How to choose the right price for your Online course [Detailed Guide]?

An online course is often a labor of an educator’s efforts to teach others and a way to build a community of learners. But it’s also an excellent way for educators to generate revenue too. Pricing your online course is the last step before releasing it to the world. But it’s also an essential part of creating a successful online course. Pricing online courses is a difficult task for many online tutors.

In this blog, we look at several strategies to choose the right price for your online course.

Before we begin, let’s get one thing clear: There is no such thing as the ultimate right price for your course. It’s subjective and depends on several factors.

Tiers of online course pricing

Before you start with how to price your online course, it’s good to understand different tiers of online course pricing. Each course out there belongs to one of the following categories.

• Free courses

Free courses are everywhere. However, the downsides to free courses are that they can take up a lot of time and effort and don’t immediately bring in any revenue. But offering courses for free works great if your priority is to build trust and earn a reputation among your target audience. This helps generate new leads with a specific interest in the subjects you specialize in.

Adopting a free pricing model works great if you are offering your online course for marketing purposes or establishing your first user base. However, you can always adopt other pricing models once you achieve your initial goal.

• Paid courses

Paid courses are another common pricing strategy that enables course creators to see a concrete ROI. This pricing strategy validates the time and effort put in by the creators. Most creators follow pay per course as the simplest pricing strategy, which involves setting a price for each course. It offers simplicity and is easier to measure and forecast.

From the customer’s perspective, paying for individual courses means that they just pay for what they need upfront. Creators can put higher price tags on individual courses, which sometimes can be a barrier to converting effortlessly.

• Subscriptions

This type of pricing plan is another excellent way to earn more course enrollments by reducing the price and maximizing the value. Learners get a fantastic deal and a valuable package, and creators get a recurring income in exchange.

However, you need to generate lots of valuable content for your online course to be worthwhile for your learners.

The psychology of online course pricing

When you are brainstorming about how to price online courses, you go through several mental hoops that limit you from putting the right price tag.

Here are some of the popular mental blocks that restrict online course creators from charging what they are worth.

• Am I enough of an expert to charge this price?
• My course doesn’t deliver tangible results, so how can I charge the price?
• Most of my competitors sell their courses for less.
• My target learner base won’t be able to afford my pricing.
• People can just browse Google and learn things on their own.

While some of these scenarios mentioned above might be valid, none of them is a reason for you to charge less for your online courses.

When your mind starts questioning your worth, just remind yourself that good online courses are valuable and worth the price. To devise the right pricing strategy for your online course, you must understand the psychology of your earners as well.

There are three main types of online learners.

• People who are willing to browse through Google, sift through vast online resources, and figure it out themselves. These types of learners are not your ideal students.
• People who choose a bunch of inexpensive courses and then complain about not getting results. They don’t make your ideal student base, either.
• People who understand the value of good online courses. They would be willing to pay a good price to learn from an expert. These people would be willing to invest in high-quality online courses that resolve the problem they face, these are your ideal learners, and by keeping them in mind, you need to price your courses.

Choosing the right price

If you wonder how to price a training course, make sure to have a strategy. Focus on what you want to achieve. What are the end goals you have for your students and your income goals? To choose the right price for your online courses, here are some of the factors to consider.

• Personalized support

Providing individual support to learners takes time and energy. Plus, it’s not easily scalable as you are spending one-to-one time with each student, which makes it valuable. Ask yourself how much individual support your learners require to achieve the promised results?

Examples of higher-end support would be one-on-one interaction and personalized teaching. Lower-end support would be email support and support over group calls.

The more support you provide, the higher the price you can charge.

• Results achieved

Your online courses address the real problems your target learners face. Some topics might be, by nature, more prominent than others. When you are putting up a price tag for your online course, think about the benefits your learners get rather than the features you want to offer. Work backwards from what the course will deliver- list out all the positive outcomes of your courses and then put a price.

To make it easier, ask yourself how substantial are the results your learners will achieve? Will your online courses’ impact on your learners be on the high end with more impact or on the lower end with valuable results but less essential.

For example,

Higher end- Helping learners complete a certification course that can help them get a job.

Lower end- Helping them improve their marketing skills to the next level.

Typically, the more impactful the results, the higher price you can charge.

• Industry research

Perform market research and competitor analysis to examine the price others in the industry charge for their online courses. This can be a great indicator of the prices your market is willing to pay. While you don’t have to decide your course price based on what your competitors are charging, it can be a good indicator to determine the price range you can charge. Use price anchoring to match the value of your course to a higher price point.

Industry research will also help you estimate the demand for your online courses. It’s important to understand the demand curve for your offerings. As you sell more courses, you will be able to estimate future demand for your course offerings based on the sales you make.

Depending on the type of learning resources you include in your course, you can choose a price tag. For example, does your course have images, videos, infographics, PDFs, interactive worksheets, tests, and assignments for each chapter?

If you offer an online course that consists of several downloadable learning resources, online video lectures, one-on-one calls, and group coaching, you can put a higher price tag on your course.

If your course is just a basic one with no added support, consider a price range that is of the lower end.

• Experience and expertise

Next, consider your expertise and the level of experience you have in the industry. You must also think about the social proof of the results you provide. If you have several valid social proofs of the results you help your learners achieve, you can definitely use them when pricing your online course.

Do you have a high level of expertise in the industry? Or are you new to the industry or have less expertise than your competitors? Advanced degrees, certifications, a published book, success stories, and testimonials equip you to charge a higher price for your online courses. Whereas if you create online courses out of passion and through self-guided research, keeping the pricing to a lower end is recommended.

In essence, the higher the expertise and proof you have, the higher your price tags can be.

Effective ways to make your online courses valuable

Now that you have an idea about how to price your online course, here are some powerful ways to make your online course more worthy so you can charge more.

• Being specific

One of the keys to running a profitable online course is to make the course idea more precise. When you get specific, you give your learners the chance to decide whether the course is right for them. When you understand the exact problems your target learners face, the more specific you can be to position your online course to solve their pain points or needs.

The idea is simple- They have a problem, and your course is the best solution. So that value you offer justifies the price you put for your course.

• Adding uniqueness

Being specific on your course idea itself is enough to differentiate your online course. However, you can go the extra mile to find what’s distinctive about how your course will help your learners. Besides offering relevant, useful, and quality content, find ways to reframe how you present your course to stand out from the competition.

• Be accessible

As an expert in a particular subject, being accessible to your learners is something you can give them.

Here are some supplemental things you can do to give them additional access to you.

• Creating private groups

Consider creating private Facebook or WhatsApp groups where students can interact with you and other students, ask questions and share their experiences.

• One-to-one consulting

While offering one-to-one coaching takes up a lot of time, it helps you increase the course price. Students will appreciate this and be willing to pay as one-on-one sessions help them achieve desired results quickly.

• Group coaching

Offer group coaching either bi-weekly or monthly, where you arrange group calls to interact with your learners.

• Be flexible

Commonly, some learners look for more value than others. For example, some of them are willing to pay higher prices for online courses to get the value they expect. To make the most out of your offerings, consider creating multiple price points that might look like this.

Basic version: Course content with downloadable materials.

Advanced version: Includes everything in basic along with group coaching.

Premium version: Includes everything in basic and advanced versions along with personalized one-to-one coaching.

You can also consider implementing a membership plan where the single pay option is a little expensive. Allow students to save money by paying money in one lump sum or choosing a three-month, six-month, or even twelve-month plan.

Pre Launch campaigns to test the pricing

The final and the most important step of determining the right price for your online course is actually to try it out. Just like any other aspect of launching a business, you won’t know the right pricing until you try launching it. Hence, if you are not confident about the pricing and need more validation for your target market, the best bet is to try a pre-launch campaign. Keep testing your online course pricing regularly and interact with the participants of pe-launch campaigns. This will help to get their feedback about the value of your course and its pricing.

Conclusion

The pricing strategy you follow directly impacts the profitability of your online teaching business. It can also impact your audience size, your target learners, and the amount of repeat business you get. Before pricing your online courses, ensure you have a clear understanding of your target market, the potential demand, your competitors, etc.

Here is the best shot- Understand what your learners are looking for and keep refining your offerings to match the price point. It might seem challenging at first, but remember this- You can always change the price at a later date. As long as you have worked hard to ensure you give off valuable content to your audience, you have nothing to worry about.

Just go forth and price your online courses based on its real value.