Are you an online course creator and you’re trying to figure out how to make money selling online courses? Well, you can make money, but it takes quite a bit of work to get it dialed in.
Earning money from selling online courses seems nearly impossible, but it’s not when you know the secrets of the pros.
In this article, I’m going to show you how to make money selling online courses by taking a different approach and focusing on building flexibility into your business model.
What are the Ways to Make Money Selling Online Courses?
There are many ways to make money selling online courses. Many people decide to start their own online business as a sideline income or even sell online courses as a full-time job, and the best part is that you can do this from any location.
With the internet being so big and accessible, there are no boundaries that can hinder your success. Nobody is stopping you from sharing your knowledge with others as you sell online courses.
To make money selling online courses, below are the effective ways you can achieve that:
1. Create a Membership Site
If you’re looking to create sustainable passive income by selling online courses, a membership site is one of your best bets. Membership sites are a recurring source of revenue that can generate thousands of pounds each month.
You can also sell a stand-alone course for sale on your website, or as part of a membership site. With a membership site, you offer courses as well as access to exclusive videos and content.
A membership site will consist of multiple courses and lessons, but it will be offered on an ongoing basis, instead of a one-time purchase. You’ll want to offer your students value in the form of learning new skills, as well as community-building with like-minded individuals.
The idea is to create an online course where people pay a recurring monthly fee to access the content and enjoy the community of other learners. Keep your course updated, and add new content each month, or every week.
Also, listen to your members’ feedback to see what else they want, and what they need and make it all part of the course. That way, you can easily share your knowledge and make passive income even from the comfort of your home.
2. Make More Money with Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a form of advertising in which people (affiliates) earn a commission for promoting someone else’s products. Allowing people to help you promote your online course while they earn a percentage of the sale is a great way to increase your revenue.
Imagine you had hundreds or even thousands of people promoting your course for you. This is the power of affiliate marketing, and it’s how so many people make passive income—because they don’t have to create their own products or services.
This is one of the best ways to make money selling online courses. It doesn’t require you to putting in any effort. The affiliates do the whole work for you to earn a commission on each sale they are able to make.
However, the rule of thumb with strategy is to ensure you put a generous commission on your courses. If the percentage an affiliate will earn isn’t good enough, nobody will be willing to promote your online courses.
In my opinion, the best thing is to add the affiliate commission when pricing your courses. This way, you can still make a good profit on each sale even after the affiliate has been paid and the affiliate program has deducted its own fee.
Most businesses using email marketing these days always include feedback and testimonial requests in the emails they send out to our customers. Why? It is a great way to get genuine words of wisdom that you can use when selling your course.
You should also make it super easy for your students to leave a review about their experience with the course, and integrate these reviews directly into your sales page.
Every good product on Amazon has a ton of customer testimonials. You can get some testimonials from your friends and family.
Encourage them to be detailed and specific about their experience with your course. Share them on your social media platform and include them on your sales page.
Another strategy under this is displaying social proof on your online course website if you have one (which you should). Nothing captures the interest of potential students like seeing proof that many people had liked, shared, and commented on a course.
4. Promote Your Course to an Engaged Audience
First things first, you won’t be a successful online course creator if you have no one to sell to. One of the most important steps in creating a profitable online course is promoting it to an existing audience.
Know this, people won’t buy your course if they don’t know it exists. Therefore. it’s time to work on getting the word out about your online courses by promoting them to an engaged audience.
You can gain customers and sell more online courses by promoting your course on multiple platforms and being consistent in your marketing efforts. Promoting your online course to an engaged audience is one of the best ways to sell more online courses.
To achieve this, you may want to use one of the best platforms like Udemy which can help you promote your course to tens of millions of students through our marketplace.
Because the marketplace is open to over 40 million students, this gives you a tremendous opportunity to reach an engaged audience and earn money doing what you love.
Below are some effective ways you can promote your online courses:
- Use social media to promote your business
- Contribute to online course communities
- Run paid social media ads
- Earn money with Google AdSense
- Blogging
- YouTube Channel
- Sponsored content
- Guest posts writing
5. Give Something Away for Free
Producing content may come naturally to you, but it’s harder for your customers. If you want to make money selling online courses, the best thing that you can do is give something away for free first. It opens up a dialogue between you and your customers and helps establish trust.
I’m not just talking about ebooks alone. Think of other ways that you can add value to people’s lives, and then give it away to them in exchange for their email address.
Give them a gift to thank them for being on your list, or just because it’s the holiday season (you can even say it’s because they’re nice).
You can use your blog, social media profiles, email list, and other platforms to give away valuable content to your customers. Once they have a taste of what you have to offer, they’ll be more inclined to purchase additional courses from you.
This is a strategy that never fails if you do it the right way. Since you aren’t charging for whatever content you’re giving out, it doesn’t have to be long. It can be a short video or two that teaches something valuable about your specialization.
6. Offer a Money-back Guarantee
There are a number of ways to make money by selling courses online. One of the best ways is to offer a money-back guarantee to your customers.
Offer a money-back guarantee for your online course. This is not only effective, but it is also advantageous as well. A money-back guarantee adds credibility to your course and it generates more sales as well.
If you have a product that is high-value or high-risk, then it makes sense to offer a money-back guarantee.
When a student buys your course with the comfort of knowing they can get their money back if they’re not completely satisfied, then your product becomes much more appealing to them.
This might seem risky at first, but it’s actually a great way to increase your sales and attract loyal customers because you’re showing students that you have confidence in the quality of your course.
If you don’t feel confident in the quality of your course and the results that students will get if they apply what they learn, then you probably shouldn’t be selling it — or at least not yet.
7. Start Offering Coaching and Consulting Services
Are you an expert on a certain topic who wants to teach what you love while making money selling online courses? Then this is one of your best bets.
As the demand for online courses keeps growing, so does the need to leverage trends and create a unique selling proposition for yourself.
If you love giving one-on-one advice and watching other people succeed, then you should offer coaching and consulting services in an attempt to introduce your online courses to your clients.
In the online course business, coaching and consulting are some of the fastest ways to make money selling courses online. However, as with any online service, you’ll want to keep your audience updated with your expertise on the latest trends in your niche.
While you can work as a freelancer, some companies will want you to offer some consulting services to them if you’re known as an expert in your field. With such a service, it’s much easier to convince them to purchase your online course.
If you’re skilled at online advertising and marketing, for example, businesses are very likely to pay you for your advice and services and buy any course or digital product you recommend.
Bonus Tips:
Answer questions on the sales page
This is simply the idea of using FAQs on your sales page. While they are beneficial, they can make your page look a bit cluttered.
A better option is to add a resource box at the bottom of each section. This way you can answer people’s questions there and then without having to clutter up your page.
Charge a subscription
Subscription-based business models are popular in the world of streaming services. If your course or training program is aimed at continuous education, this is a great option for you.
You can provide tiered memberships for different price points, allowing customers to unlock additional perks and benefits.
Sell course licenses
Selling course licenses is one of the most common ways of selling courses online and a great option for any B2B business.
Licensing grants individuals permission to use the course material and any intellectual property therein during a specified period, or until a certain number of measures are completed.
FAQs
Do online courses sell well?
Yes, online courses sell well. There are a million results for “online courses”.
People are searching for them, and buying them. In fact, there has been an enormous increase in online courses in the last 5 years.
How much money can you make from selling online courses?
Selling online courses may earn you anything from $1000 to $50,000 or more.
All you need to know to figure out how much money you can make is the size of your audience and how successfully you can convert those individuals into paying students.
Conclusion
Your time is valuable, and as an online course creator, you are a talented individual. Setting up a course will require some work upfront, but in the long run, it’s an excellent source of passive income that can help you achieve your financial goals sooner.
All the above strategies are effective and you don’t have to limit yourself to one. Try as many as you can. The truth is that what works for someone else might not work for you. Therefore, ensure you try them out first and stick to the ones that work for you.
I believe this article has helped explain the strategies that can help you make money selling an online course. If you’re looking for more help with marketing, here is an article written on an effective online course marketing plan.
I hope you found this article helpful.
Thanks for reading.
