Life as we know it has been changed forever. Social distancing is here to stay. People are talking about avoiding crowds and public places in the coming year.
Every company and business strives to connect. But building a website is no easy task, especially if you are a solo entrepreneur.
Lots of freelance instructors and teachers in various verticals: dance, martial arts, yoga, music, therapy, exercise and fitness , and many others, face this problem of taking their classes online.
If you are an independent entrepreneur struggling to overcome Corona and create some semblance of normalcy for your online classes, here is how you can do it: in less than $450.
Building an eLearning website typically costs more than $1,200, minimum. However, we understand that you may not have that investment capital yet.
So, we’ll look at all the must-haves you’ll need to set up your training website, on a budget.
Now, let’s take a detailed look at how these costs are distributed.
How to create an online training website?
# 1 Prepare your hosting and domain
There are three things you need to start building your online training website:
- A unique domain name: this will be your digital address as ‘www.wisdmlabs.com’ is ours. Choose a recognizable domain name, for example ‘www.yourbusinessname.com’, which your audience will easily recognize, is in line with the type of website you want to set up, and is memorable.
- A hosting plan – This is the home of your website, where all your courses and website content will be stored in the cloud.
- An SSL certificate – This is a security certificate to ensure that your website is seen as trustworthy by your customers. Having an SSL certificate is a must if you want to set up payments on your website. Since we plan to do it for our training platform, you will need to obtain the SSL certificate.
There are several great hosting providers like BlueHost, WP Engine, SiteGround, HostGator that have great hosting plans for beginners and independent business owners.
Choose a hosting plan Hosting is a matter of deep consideration because it is going to be the foundation of your website. For the uninitiated, there are several types of hosting available such as free, shared, dedicated, VPS and managed hosting, progressively moving towards enterprise plans.
Since we are just starting a small website, shared hosting is a good option.
We recommend BlueHost, which has hosting plans starting as low as $2.66/mo.
Also, since we chose to build our website on WordPress (more on that later), BlueHost is a great option as it includes a free domain name and website security certificate for one year. .
You can add your unique domain name when you purchase your hosting plan and then proceed to set up your website platform.
Total Cost of Hosting SSL Certificate domain = $2.66*12 = ~$40.
#2 Choose a Platform to Build Your Website
Now that you have the basics to set up your online training website , it’s time to choose the platform to build it on.
There are several ways to do it. You can choose,
- A managed website development platform like Wix or WordPress.com
- SaaS platforms like Teachable or Thinkific
- A standalone platform Open Source Content Management System like WordPress.org or Moodle
While platforms like Wix or Teachable can help you get your website up and running fairly quickly, they have the inherent drawback that once you have your website on the platform, it’s very hard to walk away.
You’re limited by the features available on the platform, scaling your website can get expensive quickly, and there’s no scope to make changes freelancers on your site. You have to stick to their templates, design, and features, making your website one of many similar-looking websites out there.
Therefore, we recommend WordPress.org.
WordPress is a popular, easy-to-use, open-source CMS platform that allows you to create your own website and customize it to your liking, even with little to no coding knowledge.
To give you some context, here is a stat WordPress powers 36.88% of the top 1 million websites in the world.
Reputable organizations such as Harvard Gazette, Bloomberg, The New Yorker, BBC America, Microsoft News Center, Vogue India and personalities such as Beyonce, Katy Perry, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones and many others.
In addition, WordPress, unlike the other platforms, is completely free.
Hosting providers like BlueHost even have dedicated hosting plans exclusively for WordPress websites, making it a breeze to set up your online training platform!
WordPress cost = $0
#3 Select a learning management system
With WordPress as the platform of choice for your site Online training web, a world of learning management system options opens before you. WordPress has over 8 different LMS plugins that can be used to set up a training website.
Of these, we recommend LearnDash.
LearnDash is a complete LMS plugin that has all the features you will need in your online training platform. This includes extensive course creation options, lessons you can create for your different training modules, video integrations for live and recorded sessions, even quiz options if you need to take a test!
LearnDash is Trusted and recommended by some of the most popular websites in the world and the system is very easy to use, allowing you to set up your courses in a jiffy.
LearnDash pricing plans start at $159. If you want some additional administrative power, you can choose the Pro Panel-compatible version, which costs $189.
For your simple training website, however, the basic plugin should work well enough.
LearnDash cost = $159.
#4 Set up your website theme for online training
Every WordPress website needs a theme. This is the skin of your website; how it will look, work, and interact with your users all depends on the theme.
Now that you’ve decided to use LearnDash as your LMS plugin, you can install a LearnDash-compatible theme even before setting up the plugin upload. There are several great LearnDash training themes available on the market, each with its own set of features.
We recommend eLumine.
It is one of the fastest themes for LearnDash and has a lot of attractive course designs for students.
A real-time customizer helps you see changes to your site as you make them. Furthermore, it has distraction-free study modes like ‘Reading’ mode and ‘Night’ mode, RTL support and integrates well with other plugins that are necessary for your eLearning website.
eLumine also offers Neo layouts that greatly improve the look and aesthetics of LearnDash pages, creating a better UX and distraction-free design, which can significantly increase student engagement.
Some of the other popular themes for LearnDash include Astra, BuddyBoss for LearnDash.
Each of these themes has its own USP, so you can try comparing them to see which one best suits your requirements.
eLumine Cost = $100
eLumine LEAP Cost = $148
#5 Create all classes for your online training website
Now we are going to start with the mammoth task of creating courses.
The flexibility of having an online training website means you don’t need to create all the courses yourself, you have your instructors to manage it for you.
You can either skip creating courses altogether or create some on the topics related to your expertise.
Creating courses in LearnDash is quite easy.
There are four options you can use to add content (sections, lessons, topics, and quizzes) in a descending hierarchy. The drag-and-drop Course Builder helps you easily rearrange these elements, as well as visualize how they will look on the front-end in real time.
You can refer to this LMS setup guide for a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up courses, lessons, quizzes, assignments, and more.
#6 Integrate lectures into video and event creation (optional)
As an online training platform, live sessions and video lectures will be an integral part of your curriculum.
LearnDash integrates with popular video conferencing software like Zoom, to help you schedule and conduct live conferences for all your batches.
Zoom’s basic plan is free, as is than LearnDash-Zoom integration plugin, so here you have no additional investment cost.
Video Lectures Cost = $0.
For To run events, you need to set up a plugin like Event Espresso, which is a powerful way to create, organize, manage, and run events online.
Event Espresso also integrates with LearnDash, via an integration plugin. LearnDash-Event Espresso, so you can display your event within your course!
Event Espresso cost for event integration = $79.95
#7 Add your co-instructors
What’s a training platform without instructors, right?
Your instructors and teachers will be your biggest assets as you build your eLearning website; you need to make sure they have all the freedom they need to create and design great courses and efficiently manage their learners.
At the same time, you also need to have a modicum of control over the content being delivered . created, an eagle’s eye view if you will, so that you have a complete idea of what is happening on your platform.
Typically, LearnDash only allows administrators to create and manage courses. This means that you must create all courses yourself or make all your instructors admins.
Either case is not a viable option, as creating and managing all the courses yourself will be exhausting, and you also cannot afford to fully open your website to all your fellow instructors; that’s a huge potential security threat.
So what do you do? We recommend using the Instructor Role plugin for LearnDash.
The Instructor role is a plugin that allows you to set up instructors on your LearnDash website, that is, people who have the freedom to create and manage your own courses, from the front-end.
For example, let’s say you’re setting up an online dance academy. You can have multiple dance teachers as ‘Instructors’ on your platform, who can conduct their own classes, teach their students, and manage training sessions.
They can create and sell courses, enroll students, set up assignments and quizzes, and do everything a course author can do, except they can’t access the central website.
In addition, all content they create must be approved by you, the administrator, before it can be published online. This ensures that you have full control over the content that comes out at any time.
After you have added your instructors, you can set the commission they will earn, each time a student purchases your training module .
There may be a fixed amount or percentage commission for each sale. Commission settings give your online training platform a defined linear hierarchy and take the headache out of paying instructors yourself. You can simply automate payment and your instructors earn based on their course performance!
Version 3.5.0 onwards, WISDM Instructor Role includes a professional and customizable instructor profile page that can be used to Share all the necessary information about the instructors on your site. Instructors can use this space to add details like their photo, bio, experience, rating, courses created, grades, etc.
Profile pages give instructors credibility and help them showcase their personality. The profile page can also be used to share contact information.
This is one of the most crucial steps in creating your online training website.
Cost WISDM Instructor Role = $80
#8 Set Up Your Ecommerce Platform to Sell Your Training Programs
After creating your training sessions, you will need to sell the Premium on your website.
For this, you need a strong and flexible eCommerce plugin that has all the features you need to create your training course marketplace.
We recommend WooCommerce.
Not only is it the best eCommerce plugin for WordPress, but it also has excellent support and a great community. It’s easy to use, offers a lot in terms of functionality, and has about twenty developers who can help you build your ecommerce platform, should you need help.
Plus, it works seamlessly with LearnDash and it supports various payment gateway integrations, so you can collect payments with ease.
The best part is that WooCommerce is free, as are its integrations with Stripe and PayPal. Also, since Stripe and PayPal have no setup costs, you can get started for free.
WooCommerce payment gateway cost = $0.
#9 Create Home and Shop Pages for Your Online Training Website
When it comes to creating and selling courses, you need some dedicated pages on your online learning platform, such as
- The home page that will be the face of your website
- The registration and login page where students can log in to the course
- The store page where all your courses are listed
- The cart and checkout pages users need when purchasing and paying for courses courses
- A contact page where potential students can connect with you in case they have any questions
The layouts for most of these pages will usually be available at its theme by default, while eCommerce layouts are available in WooCommerce. (If you use eLumine, you have all the LearnDash and WooCommerce layouts ready at hand.)
You can customize these base templates to fit your brand’s style, or create entirely new ones to better suit your needs. needs. nice.
Summarizing,
This summarizes the main functionalities you need to set up your online training website.
Maintain however, please note that this is a very basic framework, addressing only the most essential requirements, to keep it on a tight budget.
Please note, however, that this process will suffice only for create a basic website and run. If you decide to customize it further, your development costs will increase.
Now, let’s calculate the total cost of building your training platform =
And that’s it! You have a WordPress powered online training website ready for less than $450!
If you need more details on exactly how to set up your LearnDash website, here’s a helpful guide you can refer to.
Also, feel free to leave a comment in case you have any questions. Or you can connect with us if you need us to set up this website for you.
In the meantime, happy building!
- LearnDash, WordPress solutions
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