I know you do and at this moment, you might be desperately trying to use your skills to make money. I can whole-heartedly agree that it sucks to be so good yet unable to make a living out of it. But I would like to change that for you..!! Now, you would be wondering how is this possible. Well, it is possible if you create your own online courses based on your skills and sell them to interested learners.
Why I am recommending you to create and sell online courses?
People love to learn new skills.Online learning and coaching business is booming and expected to achieve a $325 billion mark by 2025.It is the best way to showcase your skills.The optimal way to get recognized for your skills and mastery.You can reach students across the globe.
And, most importantly, it is a proven means to generate healthy revenue streams. Now I hope you have realized the potential of this business model, let’s move on the further exploring this guide on “how to create and sell online courses”. Since this is a two-part guide, let’s start the first part i.e.
How To Create Online Courses?
If you are starting from scratch, I would have recommended you to first find out what you are good at. However, since you have excelled in your skill or have adequate knowledge, you can move straight to the second step. But if you are new to this and looking to create online courses to sell then follow the steps mentioned below –
Step 1 – Find what you are good at.Step 2 – Research existing courses based on your specialty.Step 3 – Based on your research, draft an outline of your course.Step 4 – Start creating and adding content to your course’s outline.Step 5 – After completing, share it among your friends to seek reviews.
That’s it..!! All these steps can be completed with the help of best screen recording apps, video editing software, audio enhancing apps, etc. But once you have completed your first draft of your online course, make sure to share it among your inner circle to get some honest reviews. If the reviews are not satisfactory, don’t get disheartened. Update and optimize your online course to a satisfactory level. While if the reviews are good for your online courses then you can take them online to start selling. But again, the question arises –
Where To Sell Online Courses?
Gone are the days where you’d have to first create your own website and host your online courses over there. However, this is considered to be a safe practice but it requires a lot of time and effort. Now, there are many platforms that allow you to create and sell online courses. Not to mention that since these platforms are a global marketplace for online courses, your new courses have a good chance of reaching a good number of students quickly. So, keeping in mind their potential, let’s explore more about these platforms that will allow you to sell your online courses…
1. Teachable – Best Online Course Platform
Teachable was founded in 2014 and since then, it has become the leading, all-in-one solution to create and sell online courses. Talking about the potential and exposure of Teachable, you’d be surprised to know that it has 83K+ online tutors just like you, with 257K+ online courses and teaching to 23M+ students. Also, Teachable is very transparent by letting us know that it has helped its tutors by earning over $555 million.
What Teachable Will Offer You As Online Instructor?
The ability to create and sell online courses in multiple formats like video, audio, text, images, etc.It also offers you the option to create your own website/web pages on Teachable itself with the help of drag & drop builder. Teachable also offers a good range of marketing tools like coupons, affiliate programs, customizable sales pages, etc. to grow your business.
How Much Teachable Will Charge You?
There are 4 pricing plans offered by Teachable and in all the plans, you get to create unlimited courses with unlimited videos, integrated payment processor, student management and other stuff.
Free – Create unlimited courses for 10 students only. If your courses are paid while you are in the free plan, Teachable will charge you $1 + 10% of the course’s fee on every purchase.Basic – $29 per month for creating unlimited courses for unlimited students. Teachable will charge you 5% of your course price on every successful purchase.Professional – $79 per month for unlimited courses for unlimited students and no transaction fee.Business – $399 per month for unlimited everything, no transaction fees, and advanced marketing tools.
2. Thinkific – Online Platform for Courses
Having started as a platform to create and sell online courses just 11 years ago, Thinkific is another great option for you to consider. Thinkific is the home for 40,000 online course creators. These creators have managed to sell over 30 million courses and earned over $200 million in profits.
What Thinkific Will Offer You As Online Instructor?
A drag & drop course builder to effortlessly curate your course’s curriculum. A website builder is also available.Thinkific believes in multimedia-rich content. Hence you are free to include video, text, audio, quiz, etc. in your courses.As a course creator, you are liable to get paid immediately. Moreover, there are no transaction fees charged by Thinkific.
How Much Thinkific Will Charge You?
There are only 3 pricing plans or tiers offered by Thinkific. And, each of these plans offers your course & website builder, upsell offers, instant payouts, secured cloud hosting, etc.
Free – The free plan allows you to create and sell only 3 courses to unlimited students.Basic – You’d have to pay $49 per month for selling unlimited courses. Other features like coupons, drip content, email integrations are also included.Pro – $99 per month for unlimited courses, unlimited students and advanced features like the ability to create membership or subscription of your courses.
There’s a “Thinkific Plus” plan too which caters to enterprise-level needs. To get the pricing quote, get in touch with its sales team.
3. Kajabi – Sell Your Online Courses
Kajabi is literally the best platform to sell online courses. In addition to creating and selling online courses, Kajabi has been proved to be the all-in-one platform as it offers all the marketing tools within itself. Adding more to this, as a course creator or online instructor, you will be profitable with Kajabi as it does not charge any transaction fees.
What Kajabi Will Offer You As Online Instructor?
It replaces CMSs like WordPress, Wix, etc. with its own website builder and hosting service. Moreover, you can also create different sales pages and landing pages.Kajabi has a native email marketing module. So you don’t have to integrate and pay for other 3rd party solutions like Mailchimp, AWeber, etc. There’s also a “Pipeline” feature that will help you create marketing funnels.Unlike other online course selling platforms, Kajabi will enable you to create courses and sell them on different models. This includes the one-time sale or membership/subscription-based course module.
How Much Kajabi Will Charge You?
With so many awesome features on the line, it is obvious that Kajabi’s pricing will be slightly expensive. Having said that, if you generate a lot of sales for your courses, the pricing would seem cheaper.
Basic – $119/month for 3 products/courses with unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, 10,000 contacts, etc.Growth – $159/month for 15 products/courses with unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, the affiliate program for your course, and more.Pro – $319/month for 100 products/courses with unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, and other resources.
4. LearnWorlds – Create Online Courses to Sell
LearnWorlds is yet another cheaper platform that allows you to create and sell online courses. It works on the ideology of creating an online school (a website) and adding courses in it. This platform was founded in 2014. And, since its inauguration, it has clawed its way up to the top spots by providing a simple way to sell your online courses.
What LearnWorlds Will Offer You As Online Instructor?
In addition to helping you create online courses, LearnWorlds will also help you market and sell them. This includes offering courses as free, coupons, affiliate promotions, etc.LearnWorlds will help you globalize your course by allowing you to collect payments from across the globe. As of now, it supports 5 payment gateways.Your students will thank you for auto-generated transcripts of your course videos. Moreover, you can add elements on video like link, pointers, etc. to make it more interactive.
How Much LearnWorlds Will Charge You?
LearnWorld has very affordable pricing plans that come with a 30 days satisfaction guarantee.
Starter – Pay $24/month to sell unlimited paid courses with 3 landing pages, coupons, 4 payment gateway integrations, etc. You’d be also charged $5 per course sale.Pro Trainer – $79/month to sell unlimited paid courses with unlimited landing pages. You also get a full-fledged website builder and other features. Also, you are exempted from any transaction fees.Learning Center – $249/month for selling unlimited courses and all the important features.
Apart from these, if you have high volume requirements then LearnWorlds would like you to get in touch with their sales team.
5. Graphy – SaaS Platform for Launching your Own Online Courses
Founded in 2020, Graphy is one of the most trusted and recommended online course platforms that not only caters to the basic requirements of a knowledge-based business but also provides additional tools and functionalities to market your course. In simple terms, Graphy makes everything you need to become a successful online educator, available in one place. Right from academics & training to art & skill development, they have helped thousands of creators and educators scale manifolds. Additionally, the excellent support provided by the team through chat, calls & their relationship managers makes every cent worth the investment.
What Graphy Will Offer You As Online Instructor?
An easy-to-use multimedia course-builder (live classes, video, audio, images, PDFs and even SCORM packages) to make your course content-rich and full of value.Highly customizable and white-labeled websites & mobile applications to best launch and market your online courses.Integrated payment gateways for accepting payments worldwide and a variety of built-in Sales & Marketing tools for generating maximum business.
How Much Graphy Will Charge You?
Taking into account the plethora of features and services they provide, Graphy ensures affordability in all of their plans.
Free – Their free plan lets you create and sell unlimited courses for up to 200 learners on a website that can be designed as per your needs. You can use all their core features free of cost and arrive at a decision to pick one of the paid plans after a certain time period.Basic – $54/ month for a custom domain, unlimited courses, videos & storage along with basic integrations that allow you to seamlessly host your courses for 10,000 active learners.Pro – $109/ month to be able to list unlimited courses for 20,000 active learners on a white-labeled website through 2 admin accounts.Business – $182/ month for launching unlimited courses through 6 admin accounts on a white-labeled website & Android app for up to 50,000 learners. Advanced – $320/ month for a total of 15 admin accounts, white-labeled Android & iOS apps along with basic and advanced integrations to provide up to 1,00,000 students a great learning experience.
Apart from these, you can also go for the Enterprise Plan and get a custom package designed as per your business requirements. Here is the special discount coupon for MyWPLife readers & subscribersUse Coupon Code MyWPLifeM2 to get an Extra 20% Off on Yearly Plans
6. Podia – Platform to Create & Sell Courses
If you are looking for a simple platform to create and sell your online courses or digital products then pick Podia. As I said, it is simple but it is also one of the most influential platforms to sell your online courses. Podia contains so much value that it offers the functionalities and features of 5 different platforms.
What Podia Will Offer You As Online Instructor?
It liberates you by allowing you to sell online courses as one-time sales or even memberships. To top this off, Podia also allows you to sell your digital downloads i.e. PDFs, eBooks, etc.A unique “Pre Launch” products feature that will allow you to broadcast your upcoming courses on your site. And, this would also allow you to collect email addresses of interested students.Podia also allows you to cater to students across the globe. This is possible through the availability of 11 foreign languages and 22 currencies.
How Much Podia Will Charge You?
Since Podia has a simple approach to selling online courses, the pricing depicts the same too. It only offers a couple of pricing plans with 14 days trial period.
Mover – $39/month for selling unlimited online courses with unlimited features and no transaction fees.Shaker – $79/month for unlimited everything and advanced features like affiliate marketing, membership module, etc.
7. Udemy – Online Course Platform
No list of best online platforms for selling courses would be complete without Udemy. Since it is the largest marketplace of diverse online courses, it becomes easy for you to reach a substantial number of students. Udemy offers great teaching and profit earning opportunities to online instructors like you. As of now, it has over 30 million students across 190+ countries, learning from 42k+ tutors.
What Udemy Will Offer You As Online Instructor?
Global exposure to you and your online courses in the most simplistic manner.It is regarded as the best platform for selling video-only courses.Udemy also allows you to make your video courses much interactive by allowing you to create a quiz, assignments, etc. Moreover, Udemy also backs you up by providing you with messaging tools, Q&As, and course announcements, etc.
How Much Udemy Will Charge You?
Udemy doesn’t show any information about their charges or fees for becoming an online instructor. However, I have consulted with a few tutors on Udemy about this and found out –
Udemy charges 50% of the course sale if it is through organic channels.Or a 75% profit share if the sale is generated through Udemy’s paid acquisition channels.
8. LearnDash – Sell Your Online Courses
If you already have a WordPress site and are looking to convert it into a full-fledged online school then LearnDash will help you achieve that in no time. LearnDash is a WordPress plugin that works with every WordPress theme. And, with some basic settings, LearnDash will enable you to create and sell your online courses. Because of this simplicity, many top companies use this plugin on their websites.
What LearnDash Will Offer You As Online Instructor?
Ability to create and sell online products with different pricing models. Along with this, LearnDash also adds a “Drip Feed Content” feature that delivers course content based on your preset schedule.To motivate your students, LearnDash provides you the power of issuing certificates or merit points.It integrates with top payment gateways easily. Moreover, if you are using the subscription model for your online course, LearnDash will automatically inform your students about the upcoming payment schedule.
How Much LearnDash Will Charge You?
LearnDash does not restrict you on features. You get all the features and unlimited access in every plan. But since it is a WordPress plugin, the pricing is based on the site’s licenses.
Basic – $159 for a single-site license that renews annually.Plus Package – $189 for a 10 sites license that renews annually.Pro Package – $329 for a 25 sites license that renews annually.
9. WizIQ – Online Platform for Courses
WizIQ is yet another LMS or Learning Management System available to you. So if you don’t want to rely on online course marketplaces, WizIQ could be a safe option. Unlike LearnDash who works only with WordPress, WizIQ is built to work perfectly with Drupal, eFront, Joomla, Moodle and also WordPress.
What WizIQ Will Offer You As Online Instructor?
WizIQ is backed up by its unique feature i.e. virtual classroom that creates live and interactive online classes.A sleek and smooth mobile app so your online course could be accessed by students from anywhere.It also offers you all the tools like customizable logo, banner, URL, etc. to build a reputable brand.
How Much WizIQ Will Charge You?
Unlike other online platforms that allow you to create and sell online courses, WizIQ does not reveal its pricing plans. However, it tells us that the pricing starts at $25/month.
What’s The Next Step?
Now that you are enlightened about how to create and sell online courses, it’s time for you to act. And, by act I mean start creating your online course and decide where to sell online courses. Rest assured, all the platforms listed above are efficient and used by many online tutors across the world. They won’t disappoint you. Lastly, if you want my personal help or one-on-one suggestion, feel free to drop your query in the comments. You may also like:
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