Health and wellness are among the top priorities for people in the U.S. Before the pandemic, over 64 million Americans were members of a health club. And with a booming e-learning industry, learning how to sell online courses from your own website is your ticket to a growing business.
The fitness market is full of opportunities for small business owners. 2022 saw more businesses emerging in this sector than in the last decade, a total of 106,132 so far. This means you’ve got your work cut out for you to distinguish yourself from competitors. With e-learning “on pace to hit $325 billion by 2025,” selling courses online is one of the best ways to do that.
Check out this guide for an easy 6-step plan on how to sell online courses to boost your fitness business.
Benefits of Selling Online Courses from Your Own Website
You can give potential customers exactly what they want by selling digital courses. At the same time, you’ll establish your brand and cultivate genuine customer relationships. Plus, such digital content only costs a fraction of traditional marketing methods (62% less) and can generate up to three times the leads.
OfferingTree’s affordable all-in-one service ensures you reap these benefits, plus:
- Complete Control: Everything in your program reflects your objectives and company culture
- Personal Customization: Each of your courses can be specially tailored to your specific audience’s pain points and aspirations, according to your brand style
- Personalized Marketing: Your courses can (and should) operate as reflections of you and your business to cultivate rapport with your target audience
- Higher Earnings: Selling video courses online opens a new earnings avenue for your business, allowing you to make money even if your customers don’t sign up for fitness memberships or buy wellness products
6 Steps to Selling Online Courses
Selling online courses isn’t easy, but it’s well worth it if you can do it right. These steps will show you exactly how to sell an online course that your students will love:
- Brainstorm What Course Your Clients Want
- Design the Structure of the Course
- Create the Content of the Course
- Find a Website Hosting Service
- Upload Course Content
- Setup Payment
Brainstorm What Course Your Clients Want
Marketing is useless if you don’t know your audience. A recent report by Ipsos shows that people increasingly expect the businesses they buy from to reflect their ethics. As of 2021, 66% of Americans “tend to buy brands that reflect [their] personal values.” You need to build trust with your potential clients before you start selling courses to them.
Effective marketing also requires understanding your customers’ pain points and goals. This is essential to learning how to sell courses online or any digital content.
Before brainstorming, spend a few days collecting information about your target audience’s values, worldviews, challenges, and aspirations. Once you have all this information, take a few minutes to jot down the most common discussion topics and questions. This will be the foundation of your course material, and with the foundation, you can create an online course effectively.
Design the Structure of the Course
Think about the best format you’d prefer for creating and selling an online course. Some topics are best suited to video, while others are more understandable in written or audio presentations. Others might call for mixed media presentations.
You’ll also need to consider the length of your individual courses and the entire program. Christine Hansen of Christine Means Business said in a recent OfferingTree webinar, “My main advice is to keep things short and sweet… an hour is a long time for people to stay focused.”
Offering short snippets of around 10-15 minutes is the best way to sell online courses that won’t overwhelm students or lose their interest. Plus, they can be arranged in topical collections for a complete program.
Create the Content of the Course
Now it’s time to draw from your initial research to develop the substance of your course. One of the most effective strategies for identifying relevant topics is to recall the questions and concerns that your potential and existing customers present to you most often.
If you haven’t had many customer interactions yet, don’t worry. You can still draw from target audience conversations in forums, social media, and other spaces.
Next, organize these subject matters into idea clusters. Refine these clusters into distinct lessons, and you have a program outline for your course!
Find out what people want from online fitness classes.
Find a Website Hosting Service
It’s best to sell online courses from your own website. Platforms like YouTube and Vimeo make you jump through too many hoops to keep your content exclusive. These often require you to fumble around with software, paid subscriptions, and other headaches. That’s where a website hosting service like OfferingTree comes in.
OfferingTree is the best way to sell courses online without breaking the bank. Our all-in-one service lets you build and host your website, where you can sell your on-demand videos and digital courses in a single place.
Already have a website? No problem. You can embed OfferingTree into your existing platform to streamline your course offering. As a fitness entrepreneur, you understand the need for a stress-free workflow. Streamline your business operations with OfferingTree’s “business in a box” solution to keep your mental and physical strength on par.
Watch a Demo of OfferingTree
Curious about how OfferingTree’s all-in-one platform can save you time and money? Watch a demo and get Ashley Hagen’s free intro course!
Upload Course Content
Your courses must be highly accessible. Thankfully, that’s where OfferingTree thrives. Numerous users have reported how easy it is for their students to register for courses.
All you need is your website and a plan. Upon sign-up, you’ll have all the tools you need to create video libraries and other digital content to meet your students’ needs.
Plus, everything’s on your terms. Whether you want to sell or rent content, bundle courses into membership packages, or anything in-between, OfferingTree has got you covered. And you can enjoy unlimited uploads. Say goodbye to those pesky upload limits that other business software impose!
Setup Payment
A steep paywall can be an effective deterrent to purchasing a course. Make it easy for your students to purchase your courses. Take advantage of the fact that online courses are often cheaper than in-person alternatives by offering budget-friendly programs. You can also introduce flexible pricing with low-cost on-demand videos and premium live classes to drive traffic and drive up conversion rates.
Finally, remember that some students need a bit more convincing before fully committing to a course. Offering “freemium” options (usually a free, short intro class or one-week trial) is an excellent way to grab their interest.
Scale your business with high-value, on-demand courses and live classes.
Sell your Online Fitness and Wellness Courses on Your Own Website with OfferingTree
Across the nation, people are looking for ways to maintain their health and wellness as conveniently as possible. So what better way to fulfill their needs than to meet them where they are?
As both the fitness and e-learning industries grow, your best bet for scaling your business and connecting with your target audience is to learn how to sell online courses from your own website. It’s much easier than it seems – especially when you sign up for OfferingTree.
Our “business in a box” solution gives you exactly what you need to build and host a website, upload educational videos, and engage your target audience all in one place. Sign up for a free trial now.
