If you, as a trainer or coach, want to expand your offerings with online courses or build entirely on e-learning, you will quickly find yourself thinking about pricing. In this article, you will learn which aspects you should consider.
(The original version of this text from 2019 was revised and updated with new insights on 04/05/2024.)
Cash, Mice & Money
Determining the price for a service is a challenging endeavor and causes a lot of furrowing of brows among freelancers in every field: "How much should I charge to adequately cover my efforts? How high can the price be to remain competitive in the market? How much are potential clients willing to pay for my expertise and services?"
The question of how much you can charge for an online course is something we hear very often at blink.it. Of course, we cannot provide a blanket answer in the form of concrete numbers, but after years of collaboration with countless trainers and coaches from various disciplines, we have gathered a few insights in this article that may help you with pricing.
👉 What should an online course cost? How to calculate realistic prices
Situation 1: You sell pure online courses
You offer digital courses through your website or learning platform such as blink.it, which are self-contained, and your only accompanying activity is to answer the questions of course participants. At price X, the customer gains access to the course and is largely left to their own devices from then on.
The price can range from 0 to 1,000 Euros or more, but market conditions will likely place it somewhere between 20 and 200 Euros.
When calculating your prices, you should consider these 4 factors:
Scope of the course: How many learning units does the course have? How elaborate is the design of the materials? How long does the course take for participants?
Quality of the content: How much time went into the research? Where, how, and for how long was the expertise acquired?
Topic: How current is the topic? How important is the topic? How often is the topic discussed?
Costs: What are the costs for content creation, advertising, learning platforms, and payment processing?
Additionally, there are 2 psychological aspects that affect your course price:
Status as a trainer/coach: How recognized, well-known, and experienced are you as an expert in your field? Are you already known, do you consider yourself a luminary in your area, are you an enthusiastic amateur, or even a complete novice?
Willingness to pay: Who is your target audience for your courses? How much is the target audience willing to pay for your courses? What value does your course hold for your target audience? Are you addressing individuals who will pay for the course out of their own pockets or businesses that can deduct course costs for tax purposes?
You can determine the price for the above factors based on an hourly rate you envision or desire as income. However, the two psychological aspects determine how realistic the final course price will be, meaning: Will the target audience actually purchase your course at that price?
Tip 1: Place yourself in the position of your target audience and determine how much you would be willing to pay for your course. Also, ask friends and acquaintances who meet the criteria of your target audience.
Tip 2: Prices for online courses are usually publicly available. Research the prices of other trainers and coaches and look around on platforms that specialize in selling e-learning. This way, you can get an idea of what the current market offers.
Always remember: You want to generate revenue or income with your online courses, so you should be absolutely clear about your actual market value as a trainer or coach. Setting a fanciful price won't help you if you then end up stuck with your product.
Situation 2: You offer blended learning
You want to expand your existing onsite offerings with online support: In the form of blended learning, you combine classic workshops, coaching, or seminars with the numerous advantages of flexibly completed e-learning.
How you calculate the price for the online portion of your blended learning can be gathered from the above Situation 1. Furthermore, you should decide how you want to design your blended learning:
Springer Principle: alternating several units in presence and digital
Reiher Principle: several presence units followed by a concluding online course
Sandwich Principle: start with a presence unit at the beginning, have an online course in the middle, and conclude with another presence unit
3 Pricing Models for Blended Learning
1. Daily Rate as a Basis
Most trainers and coaches work with their own daily rates. This is a good starting point for justifying an additional charge for the online course to the client: Depending on how much of the online course contributes to the overall coaching or training, you add a percentage to your daily rate that reflects your additional effort and the extra costs for the online course.
2. Replacing Onsite with Online
In this model, the price remains the same as you reduce your onsite offerings and replace them with online units. This has a certain appeal for your client because they can pay the usual price but receive a new, modern, and flexible course offering that they can conveniently complete via a learning platform like blink.it. This works only if you can sensibly replace some onsite units with e-learning in your blended learning.
3. Presence "On Top"
The third model is particularly interesting for trainers and coaches who are already well established in their market and can confidently market themselves. Here, you offer your client an individual package: for example, a fixed price per online course, and after 10 online courses, you provide a presence day with you for free.
The advantage of pricing for blended learning compared to pure online courses lies in the fact that you can make your clients a personalized offer. You can flexibly decide which course model is best for you, for your client, and for the course topic, and which pricing structure is most likely to be accepted by your client or target audience.
Situation 3: You are an E-Learning Beginner
You are either completely new to the world of training and want to offer e-learning right away, or you are already established as a trainer and desire additional passive income through online courses. Your lack of experience with digital education triggers a voice in your head that whispers, "Are my courses really good? Do I understand enough about didactics to structure them correctly? Should I perhaps offer my courses really cheaply at first? Or even for free and see what happens?"
We have a few arguments to counter these doubts:
No matter which service you want to sell: You need a bit of self-confidence about the quality of your work to establish yourself as a freelancer. If you are unsure of yourself, that will also reflect, and clients will unconsciously perceive that and react by not trusting the offer. So, if you doubt the quality of your work, you should first work on your mindset before you enter the marketplace.
Everyone only cooks with water: Who knows if the online courses of other trainers and coaches are really sooooo perfectly refined didactically? Focus on your knowledge, your experience, and your performance, and don't be afraid to receive criticism of your work. Ultimately, you can only learn and improve from that.
Beware of beginner prices or special offers: Once the low price is set, you can't increase it again. Your potential clients probably don't know you are a beginner and will assume that the low price for your online course is reasonable and market-conform. If you want to raise it later, once you no longer feel like a beginner, your clientele won't understand that and may drop off.
Warning: Dumping! Remember that your prices should be market-conform to avoid leading to general dumping: Low prices are also perceived by other providers in your industry, who might be forced to lower their prices if it turns out that you are stealing customers with your cheap offer. In the long run, you will only harm yourself with that.
What costs nothing is also worth nothing: This is how free offers are often perceived. The potential clients of your online courses expect to receive good performance from you from the start and will not give you a presumption of goodwill just because you are starting this business. Your courses should focus on ensuring that the learning content is conveyed sustainably. If you set no price for that, it quickly creates the impression that the learning transfer is not provided, and participating in the course is likely a waste of time. However: As advertising, you can certainly offer a free course - but you should make it clear that this is a time-limited action and that the course normally has a specific price.
We wish you great success!
Do not be afraid of pricing your online courses: This task is an important part of your work, and you should carry it out gladly, thoroughly, and conscientiously. Even if it takes a while, this initial headache is worth it before you can market your courses, because once your prices are set, you will have to live with them for a while. At the latest after a year, you will know whether you need to adjust the prices and to what extent you can do so to keep your business on a successful course.
We hope you enjoyed this article and wish you good luck in marketing your online courses!
