In recent years, there has been a rapidly changing scenario in global education. The pandemic has raised the whole world’s awareness of developing backup indirect learning methods. Consequently, online courses step by step receive significant recognition and then claim a well-deserved role in the teaching industry.
For those who are not familiar with the term, an online course delivers systematic knowledge and information through technology. What makes it an efficient teaching method is engaging elements like videos, images, and other interactive materials.
Not only educational institutions use online courses, but corporations also take advantage of online courses for training employees.
Now we will show you ways to create and monetize your WordPress online courses. Let’s dive in!
- Why Do You Need to Create an Online Course WordPress?
- What to Consider When Creating a WordPress Online Course?
- What Do You Need to Set Up?
- Which Are the Best LMS Plugins?
- How to Build and Monetize an Online Course in WordPress
Why Do You Need to Create an Online Course WordPress?
Creating an online course is a decent way to increase your revenue and generate side income for your site. Since online education is a new trend, you can put in a minimal investment yet receive remarkable profit.
The best thing is that you can establish your own online course for sale without having profound technical knowledge.
Finance aside, the most fundamental aspect that online courses benefit you is credibility in the industry. To have a firm foundation, first, you must offer your customers quality content and build trust. As long as you update your content regularly and quickly adapt to changes, your business’s growth remains stable.
Besides, there are several reasons that you should choose WordPress to build your own courses.
First is the flexibility to customize websites and courses that other platforms are not able to provide. Secondly, it costs you less to set up and have full control over your site. Finally, WordPress supports blogging which is SEO-friendly.
What to Consider When Creating a WordPress Online Course?
Preparation is always an important step before doing something. Building an online course in WordPress is not an exception. Apart from physical equipment, listing out basic references is something that you definitely need to do.
Initially, it is obvious that you decide on course content and topic before starting to create your course. It should be a topic that you know well or have a great interest in. Moreover, you should write out an outline for a clear learning route and outcomes.
Target audience is also something that you should not take for granted. Once you get to know your audience, approaching them won’t be a thing anymore. Information like age, gender, education level, and income is key to restructuring the courses’ content and pricing.
Finally, there are questions about distribution that you should ask yourself. For example, you should care about payment plans for your courses, subscriptions plans for your customers, or content publishing plans. Figuring out the answers to those concerns will make your building process more thorough.
What Do You Need to Set Up?
These are the factors for building an effective WordPress online course website.
Domain name: Having a domain is essential for setting up a website since your content refers back to your domain name.
A well-done URL makes a professional website, and non-premium domains may increase the bounce rate of your website. Also, not owning a good domain name decreases your chance to work with advertisers and sponsors.
Hosting: Hosting or web hosting is a company that stores your website’s data on a server for people to access. Initially, you can try the cheap shared hosting plan that supports hosting multiple domains at once. Once your traffic overloads, you need to upgrade your web host to a better one.
WordPress: Install WordPress on your site once your domain connects and communicates with your web host successfully. Follow the step-by-step guide to set up WordPress by cPanel, which your host provides in the welcoming email. You should be able to login and start building your courses after finishing the steps.
Theme: Theme is sometimes optional because some LMS plugins come with their own themes. Therefore, setting up a theme is necessary in case the LMS plugin does not support online course themes.
Simplicity, responsiveness, compatibility, speed, and ratings are the top theme criteria for WordPress site builders to base on.
Which Are the Best LMS Plugins?
#1 LearnDash
LearnDash comes as a popular LMS plugin with a brilliant history of 9 years in the industry. The plugin earned its reputation through its credibility, ease of use, and user support. Besides, LearnDash has an enormous library of documents, video tutorials, live webinars, and more.
LearnDash integrates with a ton of popular third-party cooperation such as Paypal, WooCommerce, and Slack. In particular, users have the ability to schedule when to deliver content automatically with LearnDash.
Apart from the mentioned features, the plugin provides all the essential functions to build an online course.
However, LearnDash developers are never satisfied with their creation. They constantly strive to ensure that their customers receive the latest and most improved version of the plugin.
#2 Tutor LMS
Despite being a late bloomer, Tutor LMS brings a brand new breeze to the LMS industry with multiple uniqueness. Firstly, the plugin provides you with all kinds of quizzes that will stimulate student engagement. Along with the quizzes is the fascinating certificating system to make course takers feel accomplished.
In case you want a clear overview of your courses’ data, Tutor LMS is here to help. With the support of this plugin, you can approach your statistics in a more detailed yet understandable way. Besides, Tutor LMS’s Zoom integration allows teachers to effectively construct an interactive learning experience through live lessons and meetings.
Although customer support is not a strength of Tutor LMS, its free trial still gains the plugin massive recognition. Thus, Tutor LMS will be the perfect choice if a low-budget yet lovely plugin is what you seek.
#3 LearnPress
Looking for a quick and easy WordPress online course setup? LearnPress also seems to be your optimal choice. The plugin’s positive ratings and high active installations result from the fact that it costlessly offers numerous useful features.
LearnPress authorizes you with course management, customization, and selling. In addition, you can build a course curriculum without any cost. Moreover, this plugin has a BuddyPress integration for users to communicate with their students with ease.
Although the plugin is free of charge, you need an exquisite yet effective theme to keep it operating seamlessly. Also, the fact that LearnPress’s developers persistently try to design more add-ons and improve the plugin is a big plus.
#4 Sensei
Sensei, as ‘teacher’ or ‘mentor’ in Japanese, shares the excellent establishers with Jetpack, WooCommerce, and ultimately WordPress.com. Therefore, it is needless to say that their products showcase their best potential when it comes to WordPress. The plugin’s WordPress exclusive course management, as a result, is unsurprisingly smooth.
With an intuitive interface, Sensei provides post drip scheduling, media attaching, and payment planning to progress tracking features. Since it is from the creator of WordPress, there are countless options for either free or paid extensions. WooCommerce, for example, is a great integration to monetize your courses.
How to Build and Monetize an Online Course WordPress
Due to the long improved features, we will walk you through the online course-creating process with LearnDash. Before moving to the next step, make sure you fulfill every necessary thing as guided above. Now here we go!
#1 Install & Configure LearnDash
Of course, the very first thing to do is installing LearnDash like any other plugin on the platform. After downloading the LearnDash package, go to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard then click Add New. Upload then activate the recently downloaded .zip file which contains LearnDash.
Because LearnDash does not include a free trial, you must choose to follow one of its plans. Once you finish the payment, go to LearnDash LMS > Settings > LMS license and fill in the license to use the plugin.
Right in this step, you can set up your Paypal ID in the Paypal Settings. Not only Paypal, LearnDash also supports Stripe and 2Checkout payment gateways.
#2 Create New Courses
To create your first course, navigate to LearnDash LMS > Courses. At the top section of the page, click Add New then hit the Builder tab in the navigation bar. In this step, you can give your course a name, add a description, or set a category.
#3 Create New Content
Lessons
Lessons are the must-have content of your courses. You can either choose to create new lessons or add premade lessons. Let’s start with creating a new one.
Initially, click the New Lesson link. Type the name of your lesson then finish adding by pressing Enter or hitting the Add New button.
Topics
The plugin only allows you to create a topic when there is at least one existing lesson.
The first thing you need to do is expand the lesson by either clicking Expand All or hitting the down arrow. Then type the name of your topic after accessing New Topic. Finalize by hitting Enter or clicking the Add Topic button.
Quizzes
Firstly, simply navigate to the lesson or topic you wish to add new quizzes. Approach the New Quiz link then fill in the name of your quiz. Hit Enter or click the Add Quiz button to finish.
Those are the most basic steps to creating new segments of your online course you should know. Obviously, the next one is how to make a profit from what you have just created.
#4 Monetize Your Online Courses via LearnDash WooCommerce Integration
As recorded, LearnDash reigns over the e-learning niche while WooCommerce marked its name in the top e-commerce plugins. Originating from the same developers, there is no doubt that LearnDash and WooCommerce will be at their best when combined.
Within 3 simple steps, you can integrate them together in order to sell your course.
Step 1: From your new LearnDash section in the dashboard, locate Add-ons and click it. Search for the WooCommerce for LearnDash add-on in the list then install and activate it.
Step 2: Before assigning your LearnDash course as a WooCommerce product, you must make it available first.
Navigate to Product > Add New then you will have to fill in information such as titles, descriptions, and images. After that, go to the Product Data section and choose Course from the Simple Product dropdown. Next, type your course title and add it in the box in the LearnDash Courses option.
Step 3: In fact, this step is optional because your students can still make payments through LearnDash instead of WooCommerce.
- Go to LearnDash > Courses
- Pick the course in the second step then open Settings > Course Access Settings
- Hit Close in the Access Mode
- Fill the URL of your WooCommerce product page in the Button URL
That’s all of it!
#5 Protect Your Online Courses
Security is obviously an unignorable part once you participate online. Therefore, we hereby present to you 2 mighty protecting assistants: Prevent Direct Access (PDA Gold) and Password Protect WordPress (PPWP Pro). You can now feel relieved to monetize your well-made courses freely with these 2 protection plugins.
PDA Gold
PDA Gold’s LMS LearnDash extension can help you grant course access to enrolled students only. In other words, the students are able to see their enrolled courses’ education content. When they attempt to access other courses without enrollment, a 404 error page or custom message will automatically appear.
In addition, PDA Gold blocks Google from indexing your courses. As a result, no one can find and steal your important courses on search engines.
PPWP Pro
The PPWP Pro plugin password protects your LearnDash courses from unauthorized access. In simple terms, only your students with the correct passwords can enter and view your courses. With PPWP, we believe that you can level up and maximize the profits of your online courses.
Ready to Give It a Try?
Offering the world something educational seems to be noble and fun, yet hard to carry out. Due to the development of WordPress and e-learning, your intention to create an online course is not impossible anymore. Now with our tutorial at hand, what stops you from launching and selling your WordPress online courses to the world?
Wait! There’re still more useful LearnDash integrations for you to check them out!
Do you find our guidance useful? And is there any great LMS plugin that we missed? We would be grateful to hear you express your valuable idea in the comment section below!
