What is the Best Way to Build an Audience for Selling Courses?

One of the more common ways to monetize your content is to sell courses teaching people a particular skill. The challenge is that you need an audience to sell to, and with courses costing more than most digital products, it can be harder to convert to sales.

We received an email from Robert who asked, what is the best way to build an audience for selling courses?

Be patient. It’s going to take time

It’s a challenge many content creators face, and sales will not happen overnight. There are certainly a few shortcuts, as we will get into this article, but do not believe the hype around selling courses.

We read so much nonsense about creating a course and then making passive income while you sleep. Sorry, but you must continuously sell and promote your class to bring in new sales and revenue.

Writing content on your website

For the long-term success of your course, we highly recommend highlighting content that focuses on the struggles people will have with the skill you are looking to teach them.

These are often called the “pain points,” and focusing on small challenges that you can give a quick win on will help you build an audience. Ensure you have an email list with a free product to entice them to sign up.

You can use this email list to sell your course in the future, but more importantly, you can communicate with people who want to learn from you and find out what other challenges they have.

The email list will be invaluable; building relationships with these people will make selling the course much more effortless.

Sell your course on a third-party platform

Another option is to sell your course on a third-party platform like Udemy, Thinkific, and Teachable, which are just three digital platforms where you can sell courses and other digital products online.

There are already people who browse these sites for classes to learn new skills, so the chance of getting sales is much higher than waiting for your email list to grow large enough to sell a course via your website.

The downside of using a third-party platform is that you will have to pay them a commission from each sale, affecting your profit margins.

Many also take care of the VAT side, which could save you from an administrative headache when dealing with financials.

You could create a smaller version of your course on one of these platforms and see if people find it useful before starting.

One of the mistakes we see content creators make is creating a course they feel an audience would be interested in, but they do not test, resulting in no sales.

Create videos on YouTube

YouTube is the second biggest search engine online, and if you create videos and tutorials sharing your skill, you will build an audience.

Make sure you include a call-to-action on every video and within the description so people subscribe to your channel or a link to sign up to your free email where they can learn more.

The advantage of video over written content is that people can get to see you and feel more connected. Videos feel more personal, and you want people to feel that connection when selling courses.

Showcase your skills

What is the best way to build an audience for selling courses?

It combines writing and creating videos to build an audience on your website, email list, and YouTube channel. Free content will showcase your skills and build trust with your audience, which is essential.

We feel it’s important to say that you do not need thousands of people to sell a course. Focus on gaining 100 people across the different platforms.

Communicate and ask them what they are struggling with. That way, you will build the perfect course that these people will be happy to pay for.