Sell Online Courses from Your Own Website: Key Strategies

Want to sell online courses from your own website? We have covered everything that might help you on your journey.

Selling is the one business activity that finally helps you bring in revenue. Without sales, all other activities will cease to exist at some point. Sales as a function have gone through a lot of changes since the internet took over. It is not as intensive as before. You don’t need a human to be there to interact with a prospective customer at every stage of the journey. The same is the case for selling the online course you worked so hard to create. A lot can be achieved in terms of sales if you have a website. Once you are done reading this, you will be able to sell your online courses from your own website to the right people.

Pre-requisites 

Here are three steps to take before you start marketing and selling your course online. 

1. Establish yourself as an authority in the topics that you are trying to sell the course on. This is because people want to learn from authorities, and anything less will be deemed to be of poor quality. You can establish yourself as an authority by making a list of all your achievements including awards, education certificates, and updating them in prominent places including the website and your LinkedIn profile. Also, patriciate in discussions online in places like Quora.
2. Know your target audience by building audience personas which are fictional biographies that describe your ideal customer. Ask questions like where do they hang out online, how old are they, what influences their buying decisions etc. 
3. Identify a solution for your target audience. The more specific you can get, the better. 

Strategies to sell online courses using your website 

The following are the time-tested ways in which you can gain quality traffic for your website. 

Create an interesting website and optimize it

When we say interesting, we mean it should be interesting to your target audience. If you try to make it interesting to everyone, it won’t be as effective. Use images that you believe your target audience will like. The same goes for the written content and its tone. Keep the content on the homepage as simple as possible using compelling imagery and short and crisp copy. Also include action words and specific adjectives to get your point across. 

The other important sections of the website include:

• About Page: Use this section to go into details about how you can help your target audience solve their problems and achieve their goals. The important thing to note is to make the conversation all about them and not about you. You have to make the target audience feel cared for while promoting your course. 
• Contact Page: Make sure there is more than one way for your website visitors to reach you. Try using forms, email, phone, or social media channels.

• Sales Page: This page lists all your courses with a brief description. Each course’s name and image should link to a descriptive product description page. These sales pages should be considered as your elevator pitch – the golden opportunity to sell.

Read more: 9 Proven Marketing Strategies To Sell Your Online Courses

Start your own blog 

In this age of social media marketing and paid advertising, entrepreneurs often forget one of the most tried and tested ways to market their products and services – blog posts. You can use blogs to demonstrate your expertise, help your audience and build your internet presence. 

Write about topics that you believe would add great value to your target audience. Try to keep the blogs as descriptive as possible and include all relevant points and key updates. Do thorough keyword research to find out what the top keywords in your niche are and include them in your blog titles and body content. Learn the basic SEO principles before you start writing blogs. This will help your target audience find you naturally through search engines and if anything has proven to be true, it is that organic traffic is the best in terms of user intent and quality.

Although you may not see any immediate results, if you are consistent enough with your blogs, you can steadily build a devoted audience and you can slowly nurture them into buying your courses. 

Take advantage of reviews and testimonials 

No matter how well the seller advertises a product on Amazon, you always end up at the customer review section to make your final decision. This is simple social proofing psychology – customers believe other customers more than they believe the brand itself. 

Social proofing allows a quick way to build trust without having to develop a direct relationship with your prospect. Testimonials and verified customer reviews show your target audience that others like them have appreciated your skills, knowledge, and teaching abilities. Once you start selling your courses, ask your customers to leave an honest

Drive traffic from YouTube

People no longer have the time nor the patience to read through the content you write. They’d rather watch a video about it on YouTube. There are over 3 Billion daily views on YouTube.  And this makes it a perfect platform to drive quality traffic to your course’s website. All you need to do is link the video to a contextually relevant effective landing page to push the sale. The following are the ways you can use YouTube to get traffic for your website. 

• At the end of each video, tell people exactly what they have to do to reach your website and the benefits of doing so. You can end your videos with something like “Thank you for watching this video. To learn more hacks and tricks in math, check out our 2-week course from the link in the description below.”
• Make the most out of the decryption box by adding a compelling Call to Action (CTA) in front of every link in the description. For example, if you’re helping students with Algebra, the CTA can say “Master algebra in 2 weeks”. 
• The third way is to use a feature known as CTA overlay. It is a simple banner that sits on the lower third of the video. You can choose what image and copy will be used in the banner and which webpage it will be linked to. It only takes a few minutes to set up.

Guest post for industry websites

Did you know that you can also write blogs for other websites related to your course and build your reputation while doing so? You will essentially be writing a post that someone else will be publishing on their website.  Although it sounds like you’re working for free, the goal is to get more people to notice your course. In exchange for the article, the publisher will let you add backlinks directing to your website. That’s exactly where you can hire industry experts like Outreach Monks to help you with your guest posting to get noticed in your niche. Guest post, however, is the best way to engage with the publisher’s audience in the article’s comments section once it is published.

Further Reading: Learnyst Website Builder – Advanced Features

How Learnyst can you sell online courses from your own website?

Using our platform, online educators have launched over 25,000 courses and earned over INR 350 Crores combined. Not only do we enable you to create a custom website for your course, but we also help you effectively market your courses using your website. For starters, all of your webpages will be SEO optimized. There are multiple high-engaging templates that you can choose to build your website on. Other than this, we also provide outbound marketing including email marketing and SMS. To know more about Learnyst, get in touch with us now!