So you have heard on social media.
How people create and sell online courses, but here’s the catch.
Nobody has ever told you that you can create and start selling your online course and make $18,000 in 48 hours or less.
Sure, that’s not a typo. It’s what other successful online course creators have achieved, and you can do that too.
In this post, I’ll show you how to create and sell your online courses and make $18,000 in 48 hours or less.
And while you may think that this is one of those cut-and-dried posts on Google, this is a detailed post, packed with current information to help you create and sell your first online course.
Ready? Let’s get started.
How Do I Make An Online Course Profitable?
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
Just like any other thing, you need a plan before you start creating and selling your online courses.
So how do you do that? Below is the process to making your online course profitable:
- Decide that you want to create an online course
- Choose a profitable niche – one that is on-demand
- Test your idea in the market to see how it will perform
- Create your course structure
- Create your course content
- Set your price
- Create the hype
- Launch your course
Why You Should Create And Sell Online Courses
Let’s get real: creating and selling online courses has become one of the best ways to earn money on the side. But should you focus on the income?
You need to earn a living from what you do, which in this case is to create and sell online courses.
After all, it isn’t a bad idea to offer valuable information to people in exchange for a few bucks.
Well, in this section, I’m going to walk you through why you should create and sell an online course. (Hint: a case study.)
Insane Gross Profit Margin (Case study: How Derek Murphy Made $18,000 In 48 hours)
This is a case study about how Derek Murphy made $18,000 from his online course in 48 hours.
It sounds like a dream, but it’s a real story.
Most online courses are sold either through affiliate links, a webinar or Facebook targeted ads, but Derek did not use any of those methods.
Instead, Derek used email marketing technique and leveraged his email list of 25k subscribers, which took him five years to build.
He also confesses that his email list wasn’t super engaged.
So How Did Derek Build His email List?
Derek says, “My funnel will be: free books on Amazon and iBooks, a free guide, challenge or short course to get them to sign up, a sales sequence and special deal on the course.”
And How Did Derek Sell His First Course?
Derek says, “When you’re ready to launch a course, after you’ve built a list and provided lots of valuable content to boost trust, likability, and credibility, you usually do a “launch sequence.”
And this is the sequence Derek is talking about:
- Send an email to your email list with a subject that reads, “Launching something new.” You can do this five or three days before.
- And then, “Course opens tomorrow. Watch your inbox anytime from now on.” You can decide to send this email a day before you launch your online course.
- On the last day, send an email similar to this: “Course is open.” Send this email on the launch day.
You can see the sequence. Derek created hype, which created curiosity about his new course.
So when he finally launched his course, it exploded.
On the first day, Derek made a total of $9,383 from his course sales.
On the second day, Derek only managed to sell $2,000, which he considered a failure.
On the third day, Derek made a whopping $7,000 from his course sales. He couldn’t believe having lost hope from day two sales. And that’s how Derek Murphy made over $18,000 from his first online course launch. You can read more about his story here.
Other Reasons Why You Should Create And Sell Online Courses
Make passive income: Creating and selling online courses do not require you to be actively engaged every time.
Sure, you will spend more time preparing, creating, and promoting the course, but once it takes off, you won’t be engaged every day.
You could decide to have a sales funnel to maintain the registration of new students, or you could open your course occasionally as most course creators do. That’s fine. It’s up to you.
You are an expert in what you love doing: Don’t worry yourself about whether or not you are an influencer. The important thing is that you have expertise in something. It could be Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Copywriting, Web Designing or anything else.
Creating online courses is about teaching what you know, so go ahead and create an online course if you have expertise in anything. Don’t let anyone hold you back.
The E-Learning industry is becoming popular: Worldwide eLearning industry was worth $107 billion in 2015, and it research markets believe that it will shoot to $325 billion by 20225.
On the other hand, a new study reported that college tuition is rising rapidly. Today, students pay an average of $31,231 annually, which is a thirteen percent increase over the last few years.
With new technology and fired by the pandemic, the future of education takes to a more quality-centric, learner-oriented, and maximal automated approach.
Examples Of Online Courses (Teachable)
Below are some Teachable online course examples:
How to Create Your First Online Course on Teachable
Teachable is a user-friendly online course platform that allows online course creators to create and sell paid courses to students around the world.
The best of all is that it provides all the marketing tools you need to create and sell your online courses on one platform.
Teachable was introduced with the slogan, “Everything is Teachable.” To date, Teachable has attracted 7,500 course instructors, building more than 20,000 courses, and more than 4 million students have signed up for these courses.
And the best of all is that it doesn’t take you long to set up your school on Teachable and start selling your online courses. Besides, schools earn an average of $75,000 in revenue after just 17 months.
That said, let’s start by setting up our Teachable school.
1. Set Up Your School
Before you start creating your online course, make sure you have a course idea, then create a Teachable school.
Think of your Teachable school as a campus. Teachable will allow you to host all your course materials. And the best of all is that Teachable has all the features you need, so you can customize everything to match your needs.
That said, below are the main pages on Teachable you need to take a keen interest in:
- Homepage/Landing Page: Your Teachable homepage should clearly state the name of your school, the description – what you teach, and probably the course outline.
- Terms of Use/Privacy Policy: Teachable has a list by default, which you can customize to match your preferences and integrate them in your school.
- Course Directory: This page shows all the courses you have on Teachable, depending on the categories they fall.
There are different plans available on Teachable. There is a free plan, Basic plan, Professional plan, and Business plan.
The free plan has limited features, and you can only register a maximum number of ten students. Honestly, you need something better.
The Basic plan costs $39 every month, and you can register unlimited students. If you go with their yearly payment plan, you’ll pay $348.
If you feel limited with some Basic plan features, you can upgrade to the Professional Package, which goes for $99 every month and $77 if billed annually.
Finally, Teachable offers a Business plan with all the features. It goes for $499 if billed monthly and $399 when billed annually.
Depending on the plan you have chosen, log into you Teachable account. If you don’t have a Teachable account yet, here’s how to create one:
- Head over to “Create a Teachable account.”
- Fill in your details as shown below
- Choose the name of your school
- Once you do that, you’ll be directed to a survey page like the one shown below. Fill in those details and click
- You’ll be automatically taken to your dashboard page as shown below. Here, you can customize everything as you need it, depending on the plan you chose.
2. Create Your Course
Once you are done signing up on Teachable, you will be prompted to set up your first course on the platform. You can decide to do it immediately or come back to it later.
Depending on your decision, here’s a step-by-step guide to creating your first online course on Teachable:
- Go to your Teachable admin area/ dashboard on the left sidebar and click on the course “Courses” tab
- Click the “New Course” button located at the top right corner
- Once you do that, you will be taken to a page where you will be required to enter your details such as the course name, the author bio, and subtitle
- Then tap the “Create Course” button at the bottom right part of your screen
3. Define Your Course Landing Page/ Sales Page
At this stage, you need to specify what your course is all about. Go to your landing page area and enter the following details:
- Name: Here, you will be required to enter your course title, which your visitors will see when they visit your Teachable page
- Bio: Enter the name of the course instructors – those who have created the course. If it’s you, enter your name in this section
- Subtitle: This is like your subheading. It will appear after you “Name.” It summarizes your course – what it’s all about. It could be something like, “Get Started With Freelance Content Writing.”
- Categories: You can add tags to help you organize your courses accordingly
4. Attach Course Display Media
You have created your course landing page, but it’s still not yet appealing. You need to tweak it a little bit so that it can appeal to your visitors. The only way you can do this is by attaching course display media. You can add:
- Thumbnail: This is a custom image that will appear on the landing page, as well as the course directory. You can directly upload it from your laptop
- Promo Video: This is a promotional video that will be shown on your course landing page. The primary intent is to grab attention. You can display testimonials, or give a sneak peek into your course. A caution, don’t create a video of more than 1.5GB in size.
5. Create Sections And Lectures
Now, to create a section:
- Go to your Teachable dashboard or admin area
- Choose the course you want to edit into lectures or sections
- Click “Curriculum” located in the dashboard
- Head over to “New section” located at the top right of your screen
- Enter your section name and click “Create section.”
Once you have created your section, the next step is to define your lectures or lessons:
- On the curriculum page, click, “New Lecture.”
- Give it a suitable name
- Add your lectures depending on what your course teaches
- If you’d like to customize your lecture settings, go back to the main dashboard and click “settings >> general >> lectures.”
6. Upload Lecture Content
Below is the process of uploading course lectures on Teachable:
- Choose any lecture from your Teachable curriculum section, then “Add File >> Add Text >> Add Quiz >> Add Code”
- Choose a tab, depending on the type of content you want to upload (downloadable, non-downloadable, videos, audios, etc.)
- Click on “Choose file” and directly upload your course material from your P.C.
And these are the only formats allowed on Teachable:
- PDF: Teachable do not accept non-PDF files
- Audio: You have the freedom to use mp3 files, and quality resolution should be maintained
- Images: You can use images in the formats of .jpg plus. Png. images should be 1000 pixels and below in width
- Video: .avi. Mov. mp4 less than 2GB is allowed
You can also watch this YouTube video tutorial on how to upload your course materials on Teachable:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tn4pwqnH8oU%3Fstart%3D2
7. Price Your Course
Next, you need to price your online course and start selling it. There are different payment options, such as PayPal or credit card.
You have the freedom to choose any of the payment methods available. Unfortunately, Teachable won’t avail of your payments upfront because they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee and they charge transaction fees.
So very fast, let’s look at how you can price your courses:
- From your dashboard, choose the course you want to price
- Choose any of these pricing options – “Free, subscription, one-time purchase or payment plan.”
- Tweak your pricing by editing the name, description, and its price
- Click “Add Pricing”
- Return to your dashboard and click “settings >> payments” and set up your payment details
Here’s a YouTube video that could also help you set up your course pricing on Teachable.
How To Promote Your First Online Course
You have created and uploaded your first online course on Teachable (you can use any other platform like Skillshare, Udemy, Thinkific, Kajabi, etc. for an excellent learning experience), so what’s next?
Promote your course on social media platforms like Facebook groups, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, your email list, on a guest-blogging platform, among others.
In this section, I’m going to take you through how you can promote your course from the day you launch it and maximize your sales.
1. Invite Course Creators Into Your Course
With this tactic, you invite other popular course creators to become an instructor in one of your courses. And because he or she has the influence, more students who already know him or her will be more than interested in purchasing that course.
The best thing to do is to offer another course creator a module or a lecture to teach. This should be in line with their expertise. For example, if you have a course about content writing, SEO will be a vital module to include in your class.
Assuming that you don’t have top-notch skills in SEO, you can invite another course creator to take your students through SEO. Depending on your terms and agreement with the other course creator, you will share the profits.
2. Give A Sneak Peek Into Your Course
There are a ton of students who are skeptical about purchasing online courses. It could be that they once had invested a lot of money in one of the online courses, but never realized the benefit.
It’s, therefore, an excellent idea to give a sneak peek of your online course. Elaborate to your potential customers what the course entails. In most cases, people use videos or images, and I recommend that too.
You can decide to show the modules you will cover, or do an entire module. This can get more students to register, especially when the first module shown in the sneak peek is superb.
3. Give Special Offers
Consumers today want to spend their money in the best possible way. That’s why they will always take a keen interest in discounts and promotional offers.
Marissa says, “These discounts and promotional levers continue to be critical for retailers who want to reach new shoppers to drive incremental sales.”
Once in a while, you can give special offers on your online courses.
For example, you could offer to bundle your courses and sell them at a price equal to one course. Alternatively, you could slash the price a bit for a limited time.
This is a selling tactic most course creators use, and it is proven to work because people always want to leverage on the offers available.
Some people prefer to spend during special offers, such as the Black Friday offers, end month offers, the festive season offers, among others. So quite often give special offers.
4. Create A Mini-course
It’s normal.
Not everyone will buy a product or a service without testing it out, and that applies to online courses.
Therefore, create a free mini-course that will help a prospective student determine whether he or she can buy your online course.
And since it is a free mini-course, don’t compromise the quality. Try your best to solve your audience’s problems.
That said, I recommend creating an email series free mini-course as you can quickly get people to sign up to your mailing list.
The first thing is to choose an email service provider. I prefer MailChimp or Mailerlite because it allows you to sign up to 2,000 subscribers for free.
Additionally, you can use it to create a landing page, which will help you drive traffic to your free mini-course.
P.S. – You can also market your own courses on your podcast. Your audience could end up purchasing some of your courses if they think it’s a good deal.
Other Online School Platforms
Learnworlds
The best All-In-One Online Course Platform for creating, selling and promoting your online courses with inbuilt website builder. They focus on engaging learning experiences, include video everywhere, even in eBooks and help you with amazing features to build and nurture your community. Pricing is affordable and starts at $24 per month.
Thinkific
Thinkific is an online education platform where course creators can create and sell online courses. Thinkific has four plans; Basic, Pro, Growth and Premier – their monthly pricing starts at $49, $99, $99+$0.99 per active student, and $499 respectively. Check out this step process how you can start creating and selling your own online course on Thinkific.
Podia
Podia is an online course creation platform that helps online course creators create and sell their online courses. They have a 14 days free trial and two packages – mover and shaker starting at $39 and $79 every month respectively. You can create and sell your course using this step-by-step guide:
Kajabi
Kajabi is an online learning management system that helps online course creators create and sell courses, as well as membership sites. Kajabi has three plans – Basic, Growth, and Pro. Their pricing starts at $149, $199, and $399/ month respectively. Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating your first online course on Kajabi:
Quizgecko
Quizgecko is a SaaS platform that allows users to instantly create and share quizzes, tests, and assessments. Their AI technology analyzes text and generates customized exam questions and answers. Educators can turn any document or text into quizzes to engage students in their online courses. Quizgecko offers a free plan with limited usage and paid plans starting at $12 per month with additional features like API access, file uploads, and priority support. The platform aims to help online course creators save time generating assessments while providing analytics on student performance.
Udemy
Udemy is an online education that allows course creators to create their own online course and sell them to students. If you are a course creator who loves creating video content online courses, then Udemy is your perfect match.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to create your first online course on Udemy:
Skillshare
Skillshare is an online learning platform that helps aspiring course creators to start their online business. Feel free to check out this step-by-step guide on how you can create your first online course on Skillshare:
CreativeLive
CreativeLive is a Seattle and San Francisco-based online course platform. It offers course creators a platform where they can broadcast their live classes to international students.
Learndash
Learndash is an online course platform. They offer three plans – the Basic package, which goes for $199 per year, the Plus plan at $229 every year, and Pro plan going for $369 annually. The difference between the three plans is the number of licenses.
P.S. – Take note that you can also host your own courses on your own website on WordPress by installing some course plugins such as LearnPress, Learndash, among others.
Over To You
You have everything you need to start creating and selling online courses today and become a six-figure online course creator.
The case study about how Derek made $18,000 in 48 hours should be your motivation to start your online business of creating and selling courses.
Additionally, you have all the most popular online course platforms. Choose any of them and get started. Once you have created your online course, refer to the ways to promote it from this guide.
I wish you well in creating your first course.