How Much Money Can You Really Make Selling Online Courses?

A course creator working on laptop and smiling

Knowing how much money can you make selling online courses can be a great motivator to break free from the inertia and start building a course that you had been long contemplating.

While the answer is not that straightforward, let us attempt to paint a realistic picture so you can make an informed estimate of the potential revenue from selling courses online.

An online course creator can earn anywhere between $1000 per month to upwards of $10000 depending on the price of their course, the marketing efforts they put in, and the audience they actively engage with.

Your course revenue is dependent on several factors

The price of your course

The revenue you generate from your online course sales is hugely dependent on the price you sell your course at.

Now, for a first-time course creator, pricing your course correctly is understandably challenging. Sell your courses at a high price and you run the risk of scaring off your audience even before they consider the purchase.

On the other hand, if you price your course lower than your competition, people might consider it of less value and deem it passable.

To price your courses correctly, look at:

The competition - At what price points are your competitors pegging their courses? If you price your courses similarly, will you be able to achieve your revenue goals?
Your unique offering - Are you providing something in your course that is setting you apart? Consider pricing your course at a premium if your course can bring the potential transformation, no other course can.
What is your goal - For some, selling a course is simply to share their knowledge with others. That’s their objective and finances matter little. On the flip side, are you selling a course to generate a passive income? Such considerations will help you decide the price of your courses effectively and strategically.

Audience size

We would be naive to think one can start earning decent revenue once a course is created and put up for sale.

The biggest determining factor to any earnings would be the number of people who engage with you and seek your course, i.e., your target audience.

Now, there are a lot of ways you can build your audience:

Write blogs - Use your expertise to create blogs on micro-topics of your niche, essentially solving a problem. Ensure best practices of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to make them rank on Google searches and attract traffic to your website.
Leverage Social Media - Post short format content specific to your topics and engage with your target audience on Social Media. This way, gradually, you’ll build a follower of loyal supporters who look for your expertise in the topic. You gain trust and ultimately guide them to your course for expanded learning.
Collect Emails - Build an email list of your potential customers by giving away easy-to-consume, actionable solutions to pertaining problems. You offer the visitors of your website, free downloadable guides in exchange for their emails.
Run Ads - You can use Ad platforms like Facebook and Google to target people looking for similar courses with ads. This is a proven but significantly costlier way to gather your audience.

Conversion Rate

Ultimately, what will tie both of the above factors together is the conversion rate at which your audience will purchase your course.

The simplest formula to calculate the conversion rate is total sales divided by the audience size landing on your course sales page, multiplied by 100 for a percentage.

Say, per month, you have 2000 people landing on your sales page from all the various sources we discussed (blogs, social media platforms, ads, etc.).

Out of 2000, 20 purchase your course. Your conversion rate, therefore, is 20 divided by 2000, multiplied by 100, which is 1%.

So, in essence, 1% of the people you attract, convert and buy your course. If you increase the conversion rate (more on this below), you’ll be able to increase your revenue.

Here’s a reasonable benchmark for conversion rates:

Low conversions: 0.1% to 2%
Medium conversions: 3 - 7%
High conversions: Above 7%

Costs

The cost of making your online course will affect the amount of profit that you make from sales. Cost in itself has no direct impact on your revenue per se, but you must be aware of your expenses to maximize your income in the long term

The significant costs to create and sell online courses include:

Production of the course - This includes all the resources you use to craft your course. Hardware such as lighting and microphone, or software like video editing software all contribute to the course production cost.
Marketing costs - These are the costs that you will incur to reach your audience. Ads, email marketing tools, and platforms are included in your marketing expenditure.
LMS - You’ll finally host your course on a Learning Management Platform. Such platforms do all the heavy lifting of technology and integration while you focus on creating the most impactful course.

How can you increase your revenue?

infographic of factors for increasing your course revenue

Create and sell more courses

If you're already offering courses, creating and selling more can be a great way to increase your revenue. You can create courses that build on your existing offerings or that cover topics that are in high demand. You can also consider creating more advanced courses for customers who have already completed your beginner-level offerings.

Another way to expand the offering is by selling different formats of your courses, such as live webinars or in-person workshops.

Increase your course price

If you receive consistently good reviews for your course and steady sales, raising your course price can potentially increase your revenue significantly.

While increasing the price, it is essential to communicate the value of your course and back up your claims by providing plenty of social proof (such as testimonials or case studies) on your sales page.

Optimize your sales page for higher conversion

A high-converting sales page should include the following:

Focus on benefits: Instead of just listing features, make sure you're highlighting the benefits of your online course to your audience. Focus on how it will solve their pain points or improve their lives significantly.
Use compelling copywriting: Use language that speaks directly to your audience and addresses their specific needs. Leverage psychological triggers such as scarcity, social proof, and urgency to encourage visitors to take action.
Bold calls to action: Add your CTAs in strategic places for your visitors to look at and take action. Use powerful language and make it clear what you want your visitors to do next.
Use high-quality visuals: Use high-quality images and videos to showcase your course and make your sales page more visually appealing. This can help to keep visitors engaged and increase the perceived value of your offer.

Identify and plug the leakage

Leakages are the various points in your customer journey where they choose to drop out. This can be while engaging with you on Social Media, or dropping off from your blog without taking action, or even choosing to not complete the payment even after reaching the payments page.

Create an effective marketing funnel to identify all the touchpoints of your customer journey and create strategic offers for each possible drop-off.

Market to your target audience

You can significantly bump up your revenue by focusing your marketing efforts on your target audience. This way you’ll be able to reach the people who are genuinely interested in your niche and possibly your offering too.

Create an ideal buyer persona and use the right marketing channels to reach your target audience.

Next Steps

By now, you should have a clearer understanding of the various factors that potentially affect the course revenue. While there is no guaranteed earning that you can aim to achieve through online course sales, executing a thoughtful strategy that prioritizes quality content and effective marketing tactics, can bring you closer to your financial goals.

And whenever, you are ready to take the plunge, try Miho. Miho is an all-in-one platform for course creation and selling. With Miho, you can not only create your course with an easy drag-and-drop builder but you can also use the dynamic platform to connect payment tools and marketing software to maximize the potential of your courses.