Creating Online Courses that Sell: Where to Promote Your Training Courses

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Selling an online course is a great way to generate extra revenue and boost a blog site's credibility. Bloggers can establish themselves as an authority in their field by offering online courses that share valuable knowledge and expertise in a particular niche. It's a terrific way to attract a dedicated following of engaged learners. 

If you've always dreamed of generating a steady stream of passive income and monetising your skills and content in a scalable way, this is the best way to go. Apart from making money as an expert, you're also building a bigger brand while creating a deeper, more meaningful connection with your target audience. 

How to Stay Profitable While Selling Online Courses

The target market is one of the most important things to consider before selling an online course. How big is your online following, and what topics are they interested in? Many factors can affect the profitability of an online course. Some of these factors are:

• Brand recognition
• Expertise Level
• Types of training content
• Number of engaged followers
• Audience income
• Pricing
• Competition and market size
• Promotional strategies

Nowadays, it's not enough to bet on your reputation or provide high-quality content to win over subscribers. Unless you are a superstar marketer, you must invest heavily in effective promotions and sales strategies to spread the word about your online course and get more signups. 

Whether you want to sell digital products or not, growing your email marketing should always be a priority. Having a strong online presence and an engaged following on social media is a great start. This is one of the best ways to guarantee a knockout launch. 

It will take time to build a loyal audience, and you'll invest a lot of time, effort, and resources in maintaining your online community. But the payoff for all your hard work will be worth it once you start marketing products and services and get excellent results. 

As you grow your followers, your brand name will start spreading all over the industry. This can spell big profits for your business. Eventually, you can launch your new membership site and make money off your expertise and content via online courses and workshops. 

What Business Model to Use

Depending on the scope of the online course and your needs or preferences, here are some of the best business models for offering online courses. 

Self-Directed Education: AKA self-paced courses, self-direction education is precisely that: learners will start and finish a course at their own pace. Because the lessons are accessible anytime, self-directed education is popular among busy students with no definite learning schedule. You can create structure using a drip-feed format or setting prerequisites before students can move to a new lesson.

Membership Site: Essentially, you'll create an online platform where students can access the learning materials, complete the online courses, and even become a part of your online community. This setup will require a website where people can sign up to become paying members. You'll need to maintain the online community to keep student engagement up and provide various types of online courses to generate more income. 

Interactive Courses: Live workshops hosted on a video streaming platform are perfect for teaching groups of people, conducting joined activities, and offering more challenging tasks for students to complete. 

It's a great business model for aspiring coaches, mentors, and online teachers who love group and one-on-one live sessions. You can maintain regular contact with your students, connect in a more meaningful way, and provide higher-quality education. Because you're more hands-on with interactive courses, you can offer this at a premium price. 

Hybrid Courses: For online courses that require more hands-on practice and challenges, you can offer hybrid courses. This will require a physical class but with the option to attend remotely. You can provide the learning materials online as you conduct the lesson. This is a step above interactive courses and will require more commitment as an educator so that hybrid courses can also be offered at a premium price. 

Popular Types of Courses to Sell

What kinds of online courses are easy to sell online? Here are some of the best online courses that sell quickly no matter the industry: 

Training courses: AKA orientation courses, training courses let you showcase what products you have in store for subscribers while blowing people away with your expertise. The best part? This is a great starter course to present future courses to sell.

Mini-courses: A mini-course educates, entertains, and engages a growing number of subscribers. Because it's a short version of a long-form course, it's easy to create multiple mini-courses to attract more subscribers. You can also use mini-courses as lead magnets to acquire more signups and collect customer details. 

Bonus content: Any type of freebie will appeal to subscribers because we all love free stuff. A short bonus course can be offered alongside a long course. It adds more value to your product while deepening your emotional connection with your subscribers. 

Workshop: To make your online courses fun and truly interactive, consider offering workshops. Develop a lesson plan that you can teach via Zoom. You can offer this as a live session or a recording that students can download and watch anytime. 

Academic course: This online course is meant to educate students in a strictly structured, multi-step format. It's heavily assessment based to train students on a specific topic and improve their skills. You can also offer certificates to make the online course more attractive to potential students. 

Challenge course: This is an online course that will boost engagement among students. Essentially, you'll host a contest where learners compete with each other to win awards or prizes. Challenge courses add a bit of fun to learning, so they're quite popular and profitable. 

Expert Interviews: Educate your audience by inviting top experts, influencers, and market leaders. This is a great way to improve your course lineup while building a more credible and recognisable brand. These experts have their own following, and inviting them for a sit-down interview will definitely expand your reach. 

Where to Sell Your Online Course

Where are the best places to sell an online course? Here are our tips: 

On Your Website/Blog Site

You can turn your blog site into a marketplace for online courses by self-hosting your online courses. If you're on Showit, you can try any of the tips outlined in this post. If you're using WordPress, you have to use third-party apps you can use to turn a website into an e-store. 

Assuming your website has regular readers, you're not starting from scratch. You can do all the promotions here and direct readers to a webpage where they can sign up and download the online course. 

Online Marketplaces

Many marketplaces sell online courses exclusively, such as Udemy and SkillShare. Simply upload the online course and add a copy to the platform, and you're ready to accept students. You'll get maximum visibility using online marketplaces with minimal effort. 

However, these platforms will take some of your income, reducing your overall profits. Udemy is notorious for getting as much as 67% off every product sold. Because there are many instructors on these platforms, competition is very stiff between sellers.

All-in-One Course Platforms

Teachable, Kahjabi, Podia, and Thinkific are some of the most popular platforms that let you create, market, and sell online courses in one place. We're huge fans of Kajabi because it's beginner-friendly and versatile with many features. You can promote your brand, attract subscribers, and connect with engaged learners through Kajabi's own online community while tracking the performance of your content with the built-in analytics tools. 

The only downside is that some course platforms will require tech-savviness. Kajabi is relatively easy to use, so it's popular among beginners. 

Selling online courses as a blogger can be a lucrative and rewarding venture. Not only can it provide a steady stream of income, but it also allows you to share your expertise and help others learn new skills. 

By leveraging your blog's audience and creating valuable content, you can establish yourself as a trusted authority in your niche and build a sustainable online business. So, if you're a blogger looking to monetise your skills and knowledge, consider creating and selling online courses to take your business to the next level.

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