Recently, the online course field has boomed, so 3 online course systems and platforms have been developed to assist instructors in course sales:
- Online course platforms, Hahow Good School, Udemy
- Course system rental service, Teaches
- Self-racking course system website, WordPress+Tutor LMS
- Emerging entity, live live course management platform, Flowclass
The following subseries will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each:
#1 Online Course Platform (E.g. Hahow Good School, Udemy)
The online course platform is a comprehensive marketplace for many types of courses, such as Hahow Good School in Taiwan and Udemy, the largest in the world. The platform is characterized by a wide variety of courses and low sales prices, and courses sold through the original traffic of the platform will be raked at 30%~50%.
The course platform provides a channel for instructors to directly list courses, and the platform will first review the course content of the instructor before deciding whether it can be put on the shelf, and almost all of them will require the instructor to change the course content and price to meet the interests of the platform.
For example, if the price of a course on the HaHow platform falls between $1500~$3500, assuming that the instructor proposes a $8000 course, it may be softly persuaded to reduce the price to meet the tonality of the platform. This is normal, and the platform students already have the habit of this price range, so even if the instructor does not reduce the price and successfully passes the review and is on the shelf, he may not get good sales results.
Udemy is even more exaggerated, sometimes the platform holds events featuring $10 USD (~HKD$78.49) courses, and will actively sell all courses at a significant price.
| merit | shortcoming |
| If you are a lecturer who is dedicated to self-media and has already been effective, bring your own traffic, and the course platform will help the instructors who can help the platform make money to bring more traffic and students In addition, the platform will assist in the production of courses, fundraising, investment of marketing resources to assist in exposure, and there will be no less. Even better, the platform will assist the instructor in handling the hidden high-cost processes of cash flow and customer service, which will greatly help the instructor reduce the burden of starting the course. | No student information will be provided. Instructors who host courses on the platform have no access to the information about their course students. In addition, the biggest misunderstanding about online course platforms is that there are already many students and traffic on the platform, and you can easily get a piece of the pie after the course is put on the shelf But the fact is that the platform will only give the layout, exposure opportunities, and advertising resources to courses that are known to bring profit, and the instructor must first sell the course to prove his contribution to the platform before the platform will start to help market the courses that are not promoted on the platform, and the probability of being searched by the platform students is lower than the chance of being searched in Google. |
#2 Rental Course System Services (E.g. Teach:able)
This type of system manufacturers mainly charge monthly fees, the charges are not cheap and each course transaction order will also take a cut, everyone operates in a similar way, the following takes teaches as an example:
Teaches Taiwan online teaching platform has 4 fee plans, you can choose to pay monthly or annually. Depending on the fee plan, Teacs charges a monthly fee plus 0% – 20% of the course commission. Taking annual payment as an example, the most basic is a monthly fee of NT$890 plus 20% profit; If you divide 0%, you will be charged NT$6,000 per month.
While this gives you relatively large course control and retains higher margins, instructors need to pay for a subscription to the system first, and they also need to promote the course and find students themselves.
| merit | shortcoming |
| Such system vendors usually assist instructors to establish online courses, instructors can have a list of students, high mastery of courses, price increases, promotions, without being reviewed by the platform E.g. Teaches will provide fee-based course opening consultant services | From the perspective of ‘long-term, sustainable operation + highest profit’, the use of the rental system to start a course is not in line with long-term sustainable operation for the following reasons: – Unable to provide a complete SEO architecture – Unable to connect with mainstream network services to create an automated sales system – High monthly fee – Course sales still have to be cut Xiaobian feels that not being able to manage SEO well is a fatal injury, because SEO is accurate organic traffic, and SEO needs to be operated for a long time, once it accumulates good results, it can bring stable income to lecturers and provide a moat for the course business, avoiding being caught up by competitors in a short period of time. |
#3 Self-rack course sales website
Now that various online services are highly integrated, self-set up websites or online course platforms are already very simple things, and no advanced computer knowledge is required. For example, from 0 to have made a course selling website + perfect SEO features, it only takes 4 steps:
- Cloudflare buys URLs
- Cloudways purchase hosting services, remember to specify the automatic creation of WooCommerce site
- Copy the two lines of cloudways numbers to Cloudflare and paste them, and the website will go live!
- The official website installs the free online course sales system Tutor LMS
| merit | shortcoming |
| Suitable for performing SEO is cheap, and course sales no longer need to be raked at the highest mastery | Make courses, pre-order, invest marketing resources and customer service |
#4 Emerging Entity, Live Course Management Platform (e.g. Flowclass)
In 2022, there will also be many new online course management platforms, such as Flowclass, which generally has a sound SEO framework and a low course commission, which is conducive to new teachers joining online teaching
Experienced teachers can keep abreast of the latest student needs trends based on the monthly student analysis report, so that they can adjust the teaching strategy/video style and increase the number of students!
Summary: Comparison of online course platform features
| Flowclass | Hahow Good School | The WordPress+ course system is self-shelf | Teaches | Udemy | |
| Year of establishment | In 2022 | In 2015 | In 2012 | In 2018 | In 2009 |
| language | globe | Chinese | globe | Chinese | globe |
| Course start conditions | HKD$89 Monthly Fee (Monthly Student Analysis Report) | Official review after application | not | Monthly/annual fee system | Courses can start after they have been reviewed |
| Course rake | 0% | Self-recruit 10 students %經由平台推廣50% | 0% | 0~20% | Via discount code 3 through platform %透過平台廣告25% 50% |
| advantage | One platform with full control over the most profitable ones, a complete SEO structure, and monthly student analysis reports | Taiwan is the largest | Full control, maximum profit | System provider, providing paid course solutions | The largest in the world |
https://flowflowclass.io/tech/%e3%80%90%f0%9f%94%a5-preparation-course-must-see%e3%80%913-kinds-of-online-course-system-platform-fee-comparison-and-the-choice-for-newbies/
