How to Select a Course Selling Platform

One of the ways solopreneurs on the internet make money is through course selling. However, building a course without a tech stack is difficult and hence, the multitude of course-selling platforms are available everywhere now.

So, how do select the best course-selling platform?

The Criteria For Selecting a Course Selling Platform

We will focus on some of the most important criteria and whittle down to the perfect course-selling platform that works for you. From our research into customers in this market, veterans look for the following things –

Upfront costs
Transaction cost
Usage cost
Limits
Security of content

Now, let’s decode these terms one by one.

Upfront Costs

Will you have to pay before using the platform for anything? Kajabi, one of the best course-selling platforms out there has only paid plans so you need some initial capital to kick off your journey as a course creator. There are several options available that charge little to no upfront costs.

Transaction Costs

Course-selling platforms uniformly charge around 2-9% of your payouts as transaction costs. Now, this might seem low, but, consider the prospect of selling.

If you’re selling $1000 worth of courses, they will charge you $20-$90 for the software.

For someone who sells $40,000 worth of courses, they will charge you $800-$3600 for it.

While transaction charges are fairly common across the board, they can cost you dearly as you scale. And if you start running with an average monthly transaction worth $1M you will end up shelling out nearly $100,000 every month just to maintain software access.

Usage Costs

This is less common and still charged by some platforms. Imagine if you exceed the number of Emails sent, or the amount of streaming you are using on the platform. This directly correlates with your frequency of usage but, the scale is different (Unlike transactions, the usage change between 1000 and 1200 people would not cost you a lot more in charges.) Every platform charges for usage in different ways, several have subscription fees and add-ons to compensate.

Our platform, Wise charges you for streaming usage, but, has none of the other costs in this criteria.

Limits

This is especially important for people who sell documents or other similar things. Some platforms put limits on how much you can host at one time and the number of customers you can enroll. Another limit that is fairly common is seat-based.

Some platforms would charge you per user. If 10 people run the same account as an administrator, you’d need to pay for 10 accounts.

Security of Content

This remains a very important thing to focus on for every course creator. You do not want to be vulnerable to leaks when you’re planning to earn your livelihood. The most advanced protocol for videos currently is the HLS protocol. The protocol breaks your uploaded video content into small pieces that can’t be downloaded as an aggregate. Because the breaks are uneven, the learner can’t use simple internet tools to download your videos.
Additionally, some course-selling platforms implement native e-readers and test suites to make the experience of the learner truly native and limit the chances of piracy from any avenue.