Pricing e-learning courses is challenging, but it gets simpler when you do it with scalability in mind. In short, pricing with scalability will allow your business to grow and your earnings to increase as you gain experience and build a reputation. To price your training with room for change, you should do the following: offer your training at balanced prices, use a pricing model or strategy, raise your prices with your experience level, and be aware of what your market competitors are charging. Read on to find out why you should keep scalability in mind when pricing e-learning courses for sales—and success!
1. Keep Your Pricing Balanced
When setting prices for your training, balance is crucial. You want to leave room for growth as your business gains traction and gathers customers, but you don’t want to put the cart before the horse, so to speak. You need to make your initial pricing accessible and reasonable, so charge what your work is worth, but don’t charge at the upper end of the price range for training in your industry. If you price your courses too high, people won’t want to invest their money in your training. If you price your courses too low, however, you won’t make enough profit to grow and continue to develop and sell more courses.
Know the costs involved in developing and selling your courses, including both the obvious and hidden costs of the LMS that you are using and the costs associated with course development, hosting, and management. Some LMS, like Firmwater, work to provide clarity surrounding costs, while others are less straightforward. Pricing e-learning courses for scalability requires careful consideration of the present and the future, so you have room to grow your experience and your business while increasing your profit margins.
2. Consider Different Pricing Models and Strategies
When it comes to pricing e-learning courses for scalability, why start from scratch when you don’t have to? Consider researching and using one of the many pricing models available to help you sell your courses at a fair value. Strategies designed for the e-learning industry will help you effectively value your training for growth and continued profits. Common models and strategies include one-time payment models, subscription and membership models, per-course or bundle pricing, and term pricing.
- One-time payment models provide you with immediate revenue and give users the benefit of affordability.
- Subscriptions and memberships offer you predictable income, and users gain wider access to course catalogs.
- Per-course or bundle pricing enables you to evaluate the popularity and success of individual courses, and users can specify the courses that they take. E-commerce platforms like Shopify can even help you cross-sell related courses to help grow your average order value.
- Term pricing provides you with predicted income, and it’s typically more affordable for users looking to take many courses.
Every e-learning pricing model and strategy offers different benefits to you and your customers, so be sure to research them well to determine which strategy will be the best fit for you both.
3. Raise Your Prices as You Go
One of the biggest reasons that you need to be pricing e-learning courses for scalability is so you can raise your prices as the quality and complexity of your course offerings increase. When you start selling your training, set your prices at the lower end of the spectrum. You might even want to open your courses to only a select number of customers at this lower rate to test your market. The longer you work in e-learning, the better products you will be able to offer your customers and the higher the quality will be. As you improve and update your products, increase your prices to reflect that growth. Work to position yourself as a premium online training provider, so eventually, you can charge premium prices.
4. Check Out Your Competition
Though certain strategies and models suggest that you avoid comparing yourself to those in your industry doing the same thing as you, remember that you aren’t conducting your business in a vacuum. While your work certainly has qualities that make it uniquely yours, pricing your e-learning appropriately isn’t possible unless you check out your competition.
Take the time to identify businesses selling training that is similar to yours and review their pricing strategies and values. Set your pricing so it is comparable to your competitors’, but value it to reflect your unique offerings. Look at businesses positioned as experts in the field with years of selling experience, and use their pricing to help you set yours with scalability in mind.
Conclusion
Pricing e-learning courses for scalability gives you the opportunity to grow your business while generating revenue. By offering your courses at balanced rates that are shaped by tried-and-true pricing strategies and models and the success of your competitors, you will set up your online education business to change and grow as you increase your earnings along the way.
Here at Firmwater, we don’t just sell an LMS for training providers. We partner with our clients, giving them the tools and insights they need to implement the best practices in e-learning course development, growth, and delivery. We care too much about our customers’ businesses to have them wade through forums and chatbots for help.
Ready to use an LMS that’s designed for the way YOU work, with a team dedicated to YOUR needs? Book a no-obligation consultation directly with our team today!