How to Price an Online Course
How to price an online course? Maybe, you are ready to create an online course. Or, maybe you are planning to launch an online course you already created.
You sit down to write your sales page and it’s time to decide: How do I price an online course so that I know my people will buy?
This year alone, I have had over 30,000 students attend workshops with me on how to create and launch an online course. A big question that comes up is often, “How do I price an online course?” I hear over and over from experts like you that “someone suggested I price on the low end” or “an online course I took taught that I should price at $697 because that’s the best number for conversion.”
Pricing is a strategic decision that affects every aspect of your business.
When you price an online course, you have to remember:
It will determine what kind of content and support you include in your online course.
It will determine how much of an ad budget you have to attract clients into your online course.
It will determine how many clients you need to find to reach your revenue goals.
It will determine the type of client you attract.
It will determine how your community perceives the value of your offer.
It will determine what kind of resources you can add to your online course in the future to add value and improve your content.
It will determine how many people you need on your team to support those clients.
In essence:
Determining how to price your online course determines what your life as an entrepreneur is going to feel like.
Why? Because…
Your pricing strategy determines if you are in the quantity or the quality game. Click To TweetIf you price an online course on the low end, you are in the quantity game.
You will need to find lots of people to enroll in your course to hit your revenue goals.
If you price an online course on the higher end, you are in the quality game… you need to deliver quality content that delivers results and develops a quality of relationship with your clients that keeps them coming back for more.
You will need to deliver high value to fewer people to hit your revenue goals.
Take a look at how your decision on how to price an online course plays out:
If your revenue goal is 6-Figures:
If you decide to price an online course at $997: You need 100 people to enroll in your $997 program (or 8 people a month over one year)
or
If you decide to price an online course at $997 with an up-sell offer: You need 50 people enrolling in your $997 program and 10 of them a year buying your next level $5k program.
Let’s look at how this is different when you price lower:
If you decide to price an online course at $97: You will need 1000 people buying a $97 online course with you this year to hit $100,000.
If you decide to price an online course at $197, you will need 500 buying a $197 online course.
Or, for comparison, you have to find 1000 people spending $8 a month in your monthly membership site community.
What many experts don’t share about pricing an online course at the lower end is that you have to go deeper with clients to generate a profit. It is difficult to generate enough profit to survive with only a low-priced course offer.
Couple this with another challenge in being in the quantity game: you don’t have the time to market AND serve all those people by yourself.
This means you need additional team support which means even less profit.
When you price an online course at the lower end, you play the QUANTITY game and…
You are constantly moving from one focus to another.
You are constantly overwhelmed.
You need support to handle the volume
You can’t afford to advertise so you have to beat the bushes online to find leads and get on the phone to close sales.
When you create high-value offers that command higher investments, you are in the quality game.
When you price an online course at the higher end, you play the QUALITY game and…
You choose who is a right fit.
You can go deeper with clients.
You have more profit margin available to market to find those perfect people.
You have a bigger profit margin which means more budget to invest in paid traffic.
You attract clients that are invested at a higher level.
You have clients go deeper with you into next level offers because you generate results at every level of interaction.
When you are in the quality game, your clients will be looking for next level offers from you. Why? Because they know you create content that delivers results.
What does it take to price an online course at the high-value end of the pricing range?
Results. Period.
We are in a critical time in our industry. There are thousands of people wanting to create an online course. It’s like online course creation has become the new frontier and all the land grabbers are in the wagons racing to stake their claim.
And, leading the wagon train are internet marketers or internet marketer wanna-be’s claiming they can teach you how to create an online course.
And, they can, sort of.
It’s easy to film a bunch of videos on your iPhone and put it on a webpage and call it an online course.
It’s even doable to sell that bunch of videos using some launch formula.
The problem with courses that don’t create results is that most buyers will only be disappointed once and then they are gone. Forever.
This means they don’t come back to go deeper with you in your work and they don’t refer new people to your online course. And, this leaves you constantly searching for new leads to fill your online course.
You create an online course that creates results you have to identify the right problem to solve.
You have to focus on identifying a problem your ideal clients:
1. Want solved
2. Will invest in to solve
3. You can help them solve
Creating an online course represents an incredible growth opportunity for your business. I see coaches, consultants, and experts transforming their businesses by creating just one transformational course.
The only people left standing when the dust settles from the great online course creation boom are going to be those that intentionally crafted learning experiences for their clients that deliver results.
It takes intentional focus on creating results. But, this is how you build real value in your business.
What is the problem you want to help your clients solve in your online course? Share in the comments below. I would love to hear what you are creating.
Cheers,
Jeanine
Jeanine Blackwell, Creator of Create 6-Figure Courses® and The Launch Lab™
Jeanine has been recognized in the Huffington Post as one of the “50 Must-Follow Women Entrepreneurs in 2017” and Leadership Success Magazine’s, “40 Top Business Coaches in the World”.
Jeanine has shared online business building strategy in publications such as Fast Company, Inc. and Huffington Post, and is the creative force behind Create 6-Figure Courses(r) and The Launch Lab(tm).
She has helped thousands of experts create and launch profitable online courses and designed global online course learning models for brands like Estee Lauder, Aveda, 3M, Disney, Samsung, Princess Cruises, Boeing, Sotheby’s, and Smithsonian Institute.
Jeanine speaks on online learning strategy and digital marketing and has shared the stage with many powerful influencers including Marianne Williamson, Daniel Pink, Marcus Buckingham, and Deepak Chopra.
Jeanine, this is an eye-opening and extremely valuable post. I can’t thank you enough for sharing it. I wish I could afford your services.
Hello Elva! It is great to hear from you. Thank you for the great feedback. There are many ways we can play together.
If you are interested in a fast-track way to get your course out without a big launch, this is one of my most popular systems and it is budget-friendly for the start-up! Here is the info>> http://bit.ly/2pwPmpN
Reach out if you have any questions. We are always happy to chat. Cheers, Jeanine
I’m a harpist/teacher/coach and the course I’ve created is to help harpists break free of the page and learn the skills and gain the confidence to improvise. I’m struggling with pricing but after reading this have decided to more than double the price I was going to charge. Initially I had decided $147 but will make it $399 because this will give me some leeway to add bonuses to the launch and to add a couple of high value modules about confidence. Thanks for the insight!
Greetings Kate! Great to hear this. The key in your course design is to stay focused on the results your ideal students are looking for. I’m leading a free web training on how to design your course working backwards from the results. This will help you design for the higher level of impact. You can see all the info and register here>> http://bit.ly/2oJj4Uk Cheers, Jeanine
Hello – I am writing a course for pre-diabetics and diabetics, recently diagnosed or their cooks and care-givers. Understanding diabetes and the body and how to manage it well and live long healthy lives. And have fun at the same time!
Hello Kim! You have narrowed to a great niche audience. Next step is to narrow the results you will deliver in the course to make it highly marketable and differentiated from your competition. I walk through examples of how to do this in this webinar training>> http://bit.ly/2oJj4Uk Reach out to us with any questions. Cheers, Jeanine
I am working on my course right now, it has been a long5 months of hard work. I am almost done though, recording the last two modules. It’s a quality product about self weight coaching. Teaching busy professionals how to lose weight and keep it off by becoming their own weight loss coach. I intend to charge around $979.
Congratulations on getting your course to the finish line, Fouad! By the way, most of our community launch their course and have paying clients going through the course while they finish the recording. (Your clients are on module 1 and you are completing module 5, for example). You might consider putting it out there even sooner. Cheers, Jeanine
Thank you so much for the advise Jeanine
Hi, thank you for your sharing. Your advice on pricing online courses is really practical. As technology becomes popular and online learning increases, many teams are creating a combination of online courses. How to price online courses has become a hot topic.
An interesting piece of the article on pricing our online courses.Thank You so much, Jeanine.
Hello Janine,
I am a business coach with a client who is building an online course to help people achieve emotional comfort. It’s a year long course with weekly video lessons. We have researched pricing a lot and have come up with a price but we still have a couple of questions. Are you available for a private consultation? If so, now much do you charge?
Janice
thank you for this post, I was wondering myself how much could I sell my first online course !
regards,
Julien