The economic landscape is evolving at breakneck speed. While some fall behind, others keep up and lead the way. Learning a unique skill like creating online courses will allow you to be on the winning side of this dynamic environment, and is perhaps the most valuable investment of your time and energy right now. 

One of the greatest rising trends is that of the creator economy, where individuals now hold the power that brands do. Taking part in the creator economy will allow you to go beyond trend chasing. Plus, it will give you the evergreen base of an audience that is worth its size in gold when you learn how to effectively monetize it–and selling an online course to them is perhaps the most lucrative method.

Making an online course is fairly simple once you have a clear roadmap - like the one we provide in this guide. However, it isn’t without its difficulties, as it requires carefully following steps and being patient enough to see each of them through. We will break this guide up into two parts. The first is a five-step guide on how to make a course, and the second is a five-step guide on best practices for launching and scaling your course.

After reading our guide, you’ll be armed with a skill set that no one can take away from you with the potential to make life-changing money and develop a stream of online, potentially passive income.

👉 If you didn’t know yet, Whop makes it easy to launch and market your online course. So, once you’ve read this guide and are ready to get started with your own online course, be sure to sign up – it takes less than 10 minutes and is perhaps the biggest step in your journey to becoming a successful online course seller.

The 5 Steps of Making a Course

Before you even think about selling an online course, you have to understand how to effectively create one. 

Here is the 5-step guide on how to make a course that will have the best chance for success based on who you are and what you know:

Step 1: Understanding Your Expertise

In order to make a course that stands out and one that will gain a loyal audience, you need to understand what you are good at.

Although some people go off shilling online courses with little personal experience in the niche, this is not a good method for various reasons. Consumers are catching on to modern-day snake oil salesmen by either not buying from them at all or openly calling them out. In the same vein, consumers are finding and supporting genuine thought leaders who are offering solid advice in a niche.

So if you have no experience in Shopify dropshipping or SMMA, don't hop on the bandwagon of trying to sell a Shopify dropshipping or SMMA course just because they’re hot right now. But, if you do personally have experience in these realms, go ahead! Approach online course creation strategically and sell something that you’re actually experienced in and good at.

Just about everyone who has reached a certain level of education or life experience has a wealth of ideas in their head that someone is willing to pay them for. However, consumers don’t buy just any online course. Your course will have to fall into one of these three main categories for an online course:

Health

    • Workout routines
    • Dieting advice or meal plans
    • Spirituality and personal well-being

Wealth

    • How to make money in (X)
    • Mindset/psychological advice related to making money
    • Budgeting and financial planning
    • Career or technology advice

Relationships

    • Dating advice
    • Breakup counseling
    • Self-care
    • Guidance on family dynamics

Every product with a strong and loyal audience falls into one of these categories in one way or another. This is especially true when it comes to digital products as they need to be particularly compelling with the amount of free advice already out there.

If you’re struggling to think of what to sell, think of a topic that is so valuable that someone would buy you lunch, just to listen to you share your expertise. Make sure you like the topic enough that you can see yourself thinking about it and offering advice on it full-time, otherwise, you will likely suffer burnout.

Don’t dive too deep into your idea though until you’ve done some market research so you can see if there’s actually demand for your skill, what similar guides are out there, and how to position yourself to succeed.

Step 2: Conducting Market Research

Every good business plan includes market research, and selling an online course is no exception to this practice. 

While this may sound complicated, effective market research can be completed in a few simple steps:

Steps For Conducting Market Research

The steps for conducting basic market research are similar to going through the customer journey and are as follows:

  • Search: Go through different platforms such as Google, Instagram, and TikTok and search niche-related phrases and hashtags. See what kind of advice is out there and if the creators have a large audience or not.
  • Dive In: Choose a few top creators and read through their bio and posts to see if they have a paid offer being advertised anywhere. Be sure to follow any CTAs (Calls to Action) that they might have that take the customer to a paid offer that might not immediately be apparent. This could look like commenting a specific word in order to receive a DM with an offer. 
  • Take Notes: Make note of the pricing and how many customers or enrolled students a course might have. Also, see if you can find any patterns or expectations that you can replicate by seeing how long the creator has been around and how many views/likes they get, and what their engagement appears to be.
  • Envision: Picture yourself not only as the customer who wants their problem solved but as the creator who offers the paid solution in the form of a course or online coaching. 

Using all of your research, see if you can establish a competitive offer that is at least as good or has a unique perspective that others don’t offer. If you feel confident that you can compete or can see yourself alongside them, the next step is figuring out what to name your offer and your brand.

Using Ikigai to Come Up With a Course Topic

The ideal for your online course topic will follow the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai, which is a helpful framework for finding a fulfilling career path.

making an online course

While it may be impossible to achieve the perfect balance and overlap that the diagram shows, you can find some combination of what you love, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. In terms of what you are good at, this is the area that you have the most control over, as you can always learn new skills or advance your current ones. So if you feel lacking in this area, take time to bolster it so you can enter the market competitively.

Step 3: Branding and Name Choice

Taking some inspiration from others is good, but having a unique brand and name choice is ideal, especially as more creators vie for the attention of an audience that is increasingly more easily distracted. 

As an individual creator, you will probably end up using your personal name as your brand. Still, you need to have more than just your name to make yourself memorable.

Here are two important things you need to know for making a brand:

Define Your Brand Identity

Your brand identity needs to be clear so that you are recognized as a specialist in a certain field. Coming up with it is a process, and should be planned thoroughly so that you are immediately professional and trustworthy when you decide to launch your online course.

Use these questions to help refine your identity. Then, package your identity into your brand: 

  • Who are you, and what is your story?

Humans have connected through stories more than any other means since the dawn of mankind. Think of any celebrity, role model, or even friend you know and look up to–those you have the strongest connection with are those whose stories you know and love. What’s your story? 

The best stories make the audience feel known and understood, so make sure to present empathy with the customer’s current situation, and a path out - a path that generally follows your personal story that they can hopefully replicate it. This is arguably the most important psychological component that causes someone to follow you and buy your course.

  • What is your tone? Do you feel most comfortable to come across as casual or professional? Formal or friendly? 

Make sure that your messaging is uniform so that customers can know what to expect. Keep it that way across all of your messaging and platforms. Be sure to pick a delivery style that is natural to you, so there shouldn’t be much thinking required in picking your tone.

  • Who’s your community? Who do you feel you can connect with and help the most? 

This is your target audience. While there is no need to be overly polarizing, you shouldn’t make your message for everyone. Have an ideal audience demographic in mind. 

  • What is the biggest way that you feel that you can help others through your online course?

Although your course will be niche-specific, there are a few broad ways you can help someone. Are you inspirational and motivational? Is your information highly technical and detailed? Do you help others get more organized and clear on their objectives? 

While your course may have aspects of each of these elements, yours will very likely lean more towards one of those areas, so stick with that for your paid course and also the free advice that you’ll post on social media.

  • What sets you apart from the others in your field, i.e., why would someone choose you over an alternative?

Becoming a creator today in some ways is easier than ever because of all of the tools at your disposal to create and distribute. However, in other ways, the consumer does have quite a bit of choice nowadays when it comes to enrolling in an online course. So, the market is huge. Having someone pick you over others is a lot like the dating world - you need to stand out in a good way. Sometimes this means having a more helpful or detailed offer than others, or a more genuine mission statement. Perhaps you’re packaging things together in a perspective that is unique and memorable. Maybe you have good visuals or an interesting look.

The ways to stand out are endless, but if there is one broad way to set yourself apart, it would have to be showing genuine passion and care for your audience. Although it may be subtle, your audience will know if you’re genuine in your knowledge and motivation to help them. If you have gotten clear on all of the previous questions, you should effortlessly come across as passionate which is the most sure way to attract a loyal audience.

Make a Great Tagline

After you’ve defined your brand identity, you should be able to come up with a good tagline. This tagline is an extension of your brand and its mission and will reflect the expertise you have in your niche.  You will use this in your bio and/or banner image across all social profiles. This tagline will be the inspiration for your course name, so make sure it is catchy and original.

Even if you can’t think of a unique tagline straight away, think of a subtitle that you can pair with your name. Pick a niche and describe your target audience to quickly resonate with whoever comes across your profile or website.

For example, you can be “Justin- Copywriting Coach for Underpaid Writers”, “Emma- Email Marketing Specialist for Social Media Agencies”, or “Fiona- Financial Planner for Single Mothers”.

Make sure to stick to this tagline in all of your marketing content, perhaps introducing yourself with it at the start of most posts or videos.

Step 4: Start, Complete, and Package Your Course

If you haven't completed the three previous steps, then you're not ready to begin working on your course. So if you don’t feel complete yet on your expertise, market research, or branding, you should continue to refine that before trying to come up with a course that you might change or not follow through with because it didn’t meet the aforementioned prerequisites.

Once you’re certain that you are ready to start, you’ll want to begin by making an outline.

Making an Online Course Outline

No matter the final format of your online course, you need to create a thorough outline that makes your course a complete package so it appears as a solution that your customer will happily pay for.

Here are some rules of thumb for making a good outline for your online course:

  • Break down your outline by starting with the solution, then walking backward with the sequential steps that will take the customer to the final solution.
  • Start with an engaging and personal introduction, a quick recap of your story, and a thank you for buying your course. This will go a long way in making the customer feel good about their purchase and make them more incentivized to leave positive feedback and recommend your course to others. 
  • Make sure to begin your course at the level that your audience is at. Don’t make content too elementary if you’re framing your course towards relative experts or those familiar with the field, and don’t be afraid to go super simple if you are marketing to total beginners.
  • Each lesson should build upon the knowledge of a previous lesson. Your course may get to a point, especially towards the end of it, where there is an exception to this rule. By this point base knowledge has been established and the student can pick and choose from a variety of specific strategies you have laid out.
  • Include in-depth answers to questions that your audience members often ask in your niche. After all, your course is simply a thorough answer to a burning question or series of questions within a certain niche.

Completing Your Course

The outline should only take a few hours to complete, and once you have it done, chip away at each piece bit by bit.

If you don’t consider yourself much of a writer, relieve yourself of pressure and simply make your course conversational, as if you were describing each step to a friend. You can also hire an editor or even a cowriter from a platform like Fiverr or Upwork if you would like as well. Also, perhaps completing your course in video format is best for you, so you won’t have to do deep writing apart from slides or supplementary guides/worksheets.

Go through each section of your outline, and write each until it feels complete. Jump around and revisit previously written sections with fresh eyes if you must. People have different writing and execution styles, and as long as it gets done in the end, that is all that matters.

Having a friend or audience member help by asking you questions for which you provide an answer will help to create the content of your course. Although the answers within your course should be more in-depth than what you have available to the public, don’t think too hard about what to exclude and what to save for the course. Most of the time people buy a course largely due to the convenience factor of having your information all in one place in a sequential fashion.

Above all, be sure to consistently carve out dedicated time in your schedule and set an estimated completion date, perhaps one you are publicly accountable for (e.g. a promised launch date to your audience). Consider using productivity methods such as Pomodoro or Flowtime Technique if they work for you. Don’t overthink, and make sure to have the mindset of having an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which means that your product is simply good enough. You can always be better, so don’t get into the artist’s trap of overthinking your final product–when it meets the requirements of sufficiently filling your outline, ship it. You can always release updates based on feedback in the future.

To keep things simple, start by typing everything out in a Word document. Once you’re done with that, you can move on to formatting.

Formatting Your Online Course

Once you have the information in your course, you will have to format it for your audience's consumption.

The two most common formats for an online course will be an eBook or a video course. 

Creating an eBook

When making an eBook, using a tool like Canva will make it easy to choose good images and templates so your guide looks professional. You can also hire a designer if you have the budget and want to outsource this, just be sure to review the branding and graphics to make sure that it reflects you and your message well. 

Pro tip💡 Create a free preview or shortened version of your course in eBook format to use as a lead magnet for email marketing

Making a Video Course

For a video course, be sure to follow the basic rules of thumb for what makes good video content, which include sufficient lighting, a non-distracting and clean background, high sound quality, and of course, a quality camera.

Video courses are more time-intensive and difficult for beginners to produce than an eBook, but the potential payoff can be much higher as video courses can be sold for several times more than a typical eBook, even if the content is similar.

Using Whop to sell eBooks and video courses

Once you have the content complete for your online course, you will have to export it in the correct format for selling and consumption. With an eBook, exporting as a PDF file will typically do just fine, and for a video course, the exact file type may vary but .mp4 and .mov are the most common. It is also possible to host a private YouTube or other video platform link as your course.

It can be difficult to figure out a solution for hosting and selling your online eBook or video course. Even if you are technically competent, it takes time to build and maintain a good solution for hosting your online course securely. Thankfully, Whop makes it simple to sell both eBooks and video courses, in addition to other digital products like private communities, Notion templates, ChatGPT Plugins, and other web apps.

When it comes to a video course, Whop is a particularly good solution as it has all of the features of any competing LMS like easy and intuitive uploading of private lessons and user-friendly navigation, in addition to being in the ecosystem of one of the fastest growing hubs for digital products of all kinds.

Here are the steps you can follow to start selling your online course on Whop today to cash in on your valuable knowledge:

  1. Go to whop.com/sell. It will start by asking for your business name, which you should already have by now.
  2. Choose the type of product you want to sell.
  3. In your dashboard, add a new course. 
  4. Include pricing and description, and be sure to have a logo and other supporting images like a thumbnail.
  5. When you’re ready, you can make your course live by changing its status from Draft to Published.
  6. That’s it! For a more thorough walkthrough for publishing your first online course on Whop including screenshots, refer to our full document here.

Step 5: Create a Landing and Checkout Page

The landing page is perhaps one of the most important ingredients in a winning online course. People will spend hundreds or even thousands making this step just right.

A good landing page for an online course will include the following:

  • A good headline that immediately addresses the customer’s wants.
  • High-quality, engaging visuals.
  • Pleasant user experience with a responsive and modern design.
  • Concise, compelling text, with clear calls to action.
  • Minimal navigation for quick and easy purchase.
  • Intuitive visual hierarchy that guides the visitor from curiosity to commitment.
  • Trust signals in the form of feedback, logos, good design and various secure payment methods accepted.

Some entrepreneurs choose to use complex solutions or to hire out assistance to help build a good landing page.

However, to save time and money, use Whop.

Whop makes it easy to create a good landing page and solve this critical part of making your course without having to shell out cash to developers or worrying about configuring or coding complicated setups.

Our design for your course landing and payment page is already conversion rate optimized. Whop makes it easy to showcase your brand and its offer within a trustworthy course ecosystem that is getting bigger every day.

Once you have your course up and live, you’re ready to launch and scale it, hopefully to a life-changing income like Joe who made $15,000 on Whop with eBooks in his first 2 months.

5 steps for Launching and Scaling Your Course

Step 1: Gather and Grow an Audience

A course creator is nothing without their audience and the platforms that they use to reach them.

Fully understanding this is one of the critical ingredients of the proper mindset of all successful creators. You can’t get to big numbers without truly caring for your audience and having confidence behind your offer, especially today as consumers become more savvy with better bullsh*t detectors.

Choosing a Platform to Market Yourself

Pick a platform that you feel most comfortable marketing yourself on, and push your content out there. Be sure to begin with your brand identity and taglines in mind.

If you’re comfortable on camera and have good delivery, use Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Instagram is good for posting photos with good captions in addition to reels, and TikTok is best for video and personal connection, in addition to the occasional use of picture slideshows. YouTube has reels that can potentially have good reach, but traditionally, YouTube is best for long form, professionally edited, and in-depth videos that establish you as a niche expert.

For those that are a bit more camera shy, fret not because you can still promote your course without having to do much or any videos or picture posts of yourself at all.

With a good profile picture and bio, you can use text content to promote yourself on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Facebook groups, and even Pinterest to reach your audience.

Creating and Executing a Content Plan

To get people to want to buy your online course, you have to gain trust by giving value before asking for money. You can do this by showing your expertise openly and for free before you seal the deal with a transaction. Write out all of the topics related to your niche that you can, and make a series of posts around each topic and subtopic. 

More is always better when it comes to pushing out free advice. While some creators may worry about thinking they have to reserve all the good stuff for a course, it’s better not to withhold almost anything, save for something particularly proprietary.

Since you likely have a full time job or other commitment before your course reaches a liveable income, consider batch creating content when you have time, and using software like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Social Pilot to automate distribution on a predetermined schedule.

If you have the budget, consider hiring a VA or social media manager straight away because content creation can be quite draining and requires patience and consistency before any significant traction or payoff.

Content creation pro tip💡: Almost always, your viewership will ask questions in the comments. Unless they’re inappropriate or not related to your expertise, answer them, no matter how simple! This shows that you care and that you’re a knowledgeable resource. It also puts the content generation on the customer rather than yourself.

While it may be a good “hack” to hop onto things like trending sounds on TikTok in the hopes of your content becoming viral, this is not a good mindset to approach content creation with. If your incentive is to go viral, you will likely be disappointed as there is a lot of luck involved. Even if one of your videos does end up blowing up, you may have a hard time replicating that. Timing trends is nearly impossible.

Instead of playing the cat-and-mouse game of virality and trends, simply put out good content consistently, and you will grow. Don’t worry too much about the views or engagement unless anything is surprisingly below expectations, in which case you may need to try a different hook or shooting style and see if that converts better. Otherwise, simply make good content consistently because that is an evergreen method that will never go away.

Step 2: Create a Funnel

A funnel, or sales funnel, is simply the path that a person takes to go from viewer to customer. The moment you have steady content going, you need to have a funnel set up. Ideally you will set up the base for the funnel in conjunction with the launch of all of your profiles and content creation.

Here are the basics of a good funnel:

Have a Wide Reach

At the top is your reach, which you want to be as wide as possible. Posting good content consistently is going to keep the top of your funnel wide and growing. The larger your reach is, the more your customer base and funnel are worth–this is why brands throw money at influencers at certain follower thresholds.

Take Them on a Journey With Clear CTAs

To take the potential customer on the journey down to the purchase, you’ll have to have a clear call to action that will allow them to opt in to a nurturing sequence that allows them to build trust with you.

All platforms have a built in call to action (CTA) of following your profile, which is the most basic step of a customer entering your funnel.

Having a link in your profile either directly to your product or to a resource that allows them to consider purchasing it eventually is another critical step of your funnel that every social media platform provides. Some platforms have requirements before posting links in your bio, like TikTok, which currently requires 1000 followers to do so.

Use Lead Magnets

Having a lead magnet, or a free resource that encourages your customer to give another contact point like their email or phone number, is best done in the form of a free PDF. It can also be a quick one-on-one call if you are selling a higher ticket offer or one-on-one coaching.

The largest benefit that comes with having a lead magnet is owning your customer base directly without having to rely on platforms. Although getting banned is unlikely, it happens, and having a direct point of content with your customers is something that can never be taken away from you. So long as your customers know and trust you, they will potentially continue to buy any products you release.

Follow Up With a Good Sequence

You always have to be warming up prospects and offering as much free value as possible before asking them directly for the sale. Whether you’re using email marketing, texts, or DMs, make sure not to come on too stong but also don’t shy away from highlighting the value of you and your course.

Just about any email marketing tool will allow you to set up and automate a sequence so that everyone who gets your lead magnet will go through this crucial part of your funnel. Keep an eye on performance– this sequence should be tested and updated if it isn’t converting well.

Tier and Update Your Offers

You want the end of your funnel, or offer, to convert as well as possible. Having a high-converting offer is the most effective feedback mechanism that will motivate you for continued success.

It is recommended to start with a cheaper course that requires lower commitment, like a fairly priced eBook, and then sell a higher ticket video course or coaching later.

The higher the price, the higher the trust needed to make a purchase. So if you’re new or have a relatively small audience, start small and grow from there. Eventually, you can have tiered offers, meaning that you will have products in different price ranges with the ability to upsell and downsell.

Make sure to let customers know that you will update your course when relevant, as this will increase trust and likelihood to purchase. 

Step 3: Launch, Iterate, and Test

Launching your funnel can happen in one grand event - like notifying your customers of a brand new product in an email blast - or a launch can simply mean that you now have every piece of the funnel in place and are producing content to continue to bring people in.

The launch never truly ends, as in order to have continued success, you must always be iterating and testing your product based on customer feedback, new trends, or newfound knowledge. Just like major brands will conduct tests and launch products based on the aforementioned factors, your personal brand must follow the same practices if you want it to generate a potentially livable and long-term income.

Here are some rules of thumb to follow for effective launching and maintenance of your online course: 

A/B or Split Testing

Once you have established certain benchmark impressions and sales, you will have enough data to see if there is a consistent conversion rate. Conversion rate is the percentage of people that end up following through with an offer.

Every platform will share analytics about reach and conversion rate about posts, so if you see a standard percentage across all areas and you think it is a bit low compared to industry standards, feel free to try different creatives or introductory hooks that you think might convert better. You can do the same with your product titles and images and the organization and style of your landing pages.

Running two designs side by side is known as split or A/B testing. Make sure you have enough data before making a decision on which final design to stick with. However, don’t overthink this as sometimes the conversion rate is dependent on too many factors to discover a strong enough correlation with split testing unless the data is obvious (for example, double the conversion rate over a large dataset).

Ask for Customer Feedback and Reviews

The biggest element of trust that will make a potential customer choose to buy is that of other customer’s feedback, often in the form of reviews.

Sometimes integrating a rating system in your product page can be difficult, but this is another thing that Whop has made incredibly easy as reviews and feedback are an included feature for all seller pages.

To gain reviews, especially in the beginning, you may have to ask customers. You can ask them via an automated follow-up email sent to all customers. For higher engagement, send a DM or personalized email. Perhaps offer them an incentive like a discount on another product to encourage them to give feedback. In fact, before you start to even split test, make sure to establish reviews first, because this is perhaps the greatest way to increase your overall conversion rate.

Make What the Audience Is Asking For

An old saying goes that the customer is always right, and while this can never be broadly applied, if the customer is reasonable in their request and you hear the same thing from different people, you should make the requested change.

If you’ve gone through the first parts of this guide well enough, you will likely have a product that is already what your audience wants, but there may be some specific features or questions that you will need to add for an updated version of your course.

Updating your course is especially important. Although it can be time-consuming, if you’re not willing to update your course at all, you won’t be able to compete with those that do.

Step 4: Set up Systems and Processes

In the beginning, you’ll likely be doing everything yourself. However, if you plan is to scale, you will need to build a team.

Before you think about building a real team, you need to set up solid systems and processes so that the team can be effectively onboarded and seamlessly integrated inside your business without friction or potential confusion.

It may be hard to initially understand how to translate your workflow in a way that can be systemized for a team to use. Here are some tips about how to effectively set up systems and processes that you can eventually pass down to a team:

  • Be efficient with your time and create a schedule that is most conducive to high productivity for your given situation.
  • Keep in mind the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule–that roughly 80% of the results come from 20% of the work. Track what is working, and double down on that.
  • Start tracking your own time and work within a labeled and organized spreadsheet. Google Sheets or Excel work well.
  • Use software like Trello, Clickup, or Notion to create to-do lists that are easy to follow.
  • Create SOPs (standard operating procedures), or guidelines, for tasks that you repeat often.

Step 5: Scaling and Hiring a Team

While it is entirely possible to bring a one-man-show business to a significant income, if you want to continue to scale without burning out, you will need to delegate some of your work to a team. This delegation will free up your mental space and allow you to go from working in your business to on your business - a huge shift for entrepreneurs, that some never make.

With an awareness of your productivity, a good workflow, and your systems and processes in place, getting new team members on board should be your biggest focus.

Best practices for hiring include the following:

Understand Your Strengths and Weaknesses

While you may be multi-talented, no one is the best all around. You should know straight away which work you are good at and enjoy doing and which you feel like you always get stuck in the mud trying to do.

Find people who are better than you to make up for your weaknesses to make for a well-rounded business, and never feel threatened by their skills. Everyone has their own strengths.

Establish Your Company Culture and Management Style

If you did a good job of establishing your brand identity and tone, you and your potential employees should have a fairly good idea of what your company culture is like. Just like with your branding, your culture and management style should be compatible with you but also effective at driving the bottom line and keeping you profitable.

Make Clear Expectations

When it comes to hiring, you need to make sure you have easy-to-understand and clear expectations of what someone’s roles and responsibilities are. You can’t blame an employee for doing something wrong or expect them to do something that is unclear. Of course, a certain level of competence will allow good employees to make accurate assumptions and act accordingly, so you don’t need to be too strict on boxing employees in with rigid rules that might be stunting them and the potential of your business overall.

Pro tip💡 Hire from your customer base. When you’re big enough, one of the best places to hire is from your audience. 

Get Started Selling Your Online Course Today with Whop!

Now that you’ve got the knowledge in this guide, in a matter of time, you’ll have an online course that has the potential to change your life. Bookmark this page and keep it handy so you can refer to it throughout your journey.

👉 When you’re ready, we’re here for you to get started and join our growing group of sellers who are put right in front of our audience that is getting bigger and more loyal every day. Start selling with Whop today!

If you need assistance with anything that isn’t covered in this guide or our selling document, you can always ask us a question in our live chat–we typically respond within minutes. You can even book a call directly with one of our team members if you prefer to have a live conversation.

FAQs:

How much money can I make selling online courses?

Your income will be determined by the price of your offer, the amount of reach you have and the overall conversion rate to your paid offer. The latter is an important consideration when it comes to income, because this is where the money is really made. 

If you compare an audience of 1,000,000 followers with a conversion rate of 0.001% vs an audience of 10,000 and a conversion rate of 1%, you’d actually make 10x more money with the smaller audience. To put a figure on the income potential, course creators can earn anywhere from $100 to $100,000 per month depending on the previously mentioned three factors.

Why would someone buy my online course if they can get the information elsewhere for free?

To get a better idea of why someone would pay for information that they could find for free on Google or YouTube, consider the time and convenience factor of having a trustworthy source of information for your topic in one place in a way that solves your problem exactly. 

If it takes someone 12 hours of scattered research to compile enough information to help solve their problem, they probably would have rather paid someone that they found in the first hour of research that will condense the possible 10+ hours of research down into one easily consumable resource. This is very much like why you go to a restaurant and pay more for a ready cooked meal rather than buying the ingredients and taking the time to learn to cook the dish yourself.

Should I invest money in ads to sell my course?

While putting money into ads to scale an existing course or audience is good practice, sinking money into ad spend, especially as a beginner with no audience is not the best idea. There are enough tools and platforms for free reach that you can utilize which will help you to build an organic audience that will happily buy from you once you launch your course to them.

Can I sell my online course before making it?

Some creators choose to build their audience first and pre-sell a course before it’s made. This can be a good way to test the demand for your course and to collect some money upfront to feel confident in the production of your course. 

However, be cautious if you go the presale route, as there is a lot of pressure to deliver on time for your audience. Plus, your reputation is on the line. A high amount of trustworthiness will need to be established, so you should only consider doing this if you’ve been around a while and have a loyal and decent-sized audience, and don’t expect the offer to have much of a conversion rate. It is not recommended to pre-sell a course if you are brand new to the game.

Do I have to make my online course myself?

Making an online course is a difficult endeavor, and although it’s incredibly satisfying to complete all of the steps yourself, many course creators choose to enlist help in the form of editing, cowriting, designing, and even ghostwriting. Be sure that if you hire help that they are aware of your brand identity and can effectively carry across your message so that your audience gets a course that is reflective of you.

I’m introverted and don’t want to show or market myself, can I still make an online course?

It is common to be camera shy or to feel a bit weird about displaying yourself as a personal brand. Writing an ebook or running a paid community does not require that you show your face at all, although people prefer to see the person that they’re buying from. At the minimum, you can sell a course simply with a profile picture and text posts if you’re using platforms like LinkedIn and X (Twitter), or if using Instagram, you can simply post graphics and text. With a video course, you can use screen recordings and slides with minimal focus, if any, on your face.

Can I resell other courses?

There are some who PLR, or private label rights to a generic guide that you can rebrand and resell, as a way to quickly get started in the info product game. However, you should avoid involving yourself in the resale of premade courses. The big winners in the PLR game are the PLR sellers themselves, not your customers, and not even you. Even though you’ll be able to quickly produce a course, it likely won’t be of high quality or reflective of you and your brand and thus probably won’t make you much money.

Where’s the best place to sell my online course?

With 24/7 customer support that is unbeaten across the entire industry, a fast sign-up process with an easy-to-use interface, and support for more types of courses and digital products than anywhere else, Whop is the #1 preferred way to distribute and manage access to your community, software or digital product. If you don’t know, now you know!

👉 Start selling your course on Whop today so you can cash in on your passion!

📚 Read next: How to Create and Sell Courses on Whop