Create & Sell Online Courses - 2019 Helpful Guide

Everything you need to know to build a business and generate revenue by creating and selling online courses

Why Create Online Courses 

 At the height of the 2008 recession, Lewis Howes found himself broke and living on his sister’s couch. His fledgling football career had come to an end because of a fracture the year before. It was not a great time for him to be jobless and without any professional job skills. But Lewis was driven. He wanted to become successful so he spent all day on LinkedIn, connecting with other people and diligently growing his network. In time he got so good at networking using LinkedIn that people were asking him to teach them how they could use LinkedIn for their business. At first, he hosted in-person workshops but then he realized he needed to create an online course to scale it up. Before creating his online course, Lewis asked his students to pay in advance for it to see if there was interest. The next day he woke up to $6,300 in his account. Before we start creating and selling online course, let’s have a look at why we should even bother. The most obvious reason is to generate revenue, and indeed there are people who earn their livelihoods purely through their course sales.

However, there are additional benefits to creating online courses beyond making money. And, depending on what your goals for your business are, there are different ways to go about creating one.

Online courses as an income source

Generating revenue is the most common reason for an entrepreneur to create online courses. This is the simplest use case – you create an online course once, and people buy it over and over again. Of course, there’s a lot more that goes into it, which we’ll cover in detail, but that’s the allure of creating an online course. As a digital asset, it doesn’t cost much to produce, and it’s cheap to distribute. No shipping costs! Once Lewis tasted success with that first online course, there was no stopping him. Today, he’s built a multi-million dollar business selling online courses, books, and other digital assets. “I think now is a perfect time to start a business by sharing your knowledge.” – Lewis Howes, School of Greatness Many other entrepreneurs are transitioning into online courses in a similar fashion. 

YouTubers have historically depended on ad revenue. However, with all the video content they create, packaging it into an online course is easy. This allows them to generate a much higher income than what they get from ads.

Sunny Lenarduzzi is an expert in YouTube marketing. As a consultant, she helped companies grow their YouTube channel. Today, she teaches others to do the same in her YouTube for Bosses online course.

Bloggers publish posts that are free to read on their sites. They previously monetized their blog with banner ads and affiliate links. Now they’re realizing that creating an in-depth course is a more natural and lucrative way to monetize.

Danny Iny started the popular Firepole Marketing blog to share his knowledge of marketing. After rebranding to Mirasee, he started creating and selling online courses to monetize his audience. 

Podcasters are eschewing the sponsorship model in favor of selling their own courses. This allows them to monetize their audience without interrupting their shows with advertorials for other companies. John Lee Dumas had built one of the most popular business podcasts and was earning six-figures through sponsorships. He then created an online course on podcasting that brings in more revenue.

Authors are augmenting their diminishing book revenues by creating follow-on courses. These courses are a natural extension of the concepts they cover in their books.

Dorie Clark is a best-selling author and personal branding expert. After the success of her books, she took it to the next level with her Recognized Expert online course.

Speakers who have hit a ceiling with the number of speaking gigs they can take on are creating courses to scale past that barrier. Many of them actually speak for free because they can make it back and more with the resulting course sales. Michael Port has been giving keynotes across the world for the last 15 years. Now he’s taken traditional keynoting off his plate so that he can focus on making a bigger impact via his online courses.

Coaches and consultants who have reached capacity and can’t trade more time for money are scaling up by creating courses as digital complements to their coaching.

Mari Smith is the leading expert on Facebook marketing and consulting for countless companies. To scale up she shares her knowledge of marketing via her online courses.

You’ll meet these people and more, including fitness experts, athletes, dancers, artists, engineers, and others who share their skills and knowledge online, as you progress through this guide. So if you have a skill, or a passion, or an audience, or some content that people want, then selling it as an online course is a great way to generate revenue.

Online courses for customer acquisition

Some businesses invert the model and use online courses as a way to build an audience who then go on to purchase other products. Hootsuite, a social media management software, for example, offers free social media marketing courses on Hootsuite Academy. More than 250,000 people have taken these courses, many of which have become paying customers of their software.

Create Online Course Content

Once you’ve validated your topic and you know that there’s demand, it’s time to create the actual course! In most cases, an online course is just a sequence of videos. 

• You can throw in other types of media, like images, sound bites, and PDFs. 
• To make things interesting, you can also add in quizzes and tests, which we’ll cover later in this guide. 
• The core of your course will be those videos where you’ll explain the topic you’re teaching in a step-by-step manner.
• You can either record yourself in front of a camera, or you can record a screencast, where you’re sharing what’s on your computer screen, and talking over your actions.

Pick the type of video based on what you’re teaching. 

• If you teach yoga, you’ll need to record yourself in front of a camera.
• If you teach people how to use Excel, you’ll need to share your screen.

Marketing your online course

Now that you have a sales funnel, it’s time to drive traffic to it.

In very broad terms, there are 4 sources of traffic and sales to your course page: organic traffic from search engines, paid traffic from ads, social media traffic, and referral traffic from affiliates, partners and students.

Organic Traffic

Organic is the holy grail of marketing because it’s “free” traffic. I put free in quotations because it takes time and effort to get there. But when you’re there, you have people visiting your site because the first search result on Google for “learn Excel online” was your course. Here are a few ways to build that up:

SEO

Search engine optimization is about making sure the search engines, like Google and Bing, know that your site is out there and is the right site to surface for certain searches.

You start by deciding which keywords you want to rank for. Use a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner or BuzzSumo to identify the most popular keywords related to your course topic.

Let’s say you want people to find your site if they search for “Excel courses” or “Learn Excel online”. The first thing you need to do is make sure your site has these phrases and keywords in it.

Thinkific allows you to add these keywords to your course pages so start there. There’s a lot more to SEO than this, but it’s a good starting point.

Blogging

There are only so many keywords you can optimize your course site for before it starts sounding robotic. Blogging allows you to continuously create new content optimized for various keywords and phrases.

Elizabeth Rider’s journey started with blogging. She wrote a lot of content around nutrition and dieting, and some of her blog posts rank high for those keywords. They attract organic traffic, and some of those visitors go on to look at her course offerings or sign up for her email list.

Using CreateOnlineAcademy, you can also create a Sales Widget for your course and place that sales widget anywhere on your blog.

YouTube

YouTube is the second most-visited search engine in the entire world (after Google). Some videos can even rank higher than websites in search results.

Start a YouTube channel about your course topic and publish helpful videos on a regular basis. Include a link to your website or course in your video descriptions.

Quora

Quora is a crowdsourced Question and Answer site where you can ask a question and have it answered by anyone else in the world. The top answers get upvoted by the community so that the cream rises to the top.

You’ll likely find questions related to the topic you teach, which means you can answer them yourself and link back to your site. If your answer is good, it will get upvoted and gain visibility. Quora questions often rank high on Google searches too.

Podcasting

Podcasts have risen in popularity in recent years and many of the top podcasts organically attract listeners and traffic from their podcast directory listings.

Think of podcasting as blogging in audio form. It’s another way to create content that attracts more customers.

Guest Posting

Writing posts on other blogs that already have a readership allow you to tap into that audience. A simple Google search will show you which blogs cover the topics you cover in your online course. Reach out to the blog editors and ask to write a post for them.

Guest posting is also a great way to build a backlink to your site, which in turn improves your SEO and search rankings.

HARO

Help A Reporter Out is a great service that connects reporters with relevant experts (aka news sources). By signing up as a news source, you’ll receive an email three times per day that includes media opportunities in which you could be quoted.

Reply quickly for the best chance of getting selected for a quote in an article, and ask for a link back to your site. This link helps your SEO.

Paid Traffic

Realistically, organic traffic does take time to build up. You’ll need to continuously create content in any or all of the formats mentioned above to build up that ranking.

So, if you’re not patient and have some money to spare, advertising is a good option. Just remember that advertising is a scientific process. It’s common to lose money initially but if you continue refining your ads and targeting you should reach profitability.

It’s also not recommended to send your ad traffic directly to your sales page, especially if the people you’re targeting have never heard of you. Instead, send them to a webinar registration page, and use the webinar to convert them into students.

When your webinar is ready, try some of the following channels to send paid traffic to it. Remember to ensure you’ve set up tracking correctly so that you can see if your ads actually result in sales of your online course. Thinkific has fields for this built in.

Google Ads

Google Ads lets you create ads that show up when someone searches for the keywords you’re targeting in their search engine. You can specify exactly which words should trigger your ad.

If you install the tracking code correctly, you’ll be able to see which keywords and ads lead to sales and cut out the ones that don’t.

Facebook Ads

Unlike Google, the targeting on Facebook Ads is based on their specific demographics, interests, behaviors, and affiliations.

Since people on Facebook aren’t searching specifically for your course, it’s better to first promote webinar or blog post. You can then collect their email address and promote your course to them via email campaigns.

YouTube Ads

YouTube ads operate under the banner of Google ads but their entirely video based. YouTube allows you to use a combination of keyword targeting, like Google, and behaviour targeting, like Facebook.

A good strategy is to start with an educational or entertaining video that leads to your blog or webinar page.

Banner Ads

Reach out to websites and blogs that serve your target audience and offer to pay them to add a banner ad for your course on their website. Before you commit to paying a website owner for a long period of time, ask for the opportunity to test your ad for one month to see how their website visitors respond to your ad.

You can find a designer on Fiverr to create banner ads for you. Create a unique link or coupon code for each website you place banners on so you can track how many sales come from each website.

Social Traffic

Like organic traffic, it takes time for your social media following to build up, especially if you aren’t using any paid promotion techniques. Yet, when done right, it’s a powerful channel because some of your followers will become your most vocal supporters, buying your courses and amplifying your content.

The key to social media is to spend more time adding value than promoting your online course. Post helpful content related to your topic frequently and interact with your followers. As you build a following, it’s ok to occasionally promote your course.

Facebook Page

A Facebook Page is separate from your personal profile. It’s kind of like a profile for your business. Some course creators use their personal name for their business page, others use the name of their course. It depends on your preference, though using your own name helps you build your personal brand.

Your page will allow you to attract fans so you can share content related to your topic with them. Hire a graphic designer to create a professional cover image for your page, and include a link to your course in your page description.

Instagram

Instagram is another great way to build your personal brand. Engagement on IG tends to be higher than in FB. With tools like Stories, it’s a great way to capture attention in a world of distractions.

Follow Later’s Instagram marketing guide to learn more about building your brand with it.

Pinterest

Infographics are very popular on Pinterest. Create an infographic that shares some interesting facts, statistics, or a step-by-step process related to your topic and publish it on Pinterest. Include a link in your post to help drive traffic from Pinterest to your website or online course. You can easily create attractive infographics using Piktochart.

Facebook Group

Unlike a page, where you push out posts to people, a group is where people can interact with each other. Successful course creators often create two groups, one specifically for their course students (see the chapter on student success), and another that serves as a marketing tool.

The benefits of creating a group for marketing is that you get to be at the center and build your authority. If people are getting value from your group, they’ll eventually pay to access additional value from your online course.

You can also join other Facebook groups related to your topic and participate in discussions there, showcasing your expertise.

Other Forums and Groups

Forums are essentially online communities where people who share a common interest hang out and interact with each other. Get involved in the discussions. Answer questions. Be helpful.

Pay attention to the questions people ask about your topic (this is also a great way to get ideas content ideas for your course). Don’t promote your course without first adding value to the forum.

Referral Traffic

This is probably the most powerful traffic source for course creators, especially in the short term. A referral from someone who has a large audience can give you a large boost in sales.

Imagine if you were selling that Excel course and Microsoft told all their customers they should check it out. Microsoft’s customers trust them, so that trust is instantly transferred over to you. You’re pretty much set at that point.

You may not be able to partner up with a company as large as Microsoft but that doesn’t mean you can’t partner up with a hundred smaller influencers and companies. Here are a few ways to do this:

Affiliates

Let other people promote your course for you in exchange for a percentage of each sale by creating an affiliate program for your course. Reach out to people who have audiences that would likely purchase your course and ask them if they would be interested in promoting your course as an affiliate.

CreateOnlineAcademy users can easily add people (including their students!) to their affiliate program. With a few clicks, you can add a new user to your course, designate them as an affiliate, and choose the commission they will receive from each sale they refer.

Joint Ventures

Find people who are followed by your target market (but are not your direct competitors) and offer to host a webinar for their audience. For example, a blogger who writes articles about your topic but does not have an online course would make a great joint venture partner because their audience would likely be interested in your course.

Spend the majority of your time on the webinar sharing valuable tips about your topic for free, and when you pitch your course at the end of the webinar, split the sales revenue with the joint venture partner.

Blogger Reviews

Find bloggers in your industry and ask them to review your course. A good review from a popular blog related to your topic can definitely help you to increase your course sales.

The best way to get your course reviewed by a blogger is to offer them free access to your course in exchange for a public review of your course on their blog. You can even offer to include them in your affiliate program.

Student Referrals

At some point in your course, ask your students to leave you a review or testimonial for your course. This simple request will help to ensure you receive an ongoing influx of positive reviews from your students, which you can then use in your marketing online. Happy students are also more likely to refer you directly to their friends.

If you receive any negative reviews from your students, use that feedback to improve certain parts of your course to ensure a better learning experience for all future students.

Public Speaking

Local events and Meetup groups are a great way to get in front of your target audience. Do some research to find local events related to your topic and contact the hosts of those events. Mention that you have an online course, and would love to give a presentation to their audience.

If they allow their speakers to sell their product or service at the end of their presentation, offer to split the sales revenue with them. Remember not to make your entire presentation a sales pitch. As a rule of thumb, your presentation should be 80% valuable content and 20% sales pitch.

Podcast Interviews

Find podcasts in directories like iTunes related to your topic with audiences that would likely be interested in your course. Make sure you read the description of each podcast (and even better, listen to a few of their episodes) before you contact the host. Send each podcast host a personalized email, introducing yourself and explaining why you think you would be a good fit for your show.

Remember, the purpose of doing a podcast interview is to add value to the listeners. Your interview should not be one big sales pitch for your course. At the end of your interview, tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about your courses.

Regardless of what strategy you use, you’re going to have to put in time or money or both. If you don’t already have an email list or online following, don’t expect to make a lot of revenue initially. At the same time, don’t give up. Just keep at it and in good time you’ll see success.

Conclusion

Right now there are people out there who can benefit from learning the topic you teach. There may already be other online courses on the same topic out there, but they do not have your unique perspective.

By reading this post, you’ve embarked upon a journey to teach what you know by creating and selling online course. You’ve already started, even if you haven’t actually done any of the exercises yet. The only question is, are you going to finish?