How to build an Udemy-like website?

If you have ever thought of enrolling in an online course or selling one, the first thing that comes to your mind is an eLearning platform like Udemy. With education getting more expensive and demanding dedicated time, more people turn to online learning to obtain knowledge and master skills. If you are an entrepreneur brainstorming about how to create an online education website like Udemy, this blog is the right resource for you to know about the ins and outs of starting your learning site. Before getting into the core subject, let’s learn about Udemy and how it works.

What is Udemy?

Udemy is one of the largest eLearning platforms globally that creates an environment for educators to sell their courses and individuals to gain knowledge from the comforts of their home. It is a Massive open online course (M.O.O.C) platform that allows creators to design their online course with pre-approved templates and sell it on the website. Udemy provides the entire system to create an online course quickly and provide an incredible eLearning experience to a global audience.

Udemy allows anyone to create paid courses, and it’s pretty easy to get started and make money. Your online courses will be presented with the courses of other educators to a wide global audience. Udemy offers 50% of the revenue earned from course sales is made through Udemy. Whereas, course creators get 97% of the revenue if they make unique sales with the Udemy course link.

Building an eLearning platform like Udemy

Follow the step-by-step guide to create your own Udemy Website.

Decide a niche

Once you have decided to build a website like Udemy, think about the type of course you would be hosting on your eLearning platform. Are you planning to host courses on a specific niche or a wide range of subjects? While both choices will attract students to your platform, the latter will bring in more learners and much profit. Making your eLearning platform specialized will also increase the effectiveness of user engagement. Choose niche specialization based on the demand of your target audience.

Strategize UI/UX

The main factor that goes behind the success of an eLearning platform after the content is its UI/UX design. The ease of use and convenience with which the learners can navigate the eLearning platform significantly influences whether they would continue using the site. Hence, when designing your eLearning website, ensure that you keep the following points in mind.

• Simple and user friendly
  When it comes to attracting learners of all types, a simple and user-friendly platform wins rather than a platform with complex and inconsistent architecture. When building your Udemy like website, make sure you integrate a simple layout, easy-to-use navigation, and user-friendly interface. Use consistent colors and themes throughout the site as well.
• Visual appeal
  The visual appeal of your eLearning platform is one of the important factors you must consider. Use attractive images, animations, videos, and illustrations to make your eLearning platform attractive and interesting to your users.

Choose the business model

The main goal behind thinking about how to create an online education website like Udemy is to make income out of it along with helping the learners in need. When learners benefit from your eLearning platform, you must also get compensated for offering the services. To define how you are going to make money from your Udemy like website, you must choose the right business model.
Let’s see some of the effective methods to make money from your eLearning platform.

• Paid courses
  When selling online courses, you can divide them into free and paid courses. Make the primary courses free and the advanced ones paid. You can also create special learning resources that can be accessed for a one-time fee or monthly subscription.
• Paid certificates
  Some eLearning platforms allow students to complete the course for free. If they want to get a certificate, they need to pay to obtain it. If the course is of great value, learners would be definitely willing to purchase the certificate. And the idea of free education will bring in more students as well.
• Sales commissions
  Udemy makes money from commissions on sales made by course creators. If you are allowing educators to sell online courses on your website, you can take a commission from each successful sale. You can set up payment gateways on your eLearning platform to support monetary transactions on your site.
• Corporate learning
  It is common for enterprises to provide training to their employees and staff, and they rely on eLearning platforms like Udemy. Udemy offers relevant tools and resources that are essential for corporate learning. In fact, Udemy has expanded this service as a separate platform called Udemy business, an exclusive workplace learning solution. Business wire states that Udemy Business has scaled from $1 million to $100 million annually in a span of 5 years.
  

Select the functionality

When creating a Udemy like website, look for the essential features of popular eLearning platforms that effortlessly sell and buy courses. Here are the core features of the eLearning platform to consider.

• Authentication
  Allow users to register to your eLearning site most easily. Users must be able to sign up using emails and social logins as well. 
• User profile
  Depending on the type of users on the eLearning platform, there can be different user profiles like students, teachers, and admin.
• Course creation
  Integrate tools that allow tutors to create a course, add text, images, videos, slides, assignments, quizzes, practice tests, etc.
• Dashboard
  Teachers must have access to the dashboard to track the activities and details about course enrolments and related insights.
  
• Course enrolment
  Learners must be able to purchase and access the courses they choose. The access can either be offered for free or after paying for a course. All enrolments must be accessible from the list of courses in the profile.
• Payment system integration
  Integrate payment gateways to facilitate secure monetary transactions in your eLearning platform. Offer a couple of payment gateways commonly used by online users.
• Admin
  Admin manages both content and users on the eLearning site. Admin can assign user roles, add and manage users, generate statistics reports, add, edit, or remove courses, change the subscription plan, manage notifications, etc.
• Notifications
  Notifications inform your users about newly released online courses, recommendations about similar courses, etc., by emails or web notifications.

Creating the eLearning website

Creating an eLearning platform like Udemy is much helpful for the new generation of students who conveniently access education. There are several ways to build your own Udemy-like website, and the most efficient and cost-effective approach is to use a make it like white-label solution like Pinlearn. White label solutions or clone scripts make it a lot for you to build an eLearning platform like Udemy with the exact same features and the unique customizations you require.

Conclusion

Easy and convenient access to education is a necessity these days, and eLearning platforms are a saving grace to learners who prefer to study productively from the comfort of their homes. The opportunity to gain knowledge or master skills has never been this easy, especially in the times of the covid-19 pandemic. Hence, it is the right time to develop an eLearning platform to join the lucrative online learning market.