How three creators used online live class platforms to share knowledge, run a business, and be successful at it.
In the last few years, the world has transitioned – in more ways than one. In 2020, unemployment was at a record high in the U.S. alone; the unemployment rate increased from 3.8% in February 2020 to 13.0% in May 2020. Many professionals needed to move to an online space to ensure they could maintain an income at the end of each month.
The pandemic prompted people to start working and living at home. They had to use digital channels to do things (such as fitness classes) online instead of at a traditional studio. This meant that instructors and creators had to start teaching online, too. Something rare and unique for many out there.
Online live class platforms were the answer for many teachers and creators globally. It formed a pathway to earning recurring revenue from home, allowing freelancers to reach a wide audience and help students easily access their content.
This is how many fitness instructors, musicians, life coaches, gardeners, painters, etc., started earning money during a time of change. The inspiring part of the story is that most of these creators are still teaching online. They’re making steady and recurring revenue from their classes, and best of all, they’re running their entire business via an online live class platform.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how best to run a business with online teaching software and review some success stories of other entrepreneurs who did it right.
Online Live Class Platforms: An Overview
As you can see, online learning, also known as e-learning, has made education and knowledge sharing so much more accessible to students worldwide. Its popularity is evident in the numbers:
- The e-learning market in the U.S. is expected to grow by an astonishing $12.81 billion between the years 2020 and 2024.
- The global e-learning market is projected to reach $325 billion by 2025.
- 8 out of 10 adult learners are actively interested in pursuing online learning.
The popularity of online learning brought about the creation of many teaching platforms out there. An online live class platform offers instructors the convenience of practicing classroom training in the comfort of their own homes or desired teaching environment.
Within online learning, live streaming is a beneficial technology for teachers. It’s another tool that has become prevalent globally; The live streaming industry is projected to hit $184.3 billion by 2027.
Video streaming allows students to interact with teachers in real-time and feels very close to a classroom – just that this one is virtual as opposed to in-person. As online live class platforms evolve, entrepreneurs can do much more than just live streaming on the software. Nowadays, you can run your entire company on the platform – making your business operations more secure and easier to manage.
Let’s review how you can best run a successful business on a single, all-in-one teaching platform.
How to Run a Business on an Online Live Class Platform
1. Build your online courses
Online live class platforms allow you to live stream classes, but you can also build courses for students. These courses can be on-demand content that is accessed once a student pays a once-off or recurring fee to you. (You can choose what type of payment plan you wish to offer learners.) Some teachers enjoy building varied tiers of courses such as beginner, intermediate, and expert. You can also choose to create different courses for varied topics you teach.
2. Maintain your content
Premium online teaching platforms help you upload a variety of content types and load them into specific courses. You can make this content accessible to particular clients and categorize content as you wish. Some platforms also allow you to bulk upload videos from your device directly onto the software.
3. Make use of your built-in website
Generally, teaching platforms charge you a monthly fee to use their software. As part of your package, you get a single-page or multi-page website included with it. This is designed to help you build a site with your personal information, teaching offers, contact details, and testimonials. This is an excellent addition because it removes the need for you to pay a third-party entity like Squarespace or WordPress for a website.
4. Schedule and book appointments with students
Live classes are favored because of their high level of interactivity. But live classes mean a lot of time spent sorting diaries and booking appointments with students. Offering individual and group training can make scheduling appointments even trickier. But with a live class platform, you can book time using a calendar embedded in the platform. This way, time management is done seamlessly and on the same platform as everything else. Here’s an example of Mastera’s calendar booking section within its dashboard:
5. Run your subscription plans
Subscription plans that you offer students will be the primary revenue stream for your business – so this functionality is of the utmost importance. Within the online live class platform, you’ll be able to build, view, and edit the various plans you offer. You can create plans according to learning levels, topics, or styles. Some instructors enjoy offering a standard monthly membership as well as some on-demand programs that can be bought by making a once-off payment.
6. Sell merchandise
This is an excellent addition to selling your online courses. Make use of the functionality where you are able to sell digital (and sometimes physical) products via your online live class platform. That’s right – you can offer students digital downloads and, on platforms like Mastera, sell merchandise with full eCommerce capabilities. This adds another revenue stream to your business and helps boost your brand awareness and capabilities.
7. Manage your clients
Client management in any business is absolutely key to your success. With live class software, you have a record of each and every client that you have as a member. You can track their membership types, what they’ve enrolled for, when they signed up, and when they opt out of using your services. This data is instrumental to your future success.
8. Converse with clients
The second part of client management is providing a solid experience to them. With chat features on live class platforms, you can create individual or group chats with students and use them to ask them how they feel about their progress and answer any questions they may have. It’s a great way to keep the conversation flowing and build strong customer relationships.
9. Review your results and adjust
As we just saw, client management is very valuable. But your live class platform should also provide you with reporting and analytics. In this section, you should be able to see how well your content is resonating with the clients, how long you can retain clients, and how much money you’re making on a monthly and annual basis. All the reporting data is ready for you, so all you have to do is pull a report and analyze it at regular intervals.
3 Entrepreneurs Who Run Their Business on Online Live Class Platforms Right
Sam Wood: Online Fitness Instructor and Founder of 28 by Sam Wood
Image Source: Smart Company
Sam Wood is the founder of 28 by Sam Wood, an online fitness course program that is designed to make people fitter, healthier, and happier. Sam has been working in gyms for over 20 years now, and is passionate about the fitness industry.
Sam decided to launch an online course to help more people looking for assistance with their health and nutrition. The result? He was able to do this as well as scale his business exponentially.
The online course program helped Sam get new clients and also allowed him to offer subscription upgrades to clients. He was also able to do product partnerships to boost his revenue.
Interestingly, Sam ensured that he put considerable effort into aiming to “understand the web and app aspect” of the online business. Sam also mentioned that he needed a deep understanding of paid digital marketing to run ads and get more prospective students to his site.
Sam’s online fitness business grew exponentially, and before he knew it, he had to employ industry experts to be able to maintain that business growth.
He shared that he believes people who haven’t started online teaching should “just go for it” and embrace it. Knowledge in digital marketing is a must, and understanding the data you’re capturing on a daily basis must be put to good use. There is power in numbers and tracking your customer interaction early on is imperative. Sam also shared that calculating the cost of acquiring a new customer, what your customers are doing with your products, and the lifetime value of a customer are all important metrics. These metrics allow you to evolve and stay ahead of the competition.
Leah Brathwaite: Bestselling Author, Mindset Coach, and Founder of the LIVE FREE Lifestyle™
Image Source: Leah Brathwaite
Say hello to Leah, a Soul Advisor, mindset coach, and bestselling author. Leah teaches women how to create a life they love by seeking and aligning their deepest truth. She helps women who are seeking their purpose and who feel lost or stuck where they are right now.
Leah’s messaging is all about “living free” and allowing others to explore the possibilities of what their life could be. She started this business because the feeling of being “trapped in a life” that doesn’t seem to feel good or work well is exactly what she went through six years ago.
Leah had bought the perfect home with her husband and thought life was bliss. And it was looking from the outside, but not she experienced much anxiety and unhappiness. Leah focused on getting out of feeling this way by using a formulated plan of admitting, acknowledging, aligning, and accelerating. Her journey took her through depression, disability, and divorce, and she has now focused on “rebuilding [her] life from scratch at age 30.”
Today, Leah uses her own experience to guide others to find their life’s purpose using online teaching and coaching techniques. Through her courses, writing, and coaching, Leah combines energetics, spirituality, and mindset reprogramming to help her clients uncover hidden potential and create a vision for their lives.
Leah offers a 12-week journey via LIVE FREE Lifestyle™ that helps build confidence, courage and transform lives. She also offers some free meditation worksheets on her website. Online courses have allowed her to rapidly access a broader audience and boost her business.
Ryan Hassan: Therapist and Founder of The Center for Healing
Image Source: LinkedIn
Ryan is a therapist and the founder of The Center for Healing. He wanted to start helping others overcome their mental illness and addiction issues because he went through something very similar himself.
In the past, Ryan suffered from severe anxiety for many years. This anxiety caused much disruption in his life and culminated in drug addiction. Ryan says that as much as the addiction was the worst thing that has ever happened to him, it was also a blessing in disguise because it forced him to face his mental and emotional fears.
Ryan overcame the addiction and his anxiety and felt peace for the very first time. This led him to believe in helping others who were going through the same issues that he did. He saw the value in getting help from an outsider. Today, he completely immerses himself in assisting others in need.
Ryan opened The Center of Healing in Melbourne. He started looking at online courses to reach a wider audience. He began with some courses via Udemy and later moved on to using a more fully-fledged online live class platform. Ryan runs paid digital advertising on Facebook, and he also puts a lot of effort into organic marketing on email and social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
He says that online courses have allowed him to reach so many more people beyond Melbourne. Ryan has clients all over the world and creates courses based on what his clients are asking for. He also has an accompanying private Facebook group for his clients, which is thriving. This sense of community helps the healing process.
Ryan believes that starting an online course is all about teaching a niche. The process of building this course will be the greatest learning experience for you.
Mastera: A Holistic Online Live Class Platform for Your Business
Running a business seems daunting – there are a million things to remember and only so much time to complete them. But if you look at Sam, Leah, and Ryan, there’s no doubt that many creators and instructors worldwide have found a winning formula.
The secret ingredient is an online live class platform. We’ve looked at just how much you can achieve with a platform like this. It’s beyond the capabilities of a single social media channel such as Facebook or YouTube. Online course platforms let you build and host courses, sell merchandise, live stream, create subscription plans, and generate reports (to mention a few features.) Of course, not all online teaching platforms have the same functionality, and not all of them cost the same either.
But when you look for the best online live class platforms out there, consider a few things:
- What is your monthly cost?
- How simple is the platform to set up?
- Is it scalable?
- Can you do the essentials on the platform?
If you have positive answers to these questions, chances are you’ve found a decent solution. For example, Mastera allows you to host unlimited videos and customers on a premium video experience platform. You can chat with customers, host live sessions, set up plans and reports, and even ship products via the software. The best part? It’s affordable!
Our experts are ready to help you with any questions you may have about our platform or live class platforms in general. Ready to get your business up and running on a live class platform? Chat with our team today.
Co-Founder, Gleantap & Mastera