When Should you Launch an Online Course?

So you have an idea for an online course, or maybe you already have a full course ready to go. When is the best time to launch?

If you are uncertain about choosing when is the best time for you to launch your brand new online course, you are in the right place.

Keep reading below to find out how to decide on the best possible time for your to launch an online course.

When Should You Launch Your Online Course?

If you do a quick search online for the best time to launch an online course, you'll see that many creators try to analyze different times of the year to find the sweet spot for their launches.

The truth is that the is no right and wrong time for you to launch an online course.

As long as you have a valuable course, an engaged audience and a solid marketing strategy, your launch can be a success at any time!

In other words, it doesn't matter when you launch your online course.

In fact, one of the biggest mistakes we see creators making is simply putting it off too long and never launching their courses. At Heights Platform we sell software for online course creators, so we can see our customers' success and mistakes.

Many creators - especially when they are just starting out - tend to get caught in the mindset that their course is not good enough.

For this reason, they spend months tweaking their content and trying to make their program perfect. Perfecting your online course is not a bad thing, however, waiting too long to launch can also have a negative effect on your sales.

Your audience is the best judge for your online course, as you are creating the course for them - not for you.

So why not let your audience help you build your online course? Your early customers can provide valuable feedback on your content and help you keep building a course that is right for them.

This is why the best time to launch your online course is as soon as you can. In other words, as soon as you have an idea for an online course and you created your outline, some lessons and maybe a few modules, it is time to quickly set up a landing page and let your audience decide if your course is worth pursuing. (In fact, it even makes sense for you and your potential students to presell your online course before you create any lessons! See link below.)

Related articles:

• How to Pre-Sell Your Online Course and Profit Before the Launch
• Selling Evergreen Online Courses Versus Scheduling Multiple Launches. Which is Better?

If you are too scared to launch right away, remember that you can always relaunch a few weeks later! This is the beauty of online courses: they offer you and your customers an enormous amount of flexibility to constantly improve and iterate on your content and marketing strategy. The journey of a creator is not one of launching a wildly successful product and stopping, it is constant improvements, tweaking, and growth in improving products overtime.

Launching an online course is not like opening a brick-and-mortar store or selling physical products: you get unlimited launch tries and you cannot run of out stock! So you get to test different launch strategies, collect feedback from your audience, try different online course structures and so on...

Each online course is different, there is no rule for when you should launch your online course or how to do it.

That said, depending on your audience, there might be a time of the year when launching can bring you the most results, let's see this below:

Launch Your Online Course According to Your Audience

There are some niches and audiences that might respond better to an online course launched at a certain time of the year.

So before you decide on when to launch, it is important that you analyze your audience and really understand your target market.

Who are your ideal customers? What do they do for a living? Do they have free time? When are they most online?

Answering these types of questions can help you figure out if there is a better time for you to launch your online course.

For example, if your target audience is teachers, you know that they are working generally from September to June, and have summer and winter holidays. So this might affect your launch date.

The topic of your online course is also worth analyzing. If your target audience is teachers, and your topic is "How to get ready for the next school year", the ideal time for you to launch can be in the late summer months before school starts.

Other audiences that may affect your launch strategy can be stay-at-home parents, students, seasonal professionals and so on.

Does the Time of the Year Affect Enrollment?

The time of the year can have an impact on your enrollment, but, as we said, this highly depends on factors such as your audience type and the topic of your online course.

For example, you might want to take into consideration that people are more willing to invest in themselves and try to change their habits at the beginning of a new year. So for instance health, fitness and self-improvement online courses can get better results around this time of the year.

But that doesn't mean that you should limit yourself to launching around New Year only. You could have a big launch at the beginning of the year and host other launches in the following months.

Another example is the holidays. You might think that during summer or winter holidays, people are less included to take on a new project and have less time available because of vacations, family etc...

This doesn't mean that your course won't be successful if you launch during the holidays. On the contrary, holidays are a time when people have more time to focus on themselves, so your launch could even be more profitable, especially by holding a Black Friday sale!

So there is no rule on when you should be launching your online course, it ultimately depends on your audience, topic, launch strategy and so on.

Our Takeaway

We believe that it doesn't matter when you launch your online course.

If you manage to secure an audience and engage with them, create a valuable online course and plan a robust marketing strategy, your launch will most likely be a successful one.

There are some exceptions: certain audience types might benefit you to launch during a specific time of the year, or your online course topic might be more suitable for one season or another.

However, our suggestion is to simply launch your online course and do not delay this process, even if your course is not perfect yet. By putting your online course out there you will validate your idea and gain valuable feedback from your audience that will help you improve your content and prepare for your next, bigger launch.