Once you start contemplating the idea of developing and publishing your online course, one of the first things you will start thinking about is its price tag as all that effort and time is rarely given out for free.
Teachable is one of the online teaching platforms offering you the chance to create and publish your online course and set your price, but when it comes to its charging fees, a course creator might wonder: “Can you create a course on Teachable for free?
And besides, when you are paying for Teachable or considering purchasing Teachable, it makes sense to be curious to know whether you can build a free course on the platform.
So, to find out the answer to that and to many other questions you might have about creating courses with Teachable and, especially doing that for free, keep reading below!
Can You Create A Course On Teachable For Free?
The short answer is yes, course creators can create a course on Teachable for free.
But while this ‘yes’ sounds great, the next question that might come up is “how can I create a course on Teachable for free?”
Let’s see!
How Can I Create A Course On Teachable For Free?
Creating a course on Teachable for free is a very straightforward process.
There is not much to be said on this, as you simply need to sign up with Teachable and choose Teachable’s Free plan.
This plan, in comparison to the other 3 paid plans – Basic, Pro, and Advanced –, allows you to create your course for free.
However, it comes with some restrictions such as the fact that you can only create one course, offer one coaching, and one digital download. (Check out ‘Skillshare Vs Teachable.’)
You also won’t be able to get a custom domain or a public API, but you will still get to use email marketing as well as email support.
Nevertheless, since you wanted to find out about creating a course for free on Teachable, that most probably means that you are new to the platform and haven’t yet established your brand.
This, in turn, means that apart from creating that course for free, you might want to consider offering it for free as well. But can you do that?
Can I Create A Free Course On Teachable?
You will be glad to find out that the answer to this is, once again, ‘yes.’
You can use the Teachable platform to build courses that you can then offer free of charge or for a price of your choice, while you can also offer the option of memberships and subscriptions to your prospective students.
Why Use Teachable to Build a Free Course?
The fact that Teachable gives you the chance to create a course for free is one of the benefits this platform offers that quite a few people seem to ignore.
But why should you do that? Let’s look at the major reasons why creating a free course on Teachable is a great idea and why some would argue that Teachable is the best online course platform!
To Offer Something Others Do Not
Many people believe that you must charge a fee for your course.
However, if you’re a newbie when it comes to course creation, you might wish to develop your first couple of courses for free.
This will introduce individuals to your business and provide you with an opportunity to come out on top of others that you might not have been able to do otherwise since you have yet to establish your brand.
If your competition is developing paid courses, design a comparable course and start promoting it for free for some time. (See also ‘Teachable Alternatives You Should Know About.’)
Even though this will not compel all the students to check your course, it will attract many of them. Therefore, at first, do what isn’t being done by anyone else and do it for free.
You can certainly start charging for the course in the future, but while you are still fresh to the game, use free courses to your advantage to attract new customers.
To Increase Your Students Base
A further great motive to offer your course for free is to increase the number of students taking it.
Teachable is awesome as it provides you with access to your students, and so if you create online courses and offer a course to them for free, it is very likely that they will pay to sign up for the next one.
This also indicates that when you try to promote your future courses, they will recognize you from the free course of yours they joined and be more inclined to join your newest ones.
If you reach the point where you have a big customer base, you will be able to offer bigger courses that will end up making you a bigger profit in the long run as a result of that extended list of unlimited students who sign up for your content.
To Create Affiliate Products
However, the fact that you are offering your course and not charging students when accessing it should not prevent you from generating revenue from it in other ways.
One way to do that is by selling affiliate products within your courses, but only whenever that is related to something you are talking about or mentioned in the course.
You can, for instance, offer a free course explaining how to start a YouTube channel and create your first content.
In this case, you can promote any type of product relevant to that like cameras, microphones, ring lights with tripod stands, and other pieces of equipment that are relevant to video shooting.
As you discuss these aspects of video shooting in your course, you can advise your students to purchase a microphone or ring light from a particular brand or direct them to a specific model and provide them with your affiliate links.
These links will redirect them to the official products’ pages where they can continue with the purchase from which you will receive your affiliate commission.
One thing to keep in mind here is that you need to make sure that promoting their merchandise in your courses or on Teachable, in general, does not violate the affiliate program’s policies and guidelines.
So, if you’re planning a free course, make sure that your affiliate products can be promoted in it.
Once you’re certain you can promote them, revisit your course and its parts to figure out where it’s relevant to promote them.
To Encourage People To Buy A Different Course
Another advantage of offering free courses is that you can sell more courses through them to the people who join them.
Teachable has been offering this function for a great many years, and you could capitalize on it to attract more students and buyers.
So, say that you offer the same course we previously mentioned: How To Start A YouTube Channel.
As the new students are signing up for free, you can upsell them another course of yours on video production that originally cost $100 but is 50% off for a short time due to their sign-up to your free course.
This provides you with an excellent chance to increase your student base while also generating some revenue by increasing course sales.
How Can I Create A Free Course On Teachable?
So, now that we’ve established why generating free courses is so important, you may also be curious to know how you can accomplish this using Teachable.
Start Creating A Course On The Platform
To begin with, you need to start by creating a Teachable course.
You can do that by signing up for your free account on the online course creation platform and following the steps involved in this process.
One important piece of advice for building a free course is to keep it simple.
You wouldn’t want your free course to be this massive collection of everything you know.
Rather than sharing all your knowledge, consider teaching something simple that everybody else should be familiar with.
For instance, suppose your subject matter revolves around content writing.
You should not build a complete guide to content writing with every single aspect of how to master it but rather give them a 101 presentation of the basics and perhaps some tips and tricks.
Think About The Selling Point And Your Prospective Students
So, what is it that you can offer in a free course and how can you sum that up in a short overview?
To write a perfect summary and find the selling point of your course, you need to think about who you are selling it to and not what your course consists of.
Don’t focus on your course’s five clips and endless sources offered for free.
Discuss the specific perks they will receive as a result of taking your course.
Here are a couple of examples:
- Write your first successful article
- Optimize your content’s SEO rate
- Create better content in a shorter amount of time
When you provide these detailed examples of how people can benefit from your course, you will make it easier for prospective students to understand precisely what they will receive if they purchase your course.
So, spend some time creating 3-5 high-quality key points for your product page to gain people’s interest and make selling online courses easier.
Give Your Course A Title
The next step is to give your course a title.
It is critical to name your courses and that title/name should state what your course is about and who it is intended for.
Three steps are required to give a name to your course:
Your Course’s Name Should Indicate Its Goal
For instance, suppose you want to build a content writing course. Your course could be called Content Writing: The Basics.
That sounds fine, but it does not really describe what your students will gain from taking this course.
Therefore, you need to consider the common issues or challenges that your students are experiencing when it comes to writing content.
We often assume that we understand what those who take our courses want, but we ought to conduct further research.
After conducting a little research, you could discover that what your students truly desire is to understand how to write better content in a shorter amount of time.
Furthermore, they also want to optimize their articles for SEO to rank higher on search engine pages.
So, those are the key points that can sell your course to them and the ones you need to use.
You Should Make Your Target Market Clear
Moreover, you should figure out and make clear who your core demographic is.
One of the most popular and certainly false assumptions is that you need a large audience.
However, the truth is that if you don’t identify a particular target audience, you will make it harder for yourself to find those key points that will better sell your course as you won’t be able to tell who you are selling it to and what those people’s needs are.
Going back to our content writing course example, you should narrow down your target market to people who are new to content writing.
Put Everything Together
Finally, you’ll want to put everything together.
So, you want to design a course that will make you look like an expert content writer who can nail their articles, even if you have only written a handful of them.
So, names like “Content Writing 101,” “Learn The Basics Of Content Writing” and other similar names can work effectively.
Develop Your Course Curriculum
Once you have finished with the above tasks it is time to develop your course curriculum and teaching plan.
Many people prefer to produce a complete outline before starting to work on the other details of your course on the platform, but you can also develop your outline in Teachable.
Given that you will be offering this course for free, Teachable allows you to only upload 3-5 videos.
Keep in mind that you are not seeking to tell them everything there is to know about your subject, but instead to provide them with a brief and relevant solution.
So, compile a list of 3 to 5 clips that provide a step-by-step guide to attaining your students’ intended result.
Make Your Course Available For Free
Now comes a crucial step, which is changing the price of your course and making it available for free. This is most likely one of the simplest steps to take.
To do so, head to the pricing tab in your free course and select “Add Pricing Plan.”
Select the “Free Pricing Plan” option and then you will be redirected to a new tab where you need to add the name of this plan, a short description, and then a detailed one.
Produce Your Course Content
After you’ve done the essentials, you can start working on your course’s content. Check out some pointers to assist you in creating content for your free Teachable course:
Keep It Brief
First of all, as previously stated, when offering your course for free, you can only include a maximum of 5 clips.
This is great for you as, either way, you don’t want to share everything with your students but rather provide them with valuable information and be brief.
This way you can make sure that a) your students will actually finish your course and b) you will have indirectly encouraged them to purchase your other paid courses to learn more from you.
And if you are wondering why your students wouldn’t finish your course, that is simply because when you are given something and you are not charged for it, you are unlikely to appreciate it in the same way you would if you had to pay for it.
Therefore, keep it brief but informative.
Keep Your Video Content Brief
Furthermore, try to keep your videos brief and to the point. Generally speaking, your free course should be no more than 15-30 minutes long. Again, this is not intended to be a lengthy course.
Avoid Creating Slides
Moreover, don’t be concerned with producing any slides and PowerPoint presentations. Simply record yourself discussing your subject and upload those videos.
It might come as a surprise to you, but this is the easiest and most effective way to provide great value while also wrapping up and producing your videos way quicker than you would if you were to prepare slides.
The only exception is when you have to create a screencast to demonstrate how a specific thing functions, or if you have to include text in your videos to split it into different sections and keep people on track.
Write A Brief Outline
Lastly, you should write a brief outline. Every bullet point must include a few words that will function as a reminder of things you need to discuss during your course.
This outline should not serve as a comprehensive outline of too many details; rather, it should include nothing but 3-5 key points in total.
Start Promoting Your Course
Once your course is ready and you can publish it on Teachable, the next thing you need to work on is promoting it.
However, since this is a free course, promoting it should be easier for you. Here are some ideas on how to effectively promote it:
Promote Your Course On Your Website
Consider your free course to be a lead magnet, attracting people to your teaching business and helping you win new students that will then buy your other paid courses.
Create an advertisement for your course and place it on your website in the navigation bar and under each one of your posts.
Promote Your Course On Your Social Media
Speaking of online ads, there is no better place to publish ads than on social media.
While publishing an ad for your free course on your website can have some people signing up for it, those will most likely be existing audiences of yours.
However, on social media, you can attract new audiences and people using, for example, Facebook Ads or Twitter Ads.
You can also post things on your business page and personal profile and ask people you know to share your post about your course with their friends.
Another great way to promote your free course for free is to join groups and publish a relevant post there.
However, do not just join random groups and post it there as you will most probably get banned.
Instead, search for groups using keywords like “online courses” and “free online courses” and let those group members know about your offer.
Furthermore, you can create a YouTube video that will act as an ad for your course and another one (or more) in which you can share some valuable tips and information.
These videos can serve as a “sneak peek” into your course material and attract more people to it.
Send Out A Newsletter
If you have been running your business for some time now, you most probably have a substantial subscriber list.
Even if it is not that big, you can still send out a newsletter to let them know that you are offering a free course that they can join.
This email can also include some other paid courses or present them with an upsell offer like “Sign up for my free course and get 50% off the paid course.” This is a great marketing tactic to help you sell online courses.
If you have that big list of subscribers, then make the most out of it and create an email marketing campaign that will consist of follow-up emails that you can send out on a daily or weekly basis.
The Bottom Line
We hope that this article has answered all the questions you had about Teachable’s business plan and whether or not you can create a course for free and even offer it for free to your students.
The answer to both is ‘yes,’ and both of these options are great for people who are new to the online course platform and want to give it a try but also for those who are not yet well-established and want to grow their audience base.
