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Creating and selling an online course is a big investment. You spend countless hours putting together a good course curriculum, targeting the right audience, and hope for the best. It is a product of your passion and determination! But, how do you make money from it? How do you figure out online course pricing? Understanding how to price an online course can be intimidating, especially if it’s your first time to create one. By looking into the amount of work you put into creating your course business, and valuing your hard work, you will be able to know the right cost your target market will be more than willing to pay.
Whether you are a coach, have a 9 to 5 job, or are an owner of a brick-and-mortar business, you can start a successful business by sharing your knowledge through an online course. Amazing, right?
At this day and age, starting an online venture is no longer just about selling physical items online. An online course is a whole new digital product that you can invest in.
With the right amount of determination, passion, and strategy, you can tap into a whole new market and make groundbreaking sales.
Be a course creator of easy online courses! I’m going to walk you through exactly how to do that. Click here.
Learn how to price your online course correctly
Your online course is more than just digital learning materials. It is an amalgam of your life experiences, knowledge, and years of experience in the field. Now, it is considered to be a valued commodity that can make a huge positive difference in someone else’s life.
Online courses provide valuable learning experiences that cannot be found anywhere else. You can never deny the one-of-a-kind format it offers!
Students and clients are always willing to pay for something they truly value to gain access to it. It is the only chance to get involved in an exclusive community.
Price online courses appropriately, so both you and your audience can enjoy a rewarding experience.
Thinking of setting a low price for your online course?
Studying how to price an online course can be a long process. I know that at some point, you will just think of giving it a low price. I’m telling you now that it’s a bad idea.
A low price depends on various factors, including course topic, marketing strategy, your target market, the credibility and authority that you have in your market, and the trust that you have with your target audience.
However, as a rule of thumb, it’s not recommended to sell your brainchild for less than $50.
Why is it a BAD IDEA to sell your online course at a super low price?
Competing on price is a race to the bottom.
Competing based on price is not good. When learning how to price online courses, keep a close eye on quality and competition. Remember that no matter what price you set for it, there will always be someone else out there who can beat it.
You would want clients and students to be loyal not to the low price, but to your credibility as a creator.
Target those people who will respect your knowledge and course’s value.
And of course, those who wouldn’t ask for a refund once they figure out that someone else sells similar learning materials at a cheaper price.
The amount of work involved in creating and marketing a low-priced and high-priced course is basically the same.
Creating and marketing a low-priced and high-priced course requires the same amount of work. The primary thing to think about here is that encouraging a person to purchase is marginally easier at a much lower price point.
At the end of the day, pricing is just one part of the equation. Acquiring leads, nurturing them and successfully marketing to your target audience requires a ton of effort and time.
You’ll also need some money to execute stronger marketing initiatives. Clearly, online course creation is a huge investment, so being able to charge more means getting more return on investment. Price your online courses effectively.
An online course at a low price? You will have a hard time attracting partners and collaborators.
There are many ways to promote and sell online courses. One of the best marketing methods you can take is to form joint venture partnerships to gain wider access to your target market.
The problem with selling your online learning materials at a lower price is that it limits the revenue your partner will receive. Bigger commissions offer more incentive for venture partners to promote you.
Lower prices attract low-quality students and clients.
When someone purchases your online course for a low price, there is a big chance that he or she won’t even complete it. There’s even a lower chance that they will put what they’ve learned to practice. Awful to hear, but true.
On the other hand, when we spend hundreds of dollars (minimum of $500) on a course, there is a much higher possibility of completing the course and implementing what we learned. A higher course cost attracts more committed, qualified students.
Implementation of “lazy” marketing techniques.
Price online courses the right way for stronger marketing motivation. Trust me when I say that pricing your course at a low price will result in lazy marketing techniques.
Will you invest a huge amount of money and time in marketing it if the sale price is only worth a few dollars? Of course not.
Whether the price is low or not, you still need to market it. You still need to promote it and encourage potential buyers to invest their hard-earned money.
No advertising funds.
Price online courses correctly to gain your much-needed marketing budget. Selling online courses at low prices means that you are limiting your ability to promote it and generate a positive ROI.
Fewer earnings mean less promotional budget. You are more likely to lose money than generate profit when you pay for ads.
You’ll end up degrading your very own online course’s perceived value.
You always get what you pay for, whether it is an online or offline venture. This is a general rule that most people believe in. For them, the product is cheap if the price is cheap.
Thus, selling your online course at a much lower price dramatically lessens its perceived value.
The perceived value of your course will be a big sales driver, and setting a low price can hurt that perception.
Make sure to position your course as the premium option in your market.
Guess What? Selling online courses at a cheap price is not always a bad idea. When does it become a good idea, then?
During a testing period before launch
This is one strategy that you can do to get your digital product off the ground. Pre-sell the online course before doing an official launch. You can do this even before the course is not yet ready, with the understanding that students will get access to it as soon as it is released.
The most amazing thing here is that you can involve them in creating and shaping your content. Why not ask them for some input before producing every lesson?
Usually, this is called “beta launch.” It is a common practice and is a way of telling your students that you are doing this and that.
As a result, they will be more forgiving of your delivery and content since they know that in time, you will soon increase the quality and price.
When you offer discounts as last resort to acquire students
I won’t recommend this to all online course creators. However, in some cases, offering discounts as a last resort to get new customers can work effectively. If you are planning to gear towards this approach, just see to it that you know and understand your engagement numbers.
You wouldn’t want to offer discounts to those who are ready to purchase at full price. This is only for those individuals who are about to leave you. Also, don’t go too low. I suggest offering 25% off.
When there is a deadline before a price increase
No matter what business you are in, deadlines produce a sense of urgency. When you set a deadline after which the cost will go up it incentivizes your target market to buy now. For example, if you are doing a big online course launch, it’s a great idea to offer a lower price before the deadline comes. You can also include extra bonuses (that will no longer be provided after the deadline expires) to increase course sales.
This is usually called an early bird special. Again, we are talking about discounts here but don’t go for a super low price. Setting a super low price will risk degrading your course’s perceived value.
When Selling Online Courses for Free Is a Great Idea
We are talking about online course pricing here, but it doesn’t mean that it’s never okay to offer it at a cheaper price. Profit is not the only reason why people come up with online courses. There are also instances where giving courses for free is highly beneficial.
Online courses as bonus materials included in other digital product purchases.
Do you offer other digital products and services like ebooks, webinars, and podcasts? If yes, you can include your online course as an added material in other purchases.
For instance, if you are a health and fitness coach, you may want to give clients access to your course, free of charge, in exchange for enrolling in a coaching program.
A free online course to onboard new clients!
Providing an online course for free is an effective way to help educate clients about your offerings. Software development companies know this very well. Plenty of people spend tons of hours learning how to use the software programs they bought.
Giving them free training through an online course is part of the initial onboarding process, helping them reduce cancellation rates, minimize customer service inquiries, and improve user experience. This can also apply to other online course creators out there who delve on complex, technical matters, like web development and design.
Free online courses for effective lead generation!
Price online courses in the most effective way possible to end up with good lead generation results. Even courses can include call-to-actions that will encourage students to go through more comprehensive learning on the same exact topic.
You can create a short course and give it away for free. Just make sure that at the very end, there is an attention-grabbing invite, encouraging students to purchase a paid course that offers more extensive learnings on that same topic.
Learn how to price online courses properly to turn your passion into a strong income stream!
Turn your love for teaching and learning into a successful passive side hustle. Once you learn how to manage things, it can even transform into a full-time source of income. We are all dreaming about that!
The thing is, before you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you are set to go through several hurdles. One of them is learning how to price online courses.
How do you even start? Get to know these three tiers in online course pricing.
Free
When you give your digital product monetary value, the completion rate may rise. I think this is because people are more likely to work on something they actually paid for.
My advice? Give it a price to automatically show its amazing value, but still be open to freebies, incentives, and sneak peek. After all, free items are parts of an effective marketing strategy.
Baseline Pricing
Whether or not you should go for baseline pricing depends on your goals as an online course. Making it affordable to most people means that more individuals can take it. If you are solely in this venture for passion and don’t need an income at all, then this pricing spectrum might be the one for you.
The catch? While making it available to most people, offering it as a much lower price point means lowering the expectation of value in your online course.
Premium Pricing
Premium pricing is the top choice for online course creators who got brilliant content and amazing potential. This is the key to higher engagement rates!
In addition to that, you will have the possibility to meet your goals a lot quicker, even without millions of subscribers. Sounds like the best option?
It’s still risky since higher prices equate to a limited customer base. You should be ready to cut out a big portion of your potential students (since they can’t afford your curriculum).
Want to learn how to create an online course from scratch? Click here.
How to Price Online Courses: The Best Tips
Don’t let the pricing issue control you. To be a successful online course creator someday, you need to control it yourself.
1. Be clear about your own strategy.
What are you trying to achieve? Don’t just think about what your competitors are doing. Focus on yourself and your experience. Learning how to price online courses and deciding on the right costs can take you to places.
It can help you achieve countless goals, from entering a new market and penetrating your current one to improving your sales and elevating your brand. Don’t forget that there is a unique strategy for every goal.
2. Set yourself apart from the others.
Place yourself in a whole new category. I know this is really difficult since these days it seems like nothing else can be considered as “original.”
Don’t worry.
As long as you know how to innovate and to be creative, it’s still possible to set yourself apart from other course creators. Figure out what is distinctive about what you do.
What makes you unique? How can you rename, reframe, configure, and modify your methods to stand apart from all the other alternatives in the industry?
3. Influence your learner’s point of reference.
Influencing your students’ points of reference is one of the best moves you can make as an online course creator. How do you “magnet” your market closer to you?
Magnet here means introducing a valuable premium offering that is priced a lot higher compared to anything else you are offering.
By doing so, you can execute a so-called anchoring effect. Exposure to these higher-priced offerings help anchor reference points at a much higher level, making the cost for your standard offering seem more reasonable.
Higher priced offerings help increase the cost of your standard offering–the very reason why it’s called a magnet.
4. Focus on the value, not the profit.
Never work towards the potential profit that comes with online course creation. Focus on the value it will deliver. How valuable can this course curriculum become?
Can students easily apply this to their day-to-day routine?
In what way will these details improve their professional or personal brand?
How much time will they save?
Look into all the potential positive results. Put price tags on them. Continuously look for ways to increase value, most especially with low-cost moves.
5. Improve your online course’s packaging.
The packaging is always a part of pricing. Sure, an online course is a digital product, not a physical one, and can’t be packaged in a tangible way.
But it involves several landing pages.
See to it that those landing pages are visually appealing, incorporates good copywriting work, have engaging CTAs, have social proof, and have compelling images. I
Improving your landing pages is one of the best things you can do to bolster your pricing.
6. Test different price points.
Continuously test different price points. For every specific offering, there is a specific price point. Endless work, but it will help you grow as an online course creator!
7. Offer different payment plans.
Not all people can shell out a big sum of money even for the most valuable online courses. It’s always better to give many payment plans and allow some to pay in much smaller amounts.
Spacing the price out for a few months will make the set up more manageable.
Use Thinkific to create an online course your future students will love.
How much should you price an online course?
Charging too little will make your content look useless. Meanwhile, charging too much might shoo potential students away.
So, how much is the right price?
Consider it as a work in progress.
Growing an online course business requires continuous testing and adapting to results.
The goal here is to regularly gather crucial data so you can figure out the best price points or make adjustments, depending on the feedback of your target audience.
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