Are you ready to take your expertise and knowledge to the next level by selling online training courses?
With the increasing demand for flexible, convenient learning options, now is the perfect time to get started. Online training courses can serve as an additional source of income or as the main product for your online business.
But how do you get started? In this complete guide, we will explore how you can create and sell your own online training courses, choose the right platform, and stand out in the competitive 2023 online course space.
Whether you’re a business coach, herbalist, or corporate trainer, this guide has everything you need to start selling online training courses and sharing your knowledge with the world.
What is Online Training?
Online training courses are a popular and effective way to teach students specific skills or knowledge through a structured, step-by-step process. They can be used for anything from personal development, to career advancement, to traditional education, and come in a variety of formats, from webinars, podcasts, and online tutorials to e-learning materials that can be accessed via an online learning management system (LMS).
One of the main advantages of online training is the flexibility and convenience it offers. Unlike in-person training, which is typically limited to a specific schedule and geographic location, online courses can be accessed anytime, anywhere, making them a good option for busy professionals or students with conflicting schedules. Online courses can also be “evergreen,” meaning they are always available for enrollment rather than being limited to specific start and end dates.
Online training courses are often offered at different price points, frequently based on the number of sessions and duration of each session. Students can typically purchase individual sessions or sign up for a monthly subscription, which grants access to all the sessions in a particular course or all the courses on the site. With the variety of options available, there is something for every student and budget.
Why Sell Online Courses in 2023?
The online education market is expected to reach $350 billion by 2025, according to Research and Markets. If you have expertise in a subject, such as yoga, marketing, wellness, therapy, or business, or almost any other subject besides, you can sell courses online and turn your know-how into a profitable business.
Selling courses online is a great way to share your knowledge and convert website visitors into new customers. If you have valuable content that people are willing to pay for, you can generate revenue from your content without having to spend time and money on creating and marketing it manually.
In the current climate, with more people working remotely, selling online courses can also provide you with a location-independent income stream. As Forbes contributor William Arruda pointed out in 2022, “the comfort that we’ve experienced in working with our remote colleagues has translated into comfort in working with a coach, regardless of where they’re located. That makes it easier to partner with the ideal coach.”
Types of Training Courses You Can Sell (With Examples)
There are an almost infinite number of options when it comes to selling online training courses. The key to creating a profitable online course is to choose a topic that you can provide the most value in, rather than simply focusing on what statistically sells the most. Here are a few examples to consider:
- Fitness training: Create fitness programs that guide students through 3, 6, and 12-month programs and beyond. You can personally train them through video sessions or provide them with training plans to follow. For example, Neurotype Training invites visitors to the website with free content and then offers 1-on-1 coaching for a fee.
- Health and wellness training: If you’re an expert in areas such as meditation, nutrition, or other types of wellness-related topics, you can create your own website to teach about these topics online. For instance, Passive Brain Fitness offers audio training material and other resources for people looking to connect with their minds and spirit.
- Religious coaching: If you’re passionate about your spirituality and already lead a community, you could consider gathering an online community as well. Engage with your congregation to uncover common pain points or topics that people struggle with, then create a program around it. For example, Sojo Academy caters to women who struggle with their daily Bible study.
- Financial coaching: Whether you’re teaching people how to do Forex trading or how to have a healthy mindset when it comes to money, you can train your community with online courses and teaching material. Money Mindset Coaching, for example, focuses on doing just that with workshops, coaching, and free resources to attract leads.
In addition to these examples, you could also consider selling training courses to businesses and employees. The options are truly endless, so take the time to think about what you’re passionate about and how you can provide value to your students.
How to Sell an Online Training Course
As we’ve seen, selling an online training course can be a great way for entrepreneurs to share their expertise with a wider audience and generate additional income. However, it’s important to follow a few key steps to ensure that your course is successful.
In this section, we’ll walk you through the process of creating and selling an online training course from start to finish. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or new to the game, these steps will help you create a course that your students will love.
Choosing an Online Course Platform
There are many platforms to choose from to sell training courses online. Many coaches looking to sell their first online course will turn to solutions like Udemy, Thinkific, or Teachable, which provide a hosted platform for course content without high up-front costs.
While these platforms have the advantage of placing your course content in front of a large audience, they have several limitations, particularly when it comes to flexibility. If you choose to host your course content on a third-party platform, you give up control over exactly how the content is presented. Additionally, while these platforms generally make it easy to build and sell courses and landing pages for your course content, they tend to fall short when it comes to additional functionality that is crucial for online course sales, such as marketing tools and community management.
Hosting your course content on your own website is the best way to ensure total control over how your courses and sales pages are presented, and the most effective way to do this is using the combination of WordPress and the AccessAlly plugin. AccessAlly is an all-in-one platform for creating beautiful membership sites, selling downloadable resources like ebooks and guides, and offering coaching programs. This avoids the need for you to combine multiple tools and plugins in order to create a cohesive system for building and selling your online courses. AccessAlly comes packed with powerful features such as:
- A beautiful order form builder that lets users sign up for your offerings, like courses and memberships, and can be customized to match your brand’s design and colors.
- A personal dashboard where users can track their progress through each session of their course (if applicable).
- Automation tools that help send personalized emails based on user behavior, such as whether they’re signed up for a membership plan or have purchased a course previously. This makes customer engagement easy!
- The ability to create upsells and cross-sells. You can offer additional digital products like ebooks related to the main topic covered in the course, which can help increase conversions and sales.
- Gamification tools such as quizzes and points, that can help to boost engagement and course completion rates.
- Extensive support for marketing tools, including built-in support for affiliate program creation and email marketing.
AccessAlly is a powerful tool that can help you create and sell online courses with ease. With its range of features and customizable options, it’s the perfect solution for beginners and experts alike. All of the examples of training we cited in the previous section can be built with AccessAlly. Here’s what successful health and wellness coach, Rachel Feldman, who used AccessAlly to expand her coaching offering from one course to 180 programs, has to say about the platform:
“AccessAlly is the best platform ever – nothing else is as flexible and complete as AccessAlly.”
Scripting and Recording a Course
Once you’ve chosen a platform and have a clear idea of how you want to sell your course, it’s time to start the process of creating your first one. The first step is to write out your course from start to finish, keeping each module to 5-8 minutes long. This will help you stay focused and ensure that your course is easy to follow for your students.
As you write your course, it’s also a good idea to prepare material that students can download and use to follow along and practice the skills you’re teaching. This could include worksheets, exercises, or other resources that will help reinforce what they’re learning.
To record your course, you’ll need to set up an at-home studio. A solid background and some lighting are all you need to create a professional-looking set-up. There are many affordable options on Amazon that can help you achieve this. To record your course, you can use your smartphone or camera, and be sure to invest in a good microphone to ensure that your voice comes through clearly. There are a range of options available, from affordable Bluetooth microphones to more elaborate plug-in ones. The key is to choose a microphone that will produce clear, high-quality audio.
Implementing Gamification and Rewards
As you plan your course, consider incorporating gamification and rewards to engage your students along the way. AccessAlly offers support for this, so you can create a flow of a student’s journey and add game design elements to keep them engaged. Here’s how:
- Include multimedia content such as videos, audio, images, and documents to keep things interesting.
- Create rewards and competition to motivate your students to keep learning.
- Reward milestones to recognize progress and give students a sense of accomplishment.
- Set up leaderboards to create a sense of competition and encourage students to work harder.
- Hide Easter eggs for detail-oriented students to find, adding an element of fun and discovery.
- Give points for performance and allow students to redeem prizes in exchange for them. This gives them an incentive to do their best and encourages them to keep learning.
Gamification and rewards can be a great way to keep your students engaged and motivated to learn! By adding game design elements to your course with AccessAlly, you can create a more enjoyable and interactive learning experience for your students.
Planning for Analytics
As you prepare to sell your online course, it’s important to think about how you’ll measure its success. Even if your course is still an imaginary product, you can start planning for how you’ll track key metrics like revenue, members, and abandoned carts. By doing this, you’ll be better equipped to gauge the performance of your course and make any necessary adjustments.
One way to track these metrics is by using a dashboard. AccessAlly, for example, has a built-in dashboard that allows you to see all of this information in one place. This makes it easy to keep track of how your course is doing and make any necessary changes to improve its performance.
Preparing for Student Interaction and Encouragement
As you prepare to sell your online course, it’s important to think about how you’ll interact with your students and keep them engaged. There are many ways to do this, including using a forum like CommunityAlly where students can engage with you and each other about course material, ask questions, share wins, and more.
By creating a community for your students, you can encourage them to stay engaged with the course material and remind them that you’re a real person on the other side of the videos. This can help create a sense of connection and encourage them to stay engaged with the course.
Student interaction and encouragement are key to the success of an online course. By finding ways to connect with your students and keep them motivated, you can create a more enjoyable and effective learning experience for them.
Marketing Your Course
It’s important to create a marketing strategy to help you reach potential students and promote your course. There are many different marketing options to choose from, including social media posting, pay-per-click ads, email marketing, and affiliate marketing.
To create an effective marketing plan, consider the buyer’s journey and include touchpoints along the way. This might include a mix of the marketing options mentioned above, as well as other tactics that will help you reach potential students and promote your course.
When developing your marketing strategy, it’s important to be strategic and consider which tactics will be most effective for your particular course and target audience. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things, but also be willing to adjust your strategy if something isn’t working as well as you’d hoped. Some specific channels that may be effective for marketing an online course include:
- Social media: Social media channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can be effective for promoting your course to a wide audience. You can use these channels to share updates about your course, engage with potential students, and drive traffic to your website.
- Email marketing: Email marketing can be a powerful way to reach potential students and promote your course. You can use email campaigns to share updates about your course, offer special promotions, and build relationships with potential students.
- Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing involves partnering with other individuals or organizations to promote your course in exchange for a commission. This can be an effective way to reach a wider audience and generate sales.
- Pay-per-click ads: Pay-per-click (PPC) ads can be a highly targeted and effective way to reach potential students. With PPC ads, you pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad. You can use PPC ads to target specific keywords and demographics, making it easier to reach the right audience. Some popular platforms for PPC ads include Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.
Marketing is a crucial part of selling any product or service, including online courses. By developing a clear marketing plan and executing it effectively, you can reach a wider audience and increase your chances of success.
Receiving Feedback for Your Online Course
As you start selling your online course, it’s important to be open to feedback from your students. Both positive and negative feedback can be valuable in improving your course and ensuring its success. Here are some tips for making effective use of feedback for your course:
- Encourage feedback: Make it easy for your students to provide feedback on your course by including a feedback form or email address on your course page. This will allow you to learn what’s working well and what needs improvement.
- Respond to feedback: When you receive feedback, be sure to thank your students for their comments and consider making changes based on their suggestions. This will show your students that you value their input and are committed to improving the course.
- Regularly update your course: While it’s important to get feedback and make improvements, it’s also important to regularly update your course to keep it current and relevant. Consider revising your course content every few weeks or months to ensure that it’s always up-to-date.
- Offer free updates to critics: If you receive negative feedback, consider offering free updates to those critics as a way to thank them for their contribution and show them that you value their input. This can help turn negative feedback into positive word-of-mouth marketing for your course.
By following these tips, you can use feedback for your online course to help you improve and grow your business.
Competing in the Online Course Industry in 2023
To compete in the online course industry in 2023, it’s important to be intentional about your goals and the student experience you provide. You need to stand out among the many course creators in this crowded space.
Understanding your audience is crucial. Know who your target audience is and where they spend their time online. This will help you determine the best channels for reaching them and the types of content and value that will most appeal to them.
In addition to your course, make an effort to show up on social media and other online spaces where your audience is active. This will help you build your brand and increase visibility for your course.
Consistently providing value is essential. Your target audience needs and expects value from you, so make sure you’re consistently offering valuable content and resources that help your students learn and grow.
The right tools can make all the difference when it comes to building, improving, marketing, and selling your courses. Consider using tools like AccessAlly that help you automate tasks, track progress, and engage with your students.
Sell Online Training Courses With AccessAlly
Selling courses on your own website is the perfect way to connect with your students and take charge of your online course business. That’s where AccessAlly comes in – it’s a user-friendly WordPress plugin that makes it easy for creators to sell courses, memberships, and other products without having to know any code.
AccessAlly offers everything you need to sell training courses online. It includes a customizable order form builder, a personal dashboard for students to track their progress, and automation tools that help you send personalized emails based on customer behavior. Plus, you’ll have access to top-notch support from experienced developers who are dedicated to helping your business succeed.
If you want to sell your courses online and have the freedom to tailor your website and sales process to your liking, AccessAlly is the perfect choice. So don’t wait any longer – start building your online course business today and join the ranks of successful course creators worldwide.
