6 Simple Steps to Building Your Online Academy

As the world continues to shift its focus to the digital world, online education is becoming more important than ever. This is your chance to share your expertise and connect with a global audience more than ever.

Once upon a time, teaching people new things from the comfort of their own homes wasn’t possible, but now technology has managed to do this.

In this article, we’ll dive deeper into learning more about the steps you need to take to build your online academy.

1. Define your audience and niche

Who is the audience you’re trying to reach out to and what are you planning on teaching them? Your target audience is always the one that you have expertise in, but keep in mind that one industry has different niches that you can target, so it’s important you teach the ones that you are more experienced in.

To make everything easier, you can define your ideal students based on the following information:

1. Demographics: Age, location, education level.
2. Professional background: Beginners, professionals, entrepreneurs.
3. Pain points & goals: What challenges do they face? What skills are they willing to learn?
4. Learning preferences: Do they prefer video tutorials, live classes, or interactive courses?

For example, here’s what an audience persona will look like:

1. Name: Jack, 35
2. Occupation: Junior UX designer
3. Goals: Improve research skills to land a senior UX role in the future.
4. Pain points: Undergoing difficulties with real-world UX research applications.

Furthermore, you can always analyze market demand by following Google Trends, LinkedIn, and industry reports.

3. Create a website with AI

Creating your website is important if you want to be able to create your online academy in the first place. The way websites are created has evolved over the years and it’s definitely not the same story as it was a decade ago.

Technology has evolved and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now making it more possible than ever to create your website in a short period of time. This is thanks to AI web builders, making it possible to create a website in under an hour and saving you from having to wait months for your new website.

The good part is that you include the industry you are in and input your business description which will allow the tool to build a website that is suitable for you.

As for prices, you’ll be paying a small monthly subscription and compared to traditional web building methods, these costs are much lower.

4. Incorporate Learning Management Systems (LMS)

After you create your website, you can start including a Learning Management System (LMS) that will allow you to deliver your courses efficiently. The best LMS will depend on your business model, budget, and tech requirements. You have different options to choose from such as those that are easy to set up, require no coding, self-hosted LMS which offer you more control & customization options, and all-in-one course marketplaces.

When choosing which LMS is the right choice for you, you need to make sure it has the essential features such as:

1. Course management: Easy content uploads, lesson structuring, and scheduling.
2. Student progress tracking: Analytics dashboards to monitor learner engagement.
3. Quizzes & assessments: Interactive tests to reinforce learning.
4. Certificates & badges: Award students upon completion.
5. Payment integration: Supporting PayPal, Stripe, or subscriptions for monetization.

After you dive deeper into this part, you can now start uploading & organizing your content.

4. Start developing your course content

High-quality content is the backbone of any successful online academy. Well-structured, engaging, and valuable content helps attract students, enhance learning experiences, and establish your academy as a trusted resource.

Break your courses into manageable sections to make sure nobody gets confused when scrolling through them. For example, let’s say you are a UX designer and want to teach people more about UX design and research, here’s a sample of what your course structure should look like:

1. Module 1: Introduction to UX design and research
2. Module 2: User interview techniques
3. Module 3: Data analysis & reporting
4. Module 4: Case study & hands-on project

Taking into consideration each of your modules, it’s important that you create video lectures (3-10 mins), visual summaries for your slide decks & infographics, ebooks & PDFs with detailed reference materials, live Q & A sessions, and gamification & quizzes to make learning fun & interactive.

5. Set up your pricing and payment models

Now we come down to what matters, and this is defining how learners will access and pay for their courses. First and foremost, you need to decide how you will price your courses. There are different methods to do so, which include:

1. One-time payment (lifetime access): Best for standalone courses, simple and easy, and work best for premium or high-ticket courses.
2. Subscription-based (monthly or yearly): Recurring revenue for consistent income, great for memberships and ongoing learning platforms, and works well for communities, coaching, or continuously updated content.
3. Tiered pricing (Basic, Premium, VIP): Offers different levels of access at different price points, increases conversion rates by giving options based on budget, and works well for coaching or multi-level learning programs.
4. Bundled courses & packages: Encourages higher purchases by grouping courses together, offers discounts for students buying multiple courses, and works well for academics with multiple related courses.
5. Free courses with paid upgrades: Attracts students with free content while upselling premium courses, and works well for lead generations and building trust.

When setting up your pricing and payment models, it’s important that you also offer a money-back guarantee of 7-30 days.

Now that you’ve gotten your pricing methods out of the way, it’s time to focus on your payment methods. Every country worldwide has different payment methods, and to make sure you cover everything you need to, it’s important you incorporate a secure and reliable payment processor.

In order to accept payments globally, you need to secure a reliable payment processor. Popular payment processors include Stripe, PayPal, Square, Apple & Google Pay.

When including your payment processors, to make sure you are payment-friendly with your global audience, you should include multiple payment options. Payment methods you need to consider are:

1. Credit/Debit cards: Most commonly used for online transactions.
2. PayPal & digital Wallets: Best for fast checkouts.
3. Bank transfers: Good for high-ticket courses & corporate clients.
4. Buy now, pay later (BNPL): You can do this with Afterpay, Klarna, or Affirm which allows people to pay through installments.
5. Crypto payments: Cryptocurrencies are becoming highly popular and it’s a great idea to include them.

If you want to make the payment process easy, you should consider including one-click payments to reduce friction and increase conversion rates.

6. Get active on social media channels

5.24 billion social media users are active worldwide. This is your chance to reach a wider audience by becoming active on major social media channels. There are plenty of users out there who are interested in your online academy, but most of them don’t know about it just yet.

Getting active on social media channels means choosing the right social media platform to use. You need to focus on the areas your target audience is most active in:

1. Instagram: Excellent choice for visual content, using reels to promote your strategy, and collaborating with influencers.
2. Facebook: Best option if you want to build a community in Facebook groups, and run paid ads.
3. LinkedIn: Your ideal choice if you focus on B2B business, networking, and thought leadership.
4. Twitter (X): Best choice if you love to share news, real-time updates, and engage in discussions.
5. YouTube: You can always post your courses on YouTube, including tutorials, and educational marketing.

We recommend you focus on 2 or 3 platforms that align with your audience the most instead of trying to be active on all social media channels. Every business has social media channels where their target audience is most active and it’s time to figure out where yours is.

Launch your online academy with confidence

Building your online academy might seem like a challenge, but it takes a lot less effort than you think. You can create a successful learning platform with these 6 simple steps, from defining your niche to taking advantage of the right technology and much more, always know that every step is going to bring you closer to your business goals.

The key to long-term success is consistency, engagement, and adaptability. Always refine your courses based on the feedback you receive, stay updated with industry trends, and seek to improve your teaching methods and marketing strategies.

Well, we said everything we had to and now it’s time to start building your online academy and make a lasting first impression.