Mike Hunder: Are You Struggling with the Right Price Point for Your Online Course?

Online course pricing has emerged as a key element in building a thriving online course business. It has a direct impact on every aspect of the online coaching business – from the strategies used to promote the course, to the type of clients you want to attract, the quality of support and attention you want to provide to them and, of course, the amount of money you want to make from selling your course.

If you have read my earlier articles, you probably know some of the key decisions that you have to make as an online business coach – using online courses, picking the right course idea, building the right audience, what to include in creating your online course content, among others.

These decisions are largely associated with creating your first online coaching course and somewhere in the course of doing this, you will be faced with the difficult decision of choosing the right price for your offering.

So if you are to make the right pricing decisions as a coach, you need to have an understanding of why many new coaches struggle to choose the right price for their course.

In general, it can be tempting for most first-time course creators to price their online courses below those of competing courses because they often have no clear idea of what their ideal client is willing to pay for their course. At the same time, they are wondering whether they have included enough content to charge that high. Then again, they may not have a large enough audience they can promote their courses to.

The fact that there are lots of free resources online is another thing that new coaches struggle with when making pricing decisions for their course. Given the existence of free resources; from slide-share presentations to eBooks, YouTube videos and more, many are wondering why a client will willingly pay a price for their course when there are so many free resources out there.  But then, I am reminded of a Japanese proverb that says, “tada yori takai mono wa nai”, which means “there is nothing more expensive than something free”.

Many coaches worry about the widespread idea that people don’t mind spending countless hours of their valuable time to search for and consume free resources online. Again, this is not such a problem.  Your audience is actually divided into different segments. In this case, these people do not fall into your target audience because such people rarely spend money on information, products or online courses to improve themselves, refine their minds and personalities. They are not your ideal audience, period!

The worry of many coaches is also not just the consumption of free stuff. It is common knowledge that some people routinely look for and buy a number of ‘inexpensive’ courses, but never actually get around to completing them. So it’s common to see such people with unopened books on a bookshelf gathering ‘dust’, courses forgotten and becoming obsolete. This remains a big issue in the world of online education today.

But there are also lots of people out there who want to learn from online coaches who have a high level of expertise in their field and good years of experience. They are also willing to pay to get solutions to what they seek. In addition, such people not only tend to complete the course, but they also implement and put what they learn into practice. This is the kind of audience you want to create your online course for.

Lastly, “there is nothing expensive or cheap in this world. There is just value for money.” If your offer provides a solution to some pressing problem for your client, then you can charge a premium price and your audiences will be willing to pay. The thing is to know a proven process of pricing your course and follow it to establish the right price for your online course. Without following the process, your online course pricing is likely to be ineffective.

If you were struggling about choosing the right price, now you have a better understanding of how to go about it.