Here are the 10 key steps to selling and marketing online courses without wasting your time:
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Creating a blog may seem like a prolonged approach to selling your course. We recommend creating one because it’s part of a long-term strategy to drive traffic and sales, and it’s a relatively cheap way to build a brand.
Selling your course is an ongoing practice. To generate the best possible results, you’ll need to track your success. Most online course platforms include analytics tools that help identify where your traffic comes from, how much traffic you get, and how much of it converts into sales.
This e-book offers a complete outlook to what creating and selling coursers is all about. In a few steps, it describes the process every online instructor should follow to effectively create, publish and sell online courses, whilst looking at all the stages and factors that need the most attention.
In order to sell a high-value online course on your website, you’ll need to make your online course video-based. That’s because video courses have a higher perceived value by customers, which makes it easier for you to deliver a course in the $200+ price range.
Sell your online course with blogEstablish yourself as an authority. Blogs are one of the top ways to establish yourself as an authority on any given subject. ... Build SEO. ... Helps build a community. ... Create landing pages. ... Create shareability. ... Offer extra monetization. ... Serve as a creative outlet.
In this article, you'll find an overview of the 10 major stages of online course creation:Pick the perfect course topic.Ensure your course idea has high market demand.Create Magnetic and Compelling Learning Outcomes.Select and Gather your Course Content.Structure Your Modules and Course Plan.More items...•
The 11 best platforms to create and sell online coursesUdemy for launching your first course.Skillshare for teaching creative skills.Teachable for creating an online school with advanced marketing.Podia for selling digital products and memberships.Thinkific for building a course from scratch.More items...•
How to market your online course after it's publishedPromote your course on your blog. ... Start a YouTube channel. ... Publish a course promotion video on YouTube. ... Add student testimonials to your course sales page. ... Include a link to your course in your email signature. ... Add a course page to your main website. ... Build an email list.More items...•
Are online courses profitable? Yes. They're actually one of the best business models you can adopt as a digital business because they're in demand and more and more people are willing to pay top dollar for them.
To sell a course online, you'll need to invest in the right software stack. To create and host eLearning you need a learning management system (LMS). An LMS is used to create and manage eLearning content and track and assess their performance.
Udemy makes money from selling online courses, so it's in their best interest to sell as many courses as they can, and this means they actively promote your courses for you. There is no other website like it in existence. It's the easiest way to make money online in 2016, and it's just the beginning.
The answer is — it depends. In some cases, you can sell the same online course on more than one online course platform. In other cases, you can't.
Either way, here are 11 ways you can generate leads by marketing your course to the public.Know Your Audience BEFORE You Create Your Course. ... Understand What Makes Your Course Unique. ... Monitor Your Competition. ... Take a Survey of Potential Students. ... Use a Platform that Offers Flexibility. ... Use Multiple Promotional Platforms.
10 Social Media Tips to Sell Online CoursesGet Shoutouts on Instagram and TikTok.Use Twitter Polls to Build Engagement.Post Your Course to Pinterest.Don't Neglect LinkedIn.Reach Out to Build 1:1 Relationships.Share Blog Posts Related to Your Course.Make a Promo Video.Test Different Titles.More items...•
Social Media: Well, there is nothing better than social media channels to make new connections and advertise your stay at home jobs. Create your pages on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and a few other such channels to gain more ground. Post regularly on these channels and give attractive titles to all of them.
Online Course Marketing StrategyCreate your online course website and optimize its pages. ... Create content around your online course on your website to drive traffic. ... Market your course content through SEO and PPC. ... Use lead magnets to generate leads for your course. ... Nurture course leads through email marketing.
Investing in education and lifelong learning is an emerging trend among both old and young, and online courses come to fill the gaps of knowledge. People tend to prefer the comfort and flexibility of their own homes, avoiding the complexities of commuting to physical classes.
The elearning market is expected to exceed $325Billion by 2025 (see above), with a yearly growth of 5% (Global Market Insights)! Becoming an online instructor means you could be earning from a few hundred dollars per year to a six-figure income.
You can also: Get your audience’s opinion through email: if you have an email list, come up with an email advertising your course. Alternatively, send your list of ideas for online courses to your audience and encourage them to pick on a course subject through a survey.
A sales page requires two things, the copy and the design . To write the perfect copy, you will need to understand your audience, what they are looking for and how to convince them. We will be going through that below.
Offering a free course can work for your benefit as it can generate leads for expensive courses or a way to showcase your expertise. Don’t forget, it is the first point of contact to create rapport. We all love good communication, creating relationships and this sense of familiarity is what will help you sell more courses.
Ultimately, the title of your course reflects the name of your brand, your work or training, and can potentially describe you as the best-selling trainer in your field.
Whereas, ‘learning objectives’ or ‘learning outcomes’ tend to be more specific and more measurable in terms of what you expect your students to learn and be able to do once they complete the course.
Encourage people to comment and interact with you and build conversations. Do everything you can to get them engaged and keep them engaged.
Then there’s Joule, which is a paid Learning Management System (with a free 15-day trial) that gives you a lot of added functionality, plus full support and an easy means to create compelling content for your learners .
If you want to add more functionality to your courses, you may want to consider Totara, which is another free eLearning platform that builds on Moodle’s core functions. It’s more for corporate learning environments, but has features that might become more appealing as your business grows:
Which brings us to SCORM. Short for Shareable Content Object reference Model, SCORM is a set of standards created for web-based educational technology. You need to make your course content SCORM-compatible to make it work on all applicable Learning Management Systems. That way, your courses will have a greater reach and be useful to a wider audience. There’s more about SCORM here.
A dedicated website is a must.#N#Even if your catalog and shopping cart are elsewhere, you’ll want a place that features information about you and your courses , as well as where to buy them. This gives you the opportunity for Search Engine Optimization to drive buyers to your courses, as some catalog solutions don’t do much of that for you.
Get learners to do active tasks frequently, like checklists and worksheets. Prune your materials to get rid of any content that is not essential. This gives it more impact and makes it more memorable. Split it into chunks that are easily absorbed and roughly equal in length.
If you want to sell online courses that are ready to go and properly formatted for Learning Management Systems, you can skip the parts about creating and formatting them (though there are some useful tips there as well) and go to the marketing and selling sections of this article.
FAQs are a staple for online course sales pages because they work. Having them neutralizes fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Show what’s included in your course by covering what each section offers and how learners will benefit from them. And that’s the key. Identifying benefits derived from learning outcomes will help prospects quickly appreciate the value of your course. Use bullets with benefits for each part of your course. Also, include images of your course content to give prospects an idea of what they are getting.
Identifying benefits derived from learning outcomes will help prospects quickly appreciate the value of your course. Use bullets with benefits for each part of your course. Also, include images of your course content to give prospects an idea of what they are getting.
Effective sales pages use storytelling to draw audiences in. They touch on pain points and then present a solution. Your sales page must do the same. With the help of your customer persona document, draw on the challenges, pain points, needs, and desires of your ideal customer and incorporate them into a well-structured message.
The great news about most platforms is that they offer insights on audiences. For example, on Facebook, you can tell where your audience is located, what interests they have, and more. Leverage this information to create strong ads that attract prospects.
Sales pages are meant to be highly effective tools for converting visitors into paying customers. To generate sales, your sales page has to be able to sell ideas, do away with fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and have a call to action that closes the sale.
A funnel is a mechanism for attracting, educating, and converting strangers into customers. Funnels include various components such as traffic sources, sales or landing pages, order-taking tools (payment gateways), and communication devices (email for nurturing).
A digital course or e-course is a course that you sell online. Online courses are typically self-study courses, but some include a bit of support (for example, a support community or coaching sessions).
All industries are getting increasingly saturated as more people find out about online courses. That’s why you need to show that your course is different so that people want to buy it.
Now you know how to create your online course. But where can you sell it?
There you have it! Now you know how to sell online courses from your own website.
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The most popular platforms for selling online courses are Google Course Builder, Kajabi, Thinkific, Teachable, Open edX, and Adobe captiv ate. It is up to you as the course instructor to find the right platform for your content and future audience. There’s no right or wrong place to sell online courses!
Some online course creators make upwards of $50,000 monthly! New online courses can quickly earn between $1 – $1000 a month, and with the right product, marketing, and business acumen, you could be earning $5,000+ per month quickly.
Search engine optimization is the “it girl” of online marketing. All ecommerce professionals would be wise to read up on beginner-level tactics and strategies to attract even more potential online course buyers. We think Moz’s Beginners Guide to SEO is the perfect starting point!
You have to be clear about the value of your product or service—and this means feeling 100% comfortable in explaining the benefits and the value of your course (especially in comparison to other, similar online courses out there).
Starting your online course business will be more rewarding (and easier) if you choose a topic or field that you’re passionate about. You will also more naturally tie your business to your personal brand, which can lead to huge gains in the online business world.
Yoast SEO is a free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugin you can use to set all the important meta-data for each of the posts and pages you'll create for your site.
If hosting performance is bad, your website can crash or load so slowly that online visitors will bounce before they even read a single word on your website.
SiteGround is a hosting company that offers WordPress specialized service plans for just a few bucks a month — but only for your first invoice period (ei ther 12, 24 or 36 months).#N#This is an important point to take note of because after this initial invoice period is over, SiteGround’s pricing jumps dramatically and you’ll start paying premium prices for budget hosting.#N#That being said, what SiteGround provides you in terms of website performance, shared server storage (i.e. multiple customers sharing the same server hardware) and customer service is good enough to get started — especially if you’re strapped for cash.#N#Just know that you’ll need to upgrade your hosting when your business takes off (i.e. when your online traffic begins to spike) by migrating your site to a premium provider like we’re discussing next.
However, it’s not practical to host your course videos directly from your website. If you do, you’ll quickly burn through your hosting service’s monthly bandwidth limits and crash your site. To get around this problem, you’ll need to subscribe to a video hosting service.
Hover.com. But it doesn’t really matter where you buy your domain name from because they all provide the same basic service. After creating a free account, use their domain name search function to make sure it’s available at an affordable price (usually around $10 USD) so you can pull the trigger on it.
Keep the domain name you choose simple and relevant to your niche. As long your domain name makes sense for the range of courses you'll build, it's “good enough” to get started. In fact, the only rule you need to follow when selecting a domain name for your website is whether or not it can pass the Grandparent Test.
With the Thrive Apprentice Online Course plugin, you can quickly create online courses with multiple Modules, Chapters and Lessons. Also, the individual lesson editor works just like the Thrive Architect and Thrive Leads visual editors so you'll have your course built in no time.
They can get a bad rap because some people are sleaze-balls and make crappy things in life. But the same thing can be said about terrible websites, spammy e-books, and blogs with 47 email capture popups.
E-courses are NOT a get rich quick scheme. They take a lot of work to put together, and there are no revenue guarantees. HOWEVER, if you enjoy teaching and sharing your gifts with others on a one-to-many scale, e-courses could be an excellent way for you to create real revenue doing something you love.
If you’re not comfortable in front of a camera or recording your voice, you can always try a written-only course. You could put your course content in daily emails, slide presentations or a series of PDFs. While you may lose a little of that personal connection with your students, the time and money investment are certainly much lower than going the audio/video route, so if you’re on a tight budget, written-only is a good place to start.
With no email list, you have no subscribers and no audience to advertise your products. You can’t start an email marketing campaign without one.
Through email marketing, a business gets access to a prospect’s inbox and establishes a relationship with them. The number of emails, the frequency, and the type of content a business sends out directly influences these prospects, who get to decide whether they want to buy from a company.
Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that allows business owners to build a strong communication channel with their audience, existing and potential customers. The term ‘email marketing’ refers to all the initiatives a business takes to communicate and build a relationship with its audience through promotional messages sent by email.
Sixty-one percent of people prefer to be contacted by brands through email ( Statista, 2019). Over 290 billion emails are sent every day, and by 2023, as surveys shows, the number will reach 347 billion ( Radicati, 2019).
Coming up with the best email content to use in your email marketing strategy is so important because that is what will keep your audience engaged.
Content is essential to getting your emails opened and read.
87% of B2B marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution channels ( Content Marketing Institute, 2020).
I’ll assume for the duration of this article that you are already offering an eLearning course or service. If you haven’t, you’ll find plenty of great articles on the topic of how to find your niche. Assuming, as I am, that you have something to offer, let’s get technical. Running a webinar involves dealing with a couple of moving parts.
The registration page is the entry point to your marketing funnel. All you’re trying to do is get people who have expressed an interest to sign up for your webinar. There are some good templates you can follow. To start with, you’ll need a nice headline that grabs people’s attention. Below the headline, you’ll have a couple of bullet points.
Once a person registers they are directed to a "thank you" page. On this page, you will want to set expectations. You should have a set of bullet points that reiterate the following:
The final page you need to create for your webinar funnel is a sales page. The sales page is where you’ll send people who attended the webinar and are interested in purchasing your offer.
We’ve now covered how to make your webinar funnel. Let’s focus on the webinar. You need to make your attendees stay until the end, and hopefully convince them to purchase your course or invest in your services. Your webinar needs to be engaging and entertaining.
There are several ways you can promote your webinar. For instance, you can promote it on your website with a hello bar, an exit-intent popup, or even a blog post.
Presentation is everything in a webinar. Just think about it. What good are your engaging and entertaining slides if the presenter doesn’t engage or entertain in the first place?