If you’re an expert at a topic or want to showcase your skills, you can create online courses and sell them to an audience. Creating and selling online courses is a great way to generate revenue for your business. All you have to do is create a downloadable course that people can watch to learn about a new topic or enhance their skills.
However, it can be difficult to know where to start, especially if this is your first time creating online courses and selling them on your own website. In this article, we’ll take a look at the necessary steps for creating and selling online courses from your own website.
#1. Brainstorm ideas
The first thing you need to do is start gathering or brainstorming ideas for creating online courses for your business. Ideally, you want to want to think of multiple content ideas that will help you launch an online course successfully.
When brainstorming new online course content ideas, you need to consider your business and the type of content your business is known for. This means if your business specializes in the financial sector, you should look to create online courses for topics related to your industry. This not only helps attract your target audience but also builds better market authority for your business. In addition to this, it’s also important to consider what your audience expects from your business. For instance, if your business is centered around selling custom posters, selling online courses on time management wouldn’t make sense to your existing audience.
A great way to gather more ideas for your online courses is by asking your team members or staff to help. By including your team members, you get a new perspective and receive new ideas about certain topics or get feedback on the content ideas you’ve shortlisted. This is a great way to get more than just one mind working towards a mutual goal, which helps you progress faster in generating more ideas for creating online courses.
#2. Validate your content idea
Once you’ve put in the time for brainstorming and selecting the ‘good’ options for creating content for your online course, you can start validating each option to decide which might work the best for your business.
Validating your content ideas before fully committing to them can help make your online courses more successful. As a result, it helps boost sales and generate more revenue for your business.
You can openly discuss and validate content ideas and eventually decide on the best one from all the options you and your staff members have shortlisted.
It’s a great way to validate your content ideas before you actually put in all the time, effort, and money in creating the content. In addition to this, it’s a better way to ensure people will be interested in purchasing your online course and make sure it’s profitable for your business before moving forward with it.
A COMPLETE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO CREATING, LAUNCHING & GROWING A SUCCESSFUL MEMBERSHIP WEBSITE
When validating online course ideas and content ideas, you need to evaluate whether the content is suitable for your business and your staff members. This essentially means you need to choose the ideas or topics that you or your team members can create content on quickly and conveniently.
It’s also important to not create content just for the sake of creating content on a trending or popular topic idea as it can cause a bad impression for your business. Instead, you should create an online course around a topic you are an authority in.
You might even consider putting together an MVP (minimum viable product) online course to see if people are interested in purchasing it.
#3. Create a fully custom website
Since you will be selling online courses on your own website, creating a fully custom website for your business is an essential step. This way, it helps your brand stand out and offers a more user-friendly experience for anyone who wants to purchase your online course.
Ideally, you want your online course website to look unique and professional. This puts out a good first impression for new site visitors and makes you look like an industry expert. It’s a great way to gain your audience’s trust and makes it easier for customers to trust your business with their money.
A fully custom online course website also helps you improve online course product visibility and lets you promote your online courses better. Using advanced page builders, you can showcase your online courses better and strategically place call-to-action buttons on your site. This way, you remove all other distractions and encourage site visitors to quickly purchase your online course without getting distracted by other content on your site.
Offering a fully unique learning experience is the best way to encourage more people to purchase your online course and become paying customers. On your own custom online course website, you can include infographics or images that help enhance the learning experience, use your brand colors anywhere and everywhere, and display your online courses.
#4. Create your online course
Just like creating a website for selling your online course is important, it’s also important to create a properly structured online course. This way, you’re able to offer an enhanced learning experience and encourage your audience to purchase your online course.
When creating your online course, you need to consider whether you want to include video lessons, audio lessons, or both. This will give you a better idea of where you need to start and how much time it will take you to launch your online course.
Offering video lessons in your online courses is a great way to keep your audience’s focus on your content. Ideally, you want to create an online course that has interesting visuals and audio clips. This way, you keep your audience engaged with your content as well as enhance the learning experience of your online course.
Keep in mind that video online courses are perceived by people as a higher value product. This essentially means people will be willing to pay more for accessing premium video content online courses compared to plain and simple audio lesson online courses.
Check out our article on How to Create a Successful Online Course (In 10 Easy Steps) for more information on how to get started.
#5. Set up a payments system
If you’re going to offer your audience the chance to purchase online courses directly from your own website, you will need a reliable way to receive payments on your online course site.
You want to set up a secure and reputable payment system on your online course website that your audience is familiar with. This helps build trust with your audience and offers them an easy way to get access to your premium online courses.
Offering a smooth payment system on your website is also crucial for selling more online courses. This means that if the payment system on your online course website is slow, there’s a higher chance the customer will change their mind mid-order and end up bouncing off your site. It’s important to offer a seamless payment experience to encourage more people to purchase your online course from your website.
You can use popular payment processors such as PayPal and Stripe to process payments on your online course website. The benefit of selling online courses on your own website is that you have full control over the payment experience you offer learners.
#6. Optimize your website for promoting and selling online courses
Now with your online course website properly set up and an online course ready to go, you need to start promoting it in order to make it profitable for your business. You need to create and run top-notch marketing campaigns that help you promote your online courses and attract new site visitors.
The more traffic you drive to your online course website, the higher chances there are of making a sale. For instance, if you get 10,000 views per month on your online course website, there is a high chance some of them might end up purchasing your online course. On the other hand, if you only receive 1,000 views per month, it can be hard to convince a small number of people to purchase your online course.
There are many ways to promote your online course including running email marketing campaigns, using social media to attract new site visitors, promoting online courses via paid ads on your website, and using influencer marketing to tap into other brands’ audiences.
Conclusion
Creating and selling an online course from your own website might seem like a lot of work but can actually be very rewarding if done right. You essentially create a product once and sell it over and over again. This proves to be a great way for most business owners to earn a good passive income while also increasing their brand’s market authority in the industry.
Do you know of any other important steps to remember when creating and selling online courses from your own website? Let us know in the comments box below.
