Profitable Online Course in 7 steps

Greger Hillman Author

In this guide you vill get an overview of the process for building, marketing, and selling online courses successfully in 7 steps.

How Do You Create a Profitable Online Course?

Well, this can be summarized in 7 key steps, but it’s important to do the right things in the right order to create an online course that sells. Go through the following 7 steps to get a clear overview and start building your online course successfully.

1. Your Course Idea

Everything starts with your course idea. You probably already have several ideas you’re considering, but the question is: which one will become your winning course idea? In other words, which idea will your target audience want to learn more about and be willing to pay for?

In this step, you need to do research and analyze the market. Are there others in your industry or niche offering something similar? This can indicate that there’s a market with paying customers.

However, that alone isn’t enough to finalize your course idea. You need to connect with your target audience to understand what they truly want. If you already have customers you can ask, that’s a great way to ensure you’re building a profitable online course from the start.

If you don’t have customers to ask, you can use social media to reach and engage with them there. There’s nothing worse than spending tons of time and energy creating an online course that no one wants to buy.

By finding out what your target audience wants before you create your course, you’ll have a much better chance of success compared to simply building what you think they need.

Ask yourself these questions:

✓ What specific problem does my online course solve?

✓ Where can I find my target audience?

✓ What does my target audience say they want?

✓ Is my target audience willing to pay for this course idea?

2. Plan you Course Content

An online course consists of various components and media. It can be compared to a book with different chapters and sections that present the material in a logical and structured way.

Your role as a course creator is to deliver the content clearly and understandably, ensuring your participants can complete each step successfully.

This requires you to plan and package your course in an educationally sound way, as your participants won’t be able to ask questions while going through your recorded online course.

There are hybrid formats where pre-recorded course material is combined with live online training. However, if your goal is to create a profitable online course that generates passive income, it needs to stand on its own.

3. Choose the right media for your Course

We all learn in different ways, and you need to consider this when selecting the media types for your online course.

If you’re teaching a concept or method that requires visual explanation, video is the obvious choice. Videos can also be used for presentations and "talking head" videos.

However, not all your content needs to be in video format. A combination of videos, images, text, and audio files often works best.

The choice of media can also depend on your industry and how your target audience is accustomed to consuming content. The general rule is to mix media to enhance learning and maintain engagement in your online course.

The Foundation of a Profitable Online Course

The key to a successful online course is creating something your target audience genuinely wants, consumes, and completes. Once they purchase your course, you need to deliver on the "promise" you made during your marketing efforts. In essence, guide your participants from point A to point B in a clear and educationally effective manner.

By mixing media strategically, you can create a rewarding experience for your participants, making them more likely to share positive feedback about your course with others. That’s the recipe for a truly profitable online course.

Ultimately, the best approach is often a combination of videos, images, text, and audio files. But it also depends on your industry and how your target audience prefers to consume content and learn.

4. Use Video

A step-by-step video might be exactly what’s needed to explain a concept or walk through a process. The goal should always be to guide your course participants from point A to point B as simply as possible.

Video also adds more value to your course, making it easier to charge a higher price.

5. Course Production

When I created my first online course in 2010, there was a lot to learn. Both in terms of production, but especially the technology and equipment I needed to create a professional course.

Now, in 2024, after creating over 100 online courses, I’ve started to think more and more about what I wish someone had told me back then, so I could have avoided wasting time testing, failing, and starting over.

That’s also the reason we created the tech guide, which gives you my best tips on equipment for online courses.

If you’re at all unsure about what technology and equipment you need to create a professional online course, I highly recommend you check out the tech guide. It will save you a lot of problems and headaches when producing your own online course.

Producing an online course involves everything from recording and editing your videos to taking photos, writing texts, creating PDFs, and worksheets to make your course complete.

6. Choose Course Platform

There are many course platforms to choose from. Throughout my career as an e-educator, I’ve used and tested many of them, and I can say that, at the core, they all do the same things.

However, from experience, I know that the platforms do differ in some ways. For one, there are significant price differences for what are essentially the same features, and the functionalities related to VAT and translation to Swedish can vary quite a bit.

For this reason, I recommend you check out our guide "Choose the best platform for you" to take a closer look at the options and choose the right platform for what you need.

7. Market your Online Course

If you want to sell many course spots, you need to market your training. This is the foundation of a profitable online course.

This is something completely different from building an online course, and it’s something many new course creators often want to avoid or “deal with later” once the course is finished.

I was the same way when I created my first online course in 2010. All my time went into creating the course, and I thought that once it was done, I’d just upload it to my website and it would sell itself…

Since then, I’ve learned that everything you want to sell requires marketing. That’s also why we use proven digital strategies that sell our online courses, whether we’re sitting at the computer or not.

If you have a good sales machine in place, you can scale your online course without it taking more time from you.

This is the key to increasing profitability from your online course while gaining more flexibility and freedom in your daily life.

That’s also why I usually recommend that you spend at least 20% of your time marketing your online course while you're creating the content.

The advantage of marketing your online course early is that you can build an email list of interested buyers. These are people who show interest in what you’re doing and want to learn more about your course.

You can do this, for example, by creating a simple lead magnet or by setting up a form where people can express their interest in your course.

When you’re creating your online course, there are also many opportunities to take photos and create short videos with more of a “behind-the-scenes” feel.

This type of raw material is popular, and it also shows that you’re a “real person” that people can relate to. It also helps when you’re ready to start selling your online course.

I often use social media and ads to get more exposure for my online courses. You can do the same and build momentum for the launch of your new online course.