Create and Sell Your Online Course

There has never been a better time to create an online course and start money real passive income. In this guide we will take you through the 5 simple steps to get your course online and earning money.

5 Steps to Sell Your Course Online

1. Choose Your Subject

Spend some time researching and thinking about what courses are popular and what you would like to teach. Ask your family and friends about what they would like to learn and their suggestions. We suggest a course subject that you are passionate about, have experience in or perhaps you are particularly good at. It doesn’t have to be anything technical!

There are thousands of online courses from highly complex IT programming course to the art of conversation.

Here are a few course ideas that we have found popular:

• IT Training Courses – Always in high demand but very technical
• Software Training – Perhaps a course on how to use Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint
• Photography – Showcase your skills, knowledge, and passion
• Health and Safety – Essential training for the workplace
• Marketing – How to increase your brand awareness and sales
• Personal Development – Inspire, motivate and improve others
• Management Courses – Career progression through managerial training

The course topics are endless, pick one that suits you, and perhaps start with a short course to gain experience.

Use websites like Ubersuggest to research your keywords and see how many people are searching Google for your course per month.

2. Create Great Content

People study in lots of different ways these days but they all have one thing in common, it has it be engaging. People might sign up for your new course, look at the first couple of pages, never come back, and will never take another course.

Keep it simple! Use lots of different media to keep your students engaged, create quizzes during your course to test their knowledge, mix it up with examples of real-life experiences, make use of different media options like photos, information graphics, videos, bullet points, and interesting text.

Asking close friends and family to look over your course is an excellent idea. It will help you create a better course by spotting the spelling and grammar mistakes and iron out any issues that you may not have seen.

✔️ Videos – You don’t need to purchase expensive camera equipment or video editing software. You can use your smartphone and free editing software. Use free software called Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to produce professional videos, capture your computer screen. We have been using it for years with great results.

✔️ Images – Use royalty-free images or photos that you have taken yourself. Don’t use other peoples as it’s unethical and it will cause you a lot of issues later.

✔️ Text – Write your content at the correct level and try and be natural. Don’t over complicate it with long paragraphs, break it up a little.

✔️ Infographics – Produce eye-catching graphics containing charts, facts, and figures to emphasize your point

✔️ Offer Downloads – Produce fact sheets, information files and course notes that are available to download during the course

✔️ Quizzes and Assessments – Check student progress with regular quizzes and an end of course assessment.

Asking close friends and family to look over your course is an excellent idea. It will help you create a better course by spotting the spelling and grammar mistakes and iron out any issues that you may not have seen. It takes a lot of time and effort to create even a short course, produce small sections at a time and have a break for a while and come back with fresh ideas!

3. Publish Your Course

You have several options when deciding how to publish your course online. You can choose from one of the many online course platforms like Satoms or start your online course website.

Use an Online Course Provider

It’s important to discuss your options with the site owners and you can also gauge their support, customer service, and user experience. Students and yourself will often have questions and issues that need to be addressed, so choose a responsive course provider, offers support with your course and professional. Perhaps take on of their courses to see that standard is what you expect.

There are many different payment options, commission rates and expenses to consider. Some sites offer a percentage of sales for your course, while others will offer you a one-off payment for your course or a monthly subscription to host your course.

Satoms offer a few options and you can choose whichever one suits you the best:

Option 1 – You keep 100% of any certificate sales and pay a monthly fee of $49.00 USD to Satoms with no lock-in contract

Option 2 – You can choose to receive 70% of all course certificate sales, with monthly stats performance reports of your course
or
Option 3 – A one-off payment from Satoms for your course. The amount will be assessed individually per course.

Build Your Own Site

Here is a list if you are thinking about starting your own online course business:

• Web Hosting – We would steer clear of cheap discount web hosts and would go for a quality service that offers great speeds, website backups, unlimited bandwidth, security, and technical advice.
• WordPress – Many top websites, including Satoms, are built on this free platform. Simple to install, secure, and supported by software developers worldwide.
• LMS – Learning Management System to deliver your course
• Secure Payments – PayPal and Stripe is the most popular and can be easily integrated into your site.
• Marketing – It might take a few years to build up visitors to your site or may wish to spend money in marketing your site to build up a user base quickly.

There are pros and cons to all options.

Online learning is estimated to be $157 billion USD by 2025 according to Industry Analysis in the USA

4. Market Your Course

There is a film form the late 19080’s called Field of Dreams where a framer from Iowa hears a voice say “If you build it, he will come”, he built it and they come. However, there’s no point in creating an amazing course if no one knows about it. Therefore you need to think about attracting visitors to your course and get them to sign up. When you create an awesome course you need to tell everyone about it!

If you are uploading your course to an existing provider then they should have a marketing strategy in place and part of their commission is to help pay for these services.

Starting from scratch is possible, with time and patience you could build a fantastic website.

• Facebook Ads are a great way of reaching your target audience. Why not start a Facebook group or page showcasing your courses?
• Google Adwords – Another good way of getting people to your site, set a budget and experiment with different ad placements and styles
• LinkedIn – Expand your network to generate conversations and interest in your course
• Buy Ads on specialist sites that relate to your course topic
• Blog Posts – Write articles about the subject and include backlinks to your course

How much are you going to charge for your course? This is a vital point and needs lots of thought. You don’t want your cheap to seem too cheap and have little value and then again not too expensive. Carry out some market research to see what other similar course costs.

5. Review and Update

After you have completed steps 1 to 4 you should start to earn a passive income from your course, or you will have received payment. Regularly review and update your course and listen to users’ feedback.

Change things up to see what work and what doesn’t. If your course isn’t performing as well as you expected to, try changing the landing page, look at the images to see how you have improved. Take a look at other online courses that are popular to see what makes them successful.

In conclusion, creating an online course takes a lot of time and effort. However, when it’s finished and people are learning it takes little effort to earn that passive monthly income that could last for years!