How to start an online school?

Being an important sector, education is one of the industries that quickly adopt new technologies as soon as they appear. The online education market is already witnessing rapid growth due to simplified monetization, great demand, a bigger number of students, convenience, and for a lot better reasons.

The global education market is expected to reach $319 billion in 2025, witnessing a CAGR of 9.23%. The growth of online learning is a valid reason to build an online school, and it would be a revolutionary decision if you are an educator or a business in the education industry. But if you have a creative idea but are not sure where to start, this blog would guide you through the fundamentals of how to start online school.

Market research and competitor analysis

Your business idea of starting an online school with unique features and functionalities might be brilliant. But without deep market research, you won’t be able to confirm it. Performing market research and understanding your competitors will help you find your business’s strong and weak points. You can also validate whether your idea is already being used by someone else. If the idea already exists, you can see whether it is successful and what you can offer to add on to it.

Finding the target audience and latest trends

While you do your research, you can get valuable information on your audience and the current and future market trends as well. The variety of statics can give you valuable data on the preferences and expectations of your target audience. Identifying your target audience and their interests will help you develop a profitable online tutoring service.

Different ways of teaching your students

When it comes to delivering your classes to your students, there are different methods you can adopt. Here are some of the different techniques you can follow to deliver lessons to your students.

• Live online classes

If you want to establish your online class as an educational platform that holds classes in real-time mode, you can primarily follow this mode of teaching. Conducting live classes is popular and simple as it doesn’t call for any complex approach.

• Pre-recorded video lessons or online courses

If you don’t want to rely on real-time delivery of lessons, you can choose to offer pre-recorded video classes to your students. However, it requires a lot of work initially in preparing your courses, but once it is finished, you can keep selling them.

• Webinars

Webinars have quickly gained popularity in the past few years and will be even in bigger demand in the future. Webinars are nothing but a web seminar or online educational events or presentations that facilitate two-way communication between presenter and attendees.

Choosing the main features

The main features and functionalities of online schools are more or less common for most online schools. Here is the list of essential features that an online classroom must have.

• User profile

Once a user creates an account in your live streaming platform, they must be able to create user profiles to update their information. Both teachers and students should create separate profiles and update their information.

• Dashboard

Integrate a dashboard for both teachers and students to view information related to enrolments.

• Online class scheduling

Allow teachers to schedule online classes adjustments accruing to their needs.

• Interactive whiteboard

A whiteboard tool is an important tool to stimulate the experience of a real classroom.

• Live streaming

Live streaming allows teachers to take live classes to foster engagement. Live classes can be conducted as one-one sessions or conducted for groups. Teachers must be able to share the content of different types, including images, PDFs, videos, for interactive real-time learning.

• Secure payment gateways

Integrate secure payment methods to your online school to make it easy for learners to pay for the classes inside the platform itself.

• Analytics

Allow teachers to track the performance of their classes and online courses with inbuilt analytics. It helps to make data-driven decisions and position your education brand ahead of the competition and create a personalized experience for your learners.

• Admin dashboard

Another essential feature is the admin dashboard that is helpful to gain control over users, content, monetization, and more.

Building your online classroom

Depending on your unique requirements, you need to choose how to develop your online classroom. While building your own customized platform, it is a time-consuming and elaborate task that takes up resources and money at the same time. If you have a tight budget and cannot wait months to develop the site, using a readymade solution is the best choice. It allows you to develop a fully customized online tutoring platform by enhancing existing features and functionalities and integrating your branding.

Building your own online classroom using an online tutoring software means you just have to pay for the functionalities required instead of paying for things you need and don’t need. Pinlearn is one of the best solutions available in the market to build an online teaching site that comes with all the essential features mentioned above and enables you to run a successful online school.

Monetization strategies you can adopt

Online schools have high revenue generation potential even with all the competition that exists in the industry. However, you just need to find the right monetization strategies that suit your business and its goals. Let’s explore some of the proven ways to generate revenue through your online class.

• Charge for each class

One of the most straightforward money-making methods you can adopt is to charge for individual classes. Learners would also be willing to pay an upfront fee rather than paying for subscriptions when they are first signing for your classes.

• Subscriptions

When learners trust you that they gain value from your online school, they would be willing to pay a recurring subscription fee for your classes. You just need to create ongoing learning programs to keep your students coming back to your site.

• Classes for free and charge for certification

This is the best approach to gain users when just launching your online school and monetize your service later. You offer your learning resources free to your students and charge only for certifications if they require it.

Conclusion

If starting an online school is always an idea that excites you, now is the perfect time to get started. Even post-pandemic the scope of online school won’t fade away, it is here to stay for long. By following this guide and implementing the steps discussed, before you will know, you will be on your way to success.