Online course marketplaces provide access to an audience of students while taking care of many technical details for creators starting out in course creation. Beginner course creators find these platforms particularly attractive as there is minimal entry barrier.
Marketplaces control student email lists and can limit how frequently or promotionally you can communicate with students, as well as what promotional messages can be sent them.
Cost
Online course platforms typically cost between $50 and $200 per month, but if you want to increase sales and revenue by upgrading to their premium plans with advanced features such as monetization tools and custom email marketing – this can double or triple sales and boost revenue significantly.
Marketplace platforms can provide your course with an established audience to market to. However, this comes at the price of leaving control of student lists with them instead of you; your student list now belongs to them and not you; therefore they have full power to send messages out at any time and alter promotional strategies without your approval, even delete it completely from their platform.
Because many students apply rating filters when searching the marketplace, if your course starts dropping in ratings it could cost significant revenue and compromise pricing, branding, and the student experience. To mitigate these risks it is advisable to host your course online first before publishing on marketplaces if desired; popular all-in-one course platforms include Kajabi, Kartra, Podia and New Zenler as examples of such platforms.
Marketing
One of the primary advantages of online course platforms is their ability to assist with marketing your courses. Most platforms come equipped with email marketing software that helps create landing and sales pages as well as automate emails based on various touchpoints. They also feature analytics tools that let you track and report on business performance.
One key feature of online course platforms is their ability to keep students engaged. A good platform should enable you to incorporate features that keep students interested, such as interactive quizzes, rewards and certificates and gamification elements – this will increase student retention rates as well as your revenue potential.
Selecting the ideal online course platform is essential to the success of your business. However, there can be numerous pitfalls in doing so such as profit sharing and lock-in considerations with marketplaces; ultimately you will need to decide whether the potential revenue of such marketplaces outweigh losing control of your eCourse business. Look for platforms which allow you to publish courses directly on branded websites with retained profits; additionally look out for features like live streaming, feedback mechanisms and members-only community forums as these may further assist your search.
Security
Online course platforms are designed to protect the data of course creators – whether self-paced, live, or hybrid courses – using various security measures, such as firewalls and SSL encryption, to keep their students’ content secure and ensure only authenticated students can access it.
If your online courses are hosted on a marketplace, gaining student loyalty will require hard work. Marketplaces typically incentivize users to view courses with high ratings; should your course’s rating begin deteriorating rapidly, this can cost your revenue considerably.
A great online course platform to create and sell your course would include tools like email, affiliate networks and sales funnels that enable you to reach a wider audience while increasing sales and driving repeat business.
LearnWorlds and Kartra are two online course platforms that offer website building features with marketing and sales features as well as payment options such as credit cards or PayPal payments. Furthermore, their secure video hosting protocol, VdoCipher, prevents unwarranted downloads or screen capture.
Reliability
Online course platforms are an effective way to kick-start online learning. They feature everything from payment processing and user management, course delivery and course content creation – but before making your choice it is essential to consider reliability measures and procedures as well as whether or not your content or data can be exported if necessary.
Course marketplaces can be intimidatingly competitive environments for students. Therefore, course creators need to ensure their students remain engaged – adding gamification elements such as interactive quizzes and rewards can do this easily.
Thinkific or Kajabi provide an alternative option for hosting online courses, providing greater flexibility than marketplaces as they include robust marketing and growth tools and pricing plans ranging from $29/month with 5% transaction fee to $199/month, in addition to offering integration support and offering various integrations. However, these platforms tend to be more costly than hosted solutions like MemberPress and LearnDash.
Flexibility
If you want to expand your online business, look for a course hosting platform with powerful integrations with third-party tools and marketing automation software. In addition, look for support for various devices and languages as well as SEO features to increase online visibility.
Your video hosting solution must provide a safe and reliable platform to host video content. Furthermore, its feature should allow you to restrict course access by blocking viewers from certain IP addresses – this way you protect both intellectual property and ensure no unauthorized user watches the videos hosted there.
Course marketplaces often provide an acceptable user experience, yet can limit the control you have over your audience and their contact details – something which may prove frustrating if you wish to market courses outside the marketplace and increase student retention. Furthermore, you may incur platform fees which eat into revenue generated.