Often, every online course creator is challenged by significant issues such as how to make money from online courses and maximize profits and course potentials. One of the first strategies to create before embarking on creating online courses is to define a marketing strategy that contains all processes that you will follow in order to make money from online courses created by you. 

As a beginner, it will be tough to get your feet flowing, especially if you do not have the audience to promote your online course and make the most of it. Creating an online course may be easy but its marketing and promotions is an entirely different ball game. 

In this article, I have explained the step by step procedure you can follow as an online course creator to make money from all your online courses and plan a successful launch of your online course. 

To begin, let us look at the possibilities of making money from creating online courses.

Are Online Courses Profitable?

According to research, the e-learning global market in 2019 was $144 billion and it is expected to be above $374.3 billion by 2026, you can see the rapid growth in the market trend, this means that if you create a course now following the guide in this article, you are more likely to earn millions in years to come.

The Internet is closer to us in the sense that when we have a problem, the first thing we do is check how to solve that problem on the internet so imagine creating a solution to 1 million people’s problem?  In this way, even if your online course is priced low and made affordable, your earnings will be limitless. 

E-learning has become normal and a lot of people would rather learn a skill online than go to an offline school.

Online courses are fun and give the best learning experience when there is an interaction between students and fellow students, students and instructors and a sequential drip of thought in the content. 

13 Best Ways to Make Money from Online Courses

There are several ways to make money from selling an online course, here is a guide on how to make your online course profitable and earn a living from selling online courses.

1. Understand the Solution your Course Provides

The most important aspect of creating an online course is what you want to achieve with it and how you want to impact your students. Knowing the purpose of your course helps you figure out your buyer persona. 

When creating an online course, it is important to understand the solutions your online course provides and the market value of such solutions. Imagine creating a course that solves a problem of one million people, such opportunities makes your earnings endless, this will not be the same if your course provides a solution to only ten people. 

To understand this perfectly, a keyword research skill is needed to determine the market value of your course even before you proceed to create one. Every online course is created to solve a problem of a specific group of people and the larger the audience interested in your online course, the better the profit. 

Ensure that your course is created to solve the problem of a specific group of people and not for everyone, this helps you to define your target market and achieve more with your online course.

2. Understand your buyer persona

Study your buyer persona and understand them, knowing who they are will let you know where you can find them and at what time you can find them, the specific app they use and how to reach them. Looking at marketing insights can help you achieve this.

Understanding buyer persona will help you determine a better pricing and marketing strategy for your online course. Information such as devices used, online behaviour, apps usage and search history will help you create a better strategy for targeting and promotions. 

3. Give value

Only valuable content make it to the top pages on the internet, you want to be that person that everyone goes to when they have a problem in your niche, you want to be an expert in your niche and there’s no better way to say it than giving value.

Your content should be important and relevant so that no one ignores it. Giving helpful content that no one has taught or knows about is one way to make money from selling online courses. Helpful content helps to drive referral traffic and so reach more people.

4. Create a high in Demand course

No matter how valuable and educational your online course is, if no one is searching for it then you won’t sell because it is not in demand. Create a course that is highly searched and is in high demand for a specific audience. 

Determining the amount of audience an online course can pull is an essential aspect of marketing called keyword research. Doing a thorough keyword and competition research will help in determining the volume of search for your keyword, the click-through rate, level of competition and other parameters that are essential for making the most from your online course. There is no better way to make money from online courses than being able to determine its market value before it is created. 

5. Price your Courses for Maximum Profit

After going through the stress of creating your course, it is difficult to decide whether to make it cheap or expensive because you don’t want to divide your audience with your price. But here is the truth, price your course for maximum profit, check out what your competitors are up to, create more valuable content and price more than your competitors when it is essential, what this does is that it leaves your buyers thinking that your course is more valuable than your competitors because of the price.

People think that the higher the price, the higher the value and if you want your course to be perceived as valuable you have to make the price worth it but ensure not to make an empty course expensive. 

Primarily, the price of your course should be determined by your audience and course value or relevance. Imagine selling a course for $700 to an audience whose purchasing power is below $100, this will only leave you frustrated and pained. Ensure that you properly understand your audience before slamming an expensive price on your online course. 

6. Host your course with the right 

Your course might be valuable and important but if your hosting is bad, you most likely won’t have any students or few students which are not good enough If you plan to make money from selling courses. Ensure that you use Learning management systems like Learn Afrique that allows you access to professional course builder, sequential drip content, course attachments, student gradebook, advanced quizzing, assignments and many other standard LMS features. 

I recommend the #1 Online course hosting platform in Africa – Learn Afrique; here Is why you should choose the platform:

1. It has a course builder that makes creating courses easy for you
2. It is an all in one Learning Management System that helps you create, sell and manage learning processes.
3. It is the most affordable and most feature-rich learning management system
4. It allows integration of third-party platforms
5. It is embedded with Google classroom which means you can have an online classroom setting
6. You can also stream classes on Learn Afrique
7. It has advanced assessment tools to help you generate quizzes, assignments and examinations for your course.
8. You can meet other instructors, collaborate and co-host a course with them which will expand your audience and make you visible.
9. Learn Afrique also promotes the courses in its platform, run paid advertisements making your course visible and helping you gain more buyers.

7. Create an Affiliate System

An affiliate link and allow others to sell your course and earn some percentage of the profits, one person selling your course might bring in 10 people daily weekly or monthly to buy your course, imagine having 10 people sign up for your affiliate program, this can give you an instant increase in sales above 20%. 

Properly utilizing affiliate systems for your online course is a great way to double your online course earnings. It is one of the best ways to make money from online courses by having others promote your product. 

8. Create an Audience before Launch

An engaging audience is the best way to stamp authority on a subject and product. Creating a huge audience turns one into an influencer with a huge following, as an influencer, many people will be interested in whatever products you want to push out to the market because it already places a successful person tag on you and many would love to be associated with success.

One of the first things to do before launching your course is to create huge social media followers that are loyal to you. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are a great place to start building an engaging audience. 

9. Host Webinars

Hosting online webinars is one of the best ways to make money from online courses. Constant online webinar on a particular topic creates a sense of mastery and expertise and makes people believe whatever product you are bringing to the market. Perhaps it is time to start hosting that Facebook and Instagram Live you have been running away from. 

During your live webinars, you can invite other speakers who have huge experience in your niche and who also have huge followers. This gives you access to their followers and introduces you as a person of value to them. Webinars give you the chance to promote your online course to a larger audience as it has more reach potentials. 

10. Utilize Online Course Market Places

Utilizing online course marketplaces is a great way to make money from online courses at ease. Such platforms allow you to sell your online course to an already established huge and influential audience. By doing very little SEO on your course description, you can gain unimaginable traffic from such platforms. 

11. Use Influencer Markting

Collaborating with other course creators with huge influence is a great way to promote your online course. Such collaborations may be a form of recommendation from them and other forms of promotions. You can also partner with influencers to create courses on your niche and make the best profit from it.

12. Utilize Social Media Advertising

Social Media advertising services like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn are great tools to promote your online course to a hot audience and reach new thousands of people with purchasing capacity to buy your online course. 

Facebook ads give you access to millions of people who have interests in your product, being able to utilize Facebook targeting properly puts your courses right in front of people who are ready to make a purchase.  

13. Create Contents that Makes you an Expert in your Niche

Imagine using a social media profile or page with little or no content about your topic of interest to promote and sell your online course, such creates distrust among your audience. For your audience to perceive you as an authority in your niche and buy your online course, create constant social media content that talks about your topic repeatedly. Both video, text and graphic contents are a great way to gain trust from both cold and hot audiences, respectively. This is one of the best ways to make money from online courses.

14. Create a Pre-order Campaign

Offering pre-order is a great way to get audience attention on your online course even before promoting them. Pre-order offers are usually made with attractive bonuses and prices to attract huge buyers to your online course. 

15. Offer a Discount

There are different ways to offer a discount for online course promotions. Apart from slashing the prices of your courses, you can also create a course bundle that includes several other courses of yours the bundle and offer for a discounted fee. This way one or more other courses may attract an individual and compel them to complete a purchase.  This is one of the most utilized practical methods on how to make money from online courses. 

Conclusion

How to make money from online courses is one of the first searches every course creator searches for before creating online courses. Online course platforms like Learn Afrique enables you to create and promote your online course with ease. The major ways to make money from online courses include utilizing influencer marketing, live webinars, determining buyer persona, creating an engaging audience, utilizing online course marketplace, creating content with value, creating affiliate programs, creating a course that solves problems of many and determining an effective pricing strategy for your course. 

Learn Afrique provides you with the best online course platform to create and sell your online courses with ease or even manage your online school. The platform has several features that make it one of the best online course platforms in the world. 

Do you want to make money from your online courses? Use the contact form below to contact us or check out our features and pricing.