How to Price Your Online Course and Attract Your Dream Client
Published Date: 11 Sep, 2024 | Updated Date: 05 Nov, 2024
Learn how to price your online course effectively with proven strategies direct from our founder! Discover pricing models, value-based tips, and customer alignment tactics to maximize sales and course impact.
If you’re an online course creator, you know that pricing your courses can feel like a shot in the dark.
Whether you’re a spiritual teacher sharing holistic wisdom or a coach empowering people with transformational lessons, the story is the same.
It’s like crafting the perfect recipe—get the ingredients right, and you’ve got a winning dish…get them wrong, and you won’t be pleasing anyone’s tastebuds!
But what if I told you there’s a way to take the guesswork out of pricing your online courses? In fact, by using customer avatars—detailed profiles of your ideal clients—you can create a pricing strategy that not only makes sense but also attracts more customers to the courses you have on offer.
So what is the secret recipe to make sure you’re pricing your courses correctly? Here’s our cookbook detailing our proven approach to pricing courses online.
By the end of this guide, you’ll have no doubt about exactly how much your incredible online courses and lessons are worth—which means you can have your cake and eat it too!
4 Simple Steps to Pricing Your Online Courses for More Course Sales
1. Discover the true value of your course or training product
Before we even talk dollars, let’s get clear on the value your course offers.
Think of your course as a well-crafted experience. The key is understanding its worth in terms of what you’re delivering and the transformation students will walk away with. That’s why your first step will be to identify your course’s unique selling points, or USPs.
But what exactly is a USP?
Your Unique Selling Points (USPs) are the special features or bonuses that make your course stand out. These are the secret ingredients that set your offering apart and allow you to charge more.
The best way to figure out what your USPs are is to ask yourself: what makes your course different from every other one out there?
To help you get started, here are some examples of USPs you can leverage for any course based on your expertise:
- Exclusive access to guest experts in your niche (e.g., guest healers or industry leaders in personal growth)
- One-on-one personalized coaching or mentoring
- Interactive, live group sessions like healing meditations, Q&A, or live workshops
- Bonus content like guided visualizations, workbooks, or extra modules that aren’t available elsewhere
- Lifetime access to course materials or a private, ongoing community for support and growth
Let’s say, for example, that your course is about developing spiritual practices for stress relief.
You include guest interviews with renowned meditation masters, which are not only hard to find elsewhere but are live sessions where students can interact directly. This becomes a golden USP, and you can easily justify a higher price because of this rare and highly personalized access.
Next up, to understand the value of your course or training you’re going to want to determine what type of transformation you are promising.
Remember: your students aren’t just buying your course—they’re investing in a journey. So, what’s the big win at the end of the tunnel?
The more clearly you can define the promised transformation, the more you can charge. People pay for outcomes, not just information.
For instance:
- If your course teaches holistic healing, focus on how students will learn practical techniques to manage their stress and improve overall health.
- If you’re offering career advancement coaching, emphasize the confidence boost and job opportunities your course could unlock.
Again, the bigger the problem you solve, the more valuable your course becomes. A course on managing daily stress may not carry the same weight as one that promises a complete life transformation through long-term spiritual practices. If what you’re offering is going to be life-changing for your students—don’t be afraid to price it accordingly!
Finally, as you come closer to understanding the true value of your course, you’ll want to calculate the value of the deliverables you are offering students online.
As a reminder, deliverables are the tangible components of your course. This is where you break down the actual content—modules, videos, bonuses—that make up the course package.
So, when deciding on pricing, ask yourself:
- How long is the course? Is it a 4-week program or a 12-week deep dive?
- How many modules or lessons are there? People often equate more modules with more value.
- What types of content are included? Are there live video lessons, pre-recorded sessions, guided exercises, or downloadable resources?
- Are there any extra bonuses? Like additional worksheets, cheat sheets, or a private community?
Once you have nailed down what your deliverables are, you can get a better sense of what price will suit those deliverables. Here’s an even more in-depth guide to what each deliverable is worth:
- Program Length: Shorter programs (e.g., four weeks or less) are typically less expensive than longer ones (eight to twelve weeks).
- Modules/Lessons: The number of modules matters. People often value each module separately, so spreading dense content across more modules can justify a higher price.
- Training Videos: The number of pre-recorded training videos adds value.
- Live Calls and Q&A: These are perceived as more valuable than pre-recorded videos and can increase your course price.
- Community Access: Generally, this doesn’t significantly increase the price.
- Supplementary Materials: PDF handouts, workbooks, and eBooks enhance the perceived quality and can help increase your price.
- Certification: Offering a certification can justify a higher price point.
You can even take a peek at what your competitors are charging, since understanding industry standards helps you position your course competitively while ensuring it stands out with added value or unique content.
For example, a course that includes 10 hours of live or pre-recorded video content, plus some bonus handouts and live Q&A sessions, might sit comfortably in the $1,000 to $3,000 price range. The more comprehensive and specialized your content, the higher you can price it.
“I would consider offering a mix of pre-recorded and live content. Live sessions often feel more exclusive and valuable, allowing you to charge more for courses that you can sell again and again!”
– Pol Cousineau, Founder of The Digital Navigator
Want to Create a Membership Option For Your Courses?
Our team can help you level up your course offerings for more passive income.
2. Update Your Pricing Strategies for Online Course Sales
With more of an idea about your course’s true value, it’s time to explore different pricing strategies that you can use for the lifetime of your course sales.
Since there is no one-size-fits-all approach, we’ve split up the different possibilities into four groups. Just make sure you choose the strategy (or combination of strategies) that best matches your goals and audience!
Strategy #1: Cost-Based Pricing
Cost-based pricing is simple—you calculate all the costs associated with creating and maintaining your course, then set a price that covers those expenses and leaves room for profit. This is your baseline strategy and ensures you aren’t losing money.
Costs to consider:
- Platform fees (e.g., Thinkific, Teachable)
- Marketing and advertising costs
- Guest expert fees
- Software subscriptions (like Zoom or email automation tools)
- Your time! Don’t forget to factor in the hours you spend creating content, delivering live sessions, and supporting your students.
Strategy #2: Value-Based Pricing
We already talked about this a little bit when you were initially determining the true value of your courses, but with value-based pricing, it’s all about the perceived value of your course to your target audience.
This time, instead of asking what you think the course is worth, ask yourself: What’s the transformation worth to your students?
Again, if your course promises to change someone’s life in a big way—whether that’s health, spiritual growth, or career success—students will be willing to pay more for that transformation.
Say for example your course teaches advanced self-healing techniques that could prevent chronic health issues. Your students may see this as a significant investment in their well-being, and it’s possible they may even have benefits to cover those costs.
In this case, you can justify a price tag of $1,000 or more, depending on the depth of content and personalized coaching!
Strategy #3: Tiered Pricing
Offering multiple pricing tiers is an amazing way to cater to different audience segments and budgets.
Not everyone will want the VIP experience, but others will pay a premium for more access and extra features. The best part is, splitting course content into different tiers and prices is super simple. For example you might want to create three pricing tiers for your course, as follows:
1. Basic Access – Includes pre-recorded videos and basic handouts.
2. Premium Access – Includes everything in Basic, plus live Q&A sessions and bonus content.
3. VIP Access – Full access, including 1:1 coaching, personalized feedback, and lifetime access to a private community.
As you can see, tiered pricing lets you appeal to budget-conscious students while still capturing higher-paying clients who want more. The benefits are endless, and you ultimately reduce financial barriers to accessing your content—which can sometimes help newer prospects trust and recommend you more!
Strategy #4: Competitive Pricing
Even if you’re confident about the price you’ve come up with so far, researching what others in your niche are charging can give you an even clearer idea of industry standards.
But remember, you don’t want to price yourself exactly the same as others unless you’re offering the same value.
For example, if you see competitors charging $500 for a basic course on meditation, but your course offers additional guest healings and personalized feedback, you can easily charge more—say, $750 to $1,000.
That way you’re not selling yourself short, while still staying competitive in your niche or industry!
Skip The Tech Stuff and Sell Your Courses Now!
Our team can help you market your online courses for more course sales and passive income
3. Create outstanding customer avatars to draw in the right prospects
Knowing your audience is half the battle when it comes to choosing the right pricing for your online course.
Our advice: get crystal-clear on who your ideal customer is, and price your course for them!
The best way we’ve found to do that is to start with basic demographics, and only then go deeper into psychographics.
Sure, you may be targeting women between the ages of 18 and 55, but what motivates your students? What are their spiritual goals, or what transformations are they seeking in life?
For example, if your course is about stress relief through spiritual practices, your ideal customer might be a 30-50-year-old professional struggling with work-life balance, looking for deeper meaning and practical techniques to de-stress.
Plus, as you begin to identify your customer you’ll have a better understanding of their specific pain points—which is key to connecting emotionally with your audience and ensuring your pricing makes sense.
With these insights, you can then refine your initial price point based on the promised transformation your courses or training provide.
Not to mention, these things are going to be essential when it comes to refining the marketing material you’ll use to advertise your course online!
4. Offer payment plans for a more budget-friendly approach
Offering flexible payment plans is one of the smartest ways to make your course accessible without sacrificing its value or lowering the price.
Let’s be real—$3,000 upfront can feel like a big investment for many people, no matter how transformational your course is.
But break that same amount into manageable monthly installments, and suddenly it feels much more doable for your students. In short, by offering flexible payment plans to potential students you will…
- Attract More Students: Some of your most eager students may not have the funds upfront but are willing to commit when they see an affordable way to pay.
- Lower Refund Rates: Students who pay in installments are more likely to stick around, as their financial commitment is spread out over time, making them less likely to abandon the course.
- Increased Enrollment for High-Ticket Courses: High-ticket courses ($1,000+) especially benefit from payment plans, making them more accessible while keeping your overall revenue intact.
To finalize the pricing of your next course with a payment plan, here are some extra payment plan tips that have been proven to work for our clients:
Monthly Installments: Allow students to pay in smaller chunks over 3, 6, or even 12 months. This reduces the financial barrier and opens your course to a wider audience. For example, a $3,000 course might feel like a stretch to pay all at once, but offering a 6-month payment plan of $500 per month makes it more manageable.
Add Interest for Cash Flow: To protect your cash flow, you can add a small interest fee, typically 5% to 20%. This way, you’re compensated for the delayed payments, and students still get a flexible option that works for their budget.
For instance, if you charge $3,000 for a course over six months, adding 10% interest increases each monthly payment to around $550, ensuring that you’re not losing out financially.
Try No-Interest Plans as a Bonus: If you want to entice buyers even further, consider offering no-interest payment plans for those who commit within a certain time frame. This can create a sense of urgency and motivate potential students to sign up sooner.
Pricing your online courses to benefit you AND your students
Pricing your course is about more than just numbers—it’s about communicating the true value of what you offer and making sure that both you and your students feel good about the investment.
With a clear understanding of your course’s value, the right pricing strategy, a detailed customer avatar, and flexible payment options, you’re well on your way to creating a pricing structure that attracts your ideal clients and meets your revenue goals!
Wahoo!
But here’s the thing: pricing doesn’t have to be a one-person job. Sometimes, getting expert guidance can make all the difference.
That’s where we come in! Our marketing team specializes in helping course creators like you develop pricing strategies that increase enrollments while maintaining your course’s value.
So, if you’re looking for personalized advice about how to price and market your latest course package, let’s get on the phone to craft a pricing strategy that will help you serve more students, and ultimately get more course sales!
Get Personalized Advice About Pricing Your Online Courses
Our team can help you serve more students and get more course sales!
0 Comments