What You Need To Know About Pricing Your Online Courses
The number one rule as far as it concerns pricing your online courses is that they’re worth much more than the credit you are giving them, and here’s why:
- No course selling expertise is needed.
You don’t have to be a professional to teach or sell online courses. What you need is having an awareness of your learners’ wants and keeping in mind the struggles you faced when you were a learner yourself. - Your courses don’t need to bring profit.
The courses you offer may cover more artistic and hobby related topics rather than ones that can help learners make money. Either way, people will be more than happy to buy what’s on offer as long as they are interested in it and can earn important knowledge and experience. - What your proposition is all about.
There is a possibility your target audience can learn more about your topic on their own through a single Google search. As such, you need to make it clear that you are offering a quicker, more structured and effective way of reaching that particular level of knowledge. - Your courses are unique.
There is always going to be others teaching the same course topic as you and at some cases they may be offering it for less money in exchange. But this doesn’t mean that your target audience will prefer others to you. What you need to do is pinpoint what is it exactly that makes your online school special and unique to others’. Make sure you provide tangible evidence (images, videos, and testimonials) that can support your arguments. - People respond to warmth, care, and provision.
It only makes sense for people to think twice about spending their money on the internet, especially on a stranger’s business. However, if you make sure to warm up your leads and offer them clear value, then the chances of them spending money on your services are pretty high.
18 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Charging A Low price
When deciding on a price, you need to make sure that your courses are worth at least $100. Generally, it’s good practice to avoid charging a low price for your course for the following reasons:
1. Education Is Highly Valued
Over the last few decades, education has become an essential part in our lives and encouraged people to work in unconventional careers. In a knowledge-based society, education is greatly appreciated as more people are becoming interested in learning new things and building their skills. So, why wouldn’t they spend their money to get it?
2. You Need To Provide Means To Education
Regardless of the reason behind your learners’ decision to enroll on your course, you will need to be able to offer them a clear path to their education and show that you care about their personal development.
3. Customers Know What They Are Paying For
People are willing to pay more for an online course than they would for an eBook. This means that you can easily integrate your online courses with the information that would be presented in your eBook and make more profit through it.
4. Online Courses Are Controlled, Isolated, And Explicit In Content
Learners have access to exclusive and valuable content that under other circumstances they wouldn’t be able to find.
5. You Deserve Every Single Cent
Online courses not only take a significant amount of time to create and edit, but also run on experience, knowledge, and skills, so you deserve to make more money for your effort.
6. It Is A Lazy Marketing Approach
The lower the price of your courses, the less incentive you will have to invest in the appropriate time and effort to market your courses.
7. There Are Some Advertising Limitations
Courses that come with a low price are hard to get advertised since they do not generate enough money needed to cover advertising expenses.
8. Your Courses’ Value Gets Degraded
A low price gives the impression that you are offering a low value product.
9. Online Teaching Is As Valuable As The In-Person Teaching
Most of the times online teaching offers more convenient and easy solutions, but this also depends on the learners and their willingness to learn.
10. Competing On Price Is A No-No
There will always be someone else who sells their courses cheaper than you. Competing with that has a guaranteed unpleasant outcome. Besides, you want to get more quality customers – and sales, coming from your targeted audience. As such, it’s best to focus on those who will value your courses exactly as you offer them.
11. There Is The Same Effort Regardless Of Selling In High Or Low Price
The process of selling is the same thing, so why not aim towards higher charging?
12. Joint Venture Partners Are More Attracted By High Prices
Low prices tend to set obstacles when it comes to attracting joint venture partnerships that can promote your work.
13. Course Prices Correlate With The Quality Of The Customers That Buy Them
The lower the price, the lower quality the attracted customers will be.
14. Income Goals Are Easier To Reach
Lower priced courses take a lot more time to get enough students for you to reach your revenue goals.
15. The Smaller The Number Of Learners, The Better The Course Experience You’re Offering
Having to deal with less than 20 learners means that you can provide more of your effort, focus, and time to satisfy their needs. Gradually you can convert them to recurring customers and then get your work recommended to others.
16. Engagement Is Increased When The Course Pricing Is High
Learners are more bound to complete the course if they have “invested” on their education and learning experience, whereas buying a low price course is probably going to lead to even forgetting they have bought it in the first place.
17. The Higher The Pricing, The Greater The Value
A low-priced course does not inspire trust and value whereas a higher price conveys significantly more value.
18. Setting The Bar
If you set a high pricing for your courses, then the learners enrolled will not only be enthusiastic and eager to learn but they will also be serious about the whole learning process, whereas lower priced courses can attract less determined learners that are out of your targeting audience.
How Much Should You Charge?
While all this information is useful, it doesn’t answer the main question which is ‘how much should you charge’. At a larger scale, this depends on the nature of your course, as well as your company needs and expenses/profit calculations. If you are not sure about the price, you can give it a go and try out different approaches:
When To Go Low On Pricing
- During a pre-launch testing period.
You can pre-sell your courses to a limited group of customers before you fully launch. Doing so will help you receive valuable feedback and testimonials both of which you can use to revise your work and make it even better. - When you have a deadline before a price increase.
In cases where you need to create a sense of urgency, you can offer a limited time discount. Also, you can even offer more bonuses if customers buy before the deadline expires. - When you discount as a last resort to acquire a customer.
While this is a helpful tip, you need to be careful so that you don’t offer a discount to a customer that is on the verge of buying at full price.
When To Give Away Courses For Free
- To generate leads.
Offering free access to a course can help you collect plenty of email addresses you can use to promote other courses in the future. - Boarding new customers.
When you welcome new customers, you can provide them with free training and simultaneously reduce cancellation rates. - Bonus resources.
You can give free access to a course as a bonus for purchasing another course or a product you offer.
Creating Income Goals
Since planning plays an important role in whatever you choose to do, you will need to set some income goals for your online course as well. Regardless of what personal goals you hope to achieve (whether it’s more money to leave your full-time job or to cover the expenses for your kid’s field trip), you should come up with a solid number that will function as a beacon of light guiding you towards the completion of your goal.
Setting such goals can help you form a clearer picture that inspires confidence in terms of the number of customers you need to sell to achieve a successful launch.
If you want to learn more about how to publish your eLearning courses successfully, download the eBook The Ultimate Guide To Selling Online Courses.