When you are ready to build an online course, you will have to decide if you need to go the hosted route. The simplest way to know this distinction is using the analogy of renting vs. owning a business. If you select to develop and sell online courses from your own site using WordPress, this is considered a self-hosted result. This is an ideal choice if you want complete control and ownership over your website and its development environment.
If you select to sell online courses on a hosted platform, this is more like a renting business. Whether you choose a hostel or self-hosted WordPress plugin, you will be able to build, advertise and sell online courses from your own domain name or site.
How to sell online courses from your site
Developing an online course is one of the most profitable ways of making money online. It is an online business that assures a flow of income regularly. Here are the steps in developing and selling online courses on your site.
1. Find a profitable niche
Most people who launch online courses struggle to thrive. The most important reason is that they did not find the perfect niche. Online courses are meant to solve issues. Your online course has to cover an area of need such as parenting, business growth, health matters, etc. Although you are concerned about meeting the requirements of your target audience, you should stay in your area of power.
Ask the questions mentioned below to get a perfect idea.
- What am I good at?
- What am I passionate about?
- What topic do I know more about?
2. Course Creation
Developing great content will help you keep your students engaged and earn more referrals. So, at this position, take your eyes off the revenue. Adding worth to your students should be your main goal. Make sure that your course offers specific results to specific people. Let’ have a look at an example.
Course topic: How to design engaging sites with WordPress?
The following sections may apply to this topic:
- Intro to WordPress
- How to Select a web host
- Intro to the WordPress dashboard
- Demystifying your cPanel
- Installing plugins and themes, etc.
However, if you add a machine learning module, you will throw your user base off balance. After that, assign learning goals to each course section. A learning goal is a statement that explains the expected aim of each section. You can break down each section into several steps. Your course lessons could either be in text or video format.
if you want to create video content, you will need these:
- A good camera
- A screen recorder
- A microphone
- Lighting
- A tripod
3. Build your Website
Developing a WordPress site is simple. The following steps will help you build your website.
Get a Domain Name
No site is without a domain name. It is a unique name such as google.com Here are the guidelines when selecting a domain name:
- Select a descriptive name:
Use a name that portrays your website perfectly. When you use a descriptive name, your audience can tell what your website is about at first look.
- Keep it short
Though a domain name can contain up to 63 characters, keep your title short.
- No hyphens or numbers
Using hyphens or numbers can mislead your website audience.
After finding the perfect domain name, check its availability. However, if it is not available, try something different until you find an available one. How is it time to get your domain registered?
- Select a web host
Whether big or small, every site has a web host. A web host is used for keeping your site up and running.
Install WordPress
If you are concerned about your coding knowledge, calm down. An online course platform may delay you from doing things on your terms. For this cause, you can develop your online course and sell it from your own site. Your WordPress host features a one-click WordPress install. All you have to do is log in to your host account and install WordPress.
How to Install WordPress Manually
- First, download WordPress on your computer from WordPress’s official site and unzip.
- Secondly, upload WordPress to your hosting account.
- Then, build a MySQL database and database user.
- Log into cPanel
- Open the database section and click on the MYSQL database wizard.
- Develop a database and name it. Tick Next.
- Develop a database user.
- Add the user to a database and click the all privileges box. Tick next.
- Click complete.
- After that, locate the wp-config file and configure it. To find this file:
- Log into cPanel.
- Click File Manager.
- Open the public-HTML folder.
- Locate the wp-config-sample.php file.
- Rename the file.
- Right click on your edited file and choose code edit. You should see this:
define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘database_name_here’); /** MySQL database username */ define(‘DB_USER’, ‘username_here’); /** MySQL database password */ define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password_here’); |
- It is time to run the installation.
- Now finish the WordPress installation.
Type in your website name, password, email, and username.
Tick install now.
4. Protect data with an SSL certificate
An SSL certificate is a regular addition to any website. When your audience signs up for an online course, they expect that you are dedicated to keeping your private information secure. If you are new to this process, select a reliable hosting provider with a technical support team who is willing to help you install an SSL certificate.
5. Set up Google Analytics
To know and analyze your website’s audience, use Google Analytics. It is an open-source platform that tells you:
- How many visitors you had on your site?
- Which type of content is ranking?
- What content does your audience prefer?
- When you need to improve your website’s speed.
- The geographical location of the audience.
The data insight from this tool can be used to enhance your website content, speed, traffic, and general performance. So, to set Google Analytics on your website, follow the steps given below.
- Set up the WordPress Plugin Directory, and you will get a code. It is called a tracking code.
- Copy the tracking code.
- Paste it into the page you need to track.
6. Build Email Marketing Campaign
To deliver your course content, you need an email marketing platform. But beyond just delivering your content, email marketing can help you improve your course sales over time. Let’s look at the best email marketing tools:
- ConvertKit: ConvertKit is TechNinjaPro’s number one pick that provides marketing automation capabilities. It helps to improve conversions by creating more personalized and targeted emails corresponding to the respondents’ needs. ConvertKit comes with a free plan for up to 1000 subscribers.
- MailChimp: MailChimp is another popular choice for email marketing. It offers a beautiful and straightforward user interface ad is used by small businesses to big online retailers. MailChimp is free for up to 10000 emails per month or 2000 subscribers.
- Active Campaign: ActiveCampaign is another leading email marketing tool that combines email marketing automation with sales and CRM. It is perfect for smarter email marketing campaigns of small sizes. ActiveCampaign allows for campaign automation and workflows. It also comes with a template editor for attractive emails and offers user-friendly signup forms.
Is selling online courses beneficial?
Yes, selling online courses can be very beneficial. The main factor of an online course is that you can create them once and sell them. Unlike other products, digital products like online courses do not have improved marginal costs the more you sell. Obviously, be sure to figure out all your expenses when calculating your profit margin. This should include your advertising costs, software costs, and your time. Still, selling online courses is very profitable for most entrepreneurs.