How to Sell Courses Online: 5 Steps (Before You Finish Building It)

To sell courses online, find a specific audience with a problem, outline a course that solves it, and presell it before you finish building it. Then promote it consistently and complete it alongside your first students. Preselling protects you from spending months on a course nobody buys.

To sell online courses, there are five main steps:

1. Find your target audience
2. Create the beginning and outline of your course
3. Have the right sales mindset
4. Promote it
5. Complete it

The first step is critical, because without knowing who you want to reach with your course, how will you know what they need or care about?

Read more: selling without pressure

Should You Sell a Course or a Coaching Program?

Before you build anything, make sure a course is actually the right offer for you right now.

Courses scale. You create it once and sell it again and again, without adding hours to your week. But courses usually sell at a lower price, and you need an audience to sell them to.

Coaching delivers faster results and higher prices. Your clients get YOU, live, and that’s often the part they actually need: feedback, accountability, and someone telling them it’s possible. You also don’t need a big audience to fill a few spots.

That’s why many people start with coaching, then turn what works into a course. That’s exactly what I did. In 2019, I had 20 one-on-one clients, and 15 of them were bloggers. I didn’t have any course content back then. I just met with them, taught them, gave them homework, and kept them accountable. By the end of the year, I thought, “I can’t teach one more person how to use Pinterest. I’m going to have to create a course for this.” That became the Monetization Accelerator Program.

• Start with coaching if: you don’t have an audience yet, you’re not sure what people really need, or you want income quickly.
• Start with a course if: you already have an email list or following, you’ve gotten results for people before, and you want income that isn’t tied to your hours.

Can’t decide? Offer both. A self-study version (around $167) and a VIP version with coaching ($697–$997) is plenty. Keep it to two levels until it’s proven.

Read more: how to price your courses and services.

How to do Market Research to Sell Your Courses Online

If you already have an online presence, the first place to do your market research is with your current followers.

• What problems do they have that you can help them solve?
• Are there questions are they always asking?
• What would they be interested in learning more about?

The next place to look for your target market is on social media, where your audience may be spending a lot of time. Look at the hashtags and keywords that they use to find out what’s important to them.

You can also do market research by creating surveys or polls about topics related to your topic area.

Another tip is to mine the comment section on important books in your area to see what people are saying, and what they are still looking for.

If you’re emailing your list, don’t ask them directly what course they want. Most people don’t actually know. Ask these instead:

1. What’s your biggest struggle with [topic] right now?
2. What have you already tried that hasn’t worked?
3. What worked a little, but you’re still stuck?
4. How will it feel when you finally solve this?

No audience yet? Facebook groups are a great place to listen in. Ask a question, or search the group for keywords. You can also ask offline friends or local business owners the same questions. (And reread the section above. Coaching might be your best first step.)

How to Do Market Research

Have the right sales mindset.

Before you start promoting the course, you also want to make sure to have the right sales mindset. It’s normal to feel self doubt before putting something out into the world, but it’s important that your confidence in what you’re selling come through in your marketing.

Here are some sales mindset tips to help you with your course sales:

• Visualize your potential customers, and their current situation. Where are they stuck? Now, visualize how your course will help them. What is the “after” once they finish the course?
• Think of your own personal successes. What struggles have you overcome? Did you create the course because you were able to solve a problem for yourself no one else could help with?
• Remember WHY you want to create and sell courses in the first place. Not the course itself, but the reason you want to create extra income for your family.
• Go all in on your efforts, BUT also detach from the results of the course sales. Remember: it doesn’t matter if you meet the goal or not, because every action you take moves you forward whether you make money or not. Your time will come, your success will happen, change is inevitable – if you keep going no matter what.

Tip: how to handle a failed launch

The second step is to promote your course.

I recommend that clients start selling their courses BEFORE finishing them. So, before building the course, we are now going to start promoting it!

Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse?

No. It’s not.

A lot of people get caught up in the idea that they have to have a course 100% ready before they can sell it, but this is fundamentally wrong. You need to know who you’re trying to reach with your course and what their needs are, then create the best possible resource for them.

A great way to do that is with a beta launch. A beta launch releases the beginning of your course to a limited number of people, at a great price.

This allows you to get early feedback from your target market and make changes before you officially launch. You then create the rest of the course as your beta students progress through it, helping create the best possible product – and also market testing your course BEFORE you spend weeks creating it.

All you really need to do this is your course title, outline, first lesson or two, and your promotional graphics and copy.

Be clear with beta students about what they’re getting: a lower price, more access to you, and a course that’s being built as they go through it. And remember, people will *say* what they want, but the market tells you what it really wants with its money. If you get even a few beta sales, your idea is tested. If you don’t, you have some adjusting to do before you try again, which is much better to learn now than after months of building.

Finding more buyers

The best way to do this is by targeting people who are already interested in your topic.

If you don’t already have a blog, start one and create original content related to the topics you’ll cover. Then, promote it on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and X.

If you want to, consider doing joint venture webinars with experts who have large audiences that are related to your topic area. This is a great way to get new friends and affiliates whose followers will be interested in what you’re creating!

The third step is to finish creating your course.

How long this takes depends on your course. A mini-course can be done in a day, while a 10-module deep dive can take months. (Another reason to beta launch: you’re building alongside paying students instead of in a vacuum.)

Choosing a platform

There are many platforms that can make this easier, including Thinkific, Podia and Teachable. Choose one that’s easy for both you and your students, has real support when you need it, and can grow with you if you add live classes or group coaching later.

Building your curriculum

1. Gather your materials. Pull together everything you’ve already taught, written, or researched on the topic.
2. Set a goal for each module. What should students be able to do when they finish it? If your course runs on a schedule, decide how long each module takes.
3. Cut what doesn’t serve the goal. Every lesson should move students toward the result they bought the course for.
4. Decide how students will know it’s working. Quizzes, worksheets, check-ins, or a final project all work.

Tools you actually need

You don’t need expensive equipment to get started. It’s more important to create the course and publish it.

• Camera: your smartphone is fine. Upgrade to a webcam or digital camera later.
• Microphone: buy the best one you can afford. Bad audio hurts the learning experience more than so-so video.
• Editing: free, simple editing software is all you need to trim your videos.
• Lighting: a ring light and a phone tripod go a long way.

For your online course, it’s important to be thorough in your content, record high-quality videos, and write helpful accompanying text.

Avoid These Four Mistakes When Selling Your Courses Online

There are four common mistakes that content creators tend to make when marketing their online courses, and if you avoid these pitfalls, your course will be more likely to succeed.

#1: The first mistake is not using the right platform for hosting a course.

Make sure your chosen platform has all of the features you need at an affordable price.

Most platforms have different levels of service to purchase. If this is your first course, you probably don’t need all the bells and whistles of the higher level, more expensive tiers.

#2: The second mistake is not having high-quality content.

This will reflect poorly on your course and may dissuade potential students from enrolling. All your work, from your promotional graphics to your video lessons, should be as high quality as you can make them.

This DOESN’T mean that you should wait until your skills are perfect to launch a course. Your students are there for results, not flash and sparkle. If you are getting results for your students, allow yourself room to grow in your execution.

There will always be room for improvement, but you can’t improve if you never put yourself out there!

#3: Third, don’t forget to market your course!

Make sure you are targeting the right people with the right message so that they want to buy what you’re selling. If people don’t see you, they can’t buy from you.

Advertise on social media, email lists and other platforms to make sure you reach the right audience.

Be consistent about promoting each new course that comes out so that people will know when they can expect a release!

#4: Finally, don’t forget to track your results.

This will help you course correct as needed and ensure that your marketing efforts are effective.

To summarize, here are some of the most important tips on how course creators can sell more online courses:

1. Create valuable videos that cover the topic thoroughly and engagingly
2. Market your course to the right audience by using the best platform for hosting courses
3. Create great promotional strategies
4. Make sure you produce high quality videos and text
5. Don’t forget to market after your course is released
6. Tracking results.

About the author: Alison Reeves is a holistic business coach with more than 15 years in marketing and nearly a decade coaching entrepreneurs. She’s trained in somatic and trauma-informed coaching and is the author of Embodied Abundance. Work with Alison

FAQ’s

Q: What is the best platform to sell online courses? A: Popular options include Thinkific, Teachable and Kajabi for hosting your own course, or Udemy for marketplace reach (with less control over price). If you already have an audience, hosting on your own platform usually earns you more per sale.

Q: Should I build my course before selling it? A: Usually not. Presell an outline first, so you know people will buy, then build it alongside your first group of students. You’ll create a better course based on their real questions, and you won’t waste months on something that doesn’t sell.

Keep growing your business

• The 4 pillars of sustainable business growth
• How to price your courses and services
• How to handle a failed launch
• How to create multiple streams of income
• How to start an online coaching business

Thinking about coaching? See how I work with clients.