand for the course you run, it will be easier for you to make money because many people will be interested in what you are selling.

Finding a popular topic is important, but so is finding a topic in which you have some expertise. This is how you can create quality learning material. If you are passionate about the subject, all the better. In most cases, the more specific your course topic is, the more you can pay. Here are some effective ways to find popular course topics:

Keyword research:

Start with keyword research. By doing keywords, you can learn what topics people search for, how often they search for them, and how that trend changes over time.

Find popular course topics with Semrush

Once you've found a suitable topic, you can search for related keywords to get ideas for your lesson plan.

Best selling courses on popular platforms

Next, you should look at which courses garner the most sales on popular e-learning platforms.

This will give you a clear indication of the topics the students are interested in. Some good learning platforms to check out are Udemy and Coursera.

Youtube:

Another way to find ideas for required courses is to watch popular videos online. Go to Youtube and see what topics people are most interested in.

If you find an interesting topic, analyze it further to see if it is suitable for course design.

Competitor analysis:

If you have business competitors, you can spy on the topics they cover in their content to find new course ideas. Find a topic that can be improved. Then you can create a more comprehensive resource to offer your audience.

If they sell courses, do an in-depth analysis to find out how much you want:

Check their website traffic to see how many people are visiting their course sales pages

Find out how many students they have

Search for course reviews

Purchase their course to get a good overview of their offering and sales process.

2. Validate your idea:

It is important to confirm the idea of each course before fully committing to it. Research is useful, but you never know exactly how your audience feels about a certain topic. Validating an idea gives you confirmation that it's right for your audience before you invest time and resources into creating a course. Below are some ways to strengthen your online course idea.

Research your audience:

Surveys are an easy way to validate your course idea. You can use a poll to directly ask your audience if a certain topic would be valuable to them.

A survey also allows you to open the floor to your audience, allowing them to offer their ideas.

Create a pre-sale page and send it to your newsletters

Once your course is published, your course sales page has the ability for visitors to get information about the course.

Before you launch your course, you can create a test version of some of these pages to see how your customers respond.

If a large part of your audience engages with the page or joins, you can be sure that this is a good course idea.

Since you already have an idea of what the course covers, you can easily create a description to add to the page.

Instead of offering instant access to a course, you can display a call to action (CTA) to visitors to pre-purchase a seat in your online course. Or you can use a call to action that asks them to subscribe to updates.

Once you've created your pre-sales page, send it out to your email list to see what your audience thinks.

Create a pre-sales page and test it with Facebook ads

Pre-sales pages allow you to run test ad campaigns.

How well a theme performs in a test campaign can be a good indicator of the feasibility of a course idea.

In the early stages of selling online courses, you will probably have to rely on some form of paid marketing to attract customers. If the theme does not work with the promotion, it will be difficult for the course to gain traction.

Start by testing your pre-sales page with Facebook ads. Choose the audience that best suits your topic and measure how well they respond to your page. See how many conversions your visitors got. If the page gets strong engagement, the course theme should be good for online sales.

3. Choose your course creation platform:

Once you've confirmed your course idea, the next step is to choose a course creation platform.

You use the platform to host and sell your course. There you can add course content, create your sales page and manage payments.

Before choosing a platform, you should have a good idea of how you want to build your course. That way, you can be sure you're choosing a platform that offers all the features you need. There are many good platforms out there that have the basic features you need to create and sell an online course.

Some of the best online course building platforms include:

4. Create your course:

Once the course platform is up and running, you can start creating an online course.

Most of your work consists of designing and writing course content.

Recording the material will also take time, but it shouldn't be too difficult. You can shoot high quality course video with simple equipment. After you've recorded your videos, you need to edit them to make them clean for your audience.

From there, you can create additional resources you want to offer students and start adding them to your course platform.

I have created several online courses, so I can tell you that it is not as difficult as you think. Becoming a master takes practice, but even a beginner can handle a good course. Here are some tips you should follow:

Create an outline first – By starting with an outline, you can arrange everything your course will cover so that it is presented in the most understandable order. Break it up into lessons – dividing the course material into different lessons helps keep things organized. Try to keep the lessons in small, easily digestible topics as this makes it easier for the students.

Use a combination of video and text – The best online courses use both text and video to teach their readers. The combination creates great learning experience for users.

Include downloadable material – Downloadable material allows you to provide users with more usable resources. This can be a template, checklist, worksheet, or other tool that helps students apply what they've learned. Checklists at the end of each lesson - Adding a checklist at the end of each lesson helps summarize the passage and gives students a quick summary of the most important other points.

5. Decide on the course price structure:

Choosing a course pricing method is an important step if you want to make money selling online courses.

Here are the most common pricing structures for online courses:

One time payment

Order based

Course packages

Free content, paid certificates

One time payment

This is simplest pricing structure for online courses. Customers pay a one-time fee before accessing the material. How much you can pay for a course depends on the length and subject of the course. It can range from $29 to several hundred dollars. You can price it higher, but that puts it out of most people's price range.

Avoid pricing your courses too low, as this will make it difficult to make a significant profit.

Order based

With a subscription-based pricing structure, you pay customers a recurring fee for access to the course material.

Orders are usually repeated once a month. A subscription pricing model is a good option if you are trying to deliver more course materials.

Instead of paying a large one-time fee, you can allow customers to spread the cost over a longer period of time.

In addition, users can always unsubscribe if they are no longer interested.

Subscriptions also allow you to monetize post-course rewards. For example, you may have a private community where students need active membership.

Course Bundles

Along with the bundles, you sell the group course at a discounted price.

Bundles are great way to increase the value of each sale. Customers who purchased only one course will be charged for multiple.

Customers benefit from bundles and get access to multiple resources at a cheaper price.

Of course, we're big fans of the packages and use them ourselves in our digital marketing courses. If you have several courses for sale, you should consider this pricing model.

Free content, paid certificates

Another way to monetize online classes is to offer the course for free, but then charge students to receive a certificate.

Certifications are valuable to students because they provide an opportunity to reinforce their skills to others.

If you want to get people to pay for certification, it needs to be well respected.

You can make the certification attractive to users by creating a comprehensive course.

6. Build Your Course Sales Page:

Once you have selected a pricing structure for your course, you need to create a course sales page.

This page tells potential students to let you know about what you have to offer. Users can also pay and register for courses here.

How you design your course sales page plays a big role in how you make money selling your online course.

If your page is overwhelming, fewer people will join your course.

Here are some tips for creating an effective course sales page.

Easy to navigate – Your sales page should help visitors find what they need. Clearly name each page section and include links to important areas such as pricing.

Mobile Friendly – Most of today's web traffic comes from mobile devices. That is why it is important that the page is optimized for mobile users. You want to position the elements vertically so customers don't have to scroll from page to page.

The easiest way to do this is to use responsive web design on your website, which automatically adapts your page to the user's device.

Show what people get - Your course sales page should clearly show what students get when they sign up. List any resources, certifications, or other benefits received.

What they learn is the heart of your course sales page. You should list all the subjects and topics that your course will cover. Easy checkout process: You do not want to make it difficult for customers to complete their orders. Checking out should be quick and easy. Include only the necessary fields and limit the steps to as few as possible.

Student Reviews - Social proof is a great way to show the benefits of your courses to your visitors. Consider giving a sample course to an audience and gathering their feedback. You can then add these reviews to your sales page to add credibility to your course.

Course Details – Ultimately, you want your sales page to include both the full lesson plan and the structure of the course material. Tell your students whether the course will be taught via video, written text, interactive lessons, or other mediums.

7. Optimize your course sales funnels:

After creating an optimized sales page, you need to design a digital marketing sales funnel.

Digital marketing channel

Funnels consist of several stages that help guide customers from awareness to conversion. Each interaction with a customer represents one stage of the funnel.

You want to use multiple sales funnels to target different groups of people. This allows each stage of the funnel to be optimized based on the interests of that segment.

Create retargeting campaigns on Google and Facebook to target non-converters

When you start driving traffic to your website, you'll notice that a significant portion of it doesn't convert into sales.

That's okay because most buyers don't sign up on their first visit. Even if someone is interested in your course, they may need a chance to think things through before making a purchase.

If you want to turn non-conversions into sales, you need a way to bring them back to your website. The most effective way to do this is to retarget your campaigns on advertising platforms such as Google and Facebook.

In a retargeting campaign, you only show your ad to people who have previously visited your sales page.

When they see your ad, they will remember your course and many will return to your sales page.

Use email marketing to send offers and discounts to prospects.

Email is one of the best tools for generating sales. When someone joins your email list, you get a live channel where you can teach them your course.

You can use it to send promotional offers to your audience, encouraging them to join the course. A common tactic is to host limited-time sales that are advertised through multiple newsletters.

Use lookalike audiences to create Facebook campaigns to target lookalikes for conversions

As you begin to convert visitors into sales, you can collect data on your successful customers to find similarities between them.

You can use this information to target your ads to people who share the same characteristics as your ad campaigns.

One way to do this is to use lookalike audiences in your Facebook ad campaign. When you install the Facebook pixel on your website, Facebook tracks all the converters and adds them to the audience list. Lookalike audiences allow you to target new people who share the same characteristics as the people on your list.

Since these types of people have delivered results in the past, there's a good chance they'll respond well to your ads.

Pro Tip: Our Facebook Ads Course includes step-by-step instructions on how to run profitable Facebook Ads to promote digital products.

8. Promote your course through digital marketing:

Simply creating a sales page for your course will not benefit you. If you want to make money selling online courses, you need to market your course so that people visit your course sales page so they can enter your sales channels.

You should use all traditional types of digital marketing. The largest are:

Blog posts

Paid advertisements

Guest post

Facebook groups

Blog posts

Blog posts are great for driving traffic and building your authority in your topic. Use the terms found in your initial keyword research to generate topic ideas.

You can then write SEO friendly blog posts to drive organic traffic to your courses. Blogging is another great way to make money online.

Paid advertisements:

With paid ads, you can instantly get visitors to your course sales page.

The best platforms to advertise your course are Google and Facebook. You can target exact keywords and audiences, and both channels have a huge number of users.

Guest posts on other sites:

As you begin to establish yourself as an authority in your field, you can write blog posts to publish on other sites.

Sending visitors to quality websites can help drive referral traffic. It helps you to establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Create a Facebook group:

With digital marketing, you can build your own community that you can interact with regularly. Effective way to do this is to create a Facebook group.

When people start joining, you can increase their interest in your course by offering added value through group activities.

Share helpful tips and tricks, answer some questions, and continue to connect with your audience.

Other traditional digital marketing tactics you can use to sell courses online include:

• Appears in podcasts

• Participation in Reddit forums and other groups

• Creating a YouTube channel

• Publishing on social networks

• Creating internal ads

• Organization of webinars

If you want to use a more advanced tactic, you can offer free useful downloadable material (eg free ebooks, free courses) in exchange for the user's email address.

Once a person is on your email list, you can start sending a regular newsletter with offers and limited time discounts to get them to visit your sales page and convert.

9. Earn money by selling your courses on popular e-learning platforms:

In addition to selling digital courses through your website, you can also consider selling them through popular e-learning platforms. This can help your courses reach more potential customers as many rely solely on online learning platforms to find courses.

However, selling through these platforms reduces profits. This is because you have to share all sales revenue with the platform provider.

If the platform uses a subscription model, customers do not pay for your courses separately. In this situation, the amount you earn will be determined by the platform's revenue sharing plan. Here's how revenue sharing works on some popular e-learning platforms.

10. Earn money by selling additional other courses or services:

Another way to make money with online courses is to sell the courses at a low price (or for free) and then sell more expensive courses, services or products to customers.

Inexpensive and free courses are a great way to get your first leads. After the free course ends, your students are more likely to purchase the more in-depth course.

Depending on the platform you use to host expenses, reselling features may also be included. For example, Teachable offers a feature that allows you to add upsells to your thank you page

Adding other services and products can work just as well to promote another course.

Many online courses add access to a private community. These groups are valuable to students because they provide additional study material by allowing them to connect with others who share their interests.

Teachable and some other course platforms allow you to create a private community. Another option is to use a Facebook group to host the group. If you do, you can create an upsell offer on your website.

Key lessons learned:

If you have expertise in a popular subject, selling online courses is a great way to make money.

It takes planning and effort, but overall the process is simple and easy to follow.

As an overview, I offer you how to sell courses online:

• Choose a course topic

• Confirm your idea

• Select the course platform

• Create your own course

• Choose a pricing structure

• Create your sales page

• Optimize your sales channel

• Advertise your course

• Sell your courses through online learning platforms.

• Sell other courses or services

I hope this guide has helped you understand how online courses can help you create passive income for your business. Comment if you have any questions!

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