How to Scale Your Online Course Business | 7 Ways + Examples

Already feeling like your online course business is stuck? You can have the greatest course content, and still not have enough enrollments. The thing is, many course creators hit this wall sooner or later.  

The good news is there are proven ways to break through this and take your course business to the next level. And no, it does not involve working harder or throwing more money into ads that do not convert.

In this article, I will share practical strategies to help you scale your course business and boost sales. You will also discover examples from other course creators. Here is what you will learn:

• How to add more value to your course so you can charge higher prices
• The power of upsells and bundles to increase your revenue without extra effort
• Why an affiliate program can turn your students into promoters
• How automation can help you scale without burning out

Why can your online course business be stuck? 

No matter the business you are running, the time comes when you feel like you want to scale. Yet, to achieve that goal, there are a few boxes you need to check. You want to make sure you have prepared good ground before you can grow your online course business.

Before we discuss some strategies you can implement, take a step back to see if you are here right now:

• Do you have a low-ticket course? 

There is nothing wrong about selling a low-ticket program, as all of us have to start somewhere. Yet, if you plan to grow your course business, it takes much more effort with a course that costs, let’s say, $20. In this case, to make $10,000 with that $20 course, you need 500 students. Yet, if you had a $200 program, you would need 50 students to hit that same $10,000. Which is easier to get, 50 students or 500 students? 

And it is not just about the price. People value what they pay for. A $20 course feels like something they can buy and forget. A $200 course feels like a real investment. They take it seriously. They get results. And when they get results, they tell others about it. 

So, reflect on how you can offer a premium version of your course. We will discuss some common ways in our article. 

• Is your audience still interested in the topics you have your courses in? 

Most of the time, we chose a hot topic for our course that everyone was interested in. Yet, not every topic stays popular forever. There was a time when courses on making money dropshipping were popular. Now, the interest in this topic is gradually fading (you can check on Google Trends). 

So, if you intend to scale, it is harder to do with trend-based topics. That is why a lot of course creators recommend choosing evergreen course topics. Perhaps you do not have sales picks as you would have with something truly trending. But you make income long-term. 

• Have you been delivering the right client results? 

If you have not a single student who felt excited, inspired, action-driven, or whatever your goal is, then it is not the right time to scale your online course business. In marketing, they say a good product sells itself. Because if your students get the results you promised, they become your biggest marketers.

That is why, before thinking about scaling, you need to follow up with your students. Ask them where they got stuck, and refine your course based on your students’ feedback. 

• Do you have an established system to manage your online course business?

Selling the course is just step one. What happens after someone buys? If your onboarding process is clunky, your emails are scattered, and your students feel lost, that is a problem. A well-organized system keeps students engaged, increases completion rates, and leads to better testimonials (aka free marketing).

A solid system includes automated welcome emails, a structured course roadmap, reminders, and a way for students to get help when they need it. Let’s discuss all these in the strategies below. 

8 Ways to grow your online course business 

Some ways you can grow your online course business include generating more traffic, automating all possible tasks, providing more value, and using some marketing like affiliate marketing and upsell opportunities. 

For example, Angel Rodriguez, who is a course creator at Uteach, was able to grow his business from 0 to more than 300K using similar strategies. If you want to find out more about how he scaled his training courses, check out our together interview. 

#1 Have more ways you can generate traffic from 

Your traffic is simply the number of people finding your course online. The more traffic you get, the more potential sales you make. 

However, relying on just one traffic source, like Facebook ads or Instagram, is risky. Algorithms change, ad costs go up, and what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow.

I know most course creators use Facebook ads to generate leads. But it is always better to have more channels you can rely on. 

So, have multiple options. For example, 

• The blog page of your own website
• The content you post on YouTube (or even YouTube Ads if that is available in your country)
• Your newsletter that attracts new subscribers
• Online events like the webinars you host. 

Whichever of the options you prefer, make sure there is more than one source from which you generate traffic so that your online course business is not vulnerable.

#2 Add more value to your existing course 

Growing an online course business does not only mean making more money as a course creator. That is only the result you get. For this reason, you cannot simply have a high-priced course. Instead, you need a higher-value course that justifies the price. 

• Have a coaching program

Group coaching is one of the ways to do it. Your main course gives the knowledge the students need, yet the “plus coaching” aspect gives them guidance. So, the learning experience is not now a one-way street because all the students come together to discuss what they learned and share their findings with you. 

This is what Annie and Jaycee do for their photography courses. 

At this point, the course focus is not on photography. It has a coaching component that teaches the course participants how to structure their photography business. Besides these, the participants have bi-weekly meetings with Annie and Jaycee to get all their questions answered. 

• Starting a community 

A strong community also increases the value of your course. And there is a strong belief among all of us that community pressure helps us push through our limits and not stay behind. 

With the environment you create around your course, you solve multiple problems at once. Your community becomes a space where you are able to build stronger relationships with your students and help them learn from each other. 

For example, Miroslav Sazovsky, who is a course creator at Uteach, runs his courses with the help of communities.  On his course page, he mainly presents the self-paced courses. Yet, he uses the communities to provide more practicality. This is where he shares more examples and discusses them with the students. 

What is great about your community on Uteach is that you can charge for access and monetize it as well. 

• Provide direct feedback 

You may not like the idea of coaching or running communities. But you can still interact with your students by sharing your feedback on their results and making your course program more valuable. 

For example, if you have assignments attached to the course, you can share your direct feedback with students who submit them. Of course, this works better when you have limited seats for the course enrollments. 

This is an important addition, especially for courses on creativity. For example, Lacey Lewis has an art school where she teaches how to draw, create oil paintings, etc. She also offers a special membership program that includes direct feedback and instructions for the students’ work. 

#3 Promote your course program naturally

You can promote your course program with partnerships you establish and use the proven results of your students in your strategy. 

• Create an affiliate program

An affiliate program turns your students and followers into marketers. They recommend your course, and when someone enrolls through their link, they earn a commission or a bonus from you. 

But before you launch an affiliate program, ask yourself one thing: does your course actually deliver results? Because if your students are seeing success, they will naturally talk about it. Even if you do not create a formal affiliate program, word-of-mouth marketing will still happen.

You can create your affiliate program for specific courses with Uteach, which is commission-based. So, you can set how much percent the students can earn for bringing in a new student, when they can request the commission, etc. 

Actually, an affiliate program helps you scale much more efficiently than running ads. Because you pay for the ads even if they do not generate the results you expected. In the case of your affiliate partners (aka students), you only pay them when there is a result. 

• Collect and show testimonials

What I have seen successful course creators do is let their course results speak for themselves. That is when they display students' testimonials (especially videos) on the course sales pages, homepage, and even their checkout pages. 

Of course, you can ask your students who achieved the promised results guide questions to have the testimonials. Yet, you can actually allow them to share it naturally. For example, in your community discussion, you have a section where every three weeks, students share their wins, and everybody celebrates. So, you create an environment where the students feel welcome to share their successes and excitement. This way, they also become a source of inspiration for other students as well. 

For example, entrepreneur and creator Shane Melaugh offers a productivity course called The Focus & Action. On the courses page he displays multiple videos from people who completed the course and had real results. And the fact that these are videos makes it more impactful.  

#4 Create a cross-sell offer 

Think of how many times you ordered coffee, and they asked if you also would like a sweet treat with that, so you bought that without much thinking. That is cross-sales. You came for the coffee but ended up buying more than coffee. 

The same works for your online course business. According to statistics, upselling and cross-selling increase the revenue by 10-30%. A student who just invested in your course is already convinced of its value. If you offer them something that helps them reach their goals even faster, they will be more likely to say yes. So, your offer should either

• Save them time or
• Save them money 

It should not replace what is in the course or feel like something you held back on purpose. Instead, it should make the learning process easier. For example, if you sell a course on how to use generative AI for better results, you can also sell a pack of prompts you use for different cases that people can fill in and get faster results. 

If you run your course business on Uteach, you can set up similar strategies and boost your course sales. For one thing, you can customize the after-checkout experience. So, when a student purchases a course, you redirect them to another page and present the upsell or cross-sell offer. 

Another way is when you add the courses to categories. So, when students browse the course, they get recommendations based on the current offer. 

#5 Create a down-sell offer 

Did you know that out of all the potential students who visit your course sales page, only 8.4% convert? That means if 300 students visit your course page, only 25 will end up enrolling. So, if you sell a $500 course, that is only $12,500. 

The other 275 people either 

• Did not have enough funds to get the course
• Were not convinced it was good value for the money
• Thought they did not have enough time to immerse themselves in your program. 

Especially if that is the first case, you still want to have an offer that proves valuable for them and is much more affordable. 

Your down-sell offer should be something that helps the students at the given point, although they were not ready for your main offer. For example, it can be a mini-course on a similar topic or a digital product. 

This way, you can still get them into your sales funnel, and whenever they are ready to upgrade, you will be there for them. 

#6 Have a well-defined email sequence

Speaking of the sales funnel, you want to make sure you have a defined sales process in place. Because once you get more enrollments, you will not be able to get back to each student every day. One of the ways to do so is by segmenting your students and creating sequences for each. 

You can target

• The leads that became your paying students.
• The leads that did not convert the first time

Most of the time we spend much effort on communicating with current students. So, we forget the ones who did not enroll. That is why you should target them with valuable information and updates for at least a month. And then, once the enrollments open again, you can continue sending them promotional emails. 

For others who purchased your course, you want to make sure there is a continuation for their journey. What if they are ready to collaborate with you on a deeper level? In this case, maybe you have another program that provides a deeper dive into the topic, or you have a paid community for graduates or even opportunities for one-on-one coaching. 

You can download our free Email Templates that focus on the course launch, and also additional templates for other communication cases. 

For example, in her podcast “The Online Marketing Made Easy,” Amy Porterfield mentions that she offers a special membership program for her academy graduates. So, even after the students complete the course, they continue receiving support from her. 

What is great is that you can automate your daily email communication with Uteach. The platform has ready-made emails for different cases, such as new content releases, a student getting enrolled, etc. Once you turn on a specific email, the students receive them automatically. 

#6 Sell in bundles 

Selling courses in bundles helps you scale your course business as it increases the average order value. At the same time, you do not spend extra resources to find new customers. Bundles are a win-win for all the creators and instructors. On one hand, it improves student outcomes since they get a more complete learning experience and get it at a discounted price. 

On the other hand, you can sell multiple digital products in one go. 

One way to bundle courses is to group them by skill level. For example, if you teach graphic design, you can create a beginner bundle that includes an introduction to design, a course on using Canva, and a course on branding basics. Another approach is to bundle by topic. For example, fitness course creators usually include meal plans, diets, recipes, or mindset coaching. 

In the same way, InPacd Academy, which runs its courses with the help of Uteach, offers bundles for Chinese learners. They made packs according to the language level the students have. The packs include vocabulary, puzzles, and expressions for the corresponding level. 

Grow your online course business with Uteach 

Are you ready to automate and grow your online course business? Uteach helps you streamline everything, from course creation to sales and marketing. Want to sell course bundles? You can do it in a few clicks. Need to set up an affiliate program? No problem. Want to automate student management and payments? Uteach handles that, too.

With Uteach, you can create online courses, coaching programs, live courses, digital products, and so much more. Here, you can monetize communities and run courses on your own branded app. 

Remember that scaling a course business does not have to mean working more. With the right system in place, you can grow faster while keeping things simple. Book a free call with our expert, who will help you identify how you can grow your business.