4 Online Course Pricing Models -

Jun 23, 2022
Woman deciding on her online course pricing.

Pricing is one of the toughest aspects to launch an entirely new course. You must strike the right compromise between giving an audience with value and setting a price they're willing to pay--or making the decision to charge for your courses in any way.

Before you choose a course pricing method, it's a good idea to compare the options and consider your revenue goals. Here are the four most popular pricing methods to take into consideration as you plan and price your classes.

1. Free courses

2. Baseline courses

Basic courses can reach a large audience by providing content that is appealing to a wide range of people with a reasonable price. The courses should be ones that you can create relatively quickly. Also, they shouldn't demand a huge time commitment from students, or focus on topics that are too in-depth or technical. The courses could result in many signups, but with smaller participation rates due to the cost-effectiveness and low risk.

3. Premium courses

Premium online courses are the goal for most authors when contemplating pricing strategies. The courses that are premium have the most price points and deliver quality, in-depth content. The course content must be original, taught by a reputable or prominent instructor, or focus on the subject you can't get elsewhere. All of these factors can justify the higher price point.

4. Subscription-based courses

Regardless of which pricing model you select, how will make sure that you're setting the correct cost for your classes?

Formula for setting your price for your course

Setting the price for courses isn't exactly a science, but you can apply the formula to take some guesswork off of price.

In order to begin, you'll need some key pieces of data.

  • Revenue goals. You should think about the amount you would like or must earn from the course. Are you required to pay for the costs in order to be profitable? Do you have an income goal? What is the total sum of money you'd like to earn?
  • Conversion. What percentage of your target audience will actually take the course? Using the information you have from your email list, your social media followers websites, landing pages or any other data related to your campaign to determine an estimated percentage of conversion for your customers. It should be a percentage represented in a decimal: For example that if you are expecting to convert 10% of your viewers to convert, then use 0.10 in the calculation below.

Then you're ready to try this formula

      Revenue = Audience Size Price x Conversion Rate      

Plug in different numbers to determine how your cost of the course changes according to your goals for revenues, or how revenue increases or decreases depending on pricing points for the course and rates.

The ideal course cost is one that allows you to reach your revenue goals given the size of your audience and percentage of conversion.

Be successful while remaining focused and grounded

The last element of the pricing is making sure that course content aligns with the pricing. If you use the formula, and it results in the course cost is excessive, you might need review your objectives It's not reasonable to cost $10,000 for just 10 minutes of instruction such as.

In the end, contemplating the diverse pricing options using the formula for pricing as a reference will assist you in choosing the best pricing method that is suitable both for you and your customer base.