8 Ways to Use Bonuses to Increase Your Course Sales

By: Justin Ferriman • August 27, 2019
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Bonuses can help you sell your course and grow revenue for your business.

After you create your online course, the next step is to think about how you will sell it. You can choose from a variety of selling models, including selling for a one-off price or offering a subscription model to your students. The right method for you depends on your business plan. While one-off sales bring in immediate revenue, a subscription model can provide you with a reliable ongoing source of cash flow, as well as making courses more accessible to students who cannot afford to pay a lot of money upfront.

Once you have decided how you want to sell your course, you can use a different types of bonuses to increase your sales revenue. Let’s take a look at a few examples of bonuses that could work well for you.

1. Use order bumps.

During the checkout process you have a fantastic opportunity to upsell courses to your students. Offer your students the chance to add a second course to their basket at half price. Many students will not want to miss out on the chance to bag another course at half the usual cost and will choose to add in a course that they would not otherwise have bought.

Be sure to suggest a relevant course to each student to increase the temptation to add it onto their order. Giving a suggestion means that the student does not have to search around to try to find a second course they want to take, which increases the chance that they will take you up on the offer.

Order bumps are easy with the free CartFlows plugin, which integrates with LearnDash.

2. Use mastermind calls to convert more customers.

Mastermind calls are a valuable service you can offer to your students for an additional fee. Many students appreciate the chance to ask questions, explain the challenges they are facing, and get feedback and solutions in real time. Mastermind calls reduce feelings of isolation among online learners which is one of the major challenges that some people face when taking advantage of online learning opportunities.

Try adding mastermind calls to your checkout process to see whether you can get students to add them to their course order. You can also contact students via email after they have been working through your course for a while to see whether they would find a mastermind call helpful.

3. If possible, try in-person meetups.

Many students love the flexibility and freedom that studying online provides, but some crave the opportunity to meet in person with others who share their interests. Offering in-person meetups is a good way to grow a community around your online course.

Get in touch with students who enjoy your course and offer them the chance to attend an in-person meetup. If you set the price point correctly, you will find that your most keen students will be eager to attend a meetup. These events can enhance learning opportunities for your learners in addition to increasing course sales revenue for your business.

If in-person meetups won’t work then you may be able to benefit by offering one-on-one coaching. This is easy to use with LearnDash when using the Private Sessions add-on.

4. Entice customers with a pre-pay discount.

If you use a subscription model to sell your online courses, offering a pre-pay discount is a good way to improve cash flow for your business. When you give students the chance to pay per month or per year, offering a discount for paying upfront can encourage more of them to hand over their cash immediately in exchange for a lower overall price.

You might worry that offering a pre-pay discount results in your business missing out on revenue over the long run. For many businesses, the benefits of having money available to spend right now outweigh a small decrease in overall income.

However, you do not need to miss out on income to use pre-pay benefits. Instead of offering a monetary discount for pre-pay, consider giving students six months of extra access if they pre-pay for a year.

5. Leverage the effectiveness of time-limited bonuses.

Whatever type of bonus you decide to use to upsell your courses, it is a good idea to make it time-limited. When a bonus is available only for a limited time, it can seem much more attractive to students. In contrast, if they know they can access the bonus at any time, their motivation to go for it right now will be reduced.

There is no standard answer to how long a time-limited offer should last. Experiment with different lengths of time to find out what works best to drive up course sales. As a rule of thumb, the time limit should be short enough that the learner does not have time to forget about the offer. If you are not getting much response to your time-limited offers, try making them shorter in duration.

6. Offer suggestions for follow-up courses to your customers.

When a student finishes a course, that is the perfect time to give them their next opportunity to learn. At this time, students are feeling positive about themselves and about the possibilities of online education.

Use the last video of your course to suggest further courses that students might want to check out. You can also send emails to students to offer them additional courses at this time.

Be sure to suggest courses that are relevant to students’ interests, based on the courses they have already taken. If you suggest courses that students have no interest in taking, your marketing efforts might simply irritate them.

7. Help your customers find their next courses.

Sometimes students are not sure what they want to study. They might have ambitions of moving into a certain field of work or simply want to have fun learning new things, but not know which courses would be most beneficial for them.

You could offer a quiz to help direct students toward the courses that would suit them best, based on their interests and their current level of knowledge. The more guidance you can give students about the courses that are most suitable for their needs, the more likely it is that they will feel confident enough to purchase a course and then be satisfied with their choice.

8. Offer premium courses next to your budget options.

Comparing your premium courses to your budget courses is a good way to show students the benefits of choosing the more expensive option. Advertise the features that the budget and premium courses include so that students can clearly see what they would be missing out on if they choose the cheaper course.

You can advertise the price of the less expensive course on your promotional materials, using phrases such as “courses starting at $20.” When students click through to your landing page, they can decide for themselves whether they want to stick with the budget course option or instead choose the more expensive premium option.

By using bonuses you can increase your sales revenue and help your learners to find the courses that they want to take.

When it comes to running an online course business, knowing how to increase your course sales revenue is as important as creating great course content. Take the step of using bonuses to encourage more sales and you could see your sales revenue grow dramatically. Use a combination of the tips given here to optimize your sales strategy and ensure that your sales revenue is as high as it can be.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter