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Host your online course

Chris Newman is a professional drone pilot who specializes in remote controlled aerial videography and photography. In April 2014, Chris published a short video on his YouTube channel to announce that he was going to create a course about drone flying. Chris already had a large library of videos from his drone. With the addition of some how-to content, he had a great starting point for his online course. He was already using YouTube to share many of these videos but he needed something where people couldnt access his course without paying for it.

He needed to create a site with a sales page, the ability to upload and host his videos, collect payments through an online credit card form, and instantly let his customers stream said videos.

There are 3 ways to do this.

Option 1: Self-hosting

As the name suggests, you host the videos on your own with this option. This means renting a server, setting up a website on it, setting up a payment processing system, and so on. There are software like WordPress for creating the site, and plugins for the rest, but at the end of the day it still requires a lot of technical knowledge and is very time-consuming to set up. Not to mention that if things break down, youre on your own to fix it. When Chris created his online course, he used his WordPress website with an e-learning theme to host it. With his course up and running, he started running ads and hosting webinars to promote his course. One time, after spending about $1,500 on ads, he drove so much traffic to his course website that it crashed. When the same thing happened a second time, he knew he needed to find a better system to host his course.

Option 2: Online Course Marketplaces

Chris had heard of marketplaces like Traineasy, where you simply upload your videos and let them do the rest. They promote it to their database of students, they collect the payments, they ensure that students can access the videos. It sounds great but at the end of the day, they control everything. You have to comply with their terms and conditions, and youll often have restrictions like how much you can price your course at or how many times you can email students. They also take a massive cut of your sales.

It was important for Chris to have complete control and flexibility when it came to pricing his course. He wanted to be able to create discount codes for his online course so that he could offer a special price for certain people (such as people who attend his webinars, for example). He also wanted to give his students the option to pay for his course in a series of monthly payments rather than pay the full price upfront.

Option 3: Learning management systems

Online course platforms, or Learning Management Systems (LMS), are the best of both worlds. They give you full control over everything and theyre very easy to set up.

Traineasy is one example. To sell your online courses on Traineasy, all you have to do is sign up for an account and upload your course content. Traineasy has all the features you need to then sell and deliver that course.

Payment systems are already built in so all you have to do is set your price. With a few clicks you can change the branding and design of your entire site. You can create powerful sales pages for your courses with our drag-and-drop builder. The learning experience for your students will also be a lot better. Your course content is delivered to them in an intuitive interface, and they can even access it on their phones. You can also add interactive elements like quizzes and surveys. Having tried other options, Chris decided that Traineasymet all his criteria. He opted for our Business Plan, where in exchange for a fixed monthly fee, he keeps all the revenue from his And thanks to our Bulk Upload feature, Chris was able to upload all of his course content in just a few minutes.

Watch the video below to learn the advantages and disadvantages of self hosting.