How to Sell Online Courses: Tips & Strategies

Online Learning

About the Author

Dr. Sara Baker

Sara Baker, Ed.D., is a full-time freelancer and solopreneur with decades of experience in online education. She is an expert LearnDash specialist and has been building sites with the platform for 3+ years - transitioning from DIY to professional client work. With two decades in public school leadership, she knows the ins and outs of education - from teaching public school law in Master's level Principal prep programs to her time as VP for Virtual Learning in Texas. When she's not working, Sara spends her free time on her farm with her family and their dogs.

Sara Baker, Ed.D.
Author, Educator and Website Developer

If you are looking to add a new revenue stream to your business, selling online courses on your website might be the answer. Courses can provide an additional income stream on top of other products and services that you sell. If you’re interested in learning more about how to sell online courses, here are some tips to make it work for you!

What are online courses and how do they work

An online course is a type of product that can be sold on an eCommerce website. Courses are made up of a series of lessons, videos, quizzes, and more. They are assigned a price tag by the course creator that customers can purchase. The customer will access the course for as long as they want to learn and use the course. Courses can be designed for participants to interact with each other and with the instructor or courses can be taken as self-paced, individual study courses.

Why sell online courses

An online course can be a valuable type of revenue that many businesses are able to add to their income streams. Courses can be an additional product for a business and are often sold as part of a bundle with other products or services. Depending on the type of courses you sell, they can also give customers the opportunity to interact with each other or an instructor. This type of product is especially popular in the education sector but it’s been seen as an additional form of income for any company looking for new methods to create revenue, including tech companies, small businesses, nonprofits, and more.

What’s the best online course plugin for WordPress sites

There are many different plugins that offer functionality to create online courses, such as LearnDash, LifterLMS, and EDD. If you’re looking for a plugin that will work well on your WordPress site then we recommend one of these because they are specifically designed to integrate with the WooCommerce platform, which is the most popular eCommerce plugin.

Creating your course content including lessons, videos, quizzes

The courses themselves can be made up of many different types of content. Lessons are what the student will be learning and videos can include lectures, demonstrations, or tutorials. Quizzes can be used to assess how well a participant understands the material they’re studying in any given lesson. The content that is provided for an online course depends on what you want your students to learn from it but courses usually contain at least one lesson, one video, and a quiz.

Marketing your course for maximum visibility and sales potential

In order to make the most of selling online courses, it’s important that you market them appropriately so they can reach as many people as possible who might be interested in learning from this type of product or service. This is where social media becomes a valuable tool. Make sure to post about your courses on social media, use a catchy title and description for the posts that will entice people to click through, and be consistent with your posting frequency so you can reach as many potential customers as possible.

Generating revenue on auto-pilot

The benefit of selling your course on your WordPress website is that once you have it set up, your courses will sell on their own. A properly designed eLearning website will be able to automate the purchasing of courses and student enrollment in courses. Once it’s all set up, your online courses will seem to sell on auto-pilot and you can rest easy knowing that your business will be generating revenue.

In this article, we’ve given you the best tips for selling online courses and generating revenue on auto-pilot. We hope that these strategies will help your business grow in new ways to reach more customers with less effort. If you have any questions about how to get started, just let us know anytime!