How to launch your first Online Solar Course in 2023?

Creating an Online Solar Course would be an amazing idea this new year.

Being a solar entrepreneur means you know solar better than others.

​Like any other business solar too has many aspects like technical, marketing, client acquisition, finance, productivity, solar financial feasibility, solar installation, and many more.

I’m sure you would be handling all, good in many and excellent in few, just like me.

You can capitalize on your learning as a solar entrepreneur by designing an online course.

What is an Online Solar Course?

An online course is a course that is taught online instead of in person. Filter your area of expertise.

It could be:

• Solar PV technology
• Solar Thermal
• Green (Solar) Finance
• DIY Solar and more…

Encapsulate your learning and experience in audio, video, and text format and offer it to your viewers to view and listen to it online.

This is an online course.

The online courses also include projects, assignments, and quizzes to make them more interactive.

Why should you launch your Online Solar Course?

Launching your online course has the following advantages:

1. A good online course has the potential to reward you incredibly, expands your reach, and make you an expert in the solar domain.
2. The entry barrier is low for creating an online course.
3. The online course delivers value by solving the specific problem of the people.

How to build the course content?

The course content is very important while creating your online course.

Let us learn the steps involved in it.

i) Types of videos

There are 2 main types of online course videos:

• One is screen recordings and
• Another is your talking videos

In screen recordings, you record your computer screen and explain things to your students. A PowerPoint presentation is a good way to do this. 

You can even explain the mathematical equations in excel.

In a talking video, you record yourself speaking to the camera and explaining things to your students.

These types of videos are good while explaining the less technical stuff like an introduction to the course to your students.

But talking videos are very effective as students get to know the person behind the course.

The talking videos can create a long-lasting impact on your students.

Remember:

• Be natural and be like a friend while explaining things to your students
• Explain the course content in simple language
• Don’t worry too much about the quality of the video. It is more important to launch your first course than delay it due to video quality.
• Create a mix of screen recordings and talking videos

ii) The naming of the Online Course

Naming your course is the first thing that anybody will see first.

The name should draw the students and create curiosity in their minds.
A good course name tells the students the type of learning they will get in the end.

If for some reason, you get it wrong, the students will move to another course even if you have better content inside it.

Examples of result oriented & time bound courses names: 

• How to design the solar power system in 7 steps?
• How to get the first 100 customers in 30 days?
• How to find the payback of your solar power system?
• How to design your first solar quote?
• How to size of the complete solar power system match your energy needs?

How to find the right price for your Online Course?

Online courses are in no way inferior to regular courses in imparting education, value, and skills.

These are interactive filled with videos, assignments, and downloadable material, giving an enriching experience to the student.

Online courses are transforming people from what they were before taking the course and what they are now after going through the course.

The price of the online course says a lot about your brand, value, knowledge, and experience.

As a creator, you should derive the right price for your online course to do justice to it.

a) Psychology of the mind

You are a first-timer, and If I tell you,

“Create an online course of your interest and price it.”

Most of you will price it around $20, $30, or $50

Why?

1. Because there is fear in the mind of being expensive and we want to keep ourselves in the safe domain, thinking that by keeping the price low, we can sell more.
2. Because you think that you might not deliver the value that buyers would be expecting from your course.
3. Because it is your first time, so keeping the price low is very much reasonable
4. Because you think there is a lot of free information available on the internet, keeping a high price tag on your online course is not acceptable and the visitors will not buy your course.
5. Because you perceive that there are already many online courses available and that too by very experienced creators. Nobody is going to buy your online course and keeping its price low is the only option left.
6. Because you are not confident and are suspecting the quality of your online course
7. Maybe you don’t have a large audience to share your online course
8. You are not writing in a profitable niche

This psychology of the mind is stopping you from growing and realizing the true value of the course.

b) How to get out of a low-price mind block?

Let us recall the line: 

“Create an online course of your INTEREST”

• If you have an interest in playing chess, can anybody defeat you easily?
• If you are good at cooking then who would not like to relish your servings?
• If you are adept in crafting then people would like to have your work hanging on the walls of their drawing rooms
• If you have an interest in making cupcakes then it is less likely that people will not like them.

Friends,

When you are creating something of your interest then how it could be possible that it will be of low quality, less valuable, and will not be liked by the people?

The same is the case with the Online solar course, you are creating it because you have an interest in that particular subject.

It might be possible that being a first-timer, you don’t have the right equipment or gadgets for making the course but in no case is it of low value.

“The food cooked in an old pressure cooker in a small kitchen is no way inferior in taste to the same food prepared in in the kitchen of 5-start hotel.”

Realize your Potential

It is your interest, passion, and knowledge that adds value and quality to the product or to be more precise to the online course.

c) How to ignite these feelings?

If I say, “create an online course of your interest and you’re going to sell it at $200, $300, $500, or $1,000 in the market”

What would be your reaction?

You would be surprised and excited.

It’s true that Passion, Interest, and Knowledge are indeed the inherent characteristics of an individual but adding a good monetary value can boost them to the next level.

"Premium pricing gives a boost to your interest, knowledge, and passion."

When you know that you’re going to get a good price for your online course, you will infuse more energy into making it and its worth is going beyond comparison among all the courses, of the same category, available in the market.

Why do people use airplanes and pay many times more when they can reach their destination with bicycles or bullock carts?

Both airplanes and bicycles will get you to the destination but it is the journey that matters most.

People buy speed, comfort, and convenience.

The same holds with your online course.

When they see the value attached to the result-oriented online course, they are ready to pay the price that you have set.
​
Always keep this strong feeling in mind that you are creating something valuable which is going to make the lives of the people more comfortable.

d) Problems with low pricing

i) People’s Perception

First, people will be excited to know that the course is available at such a low price.

But the next moment, the feeling of doubt about its quality will take over.

They will question themselves:

• Is this course going to add value to their lives?
• Is this going to be another course without any support?
• Has the creator kept the price low because of its low quality?

They already have made up their minds that the quality is low and it is not going to add value to their lives even before purchasing your course.

And you know, it is very difficult to change the perception once it is made.

"The cheap pricing instead of generating sales, creates a barrier of doubt in the minds of the prospective buyers."

ii) More non-serious candidates

With low pricing, you are going to attract more non-serious candidates who will never actually complete the course.

This will impact the service time of the serious ones and eventually, you will lose them too.

Let us understand with the help of an example:

You priced your online course at $30 with a 2-hour weekly session for queries.

Further, assume that 40 candidates bought the course and out of which 30 are non-serious and 10 candidates are serious about taking the course.

Your 2 hours’ time is going to be divided equally into 40 parts.

The non-serious candidates will hardly care about the query session while the serious candidates, who wanted to add value through your course, found time devoted to them wasn’t sufficient for addressing their queries.

With this less attention time, they will lose their taste for learning and your course’s actual motive of adding value to the buyers goes in vain.

Remember, when a serious customer is happy, he will give more referrals and this means more sales

In the long run, it will affect your brand value and you will not be able to scale your online business.

iii) You cannot market your course with low pricing

Creating an online course is only half the work done.

To sell it, you need to take some time daily and market it on various platforms.

Let us understand with the help of an example:

You have priced your precious online course at $30 and now you are spending 20 hours per month on marketing it.

Your efforts bore fruit and you sold 10 copies in the first month of launching, it means $30 x 10 = $ 300 in sales.

• Whether you made a profit or loss?

Analyze the value of your efforts in making an Online Course

Let us say that the average working rate per hour is $25.

You spent 20 hours in the first month of launching. It means your expenditure is $ 25 x 20 = $ 500 in 1 month.

Now, you can compare yourself.

It is a loss of $300 – $500 = ($200)

You end up making losses that you don’t even know unless you rationally evaluate things like I did in front of you.

So, this is the problem with low pricing.

Instead, you priced your course $100 and sold even fewer copies say 6 in number, sale of 6 x $100 = $600. Keep the marketing efforts the same which is $500.

Are you still at loss?

Come on, you made a profit of $100 in the first month of launching.

You can see that even selling fewer copies you made a profit because you rightly priced the course.

iv) Is selling at a lower price always a bad idea?

Not exactly,

• When you have a large dedicated audience size then you can keep your online course at a lower price band.

But that doesn’t at all mean that you sell it at a peanut price.

When you want to collect more leads and want to sell another product at a higher price through your online course.

Different techniques for deriving the right price for your Online Solar Course

1. The Costing Approach

In this technique, you price the course based on different costs incurred in making it and add them all to get the price of the course. 

Like you add:

• Equipment cost (camera, editing software, etc.)
• Hours spent in the making of the course (You convert the labor hours into equivalent monetary value. For example, a person works 6 hours a day and earns $240. His average hourly rate is $240/6 = $40 per hour. You too can calculate yours in this manner and multiply the rate by the hours spent in making and marketing the course. You will get the monetary value of your efforts.)
• Hours spent in the marketing of the course
• Expected profit Margin (%)

Use Costing Approach to derive the right price for your Online Course

Let me give you the excel sheet to calculate the price of the course using the costing method.

You can also monetize your knowledge and experience while calculating the price of the course.

2. The Market Approach

In this approach, you look into the market to derive the price of your course.

Follow these steps:

1. Look for the top 10 courses in your industry.
2. Write down the price of each course and take the average
3. Go to each creator’s profile and note down her/his experience (years) in the industry and find the average experience
4. Now write down your own experience in years in that industry
5. Divide your experience by the average experience
6. Multiply the outcome in the previous step by the average price of the course
7. You get the price of your course

The price of your course is:

(Your experience/ Average experience of the creator) x Average price of the course

Let us further assume that your experience in the industry is 2 years.

And the price of your course would be using Market Approach is =

(2 years/5 years) x $530 = $212

The excel sheet uses the Market Approach to find the right price for the Online Course.

3. The Value Approach

In this type of technique, you derive the price of the course based on value addition or the cost-saving to the candidates.

In this technique, you derive the price of the online course based on the value addition. For example, Mr. X has made an online solar course

“Design the complete Home Solar Power System and know its financial feasibility”

and

He priced it at $200. 

How did he derive this price?
​
The average cost of a 5 kW home solar power system is around $16000

Mr. X thinks that the candidates after going through the course are most likely to save 10-15% of the total cost of the home solar power system that is they can save somewhere between $1600 – $2400.

And people don’t mind paying 10% or less (for the course) of what they are going to save after going through the course.

This is the basis of his pricing using the Value Approach.

You should see how your course is going to add value to a candidate’s life and career.

If after going through your course, the candidate acquires a new skill that can likely give a boost to his career to the next level say a 10% hike in his annual salary.

He won’t mind paying a fraction (10% or 15%) of this hike.

4. Toe-to-Head Approach

In this approach, initially, you keep the price low and increase it gradually by a small percentage say 10% month on month until you feel the resistance and your sales start dropping.

In this approach, you look for the price resistance to derive the right price for the online course

This resistance price is the right price for the course.

5. The size of the problem approach

This approach derives the price by quantifying the size of the problem solved by your course.

The problems can be broadly classified into 3 categories, namely:

1. Small problem
2. Mid-sized problem
3. Big problem

In small problems, you provide solutions that have an effect limited to few persons and are short-lived.

For example, an online course on “How to get a haircut that suits your face?” has its effect limited to one person because others cannot derive any tangible benefits from a person who has got that haircut.

Moreover, the benefit is short-lived with the person, you need a second haircut after 2 or 3 months.

You can price it under $100 but it should be above $50.

In the solutions to the mid-sized problem, benefits are spread over more people and its effect remains for a longer time.

For example, an online course on “How to get your first job?” solves a mid-sized problem that involves a person, his career, and his dependents.

You can price it between $200 to $500 depending on your knowledge and practical experience in that industry.
​
Whereas courses dealing with big problems need to be priced accordingly because their solutions have a wider impact.

In this price technique, the online course is priced according to the size of the problem.

For example, an online course on “How to start a profitable solar business?” is dealing with a big problem.

The solution is going to impact the lives of many employees and their families.

These courses are priced over $500 and can go up to $3000.

So, you can categorize your course according to this approach.
​
The price demarcation is general when you add a greater number of services to the course, the price can go up accordingly.

6. Monetary goal approach

Some people price the course that helps them in achieving their financial goals.

For example, you aim for earning $10,000 in a year from the sales of your course.

And you have 500 subscribers in your e-mail list.

How to price your course so that you achieve your target in the given time?
​
Let us draw a table:

You price the Online Course to achieve your monetary goal You can see that when you keep the price low, you need high conversion rates to meet your target.

When the price is $50 then you need to sell to 200 subscribers out of a total of 500 to achieve your target.
​
As you increase the price of the course, you achieve your target despite low conversion rates.

You price the Online Course in a way that gives you maximum sales. You can see that price options 3& 4 are $200 and $500 with conversion rates of 10% and 4% respectively are quite acceptable and achievable.

So, you can price your course between $200 to $500.
​
In this approach of pricing, you choose the price at which the conversion rates are achievable.

7. Tips for Premium Pricing

i) Teach something very specific

The content of your online course should be very specific because general content and topics are washed very quickly.

For example, you are a solar energy student who enjoys reviewing solar panels.

You are very motivated to create a course on it.
Don’t name a course like How to find the best solar panel?

This is a general statement.

Rather create like:

• 10 best solar panels for hot climate
• 7 most efficient solar panels for people living in cold regions.

to make your course topic and its content more specific.
Because specific things look different and unique. And people value unique things and are ready to pay high prices for that.

ii) Create a result-oriented course

Tell your viewers that you can achieve the goal in a given time when you go through the course.

Like “learn financial accounting in your solar business in 2 weeks”

Or 7 simple steps required to register your solar business

When you create a time-bound and result-oriented course, people get excited to learn and get impulsive to buy the course at the premium price that you set.

iii) Live calls 1-to-1

You can offer 1 to 1 live calls to your buyers to solve their queries. This kind of personalized service creates confidence in the course and gives a kind of relief in the mind of buyers that their queries will be addressed suitably.

iv) Different Plans

Offer different plans with different prices.
One is a basic plan in which you include all the essential features while the premium plan offers more customized services like giving extra time to solve queries through video calling or access to some of your premium material etc.

v) Bonus Material

Offering different bonus materials like E-books, PDFs, Assignments, Quizzes, and Excel sheets increase the overall value and hence the price of the course. This makes the course more engaging and gives an enriching experience.

vi) Keep Updating

The material which is relevant today might not be the same in the next 1 or 2 years. The same is the case with the content of your course, some of it will get outdated.

Therefore, you need to keep updating the course content, making it fresh, latest, and relevant forever.
​
And the customer always pays for the fresh product.

vii) Benefits of Premium Pricing

The direct benefit of premium pricing is that non-serious candidates are out.

The candidates who are serious about learning will buy your course.

This will not only increase the value of the course but also you can devote more time to each candidate in handling her/his queries.

In this way, you can make them learn better.

The candidates will be satisfied and happy.

You know happy customers bring more referrals and will bring more sales.

You can attract more business partners or affiliates through the premium pricing of your course.

Because you can offer more monetary value to them if they bring sales through their reference.

Let us understand with the help of an example:

Let us say you are offering a 30% commission to your affiliate for each sale done through her/his reference.

When you price the course at $50, he will get 30% of $50 = $15 as a commission for each sale done.

While on the other hand if your price your course $200, he will get $60 for the same efforts done.

In the latter case, the affiliate will be more excited and motivated to do the sale as he is going to get more value.

So, premium pricing creates an energetic team, accelerating your online business.

Another aspect is the credibility of your online course.

When you offer premium pricing, the visitors will look at your course offering something valuable.
​
While on the other hand low pricing creates doubts about the course quality in the minds of people.

Best Online Course Platforms

What is an Online Course Platform?

If you are new to online course platforms, these are the learning management platforms that give you the power to create an engaging online course that includes the following features:

• Videos, audio, PDFs, quizzes, interactive content, and downloadable files.
• Help you to create engaging landing pages that motivate visitors to buy your course after reading the content.
• You can price your course and collect payment through different modes of credit card, debit card, net banking, PayPal, and more.
• Helps you in creating your website or you can integrate your online course with your existing website I have my website www.solarwithyash.com, and I can integrate my website with the online course built into the Online Course Platform.
• You make the session more engaging by conducting live webinars and solving the queries of your students.
• You even create membership communities of like-minded people and engage them.
• Also, these online course platforms provide you with live support to resolve your queries related to course creation and its marketing.

I have ranked and reviewed top online course platforms based on user experience, pricing, features, ease of use and flexibility, customer support, and more.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links where I may receive a small commission at no cost to you if you decide to purchase the paid plan. However, these are the tools I fully recommend when it comes to launching online courses.

What are the best online course platforms?

• Thinkific
• Podia
• Teachable
• Learnworlds
• Gumroad

1. Thinkific: Powerful and easy to features that start with $0 to $399/month

It is a powerful platform that offers you to start your online course creation journey for free.

Although the free plan has limited features but is enough for you to experience its power.
It is designed in a way that you can start with 1 student and can scale up to the millionth student easily with its powerful features.

Pros of Thinkific

• Easily create an engaging online course through live classes and videos.
• Assess the performance of each student through quizzes, assignments, and exams.
• Provide continuous learning by creating an online-communities for your students
• Its easy drag-and-drop website builder and beautiful website themes let you create your professional website page in minutes.
• It has a facility to have your professional domain remove all Thinkific branding.
• Create and start selling your online course around the world and start accepting payments in 100+ countries.
• It offers you the flexibility to choose your payment terms for monthly or annual subscriptions.
• It offers you to integrate with your existing website, e-mail list or CRM, and other tools.
• The Thinkific team is 24/7 monitoring so that your content remains safe and secure Don’t worry your online course in under

Thinkific Pricing

All the plans come with 30 days satisfaction guarantee.

• You can access your funds instantly
• Easy-to-use drag-drop website builder
• Built-in SSL certificates
• E-mail and Phone support
• Secure cloud hosting
• Student notifications, and more

FREE $0

• Unlimited students but limited courses (Very good for beginners. Initially, everyone starts with one course)
• E-mail support
• Conduct surveys and create quizzes
• Content hosting

BASIC $ 39/month: All features in FREE Plan plus the following:

• Unlimited courses and students
• Live chat support
• Offer discount coupons to grow your sales
• Affiliate Reporting
• Drip content
• You get a custom domain
• E-mail integrations with third-party services such as Aweber, Convertkit, Constant Contact, and Mailchimp

PRO $ 79/month: All features in BASIC Plan plus the following:

• 2 site admin account
• 5-course admin/author
• You can keep your courses private and hidden
• Flexible pricing options such as monthly, quarterly, annually
• You can generate recurring revenue by creating memberships
• Issue certificates
• Build communities
• Conduct live sessions with Zoom

PREMIER $ 399/month: you get all features of the PRO Plan plus the following features:

• You get 15 group analysts
• 50-course admins/author

The Onboarding package includes 30 minutes onboarding call to resolve your queries, an online training package, and a review of course launch preparedness.

2. PODIA: All-in-one package under one roof starts from $39/month

Name any digital product, you can sell on Podia.

PROS of Podia

Online course

• It is an online package to sell online courses with unlimited video, quizzes, drip content, and student content.
• Podia has unlimited video bandwidth for all its plan. So, you need not pay extra for third-party video hosting.

Digital Downloads

Sell anything like e-books, PDFs, checklists, spreadsheets, and more. These are the perfect lead magnets to collect e-mail addresses, build your audience, and then pitch for your online course.

Membership sites

Launch your memberships website and start a recurring revenue model.

Webinars

• One-on-one coaching with zoom and YouTube seamless integrations, and sell live coaching sessions with Podia.
• Popular scheduling platforms such as Calendly, Acuity, YouCanBookMe, and SavvyCal integrate them with PODIA and conduct your coaching program seamlessly.

It has inbuilt email marketing features that let you eliminate the need for any third-party email service.

You can create a custom website without any coding knowledge required and can turn your fan into an affiliate through your affiliate program.

Podia Pricing

Its all plan comes with a 14-day free trial and no credit card is required.

• Mover $39/month
• Shaker $79/month
• Earthquaker $179/month

In all the 3 plans you will find:

• Everything is unlimited such as products, customers, sales, and files hosted.
• Zero transaction fees
• Free Migration
• 7 days week support (live chat or email)
• Daily Live Q & A

While you can sell online courses, digital downloads, and webinars in all the 3 plans

• The Shaker and Earthquaker plans offer you can sell membership and coaching in addition to the above three.
• The custom website, customer messaging, and product bundles are common marketing features in all the 3 plans.
• The course certificates, affiliate marketing, embedded checkout, and third-party code are available in the Shaker and Earthquaker plans.
• Although you can add unlimited e-mail subscribers to your e-mail list but can send 5k per month under the Mover plan, 15K and 50K in the shaker and earthquake plan. respectively.

Whereas dedicated account manager, 1:1 video call for any help, advanced tips, and the best strategies to accelerate your online business in included as extras in the Earthquaker plan.

3. Teachable: Easy-to-use features let anyone create an online course in Teachable (Free to $249)

Pros of Teachable

• Build beautiful courses with easy-to-use software by anyone.
• Its powerful editor has features that help in creating engaging multimedia lectures, videos, and coaching sessions.
• You can schedule your coaching session with Calendly and conduct your coaching session seamlessly.
• It has an exhaustive list of partners that let you integrate most of the important tools seamlessly with teachable.
• If you are not a designer don’t worry Teachable has all the ingredients to design the killer page for you from scratch.
• The fraud team tracks 24/7 all bay guys and keep them off your domain, and let you create your online course and accept payments with peace.
• In addition, it has a 2048- bit SSL certificate that keeps your information safe and secure during login and checkout.
• Even after, you need any support, the teachable support team to ready to help you out.
• It lets you accept payments internationally in 130+ currencies.
• All its plan includes unlimited videos, hosting, and courses
  You can make the online course more interactive with basic quizzes, lecture comments, and student management features.

Teachable Pricing

• Free $0: The free plan includes all base features that are required to launch your online course successfully such as unlimited students, instant payout, unlimited courses, unlimited coaching, course design templates, product support, third-party integrations, basic quizzes, and more
• Basic $29/month: Includes everything from the FREE plan plus you can create coupon codes, drip course content, integrated email marketing, private student community, and course creator academy
• Pro $99/month: graded quizzes, no transaction fee, 5 admin-level users, advanced level support, course completion certificate, integrated affiliate marketing.
• Business $249/month: everything in Pro plus: 20 admin-level support, manual students support, bulk students’ enrolments, advanced theme customization, group coaching calls.

The Pro Plan is the most recommended plan that has all the important features to accelerate your online business and is designed to boost the student’s engagement.

4. Learnworlds: Start selling online courses from your website through risk-free and affordable Plans with 30 day money-back guarantee

Pros of Learnworlds

• It has a feature that makes your video more interactive by automatically extracting the transcript from the video, and placing it in the right place. Hence, boosting student engagement.
• Its drip feed feature helps you in scheduling the delivery of your online course.
• You can boost student engagement by adding notes and highlighting the course content in multiple ways.
• Make your course more interactive with self-assessment quizzes, assignments, and formal tests, and issue completion certificates to your students.
• You can even check the statistics about the student’s interaction with your videos from start to completion. Gives you an idea of where you need more improvement to make the video more interactive.
• The integrated social media networks allow you to create an online community of the students that let them share their ideas, knowledge and hence making it a more enriching experience for them.

Learnworlds Pricing

Basic features that are common in all the plans are:

• You can upload unlimited courses
• You have the freedom to promote your brand
• Multilingual User Interface
• Grow your audience by capturing leads
• Accelerate your sales with discount coupons
• Make your online course more interactive with quizzes, assignments, and offer certificates
• Over 400 beautiful ready-made templates to make your website professional
• Customize your font to match your needs
• You can send a daily newsletter to your students

Starter: $29/month

• Site builder up to 3 pages
• 1 admin
• Unlimited paid courses
• 2 popup builders
• 5 payment gateways
• Free SSL certificate
• Drip feed courses
• 24/5 email support
• Built-in community

Pro Trainer: $84.15/month

• Unlimited landing pages
• Complete website builder with a blog
• 5 admin/instructor
• Unlimited popups
• Custom certificates
• Conduct Live classes and webinars through Zoom and Webex
• Affiliate management
• 24/7 priority e-mail support

Learning Center: $254.15/month

• Bulk user actions
• Course insight reports
• 20 admin/instructor
• Scheduled automated reports
• Integrations with API
• Webhook integrations
• 1-hour premium onboarding

iv) High Volume and Corporate:  you can book a demo and learn more about the features and the pricing.

5. Gumroad: ​The most affordable and easy online course platform available ( FREE to $ 10/month)

It is very simple to get started with GUMROAD.

​Take its FREE plan, create your online course, start selling and grow.

Pros of GUMROAD

• Personalize your landing page to make it attractive and professional.
• You can easily import your email list, export your fans and followers
• You can use workflows to share your content with your audience.
• GUMROAD supports you in making your online course a successful project from creating to marketing of the course.
• It is super simple to start selling your digital products with GUMROAD.
• Offer a discount on your products and grow your sales
• You can even offer your online course on rent. The students will have a total of 72 hours to watch within 30 days.
• You can sell multiple versions of the product such as
• Easy and simple checkout with major credit cards and PayPal.
• Start recurring revenue by charging on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis for your product

GUMROAD Pricing

a) Creator $0: Unlimited products to sell from an e-book, digital download, spreadsheets, Membership, Podcasts, and online courses.

• Real-time analytics
• SD streaming

Pro $10/month

• You can add your CSS
• Use your domain
• Unlimited posts and workflows
• HD Streaming

Tips to promote your Online Course

i) E-mail Marketing

Your e-mail list is the most valuable sales asset.

Creating a blog is the best way to build up your e-mail list. You can launch your blog on Weebly.

Offer free and valuable content to your visitors.

They will visit your blog and signup to get the latest updates in their mailbox.
You can launch your blog on square space or WordPress.

ii) Write a guest post

Another effective way of increasing your e-mail list in a short period is writing a guest post on the popular blogs in your category.

Look for the popular blogs in your category.

Offer your content to publish on their blogs. Provide the back-links of your blog within the offered post.

Due to heavy traffic, more people will come to know about you when they read your guest post.

iii) Offer something FREE to subscribe

Design a small 3-4-page PDF file like

10 steps before buying a solar panel
Or
How to maintain your solar panels?

and offer it free to the subscribers.

You will see a 3-4 times increase in subscribers than it was without a free offering.

If you have a blog then search for the most popular article. Convert it into a PDF file and offer it for free to the visitors who subscribe to your newsletter.

iv) Join social media platforms

about your solar course and sharing the link on social media platforms is a good idea to promote it.

Start your marketing campaign by sharing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
Join groups related to your domain and share your content.

Like-minded people will read your content and there are good chances of buying your solar course.

v) Share other quality content in your blog

Link the work and content of other people/bloggers/entrepreneurs in the same domain in your posts.

In this way, you are directing the traffic to them and contributing to their business.

They will realize your efforts and will reciprocate by linking your content in their posts.
​
Finally, you will also start getting traffic from them. 

vi) Writing a Sales Page

Your product cannot sell without a great sales page.

Start with the problem your prospective students are facing.

a) Describe the problem

For example, People are reluctant in buying the residential solar power system because they are ignorant about its benefits.

Highlight its consequences:

• They are using more fossil fuels, polluting the environment
• Grid electricity is costlier than solar electricity
• The grid electricity makes you dependent on grid. Solar electricity makes you independent as the source of sunlight is free for all.

Benefits of solving the problem:

• Help in preserving the environment
• Pocket friendly
• Low maintenance and durability
• You can sell extra units through net-metering
• Smooth electricity increases the life of your electrical appliances.

Solution: How your course will help in solving the problem?

It will help in choosing the best system to meet your requirements

You will get to know the financial feasibility of the system.

Conclusion

Look and aim for the place where you can value and can derive the right price for your online course.

This place is filled with customers who are ready to buy your course at that price.

Gradually, increase the price of the course and make it premium by offering exclusive services.

This way you further filter out the extremely loyal and serious candidates who are ready to buy the course at any price.

Finally, keep serving those selected candidates.

Online Course long term strategy:

• The prices are general in nature you can always increase the price of the course by adding value to the course.
• The average price is between $140 – $180 for the new creators with a minimum experience of 2 years in their respective domain
• Keep your course crisp, precise, and result oriented with engaging videos, examples, quizzes, and assignments
• The optimum length of the course can be 2-3 hours
• Judge yourself on the basis of experience, knowledge, and degrees
• Improve with time to time and create your new category with a time
• Be flexible and accessible to your students
• Podia and Thinkific are the two great platforms for launching your Online Course

Mine is on GUMROAD

I have created my online course in GUMROAD and believe me it is very easy and simple.

You too can do it in minutes.

Moreover, it is affordable too.

I feel GUMROAD is best for students who are looking to share their skills.
They can very easily upload their online course using its FREE plan and start selling in minutes.

The overall good platform for anyone is THINKIFIC.

​You can start your online course through its FREE plan and then upgrade to the higher plan as your need grows.

Great quality course content that adds value to people will always sell.

Friends,

Don’t wait start NOW!

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