How To Sell Courses On Shopify
When people want to learn things these days, the first place they go is the internet.
If they want to learn something, acquire new skills, or become qualified in a new sector, online courses are often their main road to success.
That’s precisely why the digital courses sector is so massive and only set to grow. The online courses market is estimated to increase by 8.56% between 2024 and 2029, reaching a total value of $279.30 Billion.
It’s already worth over $185 Billion in 2024.
Even with fierce competition, there’s plenty of space for new courses and new sellers – especially as most new course subscribers come from emerging economies where populations are rapidly upskilling.
If you want to sell courses on Shopify and are wondering how to get started, you’ve come to the right place.
Read on for a map of your potential road ahead, including why Shopify is one of the key platforms for online courses, how to set up your Shopify store, how to create and upload your course content, and finally how to bring in sales through slick and effective marketing.
Building Foundations – Understanding the Online Courses Market
As shown by its mammoth market value, the online education market has rocketed from nothing to one of the largest eCommerce industries in the world.
This has been driven primarily by the increasing accessibility of digital resources through the internet across the world, alongside a growing demand in the workplace and private lives for continuous learning and skill development.
Especially true in developing economies, high-quality courses can fill the gaps in skills and knowledge that the education system misses, allowing people to compete for high-skill jobs no matter the quality of their country’s education system.
From upskilling for work to learning about your passions, there are many different types of online courses with different teaching, creating a vast and diverse market with plenty of space for newcomers.
Is Selling Online Courses Worth It?
If you find the right course and do it correctly, absolutely.
There’s a reason online courses have become so popular—they have several significant advantages over traditional in-person education.
First comes the global reach. Online courses are available to everyone and anyone worldwide who can speak the language your course is in, massively increasing the number of potential subscribers.
In addition, following its initial creation, your course can essentially provide passive income, requiring minimal effort to maintain while it brings in an uncapped number of new subscribers. This makes online courses extremely scalable and making good money even easier.
So long as you create evergreen content for your course, it can remain relevant and profitable for long periods of time with only minor updates and maintenance.
But why choose Shopify?
While not the only platform, Shopify is one of the leading e-commerce platforms, taking up over 10% of the global market. It has emerged explicitly as a popular choice for educators seeking to sell online courses.
This is likely due to a combination of its user-friendly interface, robust features, and seamless integration with various payment gateways and marketing tools. Easy to use and a breeze to create courses on, Shopify is an excellent place to start when creating and selling online classes.
Getting Started: How to Set Up Your Shopify Store
One of the greatest advantages of Shopify is just how easy it is to set up a store.
Simply visit the Shopify website, sign up for an account, and select a plan that aligns with your business needs—you can change plans later to match potential growth if (fingers crossed) it is needed.
This range of plans from basic to advanced allows it to cater to anyone, whether you’re just starting out or migrating a large courses business to the platform.
Customize Your Shopify Store For Success
The next step after creating your account is getting it sales-ready.
This means customizing your store to match your brand and, more importantly, cater to your target students.
The first step includes choosing a domain name that represents your courses, selecting an optimized theme with features like video players and progress tracking, and creating detailed product pages for each course with descriptions and pricing to entice in new subscribers.
And then comes the backend admin work.
This means integrating secure payment gateways, installing essential apps and plugins for course delivery and student management such as Tevello, and ensuring mobile optimization.
The final step is setting up analytics to track performance. This will allow you to accurately see the success of your course and what actions have the most impact on increasing your subscriber count.
Into the Thick of It: Creating and Uploading Your Course Content
No matter how enticing your website or how slick your marketing, what will make or break your course is its quality and effectiveness.
If you can create engaging and informative material, you’re halfway to digital sales success immediately—though you will need careful planning, subject matter expertise, and dedication.
Making a Start
The first step to success should be Identifying your target audience through market research. When you understand what challenges your audience faces, you can more effectively tailor your course content to deliver precisely what they need.
You’ll also want to ensure you have a clear and digestible course structure. Consider breaking it down into logical modules and lesson groups, and try to use a variety of learning tools such as video lectures, interactive quizzes, assignments, and downloadable resources to keep your course engaging.
This should also include real-world examples and case studies to make your course more applicable, increasing its effectiveness at upskilling your subscribers.
Finally, the fact check.
Before releasing your course, ensure its content is up-to-date, accurate, and well-researched, with reputable sources cited to make it the best online.
The Final Touches to Your Online Course
To sweeten the deal for potential subscribers, you could also consider offering additional materials such as workbooks, templates, checklists, or bonus resources, to provide even more course value.
While low maintenance, you’ll also need to regularly review and update your course content to reflect any relevant real-world changes (depending on your content), as well as check in and adjust based on student feedback.
With everything prepared, you are ready to upload it to your Shopify store. Make sure to keep your course materials organized and easily accessible to your students.
Getting the Word Out – How Should You Market Your Course?
Now that your course is glistening and ready, it’s time to find yourself some new subscribers.
They won’t just stumble into your new, unknown course, after all.
With the right marketing strategies, you’ll be able to attract new students and drive sales in no time. Here’s how:
Using External Marketing Strategies
When you first get started, you’ll want to get your course out there into the wider world.
Some of the best ways to do this is to advertise on multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to build a strong presence, either by pure advertising or by sharing engaging snippets of your course content.
You should also consider developing an email list of potential customers through lead generation.
And remember, the digital courses market is massive – create and utilize connections! It’s a great marketing strategy to collaborate with influencers, industry experts and other course creators who have authority, bringing fresh eyes to your course.
This can also include running an affiliate program that incentivizes others to promote and sell your course with rewards in the form of commission.
While not a long-term strategy, it’s also worth considering paid advertising on sites like Google or Facebook to quickly reach your target audience.
A solid blend of different marketing strategies will set you off on the best path to success in making money with digital products.
Turn Your Website and Course Into Its Own Marketing Hub
You can also conduct more in-house marketing, starting with optimizing your site for SEO to ensure it ranks highly in Google searches. Make sure to conduct keyword research and optimize your page titles, descriptions, and meta tags for better rankings.
Alongside this, you should consistently engage with your existing community via discussion forums, all while offering incentives and promotions such as discounts and payment plans to encourage new subscribers.
Creating a sense of urgency through limited-time discounts is a great way to boost conversions, so long as it is not overused.
The Final Step: How To Manage Your Success
With your online store created, your course up and running and sales being generated, it’s time to figure out how to manage your new digital courses empire.
The two most crucial elements to focus on are ensuring easy and seamless transactions and providing exceptional student support. This will for the most part keep everything running smoothly, and more importantly will foster trust and loyalty, hopefully encouraging positive word-of-mouth recommendations.
But how do you know what works and what doesn’t?
Aside from direct reviews (that can harm reputation), you’ll want to implement private feedback and make use of your website data to keep a finger on what brings in sales, what branding and messaging converts, and most importantly what course aspects students love the most.
After all, your students and subscribers are the key to your success.
This is why creating a thriving course community is arguably the most vital part of managing your course. You’ll want to continuously support current students via forums and help channels, and overall foster a welcoming learning environment within your course.
With an integrated app like Tevello, you can more easily manage your community and overall course.
Try for free now to experience Tevello’s intuitive courses dashboard, features to create discussion pages, and a built-in certification creator, giving your students a sense of accomplishment.
What Should Your Next Course Creation Steps Be?
Armed with the knowledge of just how much room there is to grow in the digital courses space, how to effectively create your course and set up your store, and, of course, get those first subscribers rolling in, you’re ready to begin.
But what next?
To get your course started on the right foot and more efficiently manage your course or courses as you scale, expand, and grow, make sure to check out Tevello to see just how simple online course management can be.