5 Leveraged Income Ideas for Online Course Creators

Creating and selling an online course is a fantastic way to generate recurring, leveraged income for your business. But is it the only way?

If your primary focus is to create online courses, you will love these ideas to earn extra income every month.

Today's article will show you five ideas to generate additional leveraged income aside from selling online courses.

Before we dive into it, it is important that we specify what we mean by leveraged income.

With leveraged income, the time and effort you put into your business will provide exponential earnings. In other words, with leveraged income, the work you put in once generates recurring profits.

A similar concept is what many people refer to as "passive income": the idea that very little work can guarantee a lifetime of recurring revenue.

While this may be true in some lucky cases, generally, any profitable business requires a lot of work and constant development.

On the other hand, leveraged income describes a scenario where the amount of time you spend working is not directly related to the result and the profits you can achieve. So the effort you put in once can generate recurring, long-lasting - but not infinite - profits.

You are already generating leveraged income if you are an online course creator. Let's see other ideas you can use to create multiple leveraged income streams for your online business!

Sell Digital Products

As you already know, digital products include any product or good that can only be accessed in a digital form. Online courses, eBooks, worksheets, videos, podcasts and so on - are all examples of digital products.

Selling these products is a great idea to generate leveraged income, especially if you plan to sell digital products alongside your online courses.

With Heights Platform, you can automate the whole process: all you need to do is upload your product and set a price. Now your students will be able to see your extra digital products and purchase them right from your platform.

There are so many different types of digital products to choose from, and they can be adapted to any niche! We wrote a whole article about this in our blog: 9 Profitable Digital Product Ideas You Can Start Selling Online To Earn Extra Income if you need some inspiration.

Create a Membership Site

A membership site is another example of an idea to gain recurring leveraged income, however, compared to more simple digital products like an eBook, it takes more time and effort to create.

Memberships are gated sites that include members-only content: students pay a monthly or annual fee in order to access the content inside the membership.

What is the difference between an online course and a membership site? Courses that focus on a topic that requires a longer time for students to learn, or that students have to access on a weekly or monthly basis are a great fit for a membership site. Examples of this include fitness classes, health, beauty, continuous learning, language, etc.

Membership sites are another great way to reach leveraged recurring income, as you will receive monthly payments from your students.

Heights Platform makes it super easy to create and run a membership site: you can set your monthly price, limit students' access, upload your content and structure your program the way you want.

Set Up a Private Community

An online community is a group of people who share common interests and gather in a virtual space to exchange opinions, new ideas and interact with each other.

You could build an online community linked to your online course business. This is a fantastic idea to boost engagement, collect customers' feedback and interact with them.

To create an additional leveraged income stream with your private community, you can set a small monthly price for members to access the shared space.

Members of a private, paid community are given log-in information to access the forum or discussion space.

If you are using Heights Platform, you can easily build a community around your online course or membership site: from built-in gamification tools to discussion boards, your online course students can share ideas and inspirations without leaving your program.

Leverage Affiliate Marketing

If you have a large following and a dedicated audience online, affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to create a recurring income stream. Today almost every company offers an affiliate program, so you can pick and choose which brand to promote according to your liking.

With affiliate marketing, you promote a brand or a product for a share of the sale. The best affiliate programs to create leveraged income are those that offer recurring payout from subscriptions. For example, Heights Platform's affiliate program offers a 30% commission, and since our customers pay us a monthly or annual fee to use the platform, our affiliates also keep receiving recurring payouts.

Before you get started with affiliate marketing, check out this article from our blog to learn all about it: A Complete Guide on How to Launch an Affiliate Program to Promote Your Online Course.

Start a Blog

Another idea to generate a leveraged income stream is by running a blog. Blogging has helped countless entrepreneurs earn recurring income by creating exposure to promote their affiliate links, online courses, digital products, sponsored content, etc.

Blogging by itself will help you increase your website visitors, create an audience and promote your products, but it will not automatically generate income for you. However, if your blog becomes popular enough, you can use it to promote your paid offerings, affiliate links or sponsored ads and therefore earn leveraged income.

Building a successful blog will take time and constant effort. However, blogging is considered one of the most sustainable ways to generate an audience through organic traffic.

Heights Platform lets you create and run a fully functional blog, completely built into your program, so you can write blog articles and promote your online course at the same time!

Conclusion

Online courses are a great way to generate leveraged, recurring income for your business. But this is not the only way. As a creator, there are many opportunities to develop and come up with new ideas for leveraged income streams.

You can sell digital products alongside your online course, such as eBooks, guides, templates, videos, worksheets etc... Creating a membership site where students pay a monthly fee to access your content, is an even more powerful way to earn recurring income.

Other ways include setting up a paid community, becoming an affiliate marketer and starting a blog.

All of these strategies can be easily implemented by using Heights Platform as your online course creation software.