The honest version of "sell an online course"
The "sell a course" pitch has been oversold for a decade. The image: you record 20 hours of video on a weekend, upload it, and earn passive income. The reality: most people who try this never sell a course to anyone outside their immediate network, and the ones who do succeed earn most of their money from marketing, not from teaching.
This post is a realistic walkthrough of what selling a course actually involves. If you've genuinely got expertise someone would pay to learn, it's a solid business model. If you're only doing it because "everyone's selling a course", skip it and go make something else.
Does your course idea actually have a market?
Before you record anything, the make-or-break question: will enough people pay enough money for this?
Healthy signs:
- You can name specific problems people in the audience regularly try to solve
- You've already answered similar questions (as a consultant, in forums, on LinkedIn) and been told "you should write this up"
- Comparable courses exist at price points above $100 and are selling
- The audience has both pain and budget (B2B skill training beats general-interest hobby)
Red flags:
- The topic is covered well by free YouTube content at saturation
- The audience is broad and low-intent ("general wellness", "being more productive")
- You have no distribution (no email list, no social following, no existing audience you've warmed up)
A course is a premium-priced product. The gravitational pull of "free YouTube covers this" is strong. Your course has to be clearly better and more structured than what's free, and it has to reach people who are willing to pay for that quality bump.
Who buys courses at what price points
- Under $50: impulse buys, mostly from existing audience. Low production value expected. Runs on volume
- $50-300: skill-specific courses bought by motivated hobbyists and early-career professionals. Most "digital product creators" operate here
- $300-1,500: substantial skill acquisition, B2B professional development. Buyers expect cohort support, community, feedback
- $1,500-5,000: transformational outcome (career change, credential, business launch). Often cohort-based with coaching
- $5,000+: executive or specialised professional education. Usually institutional budget, not consumer
Most first-time course creators launch between $99 and $499. Below that, conversion math doesn't support marketing costs. Above that, it's hard to sell without strong credentials or case studies.
Self-paced vs cohort-based
Self-paced (record once, sell forever):
- Pros: scales without your time, higher gross margin
- Cons: 80-95% of buyers never finish, word-of-mouth weak because outcomes are weak, race to the bottom on price
Cohort-based (you teach live, enrollment windows, students learn together):
- Pros: completion rates 40-70%, strong outcomes drive referrals, pricing power
- Cons: your time required, launches scheduled, smaller audience per cycle
The industry has drifted toward cohort-based (or hybrid) because self-paced courses produce poor outcomes. If you want a solid business, cohort-based almost always wins. If you want the "passive income" dream, self-paced is the version of the dream you'll be disappointed by.
Hybrid option: self-paced course + optional live office hours + community. Captures some of the outcome benefit without full live-teaching commitment.
Where to host it
A few platform tiers:
Course-native platforms
Kajabi ($149-399/mo): all-in-one. Course hosting, email, funnels, community. Strong marketing tools. Expensive at scale. Transaction fees on lower tiers.
Teachable ($39-199/mo): simpler. Course hosting, basic email. Takes a transaction fee on the lower tiers.
Thinkific ($49-499/mo): similar to Teachable. Good course experience, weaker marketing features.
Podia ($33-89/mo): cheaper, less mature. Works for smaller creators.
Circle / Mighty Networks: community-first, courses bolted on. Good if community is the main product.
These bundle hosting, video delivery, quizzes, certificates, and sometimes marketing. You pay for the convenience. Most first-time course creators start here.
Embedded commerce (Shoprocket, etc.)
Sell the course as a digital product from your existing website. On payment, the buyer gets access (download, login, link to a hosted course platform).
Cheaper and more brand-controlled than a course platform, but you handle the course-delivery piece separately (Vimeo for video, a membership tool for drip release, etc.).
Good fit when:
- You already have a website with traffic
- Your course is the second or third product, alongside other digital goods
- You want flat subscription pricing without per-student fees
- Brand experience matters and you don't want to fit the Kajabi/Teachable template
LMS (Moodle, Teachable for Business, etc.)
For B2B or institutional sales where you need SCORM compliance, compliance tracking, and bulk-license sales. Overkill for solo creators.
The pricing question
Pricing courses is hard because buyers price by perceived outcome, not by hours of content or production value. A 2-hour course that delivers a specific career result can price higher than a 30-hour course on general theory.
Anchors that work:
- What's the outcome's value to the buyer? If it helps them earn an extra $5k/year, $299 is cheap
- What do comparable courses charge? Look at 3-5 competitors
- What can your audience actually pay? Student audience tops out lower than professional
Price higher than feels comfortable. Most first-time creators underprice by 2-3x and then discount below that. A course that costs "the price of a day's work" positions as a tool, not a commodity.
The launch math
A realistic first launch:
- Email list of 1,000 warm subscribers: 1-3% buy on first launch = 10-30 sales
- At $199 course price: $2,000-6,000 revenue
- Minus payment processing, taxes, platform fees: $1,600-5,000 net
- Minus marketing time: ???
If you don't have 1,000 warm subscribers, build the list before building the course. A course without a list to sell into fails predictably.
Repeat launches get easier because you have case studies, testimonials, and a bigger list each cycle.
The 80/20 of selling a course
80% of the work of selling a course is marketing (audience building, email, content, launch sequencing). 20% is creating the course.
Most first-time creators invert this: spend 80% on building perfect course content, 20% on marketing, then wonder why it doesn't sell.
If you're just starting, reverse the ratio. Build the audience first. Pre-sell a cohort before recording anything. If you can sell 20 spots at $199 before the course exists, record it over the next 6 weeks. If you can't, you don't have a market.
What Shoprocket handles for course sellers
Works well if your course is a digital product sold alongside other things (physical goods, ebooks, templates):
- Physical and digital products in the same catalogue
- Instant delivery links on payment for digital downloads
- Built-in storage for course PDFs, templates, ebooks (100 GB on Starter, up to unlimited on Plus)
- Multi-currency pricing for international students
- Multi-language storefront across 21 locales
- Affiliate programme for course creators running referral programmes
- Email marketing built in (for launch announcements, student onboarding, drip content)
<!-- EXAMPLE ONLY. Grab your real snippet from Sales channels → Embeds in your dashboard -->
<script src="https://cdn.shoprocket.io/loader.js" data-pk="pk_yourkey"></script>
<div data-shoprocket="catalog" data-embed-id="emb_xxx"></div>
What Shoprocket doesn't ship natively: LMS features (drip release by date, quizzes, certificates, student community). If your course needs those, pair Shoprocket with:
- Vimeo or Bunny Stream for video hosting
- Circle or Discord for community
- A membership tool (MemberSpace, Memberful) for gated access
- Zapier / webhooks to wire purchase → access grant
For solo creators who want one unified tool, Kajabi or Teachable is simpler, albeit more expensive.
Who should use a dedicated course platform vs embedded commerce
Use a dedicated course platform (Kajabi/Teachable/Thinkific): first course, single product, you want the all-in-one without engineering time.
Use embedded commerce (Shoprocket): multiple products (course + other digital goods + physical), you already have a site with traffic, brand experience matters, flat subscription pricing preferred.
Use both: host on Kajabi for the LMS experience, sell and market from your Shoprocket site, link the two. Actually a common pattern for larger creators.
TL;DR
- Not everyone should sell a course. Subject matter with active buyer pain + warm audience = yes. Generic "passive income" dream = no
- Cohort-based beats self-paced on outcomes, pricing power, and sustainability. Self-paced looks like easy money, usually isn't
- Price higher than comfortable. $99-499 is the starter range; $499-1,500 where most real businesses live
- Build the audience first. 1,000 warm emails is the minimum viable launch size
- Marketing is 80% of the work. Content is 20%. Most creators invert this and fail
- Kajabi/Teachable = convenient all-in-one, expensive at scale. Shoprocket + course tools = modular, brand-controlled, cheaper
Start a free trial if you're selling a course alongside other digital or physical products. 14 days, no card.
Building ecommerce tools for independent sellers since 2013.
