Your online course is now ready, available to the public, and your first students have started showing up. Great!
Now, how to maintain this growth? Is it possible to continue to profit indefinitely with the same material?
To answer these questions, let’s understand a little more about the online courses market and how to refine your strategy so you can sell even more.
An analysis of the eLearning market
As predicted in previous reviews, the eLearning market it has grown considerably in recent years and continues to expand in many countries around the world.
For example, recently Forbes magazine presented data showing that the US online courses market will hit the incredible $ 325 billion mark by 2025.
A Global Market Insights survey, which began in 2017 and was updated in February this year (2019) brings recent data and predictions about the worldwide eLearning market proving its uninterrupted growth.
– Simple Guide for Creating and Selling Online Courses
While this data encourages the creation of online courses, it also builds a more challenging scenario that has the following characteristics:
- With increased supply, the market is much more competitive.
- Consumer attention is fragmented. Since there are so many online course options available today, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make potential buyers aware of your specific course.
- Basic economic principles dictate that as supply increases, prices fall, which decreases your profit potential.
How to act in this scenario
We definitely don’t want to discourage anyone from creating online courses, but the crux of any good business strategy is understanding and correctly diagnosing your situation, and the above facts are critical to anyone who hopes to succeed in selling.
– 10 profitable niches for online courses
The main factor is that we reach a point where online courses sellers need to act as successful entrepreneurs like in any other mature market.
Yes, it is still possible to make a lot of profit – as it is in most companies – but for that you will have to work hard, create a high quality offer, provide excellent customer service and above all differentiate yourself from the competition. In addition, you need to:
- Invest heavily in building an audience that values what you do. This means not only collecting email addresses (as important as that is), but constantly interacting with your followers, listening to what they want and need, and incorporating it into the product you offer.
- Recognize that the course alone is not enough to draw people to you. You need to produce a variety of free, high-quality content (Inbound Marketing) that clearly demonstrates the value you have to offer while building your brand.
- Do not underestimate what is unique about your course: you (or your company / organization) as the course source.
- Strive to create learning experiences that truly deliver great results for your students. There is no better way to generate positive (and free!) word of mouth and make sure your customers come back to buy more.
– Content marketing to sell online courses
Finally, for most entrepreneurs, online courses are probably only part of a portfolio of offerings.
You are much more likely to profit more if your portfolio of products/services offered delivers a diverse and complete consumer solution.
So if you haven’t already, diversify your offer! Put at least a few “real-time” components to complement your courses, such as training sessions and live webinars.
– 5 Tips for Selling Courses Using Webinar
Let’s look at some more ideas on how to profit from your online courses below.
Strategies to Profit More From Online Courses
There are several business methods and strategies that can help you attract new leads, keep your existing customers engaged, and make your business more profitable.
Start by thinking about what you can offer your customer who generates a differentiator. Adding value to your product is adding value to your pocket.
First and foremost, it is important to understand that your clients are different people and may have a variety of reasons to purchase your course.
You need to consider that the different characteristics and needs of your target audience are good reasons why you can and should have varying prices and options. For example:
- Differentiated Income: While for many people two hundred dollars may be what they spend in a restaurant in one night, for others it may be critical to pay the bills of the month. This is not to say that the second profile would not be willing to pay the value of your course if they felt that they would benefit greatly from the results.
- Business: Many companies buy online courses to provide training for their employees. When the material is intended for a business, it is unlikely that the buyer will be very concerned about price compared to the benefits it can bring to the organization.
- Goal: Your course may be extra knowledge that someone will learn on a weekend by hobby, or it may be an extra item in the curriculum of some professional who will charge more for his services because of this specialization he is acquiring.
The reason each person will buy your course can be quite varied, so why set only one price?
We consider three prices options the ideal. By having two prices available, the customer usually chooses the lowest. But by including an intermediate value, it becomes much more attractive. But here comes the question: what can I offer to justify the difference between prices?
Here are some options:
Personalized consulting
Distance learning does not necessarily mean learning on your own. To make your classes more stimulating and give students confidence, you can use features such as chats and hangouts to discuss content and answer questions.
Many students don’t mind paying a little more for extra help. Offer one hour of online consulting daily or weekly.
Keep in mind that the more time you are willing to devote to your students, the more you may charge.
Subscription
For those who constantly update their material, this is a great way to earn more money. You can offer access to all your content for a month, a year, and even for unlimited time.
This is the case with selling subscriptions, rather than the entire course at a single price. A profitable and smart method of keeping customers always active.
If you are willing to offer updates and new courses or modules for your course, don’t think twice!
– Benefits of Recurring Payment for Online Courses
Extra downloadable resources
Any background material that can help your student achieve their goals faster or aid their learning can be sold as an extra.
Offer the basic course for a price, the course plus a handout of related projects for an extra price, and so on.
As we pointed out earlier, methods that deliver better results for your customer are the best way to increase your revenue.
Free course
We know that giving something away for free escapes the idea of making more money, but in this case we are talking about something that serves as a snack, a bait to entice the consumer.
It can be an online mini course or even a first module of your course. To improve, make the customer register his email to access it, this increases your potential lead base.
– Step by Step to Creating an Online Mini Course
Free courses are a great way to get customer attention and show your audience the quality of your work.
– Free online courses as a strategy to attract students
Selling courses online with Coursify.me
These are just a few suggestions that can help you design a new business strategy.
The important thing to remember is that the course is yours and you know its potential better than anyone else, so use your creativity to come up with new ideas about what it can offer to increase the interest of your audience and generate sales strategies that reflect positively on your business and your pocket.
Getting started is not easy for anyone, but you should make every effort to stay positive in good and hard times while solidifying your sales techniques and refining the process.
Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to create, sell and promote courses on the internet without having to invest to start their own business.
Serving businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System.
– Whats is a Learning Management System
That means you do not even need to invest in building your own website. The Coursify.me is ready for you to enter your course and create a completely customized sales page for your business.
We have three choices of plans for you to decide which best suits your needs, and the good news is that the Beginner Plan is free!
Visit our website, test the platform and start selling online courses right now.