How to Sell Courses Online: A Beginner’s Guide

You love what you do. Now, you want to learn how to sell courses online about your skills. It’s just the most natural step into monetizing one’s skills. You only need to take a look at dePepi to see that I’ve done it in different ways. To successfully sell courses online, you must be strategic and love the topic you want to teach.

You can certainly sell your courses on different platforms. However, I will focus on creating a platform like this one and selling courses with Notion templates in this guide. Wait, what!? Indulge me, and keep reading about selling courses online successfully with a twist.

Understand the Market

Before you begin creating your online course, it’s important to understand the market you’re entering. Do you have many competitors? Are there many people interested in what you want to teach?

1. Identify Your Niche

It’s essential to pick a niche that isn’t oversaturated but has demand. Consider areas where you can offer unique insights or a fresh perspective. However, the most important thing here, apart from knowing how saturated the topic might be, is how much you love it.

You need to be passionate about your chosen topic because you’ll be spending a lot of hours working on it!

2. Conduct Market Research

Use tools like Google Trends, for example, to understand what topics are currently popular and in demand. Check out forums, social media groups, and industry blogs to see what questions people are asking and what problems they need to solve. You can also look at what’s offered on Udemy and similar platforms to get an idea of the demand.

3. Analyze Competitors

Now, it’s time to take a look at your competitors. Look at other courses in your chosen niche and see what they offer and what you could offer that’s unique. Analyze their content, pricing, marketing strategies, and reviews. Identify gaps in the market that you can fill with your course.

This step can take some time, but it’s worth it! Don’t jump into the pool without proper research! Remember that you’ll have a different take than your competitors and that you can always fill in gaps uniquely.

Creating High-Quality Course Content

Quality content is the cornerstone of a successful online course. You stand out by being unique and offering something that people will find useful. That’s why it’s necessary to be aware of what others offer and add your spicy sauce.

1. Plan Your Course

Outline your course structure before you start creating content. Break down the material into modules and lessons. Ensure each module covers a specific aspect of the subject and builds on the previous one.

I’ve found that shorter courses work best for beginners, and longer courses (or masterclasses) work best for people who are super invested in a topic. To better understand those, please check my Notion courses on Gumroad. You can also check my other courses here.

2. Use AI Tools for Content Creation

Depepi.com uses AI tools like DALL-E to create visual content, Grammarly to edit text, and ChatGPT to generate ideas and write. These tools can help you create nice visuals and text. However, where the moolah is in what you say. What’s your take on that topic? ChatGPT can help you outline a course but cannot translate what’s in your head on the screen.

3. Test Your Course

Before launching your course, test it with a small group of beta users. Collect feedback on the content, structure, and user experience and make necessary adjustments. If you don’t have any beta testers, you can always offer your course for free to a group of people who you know are interested.

Finding beta testers isn’t always easy. And sometimes, people who say yes to you will not check (or login) your wonderfully made course. Don’t get mad with them. If it turns out that you couldn’t test your course in the way you expected, that’s fine.

Setting Up Your Course Platform

Choosing the right platform to host your course is critical. If you’re starting out, you might want a solution offering a low investment without taking too much of your future potential moolah. While platforms like Udemy are great in that regard, competitors there might be fierce! Consider using that course over there as a “marketing fishing tool” instead of your real state. What to look for, then?

1. Take a Very Close Look at Costs

Many platforms look very slick, but are your case’s costs affordable? How many months can you invest in £0 revenue before you call the whole operation a flop? Platforms like Teachable, Thinkific, and Kajabi are popular choices for hosting online courses. They offer user-friendly interfaces, marketing tools, and integrations with other software. However, costs might be daunting for someone starting with low investment and low following.

Consider unique venues like Notion [affiliate link]. Notion is a productivity software that I also use to teach. Some of my best courses live in Notion. You pay for your course once and get access to all updates. Plus, since Notion also allows you to create great databases, you can also create slick practices for your students. Go to Transform Your Hobby into a Thriving Business – Notion Course (Say Bye to Your 9 to 5) if you want to know more.

2. Create a Professional Landing Page

Your course landing page should clearly outline the course’s content, who it’s for, and what students will gain from it. Don’t forget the call-to-action button. Now, if you decide to go with Notion, then you’ll need to showcase it somewhere. This is where Gumroad gets into play. It’s easy to use. You can set up everything in record time and don’t need to pay to host your digital products there.

Another option is to do something like me with WordPress. This needs a monthly investment: hosting, for example. It also needs more time to design, set up, and run. And, there’s no marketplace to showcase anything like it happens with Gumroad. So, why do I still have stuff here in my WP? My pricing strategy!

3. Pricing Strategy

Set a competitive price for your course. The usual approach is offering tiered pricing and discounts for early sign-ups. However, I have a double subscription offer allowing people to access different courses depending on their wants while building a community around them.

Let me explain. You can certainly buy a course. Some courses have a WordPress version and a slicker version in Notion. However, if you want to have everything produced in WordPress here, you can subscribe yearly and have access to everything hosted here. The jackpot comes when you subscribe to AI Mixer, one of my dearest products. If you become a founding member, you get access to all courses here, plus all courses made with Notion, plus all personal Notion templates I’ll do (and have done) for a full year.

Can you start offering this when you’re working on just one course? Nope. Can you start doing this after a year of producing many digital goods? Yes! But to do that, you need to have the strategy in mind from the very start.

4. Ensure Mobile Compatibility

Many students will access your course on mobile devices, so ensure your platform and content are mobile-friendly. If you choose a platform that looks hideous on mobile, your students will go elsewhere, even if the course is super good.

Think about all the people commuting to and from work. Some read while they commute, and some are taking courses and upskilling. Make it easier for them!

Marketing Your Course

Effective marketing is essential to attract students to your course. Don’t worry. I’m working on a super practical and useful course with all the secrets that I’ll share with you soon. However, for the time being, consider the following.

1. Start Building a Mailing List

You might not even have a course yet. However, if you have no following whatsoever, just trusting SEO and the magic of Gumroad isn’t enough. Consider Substack and start building months before your course is ready! Give some useful tips to your audience. Build their trust. Get them excited about your upcoming course. And, if they become paid subscribers on Substack, why not give them the course for free? (Hint: Go back and read all about pricing strategy again.)

2. Leverage Social Media

Use social media platforms to promote your course and interact with them. You’ll have to research where people who are interested in your social media hang out first. Once you have an idea, consider using Metricool [affiliate link] to track the success of your posts and how you can get better.

You need to analyze what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t, you’ll post and then wonder what’s happening. Don’t be afraid to assess your own strategy and change it when needed.

3. Use SEO Strategies

Optimize your course landing page and content for search engines. Use relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and alt text to improve your search engine rankings. (More on that is coming soon here.)

Engaging and Retaining Students

Keeping students engaged and ensuring they complete your course is crucial for long-term success. This is the holy grail. I won’t lie to you: student retention is tough. In many instances, people learn what they need and go away. And that’s totally fine. Retention makes more sense with some types of courses, like teaching languages. But even then, retention has a limit. Once the students have mastered the topic, they’ll go elsewhere.

So, whatever you read out there, remember: student retention has its limits! Also, as a teacher, you want them to learn and then grow!

1. Consider Regular Updates

Update your course content regularly to ensure it remains relevant and valuable, and notify your students about all the changes. This is also a marketing opportunity to revamp your course. Even if your regular students move on, they can tell their friends if they like your course.

2. Consider Building a Community

Create a community around your course where students can interact, share experiences, and support each other. This can be a Facebook group, or you could use your newsletter. (Hint to Substack.)

3. Provide Support

Offer nice support to your students. If you can only provide support via email, then do that. Students need to have somewhere to address their questions in private.

4. Gather Feedback

Regularly collect feedback from your students to understand their needs and improve your course. Use surveys, polls, and direct communication to gather insights. These are very useful when updating the course or creating new courses. Who knows! They can also give you ideas on what to do next!

Need to Know More?

Consider joining my community here or start learning now with Transform Your Hobby into a Thriving Business – Notion Course (Say Bye to Your 9 to 5).