How To Launch An Online Course: A Beginner’s Guide
Part III: Building revenue from the beginning
From the beginning phases of your online course creation, you should be planning how you plan to generate revenue from the course.
If you do not know your payment expectations from the beginning, you may go overbudget on tools or simply not set the course up for optimal revenue.
You should start planning your revenue from the beginning phases of your online course.
Create a High Converting Sales Page
The best way to make money from your online course is to have a high converting sales page. Your sales page will tell your students if you put in an adequate amount of time and money to create a high functioning course. If the sales page is faulty, the student will assume that the course is faulty as well and not purchase your product.
As a result, you must put emphasis on creating a high converting sales page. If you don’t, do not expect to gain many students. Once this high converting sales page is set up, you can start selling and marketing your course during any phase of the online course launch. In fact, you should create a high functioning sales page before you presell.
If you do not have a sales page during presell, potential customers may think they are being scammed and not buy your product.
Deciding on and Sticking to a Model
Before selling your course, you also need to decide on a payment model and stick to it. In fact, you should try to keep your payment model consistent through all your courses because it makes a consistent, user-friendly experience.
It is very important to decide and follow through with your model. If not, students will be confused by the payment options and they may not come back for a second course.
The most popular payment options include upfront charging, certifications, and additional features.
Charge Upfront
The most popular payment option is charging upfront for the course. This means that the student must pay for the course before they have any access to its contents. Most people are familiar with this payment option, especially in the education field. Think about college. Students have to pay a tuition fee before attending classes. Charging upfront for your course works the same way.
This strategy is often very successful because it eliminates the problem of students forgetting to pay later on and is intuitive. Additionally, if you implement this on all your courses, there’s a higher chance that you will gain repeat customers.
Preselling
The first way to make and see the money from your online course is to presell the product. As we’ve already discussed, preselling your online course includes selling it before you create any of the content.
You sell the product based on the learning outcomes and topic. Preselling your online course is a great idea because it allows you to generate revenue before you even start on the project. If you have enough participants, you will be able to use the money that you made from preselling the course to purchase more advanced tools and create a better quality course. Or, you may already have all the tools you need.
If this is the case for you, you can simply collect the money that you’ve made from the presale ad begin building your course with the knowledge that it is viable.
Read my next article in this series about building and launching your online course where we will explore how to choose the right online course platform.
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