How to Make Money with Online Courses: 8 Websites for Selling Online Courses

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Are you looking for how you can make money with online courses but confused by the tons of opinions and guides online?

Today, an increasing number of businesses are creating online courses both as a means of marketing their businesses and sharing their knowledge. Online courses allow individuals and businesses to build a community and also earn extra income.

While the concept of creating and launching online courses is simple, the process is not so simple. It goes beyond uploading a video; it entails developing a course curriculum, developing assignments, and designing the course pages amongst others.

In this post, I draw on my years of experience in creating online courses to showcase some platforms that you can use to sell your online courses.

1. Udemy

Although the earliest massive open courses made it easy to have access to learning, Udemy made it possible to teach online courses. The platform has over 40 million students that are enrolled in different courses and over 50,000 instructors.

If you want to create a paid course on Udemy, you need to apply to become a paid instructor. Once your application is approved, you will come across a series of steps that you need to follow to create your first course. As you plan the content of your course, note that the courses must be at least 30 minutes video and five lectures.

You can also include quizzes, coding exercises, assignments, and discussion prompts.

Why should you use Udemy? It’s a great platform because it offers lots of support for creating and marketing your online course. For instance, if you want to know if your video lessons are up to standard, you can submit a review to get feedback on the video and audio. The support team will also suggest the equipment that you can use.

Resources

To learn how to plan a course, film your video, and other related topics, there are tips and tricks that you can learn through Udemy’s Teach Hub.

If you are finding it difficult to make your first sales, Udemy offers a tailor-made marketing program that will provide the support that you need. Feature your course in Udemy’s email blasts, participate in site-wide discounts, or enroll in the platform’s affiliate marketing program. These options are optional, and based on the channels you use for promotion, Udemy takes a share from the sales made.

The platform’s marketplace insights will help you choose the right course topic and see how it stands against other courses on the site. This is important because of the size of the market that you are competing with. Just like Google Analytics, Udemy’s marketplace insights help you know how a topic is performing on Udemy. You will also know the topic’s search volume and keywords.

Also, you will see the number of courses that exist for the topic, the top-earning courses on that topic, monthly revenue, and the best promotion channels (such as Udemy discovery, Udemy search, and paid ads).

Pricing

Udemy is free for selling premium courses. The platform charges a 3% revenue share on sales made by instructor coupons, 50% revenue share on courses sold via organic search on Udemy (through an Udemy promotion), and 75% revenue share on sales made via Udemy’s paid user acquisition channels.

The revenue share does not include the processing fees that are charged by Payoneer, PayPal, ad mobile platform fees.

2. Skillshare

If you are an entrepreneur, writer, blogger, or designer that wants to teach your craft on the internet, Skillshare is a great platform for teaching creative skills. There are courses on different kinds of topics on marketing, doodling, photography, hand painting, cooking, and wall hanging.

Skillshare offers a membership plan for students. This plan gives students access to over 27,000 premium courses. The platform is free for course creators to register and publish a course. However, the course must be part of Skillshare’s premium catalog before a course creator can get paid.

Skillshare classes comprise three moving parts which are video lessons, a project, and community discussion. Each of the classes has 20 to 60 minutes of videos, which are broken down into 2 to 5-minute lessons.

The practical aspect of the courses ensures hands-on experience. For example, a social media class project may require students to promote their Facebook page while a writing class may require students to write a pitch.

Finally, the community aspect of the class enables students to post their work. Instead of focusing on outcomes, students are encouraged to share their progress, get feedback, and modify their work; steps that are ideal for the creative courses that you will be teaching.

Skillshare is free for creating premium classes. The platform pays class instructors $10 for premium membership referrals and royalties for minutes of classes watched in a premium class every month.

Read Also: Best Passive Income Ideas

3. Thinkific

Thinkific offers a full-featured software solution that helps course creators to create, deliver, market, and sell online courses. Lots of reputable course creators use this platform for their online courses. The site has a free plan but does not charge any transaction fees on its paid and free plans.

The Thinkific App store sets this platform apart from competitors. The app store allows you to integrate different platforms that will help you create more engaging and impactful learning experiences and sell your courses effectively.

Thinkific’s basic plan starts at $49 per month (or $39 if you pay annually).

4. LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds has a lot of momentum at the moment. The company portrays itself as a premium option for having access to high interactivity, social learning tools (for complementing standard course content), and white labeling.

The platform also places a lot of emphasis on its tools for building impressive-looking sales pages for courses. You can also test the platform without signing up via a simulator offered by LearnWorlds.  In July 2020, the company added a full website builder capability.

LearnWorlds can be tried free for 30 days (no credit card required). The paid plan starts at $29 per month (or $24 if you pay annually). The company also charges $5 per sale on the starter plan, but you will not incur any charges if you are on the other plans.

Unlike most platforms, LearnWorlds offers services that help creators to upload and convert their content, develop courses, and customize their LearnWorlds school. The platform is also one of the few sites that supports SCORM.

It is a great platform for anyone that wants to make money online with online courses.

5. Ruzuku

Ruzuku is another great platform for selling online courses. The platform is in partnership with payment gateways such as PayPal, and also provides email marketing tools like MailChimp.

Ruzuku offers a complete step-by-step guide for creating online courses. This makes it easy for anyone to launch a course, generate income, and share their expertise with a large audience.

The platform also has a discussion forum and quizzes amongst others. Some of the well-known features of the platform include teleconferences, email notifications, and video broadcasts.

6. Podia

You can create an online course on Podia in just three steps. This platform, which seems to be gaining lots of attention, is one of the most used sites for creating, hosting, and selling online courses. The site does not charge any fees but has a transaction fee of 2.9% and 30 cents.

With Podia, you can add pre-launch courses, add coupons, design sales pages, and lots more. Some of the features of the platform include hosting webinars, running affiliate programs, and connecting with Facebook groups.

The site has a basic plan that starts at $39 per month; you will get 2 months free if you are on the annual plan.

7. Kajabi

Kajabi is a high-end course builder that is designed for information businesses (not tiny course creators). It is great for email marketing automation. Automation is an important part of pre-sale, pre-webinar, drip course, and upsell emails, and Kajabi helps to execute all these seamlessly.

The site has a ‘Pipelines’ feature which allows course creators to create fully automated marketing campaigns and funnels for generating leads. These frameworks have pre-written copies that are optimized to boost conversions.

The platform also features great course site themes, a customizable checkout, blogging functionality, and the ability to sell internet-based products.

Overall, Kajabi is the best high-end platform for creating online courses. It features more built-in tools and features (all of which come at a cost that is slightly higher than other platforms).

Some of the pros of Kajabi include the following:

  • It is the best all-in-one software for information businesses.
  • Kajabi features Wistia video hosting
  • It has different sales and marketing tools
  • You can enjoy monthly recurring subscriptions
  • Public figures (such as Amy Porterfield) use Kajabi
  • The platform is integrated with PayPal and Stripe

The pricing plans on Kajabi are based on the number of courses and active members course creators have. They include:

  • Basic plan ($119 per month):  This is for 1 website, 1 admin, 3 products, 3 pipelines, 10,000 contacts, and 1,000 active members.
  • Growth ($119 per month): The Growth plan is for 1 website, 10 admins, 15 products, 15 pipelines, 25,000 contacts, 10,000 active members.
  • Pro ($319 per month): This plan is for 3 websites, 25 admins, 100 products, 100 pipelines, 100,000 contacts, and 20,000 active members.

Read Also: How to Make Money Selling Information Products

8. WizIQ

WizIQ allows teachers and educators to create virtual classrooms and offer live interactive online classes. The site has over 400,000 instructors teaching over 4 million students through virtual classes in 200 countries.

WizIQ provides educators and instructors with the latest tools for offering live training. Some of these tools include discussion boards, mobile options, video streaming, analytics, and assessments.

If you want to make money with online courses and reach a large audience live irrespective of where they are in the world, you can test the platform by using their 14-day free trial.

FAQs

How do you create an online course?

Most of the online course platforms that we considered in this post have tools that you can use to create online courses. These tools are usually intuitive and allow you to use text, images, and videos to create courses. Most of the tools will also allow you to add quizzes and tests and discussion forums.

See also: How to create and sell profitable online courses

Is selling online courses profitable?

Yes, online courses are profitable. Creating and selling online courses is one of the best businesses you can adopt if you want passive income. They are in demand and more people are ready to pay for them.

Can you make a living from online courses?

Yes, online courses are so profitable that you can make a living from them. They are one of the best models that digital entrepreneurs can use to earn additional income. The demand for digital courses keeps increasing. The convenience these courses provide makes more people willing to pay top dollar for them.

What is a learning management system?

A learning management system (also referred to as LMS) is a software platform that is used for hosting and delivering online courses. It can also be used to register students and track the students’ progress through the courses. If you’ve been searching online for how you can sell your online courses, you must have come across this term.

Conclusion

It can be quite lucrative to create and sell online courses if you have a great course and reach your ideal audience.

Also, the huge number of easy-to-use and affordable resources that you can use to host your online courses make it easier for you to become an online instructor.

Although it may take time to create all the content in your course, once you upload it, it can become a good source of profitable passive income to your existing business model. It is also a great business on its own.

I hope you found this post useful and you’ve discovered how you can make money with online courses. Click here to learn more about how you can generate passive income from your online courses.

Thanks for reading.