The Step-By-Step Guide To Making Money From Selling Online Courses

Forbes

09-04-2025

Kyle Scott
In 2019, Kyle Scott pitched a simple idea to celebrity real estate agent Ryan Serhant: turn his bestselling book Sell It Like Serhant into a course. Scott had never built a course before, but he understood something most creators miss—people don't buy information, they buy transformation. Two weeks after launch, the course had generated $500,000 in revenue. A few years later, the business was pulling in nearly $10 million a year from online education, coaching, and memberships.
Today, Scott is General Manager of High Growth Creators at Thinkific, where he helps creators and professionals turn their knowledge into real income. His message is clear: the tools have never been easier to use, but the business strategy still matters. 'The product isn't the hard part,' he told me. 'The hard part is structuring it, pricing it, creating demand for it. The hard part is building the business.'
If you're a content creator, subject-matter expert, or entrepreneur looking to generate meaningful revenue from online courses, this is the roadmap Scott recommends. It's not theory, it's the same strategy that turned one pitch into millions in sales.
The first and most important step isn't technical—it's mental. For many creators, the challenge is recognizing that they're not just making content. They're selling their expertise. That subtle shift changes everything.
Scott calls this the 'expert economy'—a growing segment of professionals who use content not to entertain, but to educate and convert. In his view, if you rely on social media for brand deals and AdSense revenue, you're in the creator economy. But if you use social media to drive attention to a product or service rooted in your expertise, you're in the expert economy. And it's the latter that offers long-term business potential.
This shift is particularly relevant in an AI-powered world. With tools like ChatGPT generating surface-level content at scale, those with real-world expertise stand out more than ever. 'You can't fake time and experience,' Scott explains. 'AI can give you buzzwords, but it can't do the work.'
One of the most common mistakes creators make is building a course around what they know, rather than what their audience wants to become. The distinction may seem subtle, but it makes all the difference.
People don't pay for content, they pay for outcomes. They want to lose weight, land a client, or get promoted. Creators who win in the course business understand that they're not selling information. They're selling a transformation.
Scott offers a simple framework: identify who the course is for, what it helps them do, and why that result matters to them. For example, a real estate course isn't just about selling homes, it's about making more money so agents can live the life they've always imagined. That emotional payoff is what drives purchase decisions.
Most new course creators underprice. Some fear charging too much. Others simply guess. But pricing is less about numbers and more about psychology.
Scott recommends launching with a high, medium, and low pricing tier. In his first course with real estate agent Ryan Serhant, they priced the base course at $499, bundled it with membership for a mid-tier option, and offered high-end coaching for nearly $10,000. Even if no one bought the premium tier (which they did, eight people purchased it in the first two weeks), it served as a signal of value.
The goal is to anchor your pricing and guide customers toward the middle. It's the same strategy used in SaaS, ecommerce, and car sales. As Scott puts it, 'Price only matters in the absence of value.'
A great course with no visibility will fail. That's why Scott spends so much time emphasizing the importance of marketing and positioning.
He argues that creators already have the hard part figured out, the content itself. The bigger challenge is building awareness. 'You could be the best spine surgeon in the world,' he says, 'but if no one knows about it, it doesn't matter.'
Creators should think of social media not as the business itself, but as their lead generation engine. Building an audience, sharing content, and telling your story are all prerequisites to launching a course.
Once you've built your audience and framed your transformation, the next step is to treat your course like a business. That means thinking in terms of funnels, sequences, and lifetime value.
Scott's approach involves clear pre-launch strategies: email waitlists, launch campaigns, ongoing nurture sequences, and value ladders that guide customers toward higher-priced products or services. Even if the course itself is $500, the business model is built on multiple revenue streams: coaching, memberships, templates, or speaking engagements.
That layered model helps balance customer acquisition costs (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV), the key metrics that separate sustainable course businesses from one-off successes. 'Three-to-one LTV to CAC is the gold standard,' Scott says. 'If you're hitting that, you can scale.'
Far from being a threat to online education, AI is becoming one of its biggest enablers. At Thinkific, AI now powers everything from sales page generation to course outlines, allowing creators to focus on what matters most, crafting a message and building trust.
For content planning, Scott favors Claude over ChatGPT and uses AI to write rough drafts for posts, emails, and even course copy. The trick, he says, is to treat it like a collaborator, not a replacement. 'AI gets you to v1. It saves time. But you still have to bring the perspective that only you have.'
Ironically, the final obstacle for most creators isn't tools or tactics, it's self-doubt.
Experts often underestimate themselves because they see complexity where others see clarity. Scott points to the 'Dunning-Kruger effect,' where true experts are more likely to question their competence simply because they know how much nuance exists.
But if you've spent years building a skill or career, you're likely far more qualified to teach than you think. 'To the kindergartner, the fifth grader is king,' Scott says. 'You only need to be a few steps ahead of someone to lead them.'
With digital tools, AI support, and platforms like Thinkific lowering the barrier to entry, there's never been a better moment to turn your expertise into income. The creator economy may be fueled by attention, but the expert economy is built on transformation. And it's only growing.
Whether you're a fitness coach, a lawyer, a marketer, or even a Harvard-trained spine surgeon, there's a market for your knowledge. But you have to treat it like a business. And the first step is just starting.
This article is based on an interview for The Business of Creators podcast.