If you want to expand your offering as a trainer or coach to include online courses or build entirely on e-learning, you will quickly start to think 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 difficult undertaking and causes freelancers in every field to furrow their brows: "How much should I charge to appropriately recoup my effort? How high can the price be to hold my ground in the market? How much are potential customers willing to pay for my expertise and service?"
The question of what price to charge for an online course is one we hear very often at blink.it. Of course, we cannot give a blanket statement in the form of concrete numbers, but after years of collaboration with countless trainers and coaches of various disciplines, we have collected some insights in this article that can help you with pricing.
Situation 1: You are selling pure online courses
You offer digital courses on your website or your learning platform like blink.it that are self-contained, and your only accompanying activity consists of answering participants' questions. At price X, the customer gains access to the course and is largely left to their own devices from there on.
In terms of price, anything from 0 to 1,000 euros or more is of course possible, but market standards suggest it will likely fall 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 did the research take? Where, how, and how long was the expertise acquired?
Topic: How current is the topic? How important is it? How often or seldom is the topic covered?
Costs: What are the costs for content creation, advertising, learning platform, and payment processing?
Additionally, there are 2 psychological aspects that influence your course price:
Status as a trainer/coach: How recognized, well-known, and experienced are you as an expert in your field? Is "everyone" familiar with you, do you consider yourself a luminary in your industry, are you an enthusiastic amateur, or even a complete novice?
Willingness to pay: Who is the target audience for your courses? How much is the target audience willing to pay for your courses? What value does your course have for your target audience? Are you targeting individuals who will pay for the course out of pocket, or businesses that can tax deduct the course costs?
The price for the above factors can be determined based on an hourly rate that you envision or desire as income. However, the two psychological aspects will decide how realistic the final course price will be, i.e., will the target audience actually buy your course at this price?
Tip 1: Put yourself in your target audience's position and determine how much you personally 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 typically publicly available. Research the prices of other trainers and coaches and take a look at 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 fancy imaginary price will not help you if you then find yourself stuck with your product.
Situation 2: You offer blended learning
You want to expand your existing in-person offerings with online support: In the form of blended learning, you connect traditional workshops, coaching sessions, or seminars with the many advantages of flexibly completed e-learning.
How you calculate the price for the online component of your blended learning can be inferred from the above Situation 1. Furthermore, you should decide how you want to structure your blended learning:
Springer Principle: alternating several units in-person and digitally
Reiher Principle: several in-person units followed by a concluding online course
Sandwich Principle: Start with an in-person unit at the beginning, an online course in the middle, and a concluding in-person unit at the end
3 Pricing Models for Blended Learning
1. Daily Rate as a Basis
Most trainers and coaches work with their own daily rate. This is a good starting point to justify a surcharge for the additional online course to the customer: Depending on how high the share of the online course is in the overall coaching or training, you add a percentage to your daily rate that reflects your additional effort and the additional costs for the online course.
2. Replace In-Person with Online
In this model, the price remains the same because you reduce your in-person offering and replace it with online units. This has a certain appeal for your customer since they can pay the usual price but receive a new, modern, and flexible course offering that they can conveniently complete through a learning platform like blink.it. This only works if you can sensibly replace some in-person units with e-learning in your blended learning.
3. In-Person "On Top"
The third model is especially interesting for trainers and coaches who are already well established in their market and can sell themselves confidently. Here, you offer your customer a customized package: for example, a fixed price per online course and after 10 online courses, there’s a free in-person day with you.
The advantage of pricing for blended learning compared to pure online courses is that you can make your customers a personalized offer. You decide flexibly which course model fits best for you, your customer, and the course topic, and which pricing is most likely to be accepted by your customer or target audience.
Situation 3: You are an E-Learning Beginner
You either start completely anew in the world of training and want to offer e-learning right away, or you are already established as a trainer and wish to generate 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 build them properly? Should I not rather offer my courses very cheaply at first? Or even for free and see what happens?"
We have some arguments to counter these doubts:
Regardless of which service you want to sell: You need a little self-confidence about the quality of your work to assert yourself as a freelancer. Those who aren't sure of themselves also radiate that, and customers subconsciously perceive this and respond by not trusting the offer. So, if you doubt the quality of your work, you should work on your mindset first before entering the marketplace.
Everyone just uses water: Who knows if the online courses of other trainers and coaches are really that perfectly polished didactically. Focus on your knowledge, your experience, and your performance, and sometimes risk receiving criticism of your work. In the end, you can only learn from that and improve.
Beware of beginner prices or special offers: Once the low price is established, you cannot raise it anymore. Your potential customers probably do not know that you are a beginner and assume that the low price for your online course is appropriate and marketable. If you want to raise it later when you don’t feel like a beginner anymore, your customers may not grasp this and will drop off.
Warning: Dumping! Keep in mind that your prices should be marketable to avoid leading to general dumping: Low prices are also perceived by other providers in your industry, who may then be forced to lower their prices as well if it turns out that you’re snatching customers with your cheap offer. In the long run, you are only cutting your own throat.
What costs nothing is worth nothing: Free offers are often perceived this way. The potential customers of your online courses want to receive good performance from you from the very beginning and do not give you a favorable presumption just because you are starting in this business. Your courses should ensure that the learning content is sustainably conveyed. If you don’t set a price for that, it quickly creates the impression that learning transfer is not provided and participation in the course is likely a waste of time. But: You can certainly offer a free course as advertising - but you should make it clear that it is a time-limited promotion and that the course normally has a certain price.
We wish you great success!
Do not fear the pricing of 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 you a long time, this initial head-scratching will pay off before you can market your courses, as 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 your prices and to what extent you can do so to keep your business on a successful course.
We hope you enjoyed this article, and we wish you success in marketing your online courses!
