Putting together an online course is a highly effective way to make money online. But some technical knowledge is needed to do that. You will have to familiarize yourself with some tools and technical know-how. The goal of this post is to help you learn how to sell online courses from your own website.
Your online course will be created and marketed on your website. So, building a website is the first step of the process. If you are a non-technical entrepreneur, you may choose a solution that provides both advanced features and affordability, so that you do not have to learn how to code.
Use WordPress as Your Platform
WordPress is a widely known content management system, and it is highly praised for its technical superiority and ease of use. WordPress is integrated with numerous plugins. No matter how fast your business grows, you can still use WordPress. A pro developer can easily build a custom solution that can meet your needs.
You must be able to control the platform you are using to host your products. In other words, you should be able to determine how your potential clients interact with you. If you use Teachable or Udemy, you will not have complete control over your courses. To some extent, you will certainly have to let go of your freedom.
That is why we highly recommend using a WordPress website. If you want to establish yourself as an authority, you should use a WordPress website as your platform.
Building Your Website
If you want to sell online courses from your own website, you have to focus on building your website first. Yes, you can build your own website even if you have no coding ability. The following steps will help you launch your WordPress website. If you have zero experience with WordPress, you may find the process a bit intimidating. However, the actual procedure is not complicated at all.
If you are going to build your first WordPress website, don’t aim for perfection. Be satisfied if it is good enough. Remember, you may not get anything done if you have a perfectionist mindset. As you keep practicing, you will certainly improve. Your goal is not to build a perfect website but to make some real progress. If you follow the steps outlined below, your website will look great.
Buy your domain name
When it comes to buying a domain name, most entrepreneurs worry too much. And that is understandable because a domain name matters. But try not to overthink it, because if you think too much, chances are that you will end up choosing a crappy domain name.
Make sure that you choose a domain name that is simple and directly related to your niche. If the domain name makes sense, you have chosen a fairly good one. Remember, it must make sense to someone else. To know whether you have chosen a good domain name, tell your friend the domain name over the phone and see if he or she can repeat it!
Choose a suitable hosting service
When you are going to build a website for your business, you have to choose a reliable hosting service. It is important. There are many hosting services to choose from, but all of them are not equal. Before you learn how to sell online courses from your own website, you have to choose a reliable hosting service.
Hosting is basically a computer server that hosts your website. Many companies build server farms, but all of them do not provide the same level of security. When it comes to choosing a hosting provider, you have to consider 3 things: performance, customer service, and security.
Also, make sure the hosting service provider has good customer service. Do not look for the cheapest service. If you chose the cheapest service on the market, your website will almost certainly have issues.
Install WordPress
Before you start building your website, you have to install WordPress. It is not hard at all. But what is the exact procedure? To some extent, it depends on what hosting service you are using. If you are using WPX Hosting or SiteGround, the process is easy.
Do a little bit of research online and you will find the exact procedure of installing WordPress. There are video tutorials that are very helpful. Hopefully, you will be able to find instructions you can use.
Install a WordPress theme
Once you have installed WordPress, you will have the structure of your website. But this is just a skeleton of your website. Now you have to put some meat on it. What will your visitors find when they come to your website? Well, you will put that content later. But before that, you will have to install a theme.
If you want to learn how to sell online courses from your own website, you must learn how to install a WordPress theme. To make the process easier for you, WordPress themes come preloaded. So, if you install your WordPress, you will not have to install them separately.
Again, don’t strive to be perfect. You should be satisfied if it is good enough. To meet your unique requirements in the future, you may have to upgrade them. For now, gladly accept whatever you have chosen.
However, if you wish to get a bit fancy, you can consider using a premium theme. If you are a Thrive Themes member, you will have access to 10 themes.
Set Up Your WordPress Plugins
These are third-party tools, and they are necessary for the functionality of your website. Luckily, to set up these plugins, you do not need to know how to code. The licenses for these plugins are often costly, but if you have a membership of Thrive Themes, you will have access to nearly all of the necessary plugins.
To be able to sell online courses from your own website, you have to learn how to use at least the basic WordPress plugins. The procedures of purchasing and installing these plugins are pretty easy. Once you are done with the plugins, you have to use the primary tools. Then, hopefully, your WordPress site will look great.
Use Thrive Architect
You are going to make your online course website, and you do not have any coding skills. Well, you will have to use a visual plugin. When it comes to choosing a WordPress page builder, there are many options to choose from. But none of them is as good as Thrive Architect, thanks to its great functionality.
If you are just getting started as a solopreneur, we recommend you get the Thrive Themes Membership so that you can have access to whatever plugin you need. Thrive Architect offers numerous landing page templates, which are very helpful.
Thrive Leads: Your List Building Tool
Are you looking forward to building an email audience? Thrive Leads can help you do that, even if you have no coding skills. In the next chapter, we will focus on this aspect. To some extent, direct communication with your audience determines the success of your business. And that is almost impossible without a healthy email list.
We recommend Thrive Leads mainly because it has a visual building interface. This is one of the most important preparatory tasks before you sell online courses from your own website.
Use Thrive Apprentice, Your Course Crafting Tool
It also comes with a visual building interface, which is very useful for people with no coding skills. With this plugin, you can create multiple chapters, lessons, and modules. It also allows you to edit individual lessons, so you will get things done in a very short time.
Before you sell online courses from your own website, you have to craft your course as finely as you can. Thrive Apprentice is one of the simplest online course plugins available online. With it, you can easily create a good learning experience for the audience. If you want to limit access to your course, consider using a tool like SendOwl.
Launch Your Content With Landing Page Templates
Once you have installed all the essential plugins, start making your initial content. But how should you get started? First of all, you have to focus on pieces of content such as Homepage, About Page, your first 3 articles, and a sales page.
A landing page template can help you get these things done quickly. Again, do not strive for perfection. If the landing looks good enough, you are doing just fine. Thrive Architect offers more than 300 templates for landing pages.
Build Your Homepage
If you are trying to brand your info product, you have to choose a suitable homepage template. Thrive Architect offers many templates and you have to choose one that suits your purpose. There are video tutorials that can help you do it well. Yes, your landing page template can be modified in just a few seconds.
Build The Sales Page To Life
You have already created the first draft of your sales page. Now you have to bring the page to life. It may feel a bit intimidating, but there is a super simple way to do it. It is not necessary to make your sales page from scratch. Rather you can take a template from Thrive Architect and work on it.
It is specially designed as an online course sales page, so it is going to really help you. The template from Thrive Architect looks great. So, don’t worry about the looks.
Start Building Your Courses
To make your online courses easier and more beautiful, you can use a tool called Thrive Apprentice. There are many reasons why we recommend this tool. It is professional looking, and the setup process is very simple.
When you are going to get started with your business, make sure you do not count too much of a cost of complexity. In this regard, Thrive Apprentice is definitely better than other course setups. In fact, before you learn how to sell online courses from your own website, you have to pour love into your course.
You do not have to use expensive and complex tools to get stuff done quickly. With Thrive Apprentice, you will have to use another tool, SendOwl, and it will help you accept payments online.
Connect Your Payment Gateway
The next step is to integrate SendOwl with PayPal, Stripe, or any other payment processor. Do a bit of research online and you will find step-by-step instructions for doing it. The instructions are also available on the official site of SendOwl. This step is very important because this is the way to get paid for your hard work.
Conclusion
If you want to sell online courses from your own website, you have to know that the process is long, and it requires a bit of love and attention. But in the end, your endeavor will be greatly rewarded.
If you can make the right setup and create a good online course, you will sell the course for many years. We have tried to explain the process of selling online courses, and we hope you have found this post helpful.
Oh! Good one to see here. Nothing beats the knowledge and benefiting the knowledge having been out to good use. To be honest, I actually like the idea of making money from writing courses and guides that can help people based on what I am knowledgeable on. I will definitely give this a very serious considerations soon. Thank you so much
Hi Sherry! Leveraging your expertise to create a passive source of income is a very tempting option these days. I would start with making a short list of subjects that you’re knowledgeable in and do some market research on the some of the more popular Course Marketplaces like Udemy and see what the market demand is like.
I find it hard to admit how much I have wanted to create a course and I have not done so. With this article explaining how to get it done, you have taken one of the 3 legs from my argument within my mind about why this hasn’t happened. I don’t think it is unusual to want to share information, after all, why else would I live all these years! However, I have so few things to share. I also like to take in information and let it cure in my mind. Then I find that I began to see the different ways to make what I have just learned work for me.
You said that the Thrive plugin worked well when sitting up a site to sell a course from and that it is easy to use. Is this plugin just for building a platform to sell courses, or can it easily work with other kinds of sites as well? I would like to create an information site. I agree with you about the perfection thing we get stuck in our minds. “Good enough” is a reasonable goal and much more profitable. Thanks for sharing your information, and encouraging me to get the ball rolling on what I want to do.
Thanks for that awesome comment Sami, I hope you feel empowered to share your expertise with the world.
Thrive is a well-rounded plugin for visual building and is very flexible. If you wanted to share your knowledge for free you just wouldn’t add the paywall.