Want to learn how to start an online course business? Willing to teach people in your own space? Need to figure out where and how to start?
If your answer to any of these questions is yes, this is the article for you!
In this article, we will discuss how to start an online course business in 6 easy steps.
Further, we will also discuss courses and their market trends, a reason to build them, their components, and more. Know in detail about the existing challenges to the earning possibilities!
Let’s get started!
Understanding the Elearning Market
The market for online courses was worth more than USD 30 billion in 2022. The reason? Its flexibility, reduced cost, course variety, personalized learning system, and more.
It can be accessed usually via an app or a website.
Different elements make online courses systematic, organized, and complete. Some of the must-have elements are:
- Functional and well-designed LMS
- Identification of all the course outcomes
- Planning of different learning methodologies
- Utilization of both synchronous and asynchronous lectures and activities
- Proper and tested delivery methods
- Online tests and quizzes are used to track progress.
Key Components of An Online Training Business
Let’s dive into the list of key components to start an online course business.
1. Learning Management System (LMS)
An LMS is software that helps you create, deliver, and manage training courses and modules.
LMS enables people to:
- Create, edit, and manage course content, including multimedia materials such as text, images, audio, and videos.
- Deliver online courses with access to materials. It provides interactive features like quizzes, assignments, and discussion forums.
- Manage users like learners, instructors, and others by assigning roles.
- LMS manages bulk user onboarding, group, and password management, enables security options, and more.
Hence, a capable LMS is a key component of any online teaching business.
Depending on your requirements and budget, you can go with either a self-hosted or an SaaS (Software as a Service) LMS.
Self-hosted solutions like Masteriyo give you the full control over your website whereas with SaaS options you are limited by the restrictions set by the platform.
2. Niche and Target Audience
Before starting an online course business, you must select, analyze, and finalize your course topic.
Try to create course topics that are trending. This will help you gain a large audience and/or learners.
For example, Artificial Intelligence is all the rage right now. So, you can create an online course on the topic “How to Use ChatGPT like an expert.”
Another important point is to know your audience. After finalizing a course topic, you should know its potential audience. Then, keep yourself in their shoes.
Analyze your course from the learner’s point of view. You should know the requirements of readers and provide course content accordingly.
3. Deliverables
In most online training businesses, the deliverable is a self-paced course. However, it could also be live coaching, code-along, webinars, ebooks, video tutorials, or some other kind of resource.
It all boils down to what works with your niche and the target audience. For instance, a personal trainer will find live coaching most effective, whereas an online educator might find structured courses a better option.
Alternatively, you can even choose multiple deliverables to cater to a wider audience.
The deliverable of online training must be engaging, complete, comprehensive, and well-structured.
Having only texts can make your course content dull. So, include videos, quizzes, assignments, graphs, charts, audio, and more.
We would suggest you create a course outline or curriculum. This way, all course creators, instructors, and learners will have a clear idea of what to deliver and receive.
4. Pricing
Pricing strategy is a must for an online course business!
It is determined by several factors like market demand and value, business goal, target audience, perceived value, and more.
A reasonable price range appeals to more readers. Try to make your pricing as economical as possible. We recommend you sell online courses for less than $50.
The pricing, of course, is also determined by the following:
- Quality of the course content. It also depends on the knowledge, expertise, and meaningful insight.
- The length and complexity of the course. You can charge a higher price for detailed and comprehensive courses and less price for short courses.
- Whether you opt for a fixed price, tiered pricing, subscription model, or bundled packages, make sure to consider the target audience.
- Determine the pricing strategy that best aligns with your business goals.
5. Distribution Options and Marketing Plans
The last step is to distribute the courses and reach out to potential learners through the most used channels.
Sell your online class course on dedicated eLearning websites. Another effective distribution option is email, where you can reach out to previous and existing learners.
Online class business owners can also run different paid campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Search Engines, and LinkedIn to reach potential customers.
Similarly, other effective online course marketing strategies include:
- Provide learners with different deals and exclusive discounts
- Outreaching to different educational institutions with a proper proposal
- Paid promotion on different educational websites
How to Start an Online Course Business? – 8 Easy Steps
Starting your own online course business can be a rewarding experience. For that, you need to make sure your learner gets a comfortable and professional learning experience.
Running an online course business isn’t as difficult as most people expect it to be!
It is one of the best businesses for making passive income from home. The online class business has sufficient market value to turn it into a primary source of income.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the detailed steps on how to start an online course business.
Step 1: Pick a Suitable Niche
Niche targeting is essential if you want to run an online course business successfully.
The elearning industry is huge! So, you need to do some research on what niches exist out there.
Do you have any skills or knowledge that are in demand these days? Something that you can train others in? If yes, that’s a suitable niche for you to get started with!
We suggest you ask these questions to yourself:
- What are my passions and interests?
- Who is the targeted audience for this niche?
- Will this niche be sustainable?
- How can I create more engaging and valuable content?
Want to stand out from the many other existing elearning businesses? Then, choose a niche that aligns with your strengths and interests.
Step 2: Identify Your USP
The unique selling proposition (USP) is something that makes your business stand out from the crowd.
Your USP can generally be something beneficial that you offer that is better than those of your competitors. It can also be something unique and creative from your end.
Your USP must:
- Resonate with the target market and audience
- Be able to appeal to the customers
Your USP must be powerful enough to change insight or provide solutions to overcome some of the biggest challenges in your chosen niche.
This is the end of our second step on how to start an online course business.
Step 3: Create a Framework for your Online Training
Decided on your niche and USP? Next, you need to create a framework for your online courses.
Framework provides a conceptual structure that will guide you while building your online courses.
If you want to know what an online course business framework looks like, here is the one!
- Identify the possible audience of your online classes
- Develop a course uniformly and create its content
- Selection of all the required infrastructure and its platform
- Pricing, revenue, and profit determination from the online classes
- Different marketing and promotion strategies
- Proper track of overall performance
- Updates as per the necessity of the learners
- Partnership, collaboration, and growth strategies
Done with your framework on how to start an online course business? Now, we suggest you choose a suitable type of online business based on your needs.
Step 4: Publish your Training Material
The next step is to put your training material out on the market. This process starts with preparing deliverables.
It could be a video course, an audio podcast, an interactive go-along tutorial, or something as simple as a cheat sheet or ebook.
Then, you need to publish it on a LMS.
Step 5: Determine the Pricing Model
Price determination is one of the most important factors when deciding how to start an online course business. A suitable price range will help your business flourish and gain more learners.
The price of online classes can depend on various factors, such as the complexity of the course, instructor expertise, duration, and more.
Sometimes, the pricing can also be determined by the course’s market demand.
Moreover, price determination should be reasonable for both you and your students. Here are some pricing strategies to implement on your course platform:
- One-time onboarding Price
- Membership and Subscription (Recurring Income)
- Multiple Currency and Parity Pricing
- Sell to Individuals / Sell to Groups
- Bundle Sales
Step 6: Promote your Course or Training Module
After you have a site to sell courses and training modules, you need to market it so that it reaches your target audience.
Marketing is of two types:
- Organic marketing in which users find your courses and training modules naturally.
- Inorganic marketing in which you push ads to boost your website’s visibility.
“What helps people, helps business.” Thus, you should create campaigns that help your audience by applying diverse methods.
Some commonly used marketing strategies for course and training modules are:
- Implementing course info and course list structured data for SEO
- Content marketing to funnel people to your courses
- Collaborating with content creators and influencers
- Offering free crash courses as samples to learners
With this, here we come to the end of the steps to create an online course.
Why Start an Online Training Business?
If you’re an individual wondering: Is selling an online course profitable? Our answer is an absolute: Yes! It is profitable!
Online course business is not only a great way to earn money, but it is also a great medium to share your knowledge and passion.
The course’s idea can be as simple as cooking, gardening, or anything that you’re passionate about.
Let’s get familiar with some of the reasons to build an online business.
1. Low Startup Capital
Many newcomers avoid starting a new business because of the huge capital investment. But that’s not the case with building and selling an online course.
It’s almost safe to say that online course business needs very little capital!
To build an online course, you need to invest in tools and sound equipment. The expenditure on these items is comparatively less.
Initial advertising is also affordable. You can get started with social media promotion on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Quora, Reddit, and more.
2. Increased Income Potential
We are all aware of the changing dynamics of the online course business. It is safe to say that its income potential is likely to increase daily. The reason? Its effectiveness!
The potential projection of the online learning market is estimated to reach $50 billion.
The successful course creators can earn around $1K to $10K per month.
Three essential factors determine the overall revenue of your online class business:
- The size of the audience
- Overall conversion rate
- Price of your course
It is safe to say that the overall income rate of online-class businesses is increasing and is expected to grow even more in the future.
3. Creates Reusable Assets
Building online classes requires maximum effort. Then, this asset can be used repeatedly for a longer period.
However, the digital world is rapidly evolving. You need to update your online modules from time to time to ensure that they stay relevant.
Starting an online training or course business is like building a solid asset. It helps you generate steady income throughout the years.
4. Make a Bigger Impact
Online courses can expand their reach and scale within a certain period.
Once it is popular, it will reach a wide audience. Plenty of learners will educate themselves and grow through the courses.
Using LMS software will help you protect, record, and re-record videos. This will help you reach a wide audience, as you can create what learners need!
Use different marketing strategies, tools, and techniques to grow your outreach.
That’s all! With little capital and your unique ideas, you can easily make a huge impact.
Importance of Building a Good Relationship with Buyers (And How to Master it?)
Customer relationships are important in online course business to attract additional buyers and maximize profit.
Trusted readers will respect your experience and advice. Not only that, but they’ll also value your contribution and decisions.
When the relationship grows and flourishes, they’ll turn out to be your long-term customers.
Want to build a strong relationship with your buyers? If yes, we suggest you go through some of the best strategies:
- First thing first, you can create buyer’s personas to understand them better.
- Rapport with buyers through mirroring, empathy, active listening, and sharing common goals.
- Ask engaging questions, questions to find what they want. After that provide a solution and ask for their feedback. After all, it’s all about communication!
- Demonstrate your expertise! This way you can develop an understanding with your customers and assure that you can solve their problems.
- Customers perceive your brand based on moments and experiences, so engage with your audience.
- Monitor the buyer’s response and everything they do. This way, you can understand them better.
Challenges of Online Education Business
Knowing only how to create and sell a course online is not enough. You must also be aware of the challenges that come along with launching and promoting your course.
Let’s know the top three challenges of online course business.
1. Technical Issue
Most things in the online course business rely on technology. Launch a course without glitches, server downtime, or compatibility issues.
To make sure that learners don’t face such issues, use suitable platforms and LMS tools.
Sometimes, the courses are not accessible across all devices. Ensure that your online courses are compatible with different web browsers, mobile devices, and screen sizes.
How to solve it: Launch your course with technical capabilities in mind. Downsize your media and don’t use them unnecessarily. Make the content as concise as possible.
2. Lack of Proper Communication
Online learning is very convenient. However, when the interaction is not fluent, it might cause some sort of inconvenience.
Not only students but even remote workers claim that online classes and training make them feel isolated.
Sometimes, lack of interaction creates boredom. As a result, students might end up switching courses.
How to solve it: Provide learners with a collaborative learning environment that includes proper interactions.
3. Poor Digital Literacy
Most online course learners have poor digital literacy. They don’t have the knowledge to use the latest technology.
This might frustrate the learners, making their easy learning experience a nightmare.
How to solve it: Provide a short tutorial on how to use all the required tools. Make the login and navigation options simple and seamless.
How Much Can You Earn with Online Education Business?
It is challenging to provide a certain range of earnings when it comes to an online course business. The profit amount entirely depends on the amount of work and dedication you put in!
If we go through different sources, you can make anywhere between $0 to $50k+ per month.
Even the most successful creators are estimated to earn $1k to $10k per month.
Want to earn more? The most profitable courses are related to development, business, and office.
To make it easier to understand, let’s get familiar with a simple formula to calculate online course revenue:
Revenue = Size of audience x Conversion rate x Price of your course
Andrea Bizzoto is a professional coding teacher on Udemy. He teaches coding through Udemy and various teachable websites.
As per his income report, he made around $3,580 per month. In aggregate, he was able to make $43,000 in the year 2020.
Wrapping Up with How to Start an Online Course Business!
Starting an online course requires a lot of planning and execution. But that’s it! After that, you can start with a low investment and make a profit throughout.
There are plenty of online training platforms today. So, if you want your course to stand out, make sure that it’s relevant, updated, and includes the best courses and resources.
We hope our article helped you to get familiar with how to start an online course business
We wish you all the best for your online course business!