Where to sell online courses: the most popular payment gateways

People who want to learn a new skill or sharpen what they know usually see the internet as their main tool for that growth. With an eye on this behavior, a new market has developed over the last decade and keeps growing: selling online courses.

At first, it looks like a way to earn extra income. But in many cases it becomes a business that leads to financial independence. To get there, though, you need to know where to start.

In this article, we'll clear up one of the key points in your journey as a digital entrepreneur: where to sell online courses. We'll explain:

Where to sell online courses
What is:
Hotmart
Eduzz
Greenn
Ticto
Kiwify
Payment gateways vs. member area
How to start selling online courses
What a Member Hub is

Where to sell online courses

From ebooks to masterminds, anyone with something to teach has a whole range of digital products they can create and sell. It's not only a chance to build a digital business, but also to help make knowledge more and more accessible.

And you can teach anything. From a cake filling recipe to something far more specialized, for example: there's probably someone out there who wants to learn what you want to teach.

In this article, we already showed you how to create a digital product. Once your product is ready, it's time to choose where to sell it. The good news is that technology has kept pace with the growth of the online course market. In other words, there are countless platforms where you can sell your content. Known as payment gateways, these companies handle the communication between you, your customer and your customer's bank, to make sure the transaction is secure for both sides.

Think of it this way: a brick-and-mortar business has a card machine. In a digital business, payment gateways fill that need. The difference is that, besides credit and debit cards, they usually also process payments via:

PayPal;
Boleto (Brazilian bank slip);
Pix.

Many companies play this role, but the ones digital product creators use most are:

Hotmart

Founded in 2011, Hotmart was one of the pioneers in selling online courses, which makes it one of the most popular platforms. You can sell courses, mentorships, ebooks and more. Each sale is charged 9.90% + R$1. And you can count on affiliates who promote your material in exchange for a commission.

Eduzz

Eduzz works much like Hotmart, with a space for creators and affiliate sellers and a fee for each course sold. In this case, it's 4.90% + R$ 1 per sale.

Greenn

Greenn's platform works in a similar way too. The standard fee is 4.99% + R$1 per new sale. But it varies for high-ticket products, affiliate sales and international payments. There's also a fee for processing withdrawals.

Ticto

Besides digital products, Ticto also lets you sell physical products. There, the fee is 6.99% + R$2.49 per sale.

Kiwify

The platform follows the same pricing model as the others. The fee per sale is 8.99% + R$2.49.

Keep in mind that, beyond the price differences, each platform has its own business model and support. That's why you should dig deeper before choosing which one to sell your online course on, so you understand which will best meet your needs.

Payment gateways vs. member area

Another important point is the difference between all of these (and other) payment platforms and your member area.

In short, all the companies above are options for where to send your customer to pay for your course. They'll handle communication with your students' banks and make sure transactions go through successfully and securely.

Once the payment is made, though, the next step is delivering the material. As we've explained here, having a Netflix-style member area is a way to build student loyalty and secure new sales. In some cases, you can host your course on the same platform where the payment was made.

But it's important to check the conditions for that and the limitations you'll face.

Cademí, Brazil's first Member Hub, focuses exclusively on delivering your content to your students. Among other things, it lets you create a fully customized platform with your digital business's visual identity and course gamification. Another differentiator is the human support at every stage of the process, to ensure your success.

+ What can Cademí's member area offer you?

On top of that, it integrates automatically with more than 40 payment gateways (all of the ones above are on the list). You can talk to one of Cademí's specialists to understand in detail everything we can do for your digital business by clicking here.

How to start selling online courses

There are other points to consider when you start selling online courses. At Cademí, for example, the Customer Success team follows your whole journey closely. You can reach them anytime in an exclusive WhatsApp group to ask questions, talk through strategy and more.

Going back to the start of the journey, our specialists highlight two steps as the most important.

Study the market;
Understand your audience.

You can see all the details by clicking here. But, in short, it's about testing your product idea with a lower-ticket option to see if there's demand. And using that moment to understand who your customer is and what their pain points are.

It's also important to think about social media. That's usually where you'll first connect with potential students and, with digital marketing strategies, turn them into leads and then customers.

With that in mind, it pays to invest in tactics like SEO-optimized content, lead magnets and paid media, for example. How you work varies with the audience you want to reach. So find out which social networks they're on, what content they like to consume and what they connect with. The more detail you have, the more on-target your communication will be.

What a Member Hub is

Besides all the strategies shared by Cademí's Customer Success team, another way to sell more is to invest in a Member Hub. In other words, having a space that's 100% your visual identity, where your students find all your products, whether they've bought them or not, is a way to make new sales to people who are already customers.

If you'd like to learn more, visit Cademí's website or get in touch and talk to one of our specialists.