How To Make Money From Online Courses in 2024

Last updated: 08/01/2024 Written by: Ruby Layram

It is possible to make money from online courses in 2024 by selling your own digital courses through a marketplace or your own website. Courses are one of the best digital products to sell online because they have a high-ticket price and can be created for free. In this article, we take a look at how to make money by selling courses online.

If you want to make money from online courses in 2024, you should take the time or invest money into creating a high-quality digital course and then list it on a platform such as Teachable. You will make money every time someone decides to buy your course. A good tip is to create online courses that have a healthy demand and appeal to a wide range of people. These courses are popular with businesses that want to provide training materials to their employees, which means that they sell very well. Ready to start making money from online courses? Let’s take a closer look.

How To Make Money from Online Courses - Full Guide 2024

The basic process of making money from online courses in 2024 involves:

1. Choosing a profitable niche.

2. Creating a high-quality digital course that provides true value.

3. Uploading your course to a marketplace or creating your own website.

4. Marketing your online course through social media, blog posts and ads.

5. Getting paid every time that someone buys your course.

However, if you’re a complete beginner or someone who has tried this passive side hustle and not seen any success, here is a more detailed look at how to make money selling online courses in 2024. It’s important to mention here that selling online courses is a legit side hustle that could bring in substantial profits each month. However, this side hustle will only work if you are willing to put in the initial work and follow a proven process.

Step 1: Choose a profitable online course niche

If you want to make money from online courses in 2024, you need to find a niche that will actually sell. This means that the first step you should take, before anything else, is niche research. To maximize your chances of success, try to find a niche that has high demand, a high selling point, will not go out of date, and has low competition.

A good place to start your research is to think about online courses that you may have taken yourself. Perhaps you took a marketing course at work or a health and fitness course to get in shape last summer. If you’ve taken a course yourself, this is a strong sign that the course is sellable.

Examples of good online course niches in 2024

Here are a few examples of popular niches for online courses that could make money in 2024. Of course, it is important to be original and create something that isn’t already offered by other sellers.

Business and marketing

Business and marketing is a very profitable niche for online courses. Each year, companies hire new employees that need to be trained using digital resources. Furthermore, there has been consistent growth in the rate of new businesses starting each year with 753,168 new companies launching the UK in 2022. As a result, there is healthy demand for online courses that cover different aspects of business and marketing.

AI and Web3

AI and Web3 are both up-and-coming industries that companies are keen to get ahead of. As a result, an increasing number of businesses are looking for educational materials that could be used to train employees. You could tap into this relatively new trend by creating courses about AI and Web3 technology.

Self-development

Self-development courses cover anything from fitness to the art of confidence. The demand for these courses has seen steady growth in recent years with social media being the driving force behind many wellness trends. Self-development is perhaps the most varied nice with many opportunities for new courses to be made.

How to find a profitable online course niche in 2024

If the above examples aren’t for you, here are some tips for finding a profitable course niche in 2024.

• Look for gaps in the market. Try to find topics and niches that haven’t been tapped into yet. The best way to do this is to search for courses on Google and look at the search results. If you are unable to find a course that matches your search, it could mean that one hasn’t been created yet.

• Use keyword research tools. Keyword research tools can be used to find profitable online course ideas by displaying data about search volume, search intent, and competition. If a query has a high search volume but low competition, this could be a good online course opportunity.

• Look at what’s trending. Tap into new online course niches by keeping up-to-date with the latest trends. I really good example of a trending topic that could be turned into a course is how to become a UGC creator. UGC is a new marketing strategy with very few existing courses available online.

• Conduct market research. Use forums such as Quora or Reddit to ask people what they are looking for. This is one of the most valuable ways to conduct research and find answers from real people, instead of guessing.

Step 2: Create your online course

The second step in how to make money from online courses is to actually create the course. This should be the longest part of the process. The quality of your online course will determine whether or not it will be a success.

We have a whole article about how to create an online course for free that you can use as a guide. If you want to leant quickly, here are the basic steps that you could follow.

Gather knowledge and create a basic course structure

The first step is to build the foundations of your online course. The best way to do this is to put together all of your knowledge and research and then use this to create a digital course structure. This will give you a good idea of what to include in each section of the course.

You can use free tools such as Google Docs to keep track of this information. Make sure to create copies of all your work in case you accidentally delete anything!

Choose a course creation platform or software

After gathering all of the information and creating an online course structure, you will need to decide whether to create your course with a platform or whether to create it using downloadable software.

Online course platforms make the process easier for beginners but offer less flexibility. On the other hand, course creation software requires some level of expertise but offers complete freedom.

Use online tools to build your course

After choosing an online course platform or software, you can start using the tools provided to build your online course. It is normal to conduct some trial and error at this stage before you create the perfect course. Again, it is important to save your course as you go to avoid having to start from scratch if anything gets deleted.

Name your online course

You should now have a fully functioning online course. The next step is to name your course so that it can be found by customers. Choose a name that is descriptive, professional, and eye-catching. For example ‘The Ultimate Guide to SEO for Beginners’ works well because it grabs your attention and is straight to the point.

On the other hand ‘SEO Course for Beginners Who Want To Know More About SEO’ isn’t as effective because it is wordy and doesn’t use any engaging vocabulary.

Step 3: Publish your course on a platform or your own website

If you have chosen to create your online course through a course creation platform, you will be able to publish your course as soon as it’s finished.

Before you publish, you will be asked to decide a price. The best way to choose a good price for your online course is to look at the competition. Try to price your course competitively but make sure that the price reflects the quality. A lot of beginners price their courses too low which puts off potential buyers. This is because a low price suggests that the course doesn’t contain much value.

If you have chosen to create an online course using downloadable software, you could sell it through your own website. Doing this is a good way to avoid platform fees, which could increase your profit margins. However, to successfully sell a course through your own website, you will have to spend time growing website traffic. It takes about 6 months for a new website to take off.

Whichever way you choose to publish your online course, make sure to optimize the product description and use SEO techniques to boost visibility. It is a good idea to include several keywords in the course description so that it can be easily found by searchers.

Step 4: Use marketing to promote your online course

At this stage of the process, you could easily sit back and wait for people to start buying your online course. However, it can take weeks to get your first sale. One way to speed things up is to use marketing to promote your side hustle and sell your course quickly.

The best way to market your course is through social media. You could use TikTok or Pinterest to easily get your course in front of thousands of potential customers. Popular marketing techniques that are used by online course sellers include using videos to demonstrate how the course could solve a consumer’s problems, or creating simple poster ads that create a sense of curiosity about the course (these are particularly effective on Pinterest).

Email marketing is another good promotional tool that is used by many online course creators. This involves building an email list and sending promotional emails on a regular basis. When done right, email marketing can be very effective at selling online courses in 2024.

Step 5: Get paid from selling online courses

The final step of the process is to make money by selling courses online. It may take a few weeks to make your first sale but this is completely normal. You will notice that sales go up as more people buy your course and leave positive reviews. This is why its important to create a course that offers true value - positive reviews are the key to success.

If you choose to sell your course through a platform, you will be able to set up a payment method. Most platforms support cards, bank transfers, PayPal, and Skrill. However, you should double-check this before signing up.

If you choose to sell your online course through your own website, make sure to set up a reliable payment system. Most eCommerce hosting providers offer safe and secure payment systems that can be used. This means that payments will appear in your bank account every time someone purchases an online course from your website.

Can You Actually Make Money Selling Courses Online? - Our Take

Is making money from online courses too good to be true? We spent time trying this side hustle idea out for ourselves to see whether or not you can actually make good money by selling courses online in 2024. Here’s what we found.

Anyone can publish online courses to a marketplace. You do not have to be a professional to create, publish and sell courses online in 2024. We successfully created accounts and published test courses with Teachable, Thinkific and Kajabi. The process was straightforward and easy to follow.

You won’t make money over night. Like most innovative ways to make money from your phone, selling online courses is not a get-rich-quick scheme. We gave up to early (after about 5 days) because we didn’t see any sales. However, after searching through Quora and other forums, we found that the average online course seller will wait about 3 months before they start seeing significant results.

If you wait long enough and focus on marketing, it is possible to make money selling online courses in 2024. The main reason that people fail at this remote side hustle idea is that they give up too soon. If you are passionate about making passive income from online courses, wait at least 6 months to see results.

Conclusion

Selling online courses is a great way to make passive income in 2024. Luckily, the process of creating and selling an online course is easy and can be done by anyone with a laptop and WiFi connection. In this guide, we have taken a look at how to make money from online courses in a realistic and beginner-friendly way. Use the steps mentioned above and stay persistent for at least 6 months to see results and start making money from online courses.

FAQs