There’s a huge demand for online courses: Revenue from online learning platforms is expected to hit $75.52 billion by 2029. (Statista, 2024) This kind of demand opens a door of opportunities for entrepreneurs with expertise—you can turn your knowledge and expertise into a profitable online course.
Sounds exciting, right? With an online course, you can help students and employees worldwide navigate different subjects and topics, allowing them to master important skills for less than they’d spend on a traditional classroom education. The fun part? You make money whenever a student enrolls in your course.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to create an online course and turn your knowledge into a profitable business.
Why create an online course?
There are different reasons why you might create an online course, including:
- Impacting a global audience – People worldwide can take your course, especially if you release it in multiple languages. Whether free or paid, the course could potentially impact many people, giving them useful skills and knowledge for their careers or education.
- Building authority – Whether you’re a data science, marketing, cybersecurity, or project management expert, creating an online course allows you to establish authority in your field.
- Generating business leads – Business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives can create online courses to generate business leads. For instance, a software company can simplify its product into quick courses for potential customers. These courses can support customer retention and accelerate business growth.
- Generating passive income – Creating an online course offers an amazing opportunity to earn passive income online. With the right strategy, selling courses can be profitable for experts in different fields.
Depending on your industry, creating and selling an online course offers several benefits to support your business, career, or passion. Plus, as satisfied students share the course with others in their circles, you can build an online community as your course grows in popularity.
Step 1: Choose your course topic
Let’s dive into how to make an online class, starting with the most important step: choosing a topic.
When creating an online course, pick a topic related to your existing industry insight, experience, passion, or credibility. The course topic can be a task you perform daily (like data analysis or programming) or a passion (like fitness, personal growth, or relationships).
Ensure your selected course topic has market demand—you can use tools like Google Trends and social media to gauge market trends and identify highly “sellable” topics. Also, explore existing courses on your desired topic to gauge coverage and figure out how to offer something unique to your market.
Step 2: Plan and structure your course
Before creating the course, you need to plan it by:
- Designing a thematic course structure.
- Setting the learning objectives.
- Picking a delivery method like video, audio, or text.
To get started, identify and list the course’s main objectives and subtopics to build an outline. Ideas can be standalone modules or you can group them into themed lesson blocks, allowing for guided progression through the course.
Create a fun and engaging content structure to ensure high completion rates. It can be a step-by-step or week-by-week course structure that takes students on a clear path to completing the course. Have a plan for assignments and tests to evaluate student learning. For instance, you can have a test after each lesson module to gauge their understanding.
Step 3: Create course content
With a course plan and structure in hand, you’re ready to start creating an online course. This includes filming, recording, and editing your course content, depending on your course delivery method. For video courses, the “talking head” format offers a simple way to engage with learners: just set up your camera and start talking.
If you’re shooting software or product how-tos, use screen recording to walk learners through a process, create how-to guides, or explain a concept. Bolster them with voiceovers, which are great for presentations or when you don’t want to appear on screen. You can also offer downloadable text course material to enhance the learning experience.
Tools for recording and editing
You should master different tools to create interactive and engaging online courses. For video recording, consider tools like:
When you’re ready to edit your clips, check out:
Canva or FormSwift PDF Editor are ideal for editing course documents and presentations. Take advantage of free tools and trials when creating your first online course to save on cost. For instance, Canva offers a one-month trial for new users to access all features.
Step 4: Build your course website
Nothing is more important than a website for any online venture—it’s your digital portfolio and the “face” of your brand. Even if you’re using online course platforms like Skillshare, Udemy, Teachable, or Kajabi, having your own website helps establish a strong online presence and digital identity.
Where do you begin the website-building process? Start by registering a unique and memorable domain name. Our domain name search tool is your gateway to limitless domain options tailored for today’s course creators, including TLDs like academy, .coach, .courses, .education, .expert, .guide, .guru, .help, .institute, and .training.
But our tools don’t stop there. We offer website solutions that empower entrepreneurs to create sleek, functional sites that turn visitors into loyal students. And Name.com’s professional email solutions will help you manage correspondence seamlessly and professionally.
When you’re ready to build your online course website, Name.com is your all-in-one platform to get started and begin sharing your expertise.
Step 5: How to price your online course
The type of your course determines its price—a mini-course is low-cost, a multi-day is mid-cost, and a masterclass is high-cost. Or, try tiered pricing for teams, one-time payments for short courses, or a subscription model for course bundles. Other factors impacting the price include the niche and course topic, the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, and your industry authority.
Conduct market research to determine how competitors are pricing their courses. Don’t sell yourself short but avoid unrealistic prices. Your sales goals can also impact your pricing. For instance, if the goal is $60,000 annually, the volume of customers you need determines your price. Set the price too low and you’ll spend more on marketing to attract many buyers.
Step 6: Market and promote your course
No matter how good your course is, it’s unhelpful if students can’t discover it. Let’s talk about marketing—it’s your responsibility to get your course into the hands of potential students. You can achieve this through:
- Email marketing – Build an email list of prospective students and buyers to share updates and exclusive information. Use landing pages, opt-in forms, and ‘contact us’ forms to build your list. A student might not buy your online course immediately, but email marketing can convert them down the line. (Forbes, 2024)
- Search engine optimization (SEO) – Optimize your website and course pages to attract traffic from potential students. Conduct keyword research to identify search terms related to your course and use them in your titles, headers, meta descriptions, content, and image alt-texts.
- Social media marketing – Identify social platforms your prospective students are likely using, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, and X (formerly Twitter). With the right strategy, social media can offer a stream of new students. Create and share engaging content on these platforms to interact with diverse audiences.
Apart from these strategies, you can also run paid ads on Facebook or Google to drive traffic to your online courses. Paid advertising is a powerful strategy for targeting your ideal student. For this to work, ensure the acquisition cost per customer is lower than the price of the course.
Step 7: How to sell your online course
A critical step in learning how to build an online course is figuring out how to sell it—in other words, learning how to convince students to pay for your expert knowledge.
There are different ways to sell your course, each offering unique benefits and features. They include:
- Your website – You can create a website with e-commerce functionality to sell your courses and build an online venture. This option gives you control over your revenue stream.
- Standalone platforms – These include sites like Teachery, Thinkific, Teachable, and LearnWorlds. They provide tools for creating courses and building communities at a monthly fee of $50 to $200.
- All-in-one platforms – Some platforms like Kartra, Podia, and Kajabi support different features and tools for creating, selling, and marketing your online courses. The monthly pricing for these platforms ranges from $50 to $400.
- Course marketplaces – Online marketplaces give you access to a pool of potential students. Examples include Udemy and Skillshare. Evaluate each platform to pick one that offers your desired features, such as a forum, mobile app, and an intuitive interface.
While you can use third-party platforms and marketplaces to sell courses, having a website is vital to selling courses and building your online presence. It gives you a professional and unique identity, allowing you to develop trust and credibility for winning over students.
Step 8: Engage with your students
Besides using the above promotional strategies, consider hosting a webinar or appearing on podcasts to broaden your reach and engage with students. Seek opportunities to interact, educate, and answer questions.
Social media groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit offer an excellent starting point to engage with students. Use polling and surveys to get student feedback when implementing course improvements. Host events and provide opportunities for one-on-one interactions to share industry insights.
Common mistakes to avoid when creating an online course
Creating and selling an online course can be an exciting idea, but watch out for these pitfalls:
- Failure to validate the course topic – Before creating your course, validate the topic to ensure there’s a market need for it. You can do this by building a minimum viable product (MVP) like a free webinar or mini-course and gauging its performance.
- Overloading content – Don’t overwhelm students with excessive content, hindering their comprehension and engagement. Courses should be fun and engaging to ensure high enrollment rates.
- Ignoring trends – Failing to stay current in your field or industry can result in stale and outdated course content. Instead, you should keep up with the industry and digital changes to remain relevant and ensure your course offers value.
- Pricing too low – You might want to price your course too low to attract sales, but there’s no guarantee that this strategy will work. Plus, low prices mean you have to invest more in marketing to reach your sales goal.
Start creating and selling an online course with Name.com
Creating an online course allows you to share your expertise, establish authority, and generate passive income. Depending on your skill or passion, you can consider niches like health, music, marketing, writing, personal finance, or fitness.
Name.com provides access to best-in-class tools for setting up a successful online course. Use our domain search tool to find a domain name for your online course website and complete your setup with our custom website builder solutions., consider descriptive domains with TLD extensions like .academy, .courses, .education, .study, .training, .online, or .expert.
Register your domain name today and launch your online course business venture.
Sources:
Statista. Online Learning Platforms – Worldwide.
https://www.statista.com/outlook/emo/online-education/online-learning-platforms/worldwide
Forbes. 5 Benefits of Email Marketing in 2024. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/benefits-email-marketing/
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