Selling Your Course

If you've never created a course before, you may wonder how to go about actually collecting payments. The task of collecting payments, processing orders, and granting access to a course can seem cumbersome and time-consuming. However, with Zippy Courses, payment integration is included as part of your course. 

You can create Products from within Zippy Courses, and easily share these sales links with your customers. If a customer purchases using one of these links, they will create an account, submit their payment, and get access to your course - all without you lifting a finger.

How Products Work

Zippy Courses uses the concept of "Products" for selling courses. Each Product has its own unique Product URL which looks like yoursite.com/product/<your-product>. That is the link that you share with your potential customers who want to buy a course.

When customers visit the Product URL, they will see the description and Buy button for the Pricing Option. Clicking the Buy button will bring the customer to the checkout page for the payment processor. The customer then receives instructions to login or register to claim the Course that was just purchased. Once logged in the customer, now a student, will find his/her course on the Dashboard page.

A Sample Buy Page

In the example above, we see a Buy page in the Zippy Courses theme. The Featured Image is displayed above the optional Product description. Below that is the Product table with the Prodyct name and the Buy button.

A student's purchase process can be summarized in five steps:

  1. The student visits your Purchase URL
  2. The student clicks your Buy button
  3. The student enters their payment information.
  4. Your Zippy Courses site directs the student to a thank you page, where they can create or log in to an existing account.
  5. Once their account is created, the student accesses your course from the dashboard.

Creating Products

To begin creating a product, you must already have at least one course created. When your course is ready to sell, select Products under the Zippy Courses menu.

Then, select Add New to create a new product

Enter the description of your product in the main editor window. This is a great place to tell your students what is included in your product, including any courses, forums, or other on-site content.

Then, set your Pricing information. For free products, you can set your product to Free, or you can set up a single payment, payment plan, or subscription model.

Finally, make sure you set a specific course or set of courses that your students can access. At lease one Course/Tier combination needs to be included in your product in order for your product to be sold.

Set both a Course and a Tier in the Access panel, or your customers will not gain access to the course materials after purchase.

If you check Include multiple courses and tiers in this product, you are able to add more than one course to a product.

Tip: You can update the products associated with a course at any time. Changes to these products will affect all students who have already purchased this product.Now that the Pricing Option is enabled and published, you may share it's Purchase URL with your customers.

Publicly display Products

By default, your Course page and its Products are hidden from the public. To allow non-students to view the Course page and buy the course, you must make the course public, and display your pricing options in your course directory.  Learn more about the Course Directory.

First, go to the Public Details tab of your course editor and select Make this Course publicly visible and available in the Course Directory.

Then, you will be able to set some course-directory specific settings to determine what to display in your site.  For a full breakdown of these options, see this guide on creating your course directory.

Discounts and Free Courses

Zippy Courses does not make use of discount codes or coupons. To give your customers a discount, create a new Product with a different price. As long as you do not choose to show the Product in the Course Directory, no one else will be able to discover the discounted Pricing Option URL.