Selling courses online is more than fun.
It is your best way to earn passive income with or without a blog.
And here are a few reasons why selling online courses is the best way to go:
- Only a few targeted traffic is needed to actually make money.
- You can make a lot of money on day one when you launch the course.
- It is free to start using the platform I’ll list below.
- Sometimes, you don’t even need a blog.
- And, you make ongoing and passive revenue when people keep taking the course with no further work.
But the truth is: it is not easy to craft a course people are willing to pay for. You need authority and expertise. Furthermore, you need to make proper audience research. And it takes time to create that course.
Fortunately, you can make money with online courses whether you create them or not.
In this post, I’ll guide you through the best ways to make money selling online courses. Find out free platforms to publish and sell online courses.
The greatest part is that you’ll learn to make money with online courses even if you did not take the time to create them.
2 Ways To Earn Money Selling Online Courses
Maybe You figured it out. There are two ways to make money with online courses that we’ll talk about.
Making money by teaching via online courses is the best way to make the highest income. But I’ll start with the easiest: making money from courses you did not create.
And trust me, whether you create your own course or not, you can make tremendous income through that method.
1.) Earn Money Promoting Online Courses
Affiliate marketing is amazing to make money online. And with online courses, it gets better.
There are a few programs you can use to increase affiliate income by promoting these courses. Let’s see which one and how you should use them or not.
CreativeLive
CreativeLive is an awesome video course platform to learn and teach about photography, entrepreneurship, money making, marketing, and more. You can sign up for free to learn free courses on air. You can ignore the buy button and use the RSVP button to join the free broadcast.
The platform is really attractive to affiliates as well. If you join the CreativeLive affiliate program through ShareASale, you will make:
- $1 per free sign-up of each user you refer to CreativeLive.
- $10 per affiliate you refer to promote courses. (Two-tier program )
- 20% of revenue from purchases made by a new CreativeLive customer.
- 10% from purchases from returning customers.
The affiliate tracking cookie lasts for 30 days and you can purchase a course through your own affiliate link and make a commission. (like a discount).
CreativeLive makes it easy for you to start making money by promoting online courses. You can make $1 per student you refer to a free course and upcoming revenue from his purchase.
You get paid through ShareASale when you reach $50 through Direct Transfer ( Payoneer US service ) or cheque.
Join CreativeLive Affiliate Sign up on CreativeLive
Udemy
Udemy hosts courses about almost everything in different languages. You can promote their courses via the affiliate program through LinkShare.
LinkShare pays when you reach $50 in account balance through ACH (for selected countries), Paypal, and a cheque for international affiliates.
Udemy pays 40%-50% per sale starting at $7.50 to $400 in commissions.
Learn more about Udemy Affiliate Sign up on Udemy
ShareASale
I hope you get the point.
You join online learning platform affiliate programs and you start promoting courses.
Each time someone buys a course from your link, you make affiliate commissions.
You make more money when you promote courses that you took.
So, if you want a place to look for more courses to promote, check out ShareASale.
ShareASale is an affiliate marketing network where you can find courses to promote and earn commissions per sale. Signup and look for merchants under the category ’education'.
They pay through ACH (Possibly to get paid through Payoneer), and via Cheque when you reach $50 in your account balance.
Whether you create online courses or not, you can earn money by promoting online courses. You can’t create courses about everything, there will be always a course you love and would like to share with your students.
Let’s go now for the second way to make money with courses online: teaching.
2.) Make money teaching online courses
If you create and sell online courses, you’ll make even more money.
- People trust you to buy more from you.
- You get a higher revenue share.
If you’re new to selling online courses, it will be a little technical to set up your own payment gateway and become PCI-compliant.
It would cost you a lot of money in buying plugins, hosting, SSL certificates, themes, and so on.
So, to ease your work, here are some platforms that did the hard work for you.
You can sell courses at teachable for free.
It is possible to create free or paid courses and recruit your students as affiliates.
Teachable hosts your files and take care of everything related to payment processing.
You can get paid via PayPal or ACH. ACH is available for paid plans instantly. PayPal is available instantly on paid plans and 30 days payment terms on the free plan.
They have a bunch of guides to help you with the process.
What I like the most about them is that you set up a custom domain, and add your own logo to brand your course.
check out teachable.com
Udemy
With Udemy, you start selling your online courses for free. Udemy handles everything such as hosting articles, photos, and videos of your courses. It collects payments from customers. And promote your courses for you.
You earn 50% to 100% of sale revenue. It depends on who promoted the courses.
If you promote your courses and make a sale, you make 100%. If Udemy or an affiliate promotes it and makes a sale, you get 50 to 75% of the sale revenue.
You have nothing to lose with Udemy.
GumRoad
The plans at GumRoad start at $10 per month to sell courses, e-books, and music.
They were a free platform. But they upgraded the system to paid plans only.
You can sell your e-books, video courses, and music using GumRoad. They host files, give you options to pre-launch, send automated emails, and collect payments for you.
Go to gumroad.com to learn more.
Build income by selling online courses
You can build an income online by selling online courses that you trust whether you created them or not. I hope these programs will help you start making cash by helping people invest in educating themselves.
