Creating and selling online courses: what you need to know
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Why offer an online course?
You naturally want to help people, but you can’t help everyone! There’s only so much of you to go around – and not everyone can pay your fees.
Online courses allow you to:
- offer an affordable option to clients with smaller budgets
- support clients who prefer to work independently
- create an additional stream of income
- continue supporting clients if the physical demands of in-person organizing become difficult
You can also offer a free course as an incentive to sign up for your mailing list.
Before you create a course
I’m not going to lie to you – developing an online course is a lot more work than creating digital products like e-books or standalone recordings. You’ll definitely need to apply your organizing skills to this project, and unless you have a background in education, you should take time to learn more about it and make sure it’s right for you before you dive in with both feet.
Here are just a few of the things you’ll need to figure out before you even decide if it’s right for you:
- What do you know that could be delivered as an online course? Is there a demand for training on that topic?
- How much time will it take you to develop the course material? Do you have that much time?
- Can you afford to invest in professional help to get everything up and running?
- What type of platform would best fit your budget, required features, and level of technical ability?
- How much will you need to charge to make a profit? Is this in line with comparable courses?
Even if you already have a business plan, I recommend creating a separate plan for your courses. Although you’ll be building on your existing business, it’s quite possible that your courses will have a different target market and/or competition, and it may require different marketing strategies.
To be profitable, your income from course registrations needs to exceed your expenses, which may include:
- Domain registration and website hosting (unless you’re building the course on your existing website)
- Fees for a hosted course solution or premium WordPress plugins
- Outsourcing fees to qualified contractors to help with various aspects of the project
Nate Johnson of Fly Plugins covers this topic in detail in his post, How Much Time and Money Does It Cost to Create an Online Course?
Choose a topic for your first course
You need to choose a subject where you have expertise and for which there is a demand.
To get your course on the market quickly, I suggest you look at material you’ve already created.
- Have you written blog posts, articles, or e-books that could be developed into a course?
- Have you delivered teleclasses, presentations, seminars, or workshops that could be repurposed as an online course?
If you’re combining content from multiple sources, ChatGPT or another AI assistant can help you get it into a more usable format much more quickly than doing it all manually.
If you don’t have anything to repurpose and you’re not up to creating something from scratch, look into PLR (Private Label Rights) content, which is pre-written material you purchase the right to use. Content Sparks offers a number of packages that might be a good starting point for courses related to productivity, organization, or other topics. There are many other PLR sellers out there, but not all of them offer quality products. In my experience, the lower the price, the more time you’ll need to spend rewriting the content.
Choose your online course platform
There are many options to choose from, so make sure you don’t rush through this decision.
Important factors to consider include:
- Upfront costs
- Ongoing costs
- Ease of use for yourself and your students
- The level of support available from the developer, other users, and/or experts
All-in-one Course Platforms
There are many standalone platforms designed to host and sell online courses, including Kajabi, Kartra, Teachable and Thinkific. Compare current pricing, features, integrations and support carefully, and take advantage of a free trial or demo when one is available.
eLearning Plugins for WordPress
If you already have a WordPress site, you can add course functionality with an LMS (Learning Management System) plugin. Options include LearnDash, LifterLMS, Sensei, and WP Courseware.
I’ve tested LearnDash and WP Courseware and found them powerful and intuitive, but there are a lot of moving pieces so it’s definitely not a matter of install your plugin and you’re all set. Both of these are highly rated and widely used, so there are lots of people out there to help, whether you need to ask a question, purchase addons to perform specific functions, or hire expert help.
To learn more about these and other eLearning plugins for WordPress, read Conquering Course Creation: Top WordPress LMS Plugins Compared.
The plugin that’s best for you will depend on what you need it to do, beyond simply restricting content. Popular features include:
- integration with WooCommerce or another payment system
- integration with email services like Mailchimp or Kit
- time limits on how long they have to access the content
- recurring payments for ongoing subscriptions
- interaction between members or students
Simpler Approaches
If all this sounds like more than you want or need at this point, rest assured that you can offer courses without investing in an e-learning website.
You deliver a simple course through an email marketing platform such as Mailchimp or Kit. For example, you could use an automated email sequence to deliver lessons, with links to videos, worksheets or other resources.
“For those just starting to sell their own organizing resources, don’t let the technical aspects, such as setting up an online cart or automating payments, hold you back. You can begin with a straightforward, manual process and introduce automation once your sales volume justifies it. What matters most is getting your expertise out into the world and helping people get organized!
Julie Stobbe, Mind over Clutter”
When sales on her course site didn’t justify the ongoing costs of maintaining it, Julie decided to transform the material into four structured packages, complete with worksheets and targeted information. When a client decides on a package, they simply email her, and she sends an invoice along with their selected materials. This approach keeps the process personal while ensuring that every customer feels supported.
Market your course
Once you’ve developed your course material and set it up on the platform you’ve chosen, you still need to market it!
“Build it and they will come” doesn’t work for regular websites, and it definitely doesn’t work for online courses. If you already have a decent mailing list and social media following, it will help, but you have to actively promote your courses. A single blog post announcing that you’re now offering a course isn’t likely to garner much attention.
There’s a wealth of marketing advice here on Your Organizing Business, but How To Build An Audience And Move Beyond Client Work includes marketing strategies that will be especially helpful when promoting your new online course.
Resources
- A Step by Step Guide to Creating Your First Online Course – a blog post including helpful advice, including eight steps to marketing your new online course
- 5-Day Online Course Challenge – a free program that includes daily emails, videos, and checklists, access to a private community, and even a brandable, done-for-you mini-course on time management that you can use to set up your first course
There are lots of other programs designed to teach you how to create online courses, ranging from free to hundreds of dollars.
One of my clients completed Jeanine Blackwell’s Create 6-Figure Courses® Virtual Bootcamp and reported that the material was excellent but the support was rather limited.
As with any investment, do your due diligence and speak with your colleagues or search for online ratings and reviews before you open up your wallet.
I hope this gives you a better idea of what’s involved in creating and selling an online course, and helps you decide whether it’s something you want to pursue.
Acknowledgements
The following individuals helped me cover this topic more thoroughly than I could have done without their input.
- Michelle Slywka
- Sarah Buckwalter
- Sharon Graham
- Shellie Deloyer
- Tonya Holowitski
- YubRaj Paudyal
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
26 Comments
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This seems like a major undertaking. I know many organizers have had success with it, but I don’t think I’m ready to dive into this right now. I can see that there is a lot involved, and it makes sense to be thorough and do it right. Thanks for sharing, Janet!
It definitely is a major undertaking. It combines everything you need to do to create a website with everything you’d do to prepare a workshop, and then some!
It’s like you know what I’ve been up to!
I working on a course/product to sell. This is all great information that I’ll read over again.
I’ll be contacting you soon for some help.
Didn’t you see me peeking over your shoulder? 😉
That’s very exciting – I look forward to learning more.
Another option that is now available is to run a course through Facebook. As long as you are happy to load your assets on FB this is a super easy way to offer a course. Once your students have paid for the course you can give them entry to a private group specific to the course and use the units function to drip content or load up according to your program. I have been using the Unit feature/function for organizing a 3 different live features that I have in my group, plus have used as a student in another group. It is super easy, intuitive and free. Plus, being able to record live and save is pretty good flexibility.
I personally would prefer to use plugins where I can host the content on my own website. I have tried to use Teachables and held an account there for 3 yrs before giving up. I have used Zippy courses as a student of another course. It was certainly easy to navigate as a student. Janet is it available as a WP plugin?
Thanks for sharing those options, Carolyn. I’ve seen references to courses in Facebook and never paid much attention to them, but have never heard of Zippy courses. It looks pretty amazing!
I think you’ve been peeking over my shoulder too.
Years ago I did a lot of teaching in the city at different institutions, like The New School. They were four or six part workshop programs and they always sold out.
After Labor Day I will be teaching a four part course on time management and organization through a local library. I designed an interactive workshop via Zoom. The library is doing all the marketing. They’re also hosting the program so they’re taking care of all the technical issues. It’s an online learning program without worrying about all those details!.
I’m excited! I’ve had so much fun creating content and graphics. I’ll keep you posted!
Sounds like a pretty sweet deal – the library does all the heavy lifting and you get to do what you do best! I look forward to hearing more about it.
Janet, thank you for the mention of my training program in your blog post. You did all the heavy lifting to get my training program set up on our new website. It has been effortless to maintain since. My students find it easy to register for the course and navigate the online videos and materials. Thank you!
I’m so glad it has worked out so well for you and your students. I’d had my eye on WP eMember for a long time before creating your course site, and had a feeling it was going to be great.
Thank you for this very informative post!
I wanted to do this for my admin services business some years ago. I even did the trial on Teachable. It is a big undertaking and I wasn’t sure if it was something I would have time to continue down the road. If it is something you want to do, there are a few more things you need to take into account. 1. Some states in the US have sales tax on these type of digital sales. So be sure to check your country/states for their sales tax laws. 2. Be sure you want to make the commitment. It’s not a one online course and you are done. You will need to continue creating courses to make it profitable.
Great points, Sabrina – thank you! In some cases, you need to charge tax based on where the purchaser is, so your system needs to have that capability.
As always, you’ve provided so many things to consider and a wealth of information. I’m impressed with people that have figured out all of the many elements for rolling out, marketing, and giving an online course. There are so many ways to do it. I love the systems that make it seamless and straightforward. I’m not ready to venture in that direction yet, but I may in the future. Currently, it’s still floating around my head as a potential idea.
My daughter just launched a new initiative called The Level Up Project. I think you saw the post I shared about it. She’s going through a huge learning curve. There are so many considerations. When we spoke about it yesterday, it seems like giving the course is the easy part. Have seamless registration, creating the right messaging, marketing, getting the reports you need to track enrollment, expenses, income, etc… are the trickier parts.
You’re right – giving the course is the easy part! Just like “organizing” is the easy part of running an organizing business. Neither is for the faint of heart. 😀
Thank you for starting the conversation about this topic, Janet. You’re absolutely right, this type of thing is a business in itself and requires so much time and attention to get right. When I relaunched my business back in March I started developing some course content. I began researching the options for hosting, marketing, selling, etc. and it got overwhelming sifting through the endless options. I had to table the project to focus on my existing business… BUT you provide a great framework and recommendations that will be great when I’m ready to get back to creating my course. Definitely saving this one.
I was really afraid that I’d just scratched the surface in a lot of areas without providing any solid information, so I’m so glad you found it helpful. Thanks for your input and your feedback!
What an amazing depth of research you’ve done, Janet, to help clarify all of the steps in this process. It’s easy to think, “Oh, I have all this material! I’ll created an online course!” — which is the 2020 equivalent of the 1930’s movies, “Let’s put on a show!” There’s so much “behind the curtain” work, from domain registration to platforms and marketing, and you’ve made the opaque so much more transparent. Great job!
Is that a nice way of saying I’ve pointed out that creating an online course is too much work? 😉
I know that’s not really what you meant, but even if I did that, it would probably save a lot of people a lot of time and energy!
A very timely read for me as I am working on my first course right now. I am planning to use Groove Funnels for my course. (it was just released) HOPEfully it will be out by October.
That’s a new one to me, Lisa. I’d love it if you came back here with your thoughts (or even a guest post) about Groove Funnels once you’ve worked with it.
Great article Janet. So much detailed information gathered on the subject of creating an online course.
Thank you!
You’re welcome, Janice! After I started gathering information, I realized how many options there were and that I couldn’t possibly cover them all thoroughly, so I’m really glad it was helpful even though it was mainly an overview of what’s out there.
Thanks so much for a brilliant article. Do you have any advice about converting a client’s book into an online course, especially with regards to putting a contract in?
I don’t have a specific contract for that purpose, but you may find one or more of these resources helpful:
Good luck with your project!
I signed up for Jeannine Blackwell’s course and was seriously disappointed. Your friend mentioned that support was limited? It was non-existent. I signed up for the course ($1500) because I felt connected to Jeanine in her sales videos, who would have thought that that was the last I would see of her. There are no virtual retreat as promised and what they tried to pass as a “summit” was a joke. Just posted questions from the course on a Facebook page. She has a team that handles everything and the big “community” on the FB page is crickets, the only people that weigh in on anything is her team…and it’s brief. Everything is an upsell opportunity for them. If anyone is considering this course I would HIGHLY discourage you. You’d be better off taking the $199 series on course creation through Thinkific. Stay away.
Hi Dana, I am on the fence about taking Janine Blackwell’s course. Did you receive anything helpful for the $1500? I’m basically starting from scratch so would need quite a bit of guidance. Thanks