How to Sell Online Courses: The Complete Guide for 2024

Tutors or educational businesses wanting to level up their tutoring scene should opt for online tutoring. Online tutoring liberates you to bring your educational content online and spread it around the globe. With this expansion, you attract more learners and build an excellent opportunity to increase your income.

To host your educational content online, you need to opt for an e-learning platform. There are platforms that let you sell courses and videos online and earn significantly.

Let’s talk about how you can sell your courses online and what platforms you should consider. We’ll also assist you with how to decide the pricing of your courses.

Why Should You Choose To Sell Courses Online?

Before diving any deeper, let’s have an idea about why you should consider online course selling at all.

The online education sector is growing with leaps and bounds, and by selling your courses digitally, you carve a chance to be a part of this growth. 

With every passing year, the elearning industry is getting bigger, and it’s been estimated to cross USD 374.3 billion by 2026. 

According to Statista, online education would also bring the market volume to US$257.70bn by 2028.

Other than these numbers and stats, there are plenty of reasons why you should consider selling courses online. And the number one reason is that you create yourself an income source! Online course selling or tutoring can generate money even if it’s at irregular intervals. 

Also, tutors can reach a broader audience they would’ve missed otherwise. Once you’ve built a strong digital presence, you might even start full-time online tutoring without relying on traditional classrooms. 

“The future of e-Learning is wide open! Learning doesn’t just happen during business hours in the office or the classroom. It happens everywhere through several different channels.” – Eric Schuermann.

How to Sell Courses Online in 6 Steps

Figuring out how to get started with online selling of your courses might be overwhelming. That’s why we have arranged the entire process in steps you can follow individually and develop an understanding.

Step 1 – Identify Your Audience

Before creating any videos, know whom you’re creating for. Ask yourself these questions:

• What is the expertise level of your audience regarding the course?
• Are they gonna be total beginners or intermediates?
• How much time can they devote to learning?
• What is their lifestyle like?
• What is their age group?
• What are their interests, and if they are employed or students?

Finding answers to these questions will help you decide the topics and the vocabulary and tone you should use in your videos.

Step 2 – Determine The Niche Of Your Courses

Finalizing a niche is important before you can start creating courses. You can create educational videos on any subject; however, you should always choose the one you have experience and interest in.

Once you know which niche to pick, the next step is to figure out related topics. Do a competitor check and see which topics others are creating. You can then provide the same topics by infusing in-depth information and presenting it more interestingly. Also, cover what your competitors haven’t and present it in your own style.

Step 3 – Create An Outline Of Your Course

Now that you know your audience and the niche, it’s time to learn how to design a course. Instead of creating random videos, design an outline that gives a proper idea about what the learners would learn by finishing the course. 

You can also use instructional design storyboard templates like Bloom’s Taxonomy, Gagné’s 9 Events of Instruction, or some other template.

You need to consider students’ expertise level before designing the content of your courses.  Think from the learners’ perception, and you can figure out the modules and each lesson that should be a part of the course.

Step 4 – Choose The Right Platform

The following essential aspect is to consider the course-selling platform. There are various platforms that offer video monetization through subscriptions, advertisements, and other methods. Before finalizing one, consider its features, price-friendliness, customer support, and other important factors.

Step 5 – Next, Choose A Business Model

Now that you know all the steps to succeed with your course creation strategy, let’s consider the business models.

#1 Self-Paced Courses

These courses liberate the learners, allowing them to start and end a course as per their schedule. To utilize this business model, you should not have a start and an end date while creating the courses.

#2 Subscription-Based Access

This one gives the learners access to your channel’s content in exchange for a subscription fee. Once paid, the students can access the entire content library for a defined period. You earn from recurring payments when subscribers make monthly or yearly payments. Such a business model works if you can provide new content regularly.

#3 Joint Learning

While experimenting with different styles to sell your online course, consider joint learning as well. The idea here is to remove the monotony since many students find it uninspiring to take online classes alone. To combine the feeling of a community and to give a physical-class-like experience, tutors can adopt a joint learning business model.

#4 Hybrid Courses

The hybrid business model lets tutors upload online courses and take classes in a physical classroom. Students can opt for either as per their convenience. Tutors can also support their students by providing online teaching material along with physical classes.

Types Of Video Courses To Sell Online

Let’s discuss the kinds of courses you can offer on your online learning channel. You can start with any of these courses or have a blend of multiple courses.

1. Bite-Sized Courses

As its name implies, a mini-course comprises short videos that teach new things to the viewers in small chunks. Since the audience doesn’t have to spend much time viewing your video, they prefer mini-courses over long ones.

2. Certification Courses

Sell courses online with certificates that are usually taken by serious learners who want the certificate as proof.

3. Bundle Courses

Bundle courses put similar kinds of videos together as one course. Instead of selling individual videos, you can sell these videos altogether and generate significant money. Bundling videos into one also increases their chances of getting sold as compared to single videos.

4. Bonus Courses

Bonus courses are additional videos that you offer along with your premium courses. These bonus videos can be short in length but informative. When a student pays for a particular course, they also receive the bonus videos.

Best Platforms For Selling Online Courses

Let’s now get to know the 5 platforms you can rely on to upload your courses and sell them online.

1. GUDSHO

GUDSHO provides video hosting and monetization services to businesses and premium content creators. You can generate revenue using subscriptions, rentals, advertisements, and donations. With its live streaming, you can conduct events, webinars, conferences, and employee communications in real time.

Features:

• Unlimited video hosting and live streaming
• Comprehensive CMS
• 360 degree analytics 
• Multiple revenue streams
• Auto-generated promos, geo-fencing, special screening, etc.

2. Kajabi 

Kajabi lets you host your educational videos and monetize them. You can use subscriptions and memberships to generate revenue from your videos. Creators should know that Kajabi doesn’t charge you any commission, and lets you have your complete income.The platform provides tools for creating a thriving community where you can interact with your audience using real-time chat.

Features:

• AI course builder
• Numerous templates
• Community of creators
• Smooth integrations and automation tools
• 24/7 live support

3. Teachable

On Teachable, creators can earn through coaching and courses; you can also earn by providing your digital content for downloading. Teachable is known for its beginner-friendly interface that lets novices start selling their content in just a few minutes.

Features:

• Add quizzes to your courses
• Automatic subtitles and translations for your videos
• Flexible payment options, including Buy Now, Pay Later
• Built-in affiliate marketing tools
• Networking with fellow creators

4. Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks is a platform to launch courses and coaching, and host events. The platform facilitates building your community and bringing paid content within it. You can earn from selling online courses and memberships; you can customize the pricing for each course.

Features:

• Multiple kinds of content supported
• Live streaming
• Create polls and gather feedbacks
• Integrations to your choice of apps via Zapier

5. Thinkific

Thinkific provides ready-to-use templates so you can create courses easily and quickly. There are templates for different types of courses, such as mini-courses, membership libraries, webinars, etc. You can also get sample quizzes, surveys, and other information samples to make your journey easy as a creator.

Features:

• Course building with pre-designed templates
• Live lessons
• Add quizzes, assignments, and exams
• Community for your audience
• Customizations for video player

Deciding The Pricing Of Your Courses

Pricing your courses can be quite daunting, but if done rightly, can allure the right audience to your videos. Below we’re gonna present you with factors to consider that will help you price your courses.

1. Recognize The Influential Factors

The foremost thing is to consider a few factors, such as:

• Your audience and their demographics
• Your experience with the course
• The value that your course holds
• The length of the course

2. Competitor Analysis

Knowing your competitors helps you figure out the pricing technique. To begin with, you can search your primary keywords and receive insights on your competitors. See how much they’re charging for which kinds of courses.

3. Calculate The Numbers

Very first, know the number that you want to generate. For example, you want to generate at least $1000 from your course.

Next, you should estimate the number of students that would be buying your course and altogether generating you those thousand dollars. In this case, if you get a minimum of ten students and if you price your course for $100, you can generate $1000.

Remember that the price you’re gonna charge should pay the cost of creating and marketing your course plus it should generate you some profit margin.

To simplify this process, you can also try the pricing calculators available on Google and many other websites.

4. Don’t Charge Too Low Or Too High

Another consideration is “not to charge too much or too low.” Charging lower than your competitors is perceived as low-quality content and you also attract a low-quality audience.

Charging too high can make your audience lose interest when they can find similar courses with better prices. Instead, set up a price that is neither too low nor too high.

Additional Tips For Better Selling Your Courses

✔ Choose a subject you have expertise in.

✔ Use an online platform to host your courses.

✔ Create a sales page highlighting the pain points and solutions.

✔ Collect video testimonials from previous students.

✔ Price your courses rightly; do not set them too high or too low.

✔ Use various marketing channels to advertise your courses digitally.

✔ Utilize multiple revenue methods to earn more.

FAQs

If You’re Ready to Host an online Video Course on GUDSHO, Schedule A Free Demo,

And We’ll Get You On The Road To Elearning Success!

Conclusion

Online course creation brings you significant benefits over the traditional approach. It creates a passive income source and introduces you to a whole new range of audiences. Tutors can, in fact, get the best of both worlds by teaching in a classroom and selling their courses online.

Remember that while setting up the online account, keep the buying process straightforward for your students. Rely on a platform that offers easy navigation, video hosting, and live streaming. A platform that provides marketing support can be even more amazing to make your journey as a tutor successful.

Now, while ending the article here, we hope you gained some valuable insights about how to sell online courses, price them, and where to sell them. It’s your turn to use these insights and take your first step toward designing your course and selling it online!