How To Sell An Online Course Like A Guru

Published on February 26th, 2024

This guide will teach you how online gurus sell online courses, from audience research to choosing the right selling platform.

Imagine you’ve been grinding for MONTHS to create an online course.

You’ve poured countless hours, sweat, and tears into creating the best course possible.

Then, when you finally launch it…

No sales.

Don’t worry. We’ll show you how to tap into the 6 trillion dollar digital products market like a boss.

Feel free to skip the section that you’re most interested in:

How To Choose A Profitable Course Topic
Establishing Clear And Compelling Learning Outcomes
Determine Your Course Model And Pricing Structure
How To Increase The Value Of Your Courses
How To Market And Promote Your Online Course
How To Choose The Right Selling Platform

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How To Choose A Profitable Course Topic

One simply doesn’t create a course and collect cash.

You first need to do research into your target audience to make sure it’s worth it.

Here’s how:

Identify Your Target Audience

Firstly, WHO is your target audience.

Are they millennials who want to learn more about personal finance?

Or perhaps they’re recruiters seeking courses on upping their LinkedIn game.

What are their pain points?

What are their goals?

Map out a clear picture of these individuals so you can serve your course to a starving crowd.

Analyze Market Demand And The Competition

It’s time to figure out exactly what and who you’re competing against.

Find your competitors that appear to be killing it (based on enrollment numbers and reviews).

Analyze the reviews.

Where are there gaps that you can fill with your course?

Identifying Your Expertise And Passion

You should NOT create a course if you’re not at least an expert on a topic.

Think to yourself:

What are you good at that your target audience needs help with?

And as a bonus (definitely not as important): Are you even passionate about this topic?

Combining what you’re skilled at with something you’re passionate about leads to a higher likelihood of success.

Your audience will be able to tell if you’re skilled and passionate.

Test Demand With Your Target Audience

Once you’ve selected potential topics based on your expertise, passion, and market demand analysis…

Test them!

Use interactive channels like social media, polls, or email surveys to ask your target audience if they’re interested in these topics.

This will save you a ton of time and energy by helping to identify which course ideas will have the most DEMAND before dedicating resources towards development.

Establishing Clear And Compelling Learning Outcomes

You should focus not just on the content but also on your students’ transformation and results.

Since people are more likely to invest in a course with defined results, clear and compelling learning outcomes can make or break your online course sales.

What is a Learning Outcome?

In simple terms, a learning outcome refers to what learners will know or be able to do upon completion of the course.

This makes it easier to create and market your course.

Define what the end goal of your course will be.

Align Your Course Content With Your Objectives

You need to create an online course that aligns your content with your objectives.

Here’s how you can approach this:

1. Start with the end in mind. Think backward from the desired outcome of your course. What will students learn? What skills will they acquire?

2. Frame lessons around each objective. Create modules addressing each objective individually. Focus on one outcome at a time.

3. Review and refine. After you create your course content, review and scrutinize it to catch errors, redundancies, and knowledge gaps.

4. Run a beta version. Consider selecting a sample size of interested people to try out your course before investing more resources into a launch.

Determine Your Course Model And Pricing Structure

The model and pricing structure of your online course addresses 2 things:

How will students digest your content
How will you set a price point that reflects its value

Choose The Course Model

Here are some popular course models to give you ideas on how to structure yours:

Self-paced – This model allows students to learn at their own pace, which caters to different learning speeds and schedules.
Instructor-led – Although more demanding for you as an instructor, this model brings a high degree of interactivity, often leading to higher student engagement and success rates.
Mixed-model – Combining self-paced activities with periodic live sessions could offer balance and cater to diverse student expectations.
Community-led – This could be a mix of any of the above models with an added community subscription for students to network as they go through the material.

Remember your target audience, market demand, and personal capabilities when choosing your course model.

Decide Your Pricing Strategy

Setting the right price point for your online course is equally important – the pricing needs to seem fair to students yet enough for you to have good profit margins.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to deciding the perfect cost.

Consider setting lower introductory prices initially to attract enrollments and gain traction with reviews or testimonials.

As time goes on and reputation builds up around your course, feel free to gradually adjust your price points according to its perceived value.

You can also offer tiered packages based on add-ons or complexity levels.

This accommodates various budgets while optimizing for more revenue possibilities through upselling.

Keep in mind: You can also offer discounts or special offers as powerful lures to boost sales.

Plan Your Modules

The first step in creating course content is laying out a blueprint for your modules or lessons.

Think of them as building blocks of knowledge that you want to pass on to your students.

These modules need to follow a logical structure so learners can build upon what they’ve learned as they progress through the course.

Use Various Formats

Next, consider incorporating a mixture of video tutorials, written materials, and interactive elements such as quizzes or practical exercises.

This variety helps cater to different learning styles and keeps the course engaging.

Remember, formatting matters too!

Break text into short paragraphs or use bullet points wherever possible – it enhances readability immensely.

Create High-Quality Material

Make quality your top priority.

The accuracy of your information needs to be on point.

Always cross-check facts from reliable sources before introducing them into your course material.

And if you’re creating video modules:

Video production needs special attention. Ensure good lighting and clear audio – nothing detracts from content quality quite like poor production.

Review & Refine

It’s essential to review each module to ensure there are no gaps or overlaps in the material covered.

The student should be able to smoothly transition through the subjects without feeling any disconnect.

Remember: A masterpiece often involves tweaks and refinements along the way.

Don’t hesitate to remove excess information, introduce clarifying examples where complex concepts are discussed, or even reshuffle the order of the modules.

How To Increase The Value Of Your Courses

Creating a valuable course isn’t just about sharing information.

It involves enhancing the learner’s experience and ensuring they fully extract the value in your course.

One primary way to boost course value is through supplementary resources.

Add Supplementary Resources: Worksheets, Quizzes, Case Studies, etc.

Create additional learning materials such as worksheets, quizzes, or case studies to make your content easier to understand.

These materials help reinforce key concepts taught in your lessons and improve knowledge retention.

Here’s some elaboration on those ideas:

Worksheets – You could prepare a fill-in-the-blank sheet or a reflective journal entry aligned with each module.
Quizzes – You could implement quizzes on course content at regular intervals as students progress.
Case studies – Show real-life examples to reinforce your subject matter via real-life stories and case studies.

How To Market And Promote Your Online Course

Marketing your course is the fun part.

It’s when you start making money…

Or find out you screwed up the research process.

Regardless, these are some of the top tactics those “online gurus” use to get their course sales roll in.

Create A Lead Magnet, Promote It On Social Media Platforms, And Nurture Your Audience With Email Marketing CRM

This tactic is first because this is probably going to be the quickest and most effective to start.

Start by creating a lead magnet.

Your lead magnet should be something that one of your students would want before buying your course.

Here are some ideas:

Ebooks
Templates
Tools
Videos
Blog posts
Email sequences
A free modules

Then, you need to gate your lead magnet using a signup form and landing page like this:

Next, you can promote your lead magnet directly to your followers on social media and email lists.

(If you have neither, you’ll need to grow those first.)

One of my favorite tactics for promoting lead magnets on LinkedIn is to make people leave a comment on my post if they want the free resource. This creates an engagement loop that pushes your promotional post to your commenters’ followers.

Then, I DM any commenters my VipeCloud signup form URL.

After someone signs up, VipeCloud’s CRM automatically sends them my lead magnet and places them in an automated email nurture sequence.

Collaborate With Influencers Or Industry Experts For Endorsements

Another highly effective strategy for getting your course in front of more people involves collaborating with influencers or industry experts whose audience aligns with yours.

You’ll need to network with these people – maybe get on their podcast – and get them to trust you.

Then, you can pitch the idea for them to endorse your course to their following in exchange for commissions.

Their endorsement will increase your visibility to all of their followers and quickly give you credibility due to their status.

Implement SEO With Blogging And YouTube

Last, but not least, you can use SEO strategies via blogging or YouTube to grow a following that you can sell your courses to.

If you have a blog that gets traffic, you can place signup forms for your lead magnet on relevant pages.

Or, if you have a YouTube channel, you can start including a short but compelling pitch in your videos (think of it as your own ad).

How To Choose The Right Selling Platform

You’re going to need special software to manage leads, nurture those leads, create landing pages, create signup forms, automate emails, and process payments.

There’s no shortage of “online course software” on the market.

The good thing is a lot of them are pretty affordable.

The catch?

They also charge you steep commissions (I’ve seen them charge up to 10% commissions!).

So, how do you get the tools you need without giving up such a large chunk of profits?

You can use a CRM like VipeCloud that gives you all of the tools you need to sell your online course (at an affordable, monthly fixed cost)…

Signup forms
A landing page builder
Email and SMS automation
Social post scheduling
Payment processing via Paypal

VipeCloud will give you everything you need to execute the strategies in this article – and much more.

Sign up for a 15-day free trial to give it a go yourself.Or, schedule a demo with one of our reps to see if VipeCloud is a good fit for you.