It’s 2021, and almost every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to sell online courses! Not that there’s anything wrong, but you should probably note the boom in the market!

Best Ways to Sell Online Courses

It’s only during the mid of 2020 the online learning industry started to soar. The industry itself shows high growth in the future (an estimated 14.6% growth from $144 billion to $374.3 billion by 2026)!

And here is something that’d pique your interest. Udemy as of now has 150,000+ courses and 70,000+ tutors which means that there are 70,000 individuals trying to sell online courses on one single platform alone!

Pretty big competition, right?

This brings you to the question of how you should sell online courses to stand apart from the crowd, attract potential audience and drive revenue?

We’ve got you covered on this! This read is all about the best ways you should consider selling your online courses — highly proven and effective!

Consider this approach a chain reaction — you’ll do each step in order. This makes marketing your online course way easier. Instead of starting from scratch at each stage, you’ll build on what you’ve already done.

And here’s the super cool part — this is going to cost you nothing. So, let’s get started!

Sell online courses with YouTube

While working out on the strategy, YouTube seemed like the ideal platform to start with! Assuming you’ve already created your online course, here’s what you need to do.

Instead of putting your entire course on YouTube, share a few sections — maybe four or five. Post them on a regular schedule. If your high-quality videos provide real value, people will get hooked and look forward to your next one!

Here’s where things take a turn. Every time you post a video, make sure you add links that redirect to your online course. Also, create a comment that includes a link to your online course (and pin this as well).

Even if only 10% of those 20,000 viewers sign up for your online course, that’s still significant revenue!

P.S. Make sure you add SRT files to your videos while uploading them. This helps improve the quality of your videos! Here’s a little YouTube SEO we thought you might find useful!

Create Compelling Blog Posts

It’s common nowadays coming across the phrase “Content is the King”! Well, we couldn’t agree more with this (and so should you).

A well-researched and written blog post (following all on-page SEO guidelines) can drive extensive organic traffic!

Remember the SRT file you used for your YouTube video? With that as reference, come up with a blog post. Make it interactive, witty and at some point (in most cases, the end of the read), include a link that redirects the audience to your online course.

Also, to make your blog more interactive, create infographics as downloadable content (don’t forget to include a link address to your online course). If your user doesn’t have the time to read your blog post, they can always download the infographic and take a look at it later.

P.S. Choosing the right platform for your online course is equally important as marketing It. Make sure you choose a platform that gives you complete ownership in terms of revenue, marketing and management.

Harness Your Email Marketing List

Email marketing is by far the most affordable way to market your online course. With an ROI of 4400%, you can pretty much market anything using emails.

Create a newsletter to send the blog copy you just came up with to your email subscribers. Make sure you include links to your online course as well! If you’ve managed to catch the attention of your reader, you don’t have to worry about the conversion rates and revenue!

Here’s an example where Neil Patel has sent an email about his new free course.

Since Neil has a huge marketing list, he has directly prompted his users to try out his free course (of course, he’s up to something — he says he’d be sharing the final 3 lessons the next week). Though not relevant here, it’s the idea you should be taking!

P.S. If you don’t have a sizeable email marketing list, it’s highly recommended that you build one. Here, this read can help you know how to grow your email list.

Use Social Platforms as Your Marketing Medium

You’re done with YouTube, blogs and email marketing! It’s time you turn your attention to social media channels — you never know when one of your posts is going to wreak positive havoc!

Create excerpts from your blog post and redirect them to your blogs. You can also post short videos about your online course and redirect them to your course page!

Here’s how Julia McCoy, a famous content strategist and entrepreneur, has done this.

This post gets redirected to the blog on Expresswriters. And at the endpoint, there’s a free guide to download. The purpose here is to grow their email list.

But in your case, you can redirect the audience to your blog and make them signup for the course.

Make use of social post scheduling tools like Buffer to automate posts on popular platforms at set times.

Submit Images On Sites Like Pinterest

The fast-moving lifestyle has left people with very little spare time. And browsing information on image search engines like Pinterest is becoming more popular.

Whenever you create images and excerpts for your blog, make it a practice that you submit on visual sites like Pinterest, Mix, Juxtapost and more (with a link back to your blog). You can also submit the infographics that you created for your blog post.

What happens here is, you get increased visibility. When someone does an image search relevant to your online course, you eventually get visitors to your blog post which in turn takes them to your online course. Sounds pretty easy stuff, right?

So, yes! The above-mentioned are the 5 best ways to sell online courses these days!

Webinars to create and sell online courses

Just when we thought we covered the most potential ones, we remembered that we were missing a gem in the crown — webinars!

Webinars are an excellent way to sell your online courses as well! What makes webinars super cool is that you get directly in touch with your audience and let them know what your course is about. You can even go ahead and give a taste of your online course to your audience and make them want more. Since it’s you who is conducting webinars, the trust factor increases, making webinars an ideal way to sell online courses. Speaking of webinars, here’s a webinar platform that lets you create and host webinars — the platform is easy to use and should get you going in time!

We covered the most lucrative marketing mediums that cost you nothing — all you need is to be a little creative and make sure you follow the best practices on all platforms.

So, Which Marketing Method Should You Follow?

It’s not the question of which. It’s the question of how efficiently you use it! All the above-mentioned marketing techniques follow a sequence and are most effective when you follow it as mentioned.

You don’t have to come up with unique stuff every time you switch platforms. What you create at the beginning is further elaborated into different types of marketing materials — good for you and your online course as well!

And here’s a little bonus!

While you create and sell online courses, it’s highly important that you choose the right platform to go ahead with! Enrolling yourself as a tutor in platforms like Udemy (that works on a commission model) restricts you from growing above a certain point.

But creating your own eLearning platform not only allows you to have full ownership but also helps you grow in all aspects — a self-paced tutor, a marketer and what not?

Excited? Get started with creating and selling your own online course!

Cheers!