You are probably asking yourself: How can I teach my courses online? Where can course materials be delivered online? How can I sell my content?
There are many platforms where you can upload and sell your courses online. There will be many things that you need to consider to determine which platform is the best for you. This is not a comprehensive list. Nor is this a comparison list. There are plenty of those posts online. The intention of this post is to make it clear that there are things to consider.
One of the biggest things to consider is how much do you need the platform to simply teach with and how much do you need it to be the everything. The website, the marketing, the money-handler.
Some of the things to consider within a platform are: digital downloads, video upload, template to use, messaging customers, migrating any previous system if you have one, monthly fee to use the platform as well as monthly fees to withdraw money, does it even handle the money? Do you need monthly subscription or membership options. Do you need it to be a blog, landing page, automated sequence? Does it collect email addresses so you can do email marketing? Do you want to do affiliate marketing? Languages and currency options?
There are so many things to consider. This type of platform listed below is best used for once off content-based learning where interaction is not crucial. This platform does not lend itself well to webinars or workshops. Learn more about webinar and workshop platforms here.
Here are some of the big players for selling courses online:
Teachable
It allows you to create a fully responsive website. You can plug into your own or design one through them. You can add PDF workbook and learning materials, images, video and text. You can upload from a variety of different cloud storage providers. You can break up content into modules. In this way, users can see their progress as they go through the materials. You can add things like quizzes and give out certificates. You can sell many courses and even have bundle deals.
This platform allows you to set up different email segments to market to customers better depending on their usage. There is also the ability to do affiliate marketing. They will accept payments for you but will charge you transaction fees.
Teachery
This platform has tried to make everything as simple as possible. They have said using their platform is as simple as typing an email. Ways they facilitate this is having over 250 templates to choose from for your store. You can get your store and courses up and running in a few minutes.
With Teachery, you can add PDFs, images, video, text and slideshows. With ability to integrate to many email and cloud storage options. You can really customise the look of your course if you choose to. Not just the main colour but panels and backgrounds, headings, buttons. You can make your course match your brand.
You can have unlimited students, do tracking and analytics, set up affiliates, drip schedule all your lessons. They don’t support PayPal payments but you can up recurring, once-off payments and payment plans through Stripe. You can also set up all the landing pages, payment pages and email capture pages through their platform. It also integrates to outside platforms.
Podia
You set up a store with Podia. You can migrate it and there are integrations to help make this seamless. They have lots of language and currency options. You can brand your new fully responsive website with your images, testimonials and videos. Then you start setting up your actual online courses including any workbooks or learning materials you have created. Or use them to build your email list with lead-magnet digital downloads.
With their course they have some features like drip scheduling lessons and set up quizzes. These things help improve engagement. You are able to pre-sell course and have a launch with their platform. You can upload all types of media, including making lead-magnets and you can bundle your courses to maximise sales. They are trying to help you grow and engage with your community so you can post directly to member’s only area, connect with the group, have discussions you can even use it as your blog. You have the ability to do all the email marketing things such as setting up building funnels, landing pages, campaigns, segment your audience and collect analytics.
With payments, you can set up payment plans, add one-click upsells, launch products and collect patyment before launch date, cross-sell, have coupons and affiliates. You can set up Stripe or PayPal payments and Podia don’t charge extra fees to withdraw.
Thinkific
This site has many of the features you will need. You make a store and fully customise it based on colours and fonts. Thinkific have many template options so you don’t have to start from zero. They take care of payments and gives you the ability to sell to people through your custom website. Recurring, once-off, payment plans and subscription payments are built in. They accept payments in over 100 different currencies and you can get paid right away. You can market and sell your courses with promotions and coupons. One of their options is to set up custom first month plan so you can set up a promotion where the first month is cheaper than continuing months.
There are so many integrations you will be able to plug into whatever other services you use. You can track the data and set up campaigns and even do affiliate marketing if you chose.
As far as student learning and engagement goes there are some great features here. One is pre-requisites. You can set these up so students have to follow a set learning structure and cannot move ahead without having those skills first. Students can check out their progress on any unit as well as the whole course with just a glance.
Kajabi
These guys are trying to replace all the other platforms in selling courses online. So they will do what all the others listed here. Instead of using integrations, they do everything themselves. They want to replace products (integrated subscriptions, courses and digital courses), websites (to have everything in one place), payments (they integrate with PayPal and Stripe so you get paid but you don’t need to set up a cart by yourself), analytics (all included), email (or more specifically email marketing), pages (as in funnel and landing pages), campaigns (or tying it all together), people (to track all your leads and keep everything in one place, a lead becoming a contact all in the one place), communities (no longer using Facebook groups), and of course it all works on any device.
Disclosure. I have no affiliation with the services mentioned in this article. However, I can help you design content including workbooks and webinars for these platforms.
