How to Build and Sell Profitable Online Excel Courses

If you’ve been dreaming about creating an online course, there’s no better time than now. The demand for online courses is greater than ever as more and more people are opting for online learning. In fact, this market is forecasted to grow to be a $325 billion industry by 2025.

However, since the market is so profitable, the competition is tight. This makes it crucial for you to carefully plan out your course and to have a marketing plan in place before you launch it.

Don’t worry! This article will guide you through the process of building and selling profitable online courses. You’ll also discover why you should consider selecting Excel as the topic of your course. 

Why Create an Online Excel Course?

Now the question might hit your mind, “why create an online course about Excel?”. According to research, 38% of people’s work involves Excel. So, this is a good market to target as many people will be looking for ways to improve their competency and confidence in using Excel.

In short, if you build an online Excel course, it’s something that many people will want and need.  

With this in mind, let’s now take a look at the steps involved in building an online Excel course and tips for selling these courses. 

How to Build and Sell an Online Excel Course

Building a profitable online course doesn’t happen overnight, and it involves considerable work and careful planning. So if your goal is to create and sell a profitable online Excel course, these are the steps you should follow. 

1. Set a Goal for Your Course

The first step for starting any business is to set your business goal so that you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve. The same is true when it comes to creating an online course. To help you set your goal, consider the following questions:

• What do you want to sell? If you don’t know what kind of course you want to sell then it’s hard to create a successful one.
• What is your primary goal behind this course? Let’s think about your goal. Deciding a goal is important because, without any specific goal, the road to a successful online course is not in sight. 
• Think about your learning goals. Decide the goals you want your student to achieve. This will help you in designing your course structure and content. 

On top of this, you should also consider what learning outcomes you want from this specific course. 

2. Identify Your Target Audience

The audience makes or breaks any business, and the same is true when it comes to online courses. In this regard, you need to first identify your target audience. For example, do you want to target college students or business professionals for your Excel course?

Identifying your audience will help you in molding your course accordingly. In addition, identifying the audience will help you have a clear focus on who your online course will serve. It will also help you in identifying why the your target audience needs your services.

Once you know who your ideal audience is and what they need, you have a higher chance of designing a successful course that meets those needs.

3. Conduct a Competitive Analysis

One of the most important steps when creating a course is competitive analysis, in which you research your competitors’ products, strategies, and insights. This will help you uncover any flaws or gaps in your course. 

You might be wondering about the benefits of market research and competitive analysis. Here are some of the advantages of conducting market research: 

• You can judge the flaws in your course. You can better judge where your course is missing something important. 
• You will better know what your competitors are selling. By doing competitive analysis and research you can better understand what your competitors are selling. 
• You can make a better course than your competitors. After competitive analysis, you will be able to judge the flaws of your course and fill in the missing gaps. You can also add things that are missing in your competitor’s course. This will give your course an edge over your competitors’ courses.

Always make sure to do a market analysis and competitive analysis before designing your course. This will help you in the best possible way.

4. Develop Your Course Outline

After setting your online course goals and doing a competitive analysis, now it’s time to move forward. The next step you should take is to develop your course outline.

Before you start outlining, ask yourself the following questions:

• What specific topics do you want to cover in this particular course?
• How do you plan to break each topic down into individual lessons?

Once you’re clear on these questions, you can go ahead and draft a logical outline of the course. Ensure that the outline makes sense and is easy for people to understand. Always start with the basic topics, the ones that are easier to understand and are the backbone of your course. 

Move to the more complex topics at a slow and gradual pace. This will help you to develop a course that allows students to build up their knowledge a little at a time, without getting overwhelmed.

5. Create Your Course Content

After completing an outline of your course, the next step is to create the course content.

But before you dive into writing your lessons and recording your videos, you need to figure out a couple of things first.

• What kind of content you’ll create. For example, you might decide your course is going to include video, audio, presentation slides, and handouts.
  
• Where your materials will come from. You might consider doing an audit of all existing articles, videos, workshops, and presentations you’ve created related to your course topic to see what you can include in your course content.

Once you’ve clarified the kind of content you’ll be developing, you can go ahead and script your course, create your handouts and presentation slides, and film your course videos.

6. Decide on the Price of the Course

Now here comes one of the most important steps. Deciding on the price of your course can sometimes feel like a very challenging process. To make it simpler, do market research again and look at what your competitors are asking for their courses. 

This will help you determine the right price range for your course. When figuring out the price of your course, you should also consider the following factors:

• The cost of resources you are providing.
• The cost of your time.
• The cost of the expertise you are providing.

In general, it’s a good practice to always try to keep the cost lower than your competitors, especially if you are new to the world of online courses. That said, you don’t want to undercharge either, as this can hurt your credibility.

7. Choose a Platform for Your Course

Another important step is choosing the platform for your course. After all, there’s no point of creating a course if you don’t have a platform to host it. There are numerous platforms you can use for your course.

Here some examples:

• A WordPress Site: One option is to create a course on your own WordPress site. An advantage to this approach is that when you drive people to your website, they’ll be able to learn about you and your offerings, including your online course, all in one place.

• Standalone Online Course Platform: Standalone online course platforms provide you with all the tools to build and sell your course on your site. Some examples of standalone course platforms are Thinkific, Teachable, and Ruzuku. 

It’s absolutely crucial to choose the right platform for your online course. If you’d like to learn more about how to select the best platform for your course, you can check out this guide.

8. Launch Your Course 

Now comes the most important step, which is launching your course. This part of the process can be sometimes hectic and overwhelming for many course creators. But if you have a plan to launch your course, then it will all be worth it in the end. 

The launch strategy you pursue should be somewhat like a two-sided coin. The first side is the education side and the other one is the selling side. These two aspects should work together to help you launch a successful online course. If your course cannot educate people in the best way, then it will be impossible to sell it widely. 

So make sure to focus on both sides to help ensure your course launch is a success.

9. Market Your Online Excel Course

In addition to launching your course, you also have to market it. The most effective way to market your course is to use a combination of strategies, such as:

• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Affiliate marketing

Let’s discuss all these marketing tactics in detail:

Email Marketing

One tactic for promoting your course effectively is email marketing. Email marketing will update those on your email list about your new courses and offers. If you are not new to the field of online courses, then it will be very easy for you. 

However, if you are a beginner then you need some additional strategies to reach the customers through email. You should focus on getting people to subscribe to your newsletter in order to get access to their emails. 

Social Media Marketing

The most popular tactic in today’s world is social media marketing. As people often use social media in their daily lives, it’s fruitful for you to use a social media marketing strategy.

It is one of the best ways to connect with your audience and promote your brand, and can really help you boost your sales.

Affiliate Marketing

You must have heard about Amazon affiliate marketing, right? Well, as an online course creator, this strategy can work for you too! Do some research into how other online course creators use affiliate marketing then apply this strategy to your own course. 

These affiliate marketing strategies can be very fruitful for your product.

10. Sell Your Course

After preparing all these marketing strategies, now it’s time to sell your course. Where you are in your business can impact which strategies you use for selling your course.  Let’s say you already have an audience. In this case, the best way to sell your course to that audience is through a pre-launch email campaign. 

In this campaign, you send emails to all your subscribers and ask for their reviews on your offer. You may also ask if they are interested in your course. This will help you gain a more organic and specific audience for your particular Excel course.

Now let’s discuss the idea of selling your course if you don’t have an engaged audience. The best way is to communicate with the people you think might be interested in your course. But don’t try to sell your course to them. Just discuss your idea with them to see if they’re interested. If they are, you can then take the opportunity to tell them about your course.

Ready to Build Your Online Excel Course?

Just like any business, selling an online Excel course requires that you have clear goals and a well-planned strategy.

You should outline your business plan from goals to marketing strategies to give your course the best possible chance of success.

Having a well-thought out plan can help to reduce risks and increase the chances that your course will be profitable.

So if you’re ready to create an Excel course, take action today and start figuring out your goals for the course. Follow this process, and you’ll be launching a successful course before you know it!