What the most successful Teachable schools all have in common
Ever wonder what some of the most successful schools on Teachable have in common? We did the research for you. To do this, we looked at self-paced courses that have made between $400,000 and $1 million using Teachable. What we found is that many of these schools have similarities that you can implement with your own courses.
Successful course features
It takes more than simply applying each of the common successful course features below into your school to become one of these top earners. But, you can use this as a jumping-off point for what to include in your school and courses. Or as a guide to where to start if you’re new to Teachable. Keep in mind, we examined self-paced courses only for this research.
Multiformat course curriculum
We found that 90% of courses included video, PDF, and regular text components. The most successful courses out there included a mix of mediums to teach their students. You should focus on keeping the information in your courses bite-sized and digestible. Remember that while you’re the expert, your students might be completely new to the topic your course covers. This means too much information at once can feel overwhelming to them.
Break up the text-heavy courses by adding downloadable PDF worksheets or guides. Consider adding video instruction for some parts of your course too. The video format that works best for your course might vary depending on what you teach. But, get creative and consider a combination of screen recordings, timelapse videos, demonstration videos, or guided videos.
Being social
When it comes to using social media marketing there are some clear trends for the course creators behind some of the most successful schools. Of those top creators, more than 60% of them use Facebook and/or Instagram. YouTube follows closely with roughly 60% of creators using it. Interestingly, 10% of these top creators used no social media at all.
Take a look at your social media platforms and analyze where you have the strongest audience. Consider the follower count as well as the engagement you get on each platform. This can help you decide which platform, or platforms, to focus on.
Your social channels can be a great opportunity to generate a following to then market and promote your course to. And don’t underestimate the fact that social media is made to be shared, meaning your students should be able to easily refer your course to their friends and audiences too.
Our guide to using social media to sell your online course is designed to help you no matter where you are in your course creator journey.
Monetizing other assets
For the top course creators, their business is based on selling more than courses alone. Monetizing other products helps them some of the most successful creators on Teachable. Roughly 95% of the top creators also offer a coaching product. You can bundle your coaching services with your course too to offer your students the same valuable experience at a slightly lower price to incentivize them.
About 65% offer downloadables to their students as additional assets. These downloadables can include worksheets, mini courses, ebooks, and anything else you could gatekeep or include as order bumps or supplemental learning material.
Think of all the content you give to your students for free. You could monetize a portion of it to increase your GMV. Newsletters, communities, events, merch, ebook, podcasts, and more can all be sold as add-ons to your courses.
Before giving away a piece of content for free, ask yourself whether it’s more valuable than that. If you’re creating valuable content, share it and sell it as such.
Using Teachable features
Utilizing Teachable features is another common move some of the most successful course creators do. Of the high GMV earning courses we looked at, 36% more of them took advantage of the bundles feature. Make it easy for your students to combine your courses, or your courses with a PDF, or any other asset you might have made available.
In addition to using bundles, 37% more of the most successful courses used the affiliates program. This means they helped to refer other creators to Teachable and got a commission for it.
Another of these successful course features? 25% more of the most successful creators took advantage of the custom domain feature. Creating your own domain to fit your branding can go a long way in helping to establish your courses.
How to become one of the most successful courses
Becoming one of the most successful schools on Teachable won’t happen overnight, but with a little hard work and some effort, you can get there. Now you know how to model your courses after some of the most successful schools and courses on Teachable. They all have some commonalities that you can implement too. There’s no reason you can’t use a combination of formats for your course materials, get active on social media, monetize your other assets and take advantage of the Teachable features. Start slowly by working to implement one of these successful strategies at a time. Then work your way up to them all and see your success increase!