I don't sell courses myself but our clients do (SAAS LMS business). I can give you some tips:
- There are lot of online course sellers these days. A lot of the content is mediocre and not worth paying for especially when you can find tons of free stuff on youtube, google etc these days. So you need to create real quality content of tremendous value.
- Don't do broad courses. Pick a niche. Specific niche. Don't teach programming languages. Teach Python (for example).
- Marketing. marketing. marketing. If you canot market your courses, you won't do much. You need to think about this.
- Plenty of good platforms to start with. Look at teachable, thinkific, learnworld, podia and a few others. The problem with these platforms is that you have to figure out marketing yourself even though they give you a more branded platform (your own logo, website etc). You may be better off starting with a marketplace platform like udemy.com where you are just a number like others but you may be able to get a few eyeballs on your courses (even though udemy courses are too cheap mostly for my liking and I feel like authors are forced to heavily discount).
- Did I say figure out your marketing strategy/tactics ? If you have no idea, you need to think about it. If you build it, they won't come but you already know that.
- Don't create long content (e.g. a 45 min single video). Better to create smaller consumable content (split that 45 min video into 3-4 10-15 min videos). Student attention span for online content/courses is too short.
- Create a feedback system and ask your students if your courses helped them. Offer tons of free resources.
- Do tons of content marketing. Best way to gain audience especially for online courses.
- Setup Upsell by offering FREE courses and then provide premium content. This will work if your content is good quality.
Good luck!!