How To Price An Online Course

Jun 16, 2022

Content is done, promotions are ready to go, and the final item that you must check off before launching is how to price an online course in a way that leads people would join. Pricing is among the trickiest elements of launching the course on your own since it's a matter of finding that sweet spot that provides the right amount of value to your audience for a cost they are willing to pay.

A well-planned online course and pricing could help a content creator make the transition from being a side project to full-time. Well-developed online courses can drive revenues and possibly even sponsoring your site or company.

Ready to get started? Here are some considerations for pricing you should consider before starting a new course online.

     Pricing Online Courses Begin with the Types of Courses    

Online course expert Sarah Cordiner claims that all material falls into one of five types of online courses. Of course, the type that you're planning to provide may be related to the price and pricing strategies. It is crucial for creators of content to be aware of this when they design online classes.

  1. The Lead Magnet Mini-Course In general, it is a free and short online course to help get users attracted to more content. This mini-course could be the beginning of the more extensive course, which acts as a marketing lead.
  2. Kickstarter Course These courses are an entry point for creators of content into course development. These online courses might mimic other content you are creating, such as a how-to blog post series however, in a different form. The courses tend to be inexpensive (less than $100), aren't long in time (can be completed in a few minutes to an hour) they are great for creators that already have followers and credibility.
  3. Authority Flagship Course: When you think of online courses that you can take, the Authority Flagship Model is probably what comes to mind first. They are classes taught by an experienced instructor who has plenty of trustworthiness in their field, costing moderately ($100 to $3000) as well as include repeated sessions or logins (lasting around one hour for a period of several weeks). The courses contain information cannot be found from other sources, including a tutorial or in-depth explainer of an area.
  4. Supportive Coach-Lead course: The material might be similar to that of an Authority Flagship Course, but the way of teaching is distinct. They are designed to be study on your own and independently and not mass studying with a touchpoint with the instructor. These online courses are higher-priced ($500 and above) They include multiple lessons or one-on one meetings. They also provide lots of resources to help you succeed individually.
  5. Membership or online Academy The course: This group class has multiple classes in a series which build upon one another. Students can take on different classes to earn credential or obtain certifications. The pricing strategy is less about the cost of an individual course, however, it is for the course as the whole, using a subscription-based pricing model ($10 to $100 per month).

Whatever online course strategy you choose, you need to conduct your research to make sure you're developing a course that people would like to attend. The process begins by conducting research, gaining an understanding of your audience marketing, as well as the development of content.

     4 Pricing Modules for Online Courses    

When you've developed your course, and you know the type of classes you'll provide, it's time to really think about how to price. There are four distinct tiers of pricing for online courses: free, baseline and premium.

Courses for free

Baseline courses

Basic courses are able to reach a broad range of people with the right content. It appeals to many people at an economical cost. They should be simple to create, not involve huge participant time commitments, and include topics or information that goes in-depth, but doesn't get excessively technical. These courses may result in a lot of signups with little participation due to the low-risk price point.

"When you offer an offer for a complimentary class, your completion rate could be as low as single-digits. When you charge for similar courses, your percentage of completion could be as high as 30% or 40%. The higher you price a course, the more students actually take it up," said Ankur Nagpal, the CEO and co-founder of Teachable.

Premium courses

The premium online course is the primary goal for many content creators when they are thinking about pricing strategy. These courses have the highest prices, but they must also provide high-quality information at the same time. Content must be distinctive, have a well-known instructor and be something you can't get anywhere else that is worth the cost.

Consider a high-quality online class as comparable to a higher-level university course or taught by a "celebrity" through a masterclass format. The courses may not attract as many signups as baseline classes, but they often boast high participation and engagement rates.

Subscription model

Subscription models offer option for customers to pay. This can be in the form of monthly, daily weekly, monthly, or even annual subscriptions. Once a member, your customer gets access to your restricted content.

     Online Price Strategy for Courses    

One of the best strategies for pricing online courses comes from Online Course Igniter..

It starts with a little analysis of your audience so you are aware of the number of people who might be interested in the online course. It is possible that this audience will change with every new course, depending on the course's content.

From there, you'll want to determine the amount of money you'd like or need to make out of the program. Are there costs have to be covered in order to be able to meet your goal? Do you have a set amount of income you want to earn from each online course?

Then you are going to take a deep dive into the analytics of your audience. At this point, you most likely have an email database and a following on social media, a landing page, or another means of collecting and interacting with those that are interested in your content. What you have to figure out is how interested they are in order to determine an average conversion rate for that audience.

Then you can plug all of the information into the basic formula to establish the price and income:

     Revenue = Size of the Audience Conversion Rate    

Remember to subtract expenses from the revenue to make sure you are making a profit on the online courses that you develop.

The final element of pricing strategy is ensuring the content of courses is in line with the cost. It's not reasonable to expect someone to pay $1,000 for an hour of education. Consider pricing models as well as perceived value will help you determine a price strategy which is suitable for your client base.

     How Much Should You Charge for an online course?    

It all goes to the main issue of how much you be charging to an online class?

When you consider course types price models, course type, and finally, a comprehensive pricing strategy , the answer might be simpler than you think. (You ought to at the very least reduce it to a range quickly.)

Now you can start your online course. This will assist you in transforming the contents of your course into great user experience that people are likely to want to participate in. The platform that hosts online courses was developed by experts in e-learning and comes with all the features needed to build an online course that is popular.

You have control over the whole process, including pricing strategies and the capability to provide the possibility of upselling.                       Sign Up for a Demo Today