Do you know how much will you be making as an online course creator selling courses online? According to case studies, successful online course creators can make up to 6 and 7 figures per annual selling course online.
- Bottom Tier: $19,500 to $65,000 per year
- Middle Tier: $70,478 to $82,499 per year
- Top Tier: $98,000 to $135,000 per year
The online eLearning industry have be growing 20% per year, and for the past decade many educators, influencers and coaches are becoming edupreneurs who create and sell their own online courses on platforms like Teachng, Udemy and SkillShare.
As you explore the possibility of teaching online, let’s take a look at hard data on how much money you can actually make selling course, and uncover ways you can increase your earning potential to reach 7-Figures.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- How much you make by selling online course depends on your course price, market demand, course quality, your reputation and marketing strategies.
- Revenue expected from an online course depends on your audience reach with your course, price of your online course and your overall conversion rate.
- Selling online course is very profitable and offers many ways to monetize your online course to increase your revenue and profit.
How Much Do Online Course Creators Make?
On average, course creators make at least $70,478 per year, while top 10% earners make over $135,000 per year.
In general, an online course creator makes anywhere between $19,500 to over $135,000 per year, and top 1% course creator make over $200,000 per year.
While the range of how much online course creator makes varies greatly between industries, according to the recent studies, the mass majority of course creator make between $40,000 (25th percentile) to $91,500 (75th percentile).
However, how much money you can potentially make money from course selling depends on many other factors, and here are some key considerations.
1. Course Pricing
The price you set for your course plays a crucial role in determining your potential earnings.
- Higher-priced courses can yield greater revenue per sale, but they may also have a smaller customer base.
- Lower-priced courses can attract a larger audience, but the revenue per sale will be lower.
Price your course according to your industry, your skills and experience as an course creator, and the affordability of your audience.
Check out our in-depth article about pricing your online course if you want to learn more.
2. Course Demand
The value of your course often depends on the popularity and demand for your course topic. Some niches are more demanded than others and have a larger target audience size.
- A course with higher demand will lead to a higher audience number and higher pricing power.
- A course with lower demand will have lower audience number and lower pricing power.
Selling online course like any other forms of sales, it is highly dependent on the rule of demand-and-supply.
The size of your audience is an important factor in determining how much you can actually make selling course online.
And if you are wondering what niches to start, here are some of the popular niches:
- Personal Development
- Leadership and management
- Digital marketing
- Arts and design
- Home and gardening
- etc.
The types of topics you can create an online course is limitless, and if you are wondering what are some of the best online course ideas, check out our complete list of over 200+ online course ideas next.
3. Marketing and Promotion
Your ability to effectively create a sales funnel that helps to market and promote your online course can directly influence your course sales and eventually your income.
There are many ways to market your new course, and a well-executed marketing strategy can attract more students and increase your revenue potential.
- Build a reputation and a brand for your online course.
- Build an online community using some of the best membership platforms.
- Reach out to your potential audience through different marketing strategies.
- Create a sales funnel and convert your leads into paying learners of your course.
Regardless, how good your new course, if no one knows about your course, no one will buy your course, and you won’t be able to create a profitable online education business.
4. Course Quality
The quality of your course is critical in determining how much you will earn as an online course creator. An online course that is professionally created and another that looks like just some YouTube video can greatly affect the perceived value of your course.
If you want to create a high quality course you’ll need to:
- Choose the best online course platform.
- LMS system that streamline your online course delivery process.
- Course ideas and topic that resonate with your audience.
- Course that offers features that interact with your audience.
- Course structure with a logical flow that guides your learners.
Create online courses that sells means to offer exceptional value to your online learners, and setting up your course on the right online course platform is essential.
5. Your Reputation as a Course Creator
Will you choose to attend a course conducted by Warren Buffett talking about investing, or will you attend a course conducted by an experienced but a less known retail investor down the street talking about the same topic?
Even I will choose to attend Warren Buffett’s investing course, because he is basically a legend in investing and I doubt anyone will be as qualified as him to talk about investing.
Your reputation as an expert in your field greatly impact your earnings. People pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to just have lunch with Warren Buffett.
You can build your reputation is a few ways:
- Be world famous on a particular subject or topic.
- Get positive reviews on your online course or topics.
- Get testimonies on your online course.
Having some reviews on what you are promoting will greatly enhance your reputation which helps you in building your reputation.
How to Calculate Revenue for Your Online Course?
Revenue is an important number when calculating how much you make from selling your course online. To calculate the revenue of your online course, it follows a simple formula:
Revenue = Audience Size x Price of Course($) X Conversion Rate(%)
Regardless what course you are creating or which type of online business you are running, as long as you are selling something online, the 3 factors that determines your revenue are:
1. Audience Size
Audience size represents the number of people you can reach and let them know about your course.
This can be increased through marketing effort such as email marketing, social media marketing, paid advertising, SEO or word of mouth.
Your audience size are the people you drive to your landing page, your online course website, or your sales funnel.
2. Price of Course
Pricing of your course means how much you are actually earning for each of the sales. It can be single course sales, membership subscription sales, or even coaching service sales.
A course that is priced low will requires many more sales to reach a certain revenue goal. While a course that is priced higher will need much fewer sales to reach the same revenue goal.
As a general rule here are some general guidelines on the minimum price you should set for your course.
- Subscription service: Min. $29 per month.
- Online course: Min. $100 for each single course sale.
- Coaching or consultation service: Min. $75 per hour.
So how your pricing can affect your revenue and the number of sales you need to reach the same revenues goal?
Example on Pricing:
- Low Priced: If you sell a course at $20 per course and your revenue goal is $1000, you need to sell 50 of these course to reach your goal.
- Average Priced: If you sell a course at $100 per course and your revenue goal is $1000, you need to sell 10 of these course to reach your goal.
- High Priced: If you sell a course at $500 per course and your revenue goal is $1000, you need to sell 2 of these course to reach your goal.
Pricing of your course is determined by many factors, and oftentimes it is better to price your course close to the average than to price it too low.
3. Conversion Rate
Conversion rates for online courses is the last and most important factor that determines your total revenue selling an online course.
- An average landing page conversion rate for online course is 2.35%, which is between the range of 1.5% to 5% conversion rate.
- Low conversion rate for an online course’s landing page will be anywhere between 0.1% to 1.5%.
- High conversion rate will be anywhere above 5%, rarely an online course can reach a conversion rate of more than 10%
Good rate of conversion for any online course falls between 2.5% to 5% conversion across all industry.
Example on How to Calculate Your Revenue
Understanding the earnings from your online course business will follow the formula:
Revenue = Audience Size x Price of Course($) X Conversion Rate(%)
If your goal is to earn at least $5,000 per month you can either do one of the following:
- Increase your audience size.
- Increase your course price.
- Increase your conversion rate to meet your earning goal.
Here are some examples with $5,000 as your earning goal:
- $5,000 (Revenue) = 2,000 (Audience Size) x $100 (Price of Course) X 2.5% (Conversion Rate)
- $5,000 (Revenue) = 10,000 (Audience Size) x $20 (Price of Course) X 2.5% (Conversion Rate)
- $5,000 (Revenue) = 1,000 (Audience Size) x $100 (Price of Course) X 5% (Conversion Rate)
Is Selling Online Courses Profitable?
Well, of course!
Selling online course is highly profitable, in fact it is one of the most profitable online business if you are an influencer, coach, instructor, online educator, or an edupreneur looking to build a scalable online learning business.
However, the money you can earn and exactly how much you can make through online course creation is depending on a few factors.
1. Cost of Course Creation
The cost of course creation means the expenses you need to create, host and sell your online course. These expenses are separated into 2 main categories:
- One time expenses
- Recurring expenses
One time-expenses are the materials and software you need to invest in creating your online course. These expense includes:
- Video production.
- course materials.
- Software and tools.
Recurring expenses includes the money you need to spend on a recurring bases to maintain your course, these expenses includes:
- Course hosting and platform fees.
2. Marketing and Promotion
Marketing and promotion is big part of selling online course, budget allocated to marketing activities such as advertising, social media campaigns, email marketing, and SEO helps to bring your course right in front of your target audience. These includes:
- Time and effort invested in building an online presence.
- Creating engaging content.
- Establishing partnerships.
3. Scalability and Passive Income
The best benefit of online teaching is it’s scalability and the potential of reaching thousands, if not millions of potential audience worldwide.
Unlike traditional courses, selling online course allows you to build an totally passive online business helping you generate passive income.
By analyzing your expenses and revenue estimates, you can determine if selling online courses is profitable for you, and knowing which platform to setup your online course can help you succeed faster.
How to Increase Your Revenue and Profit as a Course Creator?
There are many ways for you to maximize your revenue and profit potential as a course creator. And if you want to increase your profitability further, here are some strategies you may consider implementing.
1. Expand Your Course Offering
Grow your portfolio of online course and expand your course offering.
- Develop new courses that complement your existing offerings.
- Target related niches within your field.
- Create advanced or specialized courses for students seeking in-depth knowledge.
2. Diversify Revenue Streams
Diversify, diversify, diversify. Like investing, if you want to grow your online course business and maximize your revenue, you diversify the different ways you monetize your course.
- Offer upsells, add-on resources, or bonus materials to increase the average transaction value.
- Offer course bundles or subscription services to your online course.
- Offer 1-on-1 coaching, consulting, or group mentorship services.
3. Implement Effective Marketing Techniques
Marketing is about bringing your course to the right audience, and improving your marketing strategies will increase the conversion rates of each of your audience which increase your overall revenue.
- Build an engaging website or landing page to showcase your courses.
- Build a strong community by leveraging social media platforms to promote your courses and engage with your audience.
- Build a highly targeted email marketing campaigns to nurture leads and convert them into customers.
4. Collaborate and Partner
Collaboration and building partnership strategically can often leave to an increase in the audience you have for your online course.
- Seek collaborations with influencers or course creators in your niche.
- Explore joint ventures or offer affiliate partnerships to expand your reach.
- Host free webinars or get guest appearances opportunities on podcast and interviews to increase your visibility.
5. Craft a Benefit Based Course Description
Course description is the most important part of your landing page, or sales page where it helps to convert your audience into paying learners of your course.
A well written course description is the secret why some course creators make money selling courses while others don’t. Regardless how much you market your course, if your audience don’t convert, it means nothing if they don’t purchase your course.
Not sure how to start? Check out my simple but effective guide on crafting a high converting course description.
Is it Time to Start Making Money Selling Online Courses?
The income potential of selling online courses is absolutely amazing, an average course creator earn over $70K per annual, and the top course creators earn over 6-figures a year.
In fact, there are course creators that earn over $200,000 selling online workshops and eLearning course.
Bu understanding the different factors that influence your earnings, calculating your revenue projections, and implementing effective marketing and revenue enhancement strategies, you can avoid costly mistakes and increase your chances of success as an online course creator.
With an average of 2.35% conversion on your audience, you can easily make over $5,000 by building an audience of 3,000 people and selling your online course at $100 each.
The best time to start making money selling online course is yesterday, and the next best time is now.
Become an instructor at Teachng, or if you are tech savvy and want more control on your online course, toy can check out some of the best online course platform and get started now!
