4 Online Course Pricing Models -

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

Pricing is one of the trickiest parts of launching a new course. You must strike the right equilibrium between offering the best value for your customers as well as establishing a price that they're willing to pay, or making the decision to charge for your courses at all.

When you decide on a course pricing model, it's a good idea to compare the various options, and also consider your revenue goals. Here are the four most commonly used pricing models in planning the pricing of your courses.

1. Courses for free

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. They should be classes which you are able to create swiftly. They also shouldn't require a huge time commitment from students or deal with areas that are too deep or technical. The courses could result in many signups, but with less participation due to the low-risk price point.

3. Premium courses

The premium online course is the main goal of most authors when considering pricing strategies. These courses have the highest price points and deliver quality, in-depth content. The course content must be original or taught by an experienced or known instructor, or address the subject you can't find anywhere else--these attributes help justify the premium price.

4. Subscription-based to courses

Regardless of which pricing model you choose, how can make sure that you're setting the appropriate cost for your classes?

The formula for setting the price of your courses

The process of determining the cost for courses isn't exactly a method, but you could utilize the formula in the following to take some of the doubt off of pricing.

For starting out, you'll need the following key bits of data.

  • Goals for revenue. You should think about the amount you'd like to make from your course. Are you required to pay for the costs in order to be profitable? Are you working towards a revenue goals? What is the total amount of revenue you expect to receive?
  • Conversion. What percentage of your potential audience will actually take the course? Utilizing data from your email list, your social media followers and landing pages as well as other campaign information to determine an estimated conversion rate for your audience. The rate must be expressed as a percentage in decimal form. For instance, if you expect to convert 10% of your audience to convert, you can use 0.10 in the formula that follows.

You're now ready to test this formula

      Revenue = Audience Size Price x Conversion Rate      

Input different numbers to observe how the cost of the course changes according to your goals for revenues, or how revenue increases or decreases at different prices for courses and conversion rates.

The best course price will allow you to meet your goals for revenue based on your audience size and estimated the conversion rate.

Reach your goals while staying focused and grounded

The final element of pricing strategies is to ensure the content of your course is in line with the price. If you apply the formula, and it results in the course cost is excessive then you may need to reconsider your goals as it's unjust to cost $10,000 for just 10 minutes of information such as.

Ultimately, thinking about the diverse pricing options using the formula for pricing as a reference will help you choose a pricing strategy that works both for you and your customer base.