How to Create and Sell an Online Course (No Audience Needed)

Short answer: To create and sell an online course without an audience, promise one specific outcome, pre-sell a small live founding cohort through borrowed audiences before you record anything, and teach it live. Then turn the recordings into a self-paced course on a platform whose fees and tax handling you have checked. Build your email list while you teach, launch to it, and relaunch on a schedule rather than hoping for passive sales.

This guide covers the whole path: choosing a topic, validating it with no followers, choosing a format, the production kit, a platform comparison with fees checked today, pricing, launching, evergreen marketing, refunds and piracy, and a 90-day plan. Every price, fee and creator figure comes from the vendor's or creator's own page, checked on 11 Nov 2026. The advice in between is ours and is marked as such.

TL;DR#

• Pick an outcome, not a subject. "Ship your first paid Chrome extension in four weeks" sells, "Learn JavaScript" does not. Our read: the narrower the result, the easier it is to sell without an audience.
• Pre-sell first. Sell a live founding cohort of 5 to 20 people before you record a single lesson. If you cannot sell five seats, you have learned something cheaply.
• Borrow audiences. Niche newsletters, podcasts, communities and your own network get you the first buyers. Your email list grows from there.
• Fees vary a lot. On 11 Nov 2026: Lemon Squeezy 5% + 50¢ per sale (Lemon Squeezy pricing), Gumroad 10% + $0.50 on direct sales (Gumroad pricing), Teachable Starter $39/mo with a 7.5% transaction fee (Teachable pricing), Maven 10% of each paid enrollment (Maven help).
• Tax matters as much as fees. Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy say they are your merchant of record. Most course platforms are not, at least not in the words on their pricing pages.
• Small lists can launch well. Adam Wathan made $61,392 in three days from a list of about 1,500 people (adamwathan.me).
• Relaunch. Nathan Barry's second launch of the same course added $22,600 (nathanbarry.com).

Disclosure: ZeroRaised publishes this guide and runs a launch site for bootstrapped products. ZeroRaised has no commercial relationship with any platform, tool or creator named here, and no links in this post are affiliate links. Facts come from the linked sources as checked on 11 Nov 2026.

Why courses suit bootstrapped founders#

An online course is a digital product with an unusual property: the hard part is not the software, it is the expertise, and you may already have it. If you have shipped a SaaS, run a newsletter, grown a niche site or solved a painful technical problem at work, you know something that other people would pay to learn faster.

Our general guide on how to sell digital products online covers templates, ebooks and software alongside courses. This post goes deep on courses only, because they behave differently from other digital products in three ways:

1. Higher prices. A course that delivers a clear result can sell for much more than an ebook on the same topic, because students are buying the outcome and the structure, not the information.
2. More support. Students get stuck, ask questions and want feedback. That costs time, but it is also what lets you charge more.
3. Completion matters. A template is used once and forgotten. A course that students do not finish produces refunds, no testimonials and no word of mouth.

Our read: courses are a strong first product for a founder who wants revenue without building software, and a good second product for a SaaS founder whose users keep asking "how do I do X?" A course can fund the next build, and it builds an audience that the next product can launch to.

Step 1: pick a topic you can teach with a specific outcome#

Most failed courses fail at the topic. The pattern we see is a founder picking a broad subject they know well ("Python", "marketing", "Notion") and competing with free YouTube videos and $15 marketplace courses. The fix is to sell a transformation for a specific person.

Use this formula (ours):

[Specific person] goes from [current painful state] to [measurable result] in [time frame], using [your method].

Examples:

• "Solo developers go from zero to a live, paid Chrome extension in four weeks, using a stack that costs nothing until you sell."
• "Freelance designers go from per-project quotes to a productised service with three fixed packages in 30 days."
• "Indie SaaS founders go from no SEO to their first ten articles ranking on page one for long-tail queries in 90 days."

The topic test#

Score each idea from 1 to 5 on these questions. Ours, not a formula from anywhere else.

Pick the idea with the highest total, then cut its scope in half. First courses are almost always too big.

Ask before you outline#

Before writing an outline, talk to five to ten people who match your "specific person". Ask what they tried, where they got stuck and what they spent money on. Do not pitch. Write down their exact words, because those words become your sales page headline and your module titles. Our guide on validating an idea before building has an interview script that works as well for a course as for software.

Step 2: validate with no audience#

The usual advice is "build an audience first". That can take years. The faster path is to sell something small to people who are not your audience yet, using other people's channels.

Option A: pre-sell a founding cohort (our default)#

Offer a live, small-group version of the course at a founding price, with a fixed start date about three to five weeks out. You teach it over video calls, record the sessions, and the students get lifetime access to whatever the course becomes.

What to put on the pre-sale page:

1. The outcome sentence from Step 1.
2. Who it is for and who it is not for.
3. The session plan (four to six live sessions, each with a result).
4. Your proof: what you built, earned or shipped, with screenshots.
5. The founding price, the seat limit and the start date.
6. The refund promise (see the refunds section below).
7. What founding students give in return: feedback and an honest testimonial.

Set a threshold in advance. Our rule of thumb: if fewer than five people pay by the deadline, refund everyone, thank them and go back to Step 1 with what you learned. Five paying strangers is stronger evidence than five hundred likes.

Option B: a paid workshop#

If a multi-week cohort feels too much, run a single 90-minute paid workshop on one slice of the topic. It is easier to sell, takes one evening to deliver and tells you whether people pay for your teaching. The best workshop attendees are your first cohort buyers.

Option C: a free live session with a paid next step#

A free session through someone else's community, followed by an offer to join the founding cohort. Lower conversion, but it reaches more people and costs the host nothing, which makes it easier to get invited.

Where to borrow an audience#

Our read: one well-matched newsletter or community post usually beats a month of posting to a small social account. Go where the buyers already are and offer something useful before you ask.

How small can you start?#

Smaller than most people think. Nathan Barry writes on his own sales page for Authority: "In July 2012 I had just 100 RSS subscribers to my blog, two months later I had a $12,000 book launch. That’s all in one day." (nathanbarry.com/authority). That was a book, not a course, but the lesson carries over: the list was built in the weeks before launch, by teaching in public, not over years.

Step 3: choose cohort, self-paced or hybrid#

Our recommended sequence for a bootstrapped founder:

1. Run 1: live founding cohort, low founding price, recorded.
2. Run 2: live cohort at full price, improved from run 1 feedback.
3. Then: edit the best recordings into a self-paced course. Keep a live or hybrid tier at a higher price for people who want you.

If you choose a cohort platform, know the economics. Maven says "Maven's fee is 10% on each paid student enrollment", with Stripe fees on top (Maven: Getting paid). Its pricing guidance says "Maven's platform minimum for any paid offering is $200" and suggests $800 to $1,200 for a live course with 6 to 8 live hours (Maven: Pricing your course). Those bands are Maven's guidance for its marketplace, not a rule for your first cohort.

Step 4: the production kit (cheaper than you think)#

Students forgive plain video. They do not forgive bad audio or lessons that waste their time. Spend on sound first, then on editing time, and last on cameras and lights.

Our production rules:

• Record in short lessons. Aim for lessons of 3 to 12 minutes that each produce one result. Short lessons are easier to re-record when something changes.
• Script the first 30 seconds, not the whole lesson. Say what the student will be able to do by the end, then do it.
• Show your real work. Your own dashboards, code, numbers and mistakes beat stock examples. This is also your best protection against generic AI-written competition.
• Batch. Record a module in one sitting with the same setup, so sound and lighting stay consistent.
• Ship workbooks and templates. A checklist, a starter repo or a spreadsheet often helps students more than another video.

Our read: for a first cohort, OBS plus the recording of your live calls is enough. Buy editing tools when you turn the cohort into a self-paced course, not before.

Step 5: choose a platform (with fees checked today)#

There are three kinds of places to sell a course:

1. All-in-one course platforms (Teachable, Thinkific, Podia, Kajabi, LearnWorlds): hosting, lesson player, checkout, email and often community in one subscription.
2. Checkouts and storefronts (Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Payhip): handle payment, tax and delivery. Lighter course features or none, low or no monthly fee.
3. Cohort and community platforms (Maven, Circle): built around live groups and discussion.

You can also self-host: a static site or your own app for the lessons, plus a merchant of record or Stripe checkout for payment.

Platform comparison#

Prices are USD as listed on each vendor's pricing page on 11 Nov 2026. "Annual" is the per-month price when billed annually. Payment processing fees are extra unless noted.

Two things in this table are easy to miss.

Monthly fee vs transaction fee. A 0% transaction fee plan is not cheaper until your sales are big enough to cover its subscription. Teachable Builder at $89/mo with 0% only beats Starter at $39/mo with 7.5% once you sell more than about $667 a month on the platform ($50 difference divided by 7.5%; our arithmetic, monthly billing, before processing fees).

Who handles tax. If you sell to customers in the EU, UK and other places with VAT on digital services, someone has to collect and remit it. Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy say they are your merchant of record, which means they sell to the customer and handle the tax. Payhip says it collects and remits VAT and sales tax on your behalf. Teachable and Podia mention tax handling on their pricing pages; read their terms for the detail. Our guide to merchant of record vs payment processor explains what each model leaves on your plate.

Which platform for which founder (ours)#

Our read: start on the cheapest option that handles tax for you. Moving a course later is annoying but doable. Paying $100+ a month before your first sale is the bigger risk.

Step 6: price the course#

Price the outcome#

Students compare your course with the cost of not solving the problem: a month of trial and error, a freelancer, a lost client. They do not compare it with the number of hours of video. A course that saves a developer two weeks is worth more than a "complete guide" with forty hours of footage.

Use a price ladder#

Tiered packages are the most consistent pattern in the indie launches we found. Two examples from the creators' own posts:

• Adam Wathan, Refactoring to Collections (2017): a book-plus-screencast package sold in three tiers: $29 (book and exercises), $59 (adds 4 hours of screencasts) and $135 (adds the source code to a SaaS app). The $135 tier made 220 sales worth $29,091, close to half of the launch revenue (adamwathan.me).
• Nathan Barry (2014): a course with a $119 Starter package and a $199 Complete package. In the first launch, 172 Complete sales brought in $33,114 against 22 Starter sales for $2,618 (nathanbarry.com).

A ladder for a first course might look like this (ours):

Founding price#

Give founding cohort students a clear discount, a written reason ("you are getting it before it is finished, in exchange for feedback") and an end date. Raise the price for every run after that. Founding students who see the price go up feel rewarded, not cheated.

Pricing for other countries#

If a big share of your buyers are in lower-income countries, a single US price will exclude many of them. Purchasing power parity discounts are common for developer courses. Our guide to purchasing power parity pricing covers how to set regional discounts and limit abuse.

Worked example: what you keep from 100 sales#

This is an illustrative example (ours), not a forecast. It assumes a $149 course, 100 sales, US cards, and the fees listed on each vendor's page on 11 Nov 2026. Where the platform uses Stripe or PayPal, we use the 2.9% + 30¢ rate quoted by Podia, Teachable and Maven for US cards. Real fees vary by country, card and currency, and tax is ignored.

For a cohort, a different example (ours): 20 students at $800 on Maven. Maven's 10% is $1,600. Stripe at 2.9% + 30¢ is $23.50 per student, or $470. You keep $13,930 from $16,000, which matches the shape of Maven's own example, where a $1,000 payment leaves the instructor $873.60 (Maven: Getting paid).

Our read: at this volume the gap between the cheapest and most expensive route is about $900, which matters, but tax handling matters more. A route that leaves you to register for and file VAT in other countries can cost more in time and accountant fees than any fee difference in this table.

Step 7: launch#

A course launch is a short, deadline-driven event aimed at people who already said they were interested. The work happens before launch week.

Four to six weeks before: the waitlist#

• Publish a one-page waitlist with the outcome sentence, who it is for and a date.
• Give something away to join: a free mini-course, a checklist or the first lesson. More on lead magnets below.
• Send the waitlist a useful email every week, teaching something real from the course.
• Ask waitlist members one question by email ("what is the hardest part of X for you?"). The replies sharpen the sales page and warm up buyers.

Our guide on building an email list as a bootstrapped founder covers tools and opt-in pages. For a course, the list matters more than any other channel, because launches convert from email.

Launch week (ours)#

Deadlines must be real. If the launch price ends on Friday, it ends on Friday. Breaking that once teaches your list to ignore every future deadline.

What launches look like for indie creators#

These are real numbers from the creators' own posts. None of them had a huge audience by today's standards, but all of them had more than zero. That is the point of Steps 2 and 7.

• Adam Wathan launched Refactoring to Collections in 2017. He writes: "I launched Refactoring to Collections to a list of 1500 people and about 4000 Twitter followers." The result: "By the end of the first day, the book had made $28,299." and "Within the first three days it generated $61,392 in revenue". He adds: "It took just under 3 months for the book to cross $100,000" (adamwathan.me).
• Nathan Barry ran a 24-hour launch and then a second launch of the same course. He writes: "In those 24 hours (actually it was 25 by the time sales were actually closed) the course sold $35,732." and "During this second launch I sold 121 units for $22,600 in revenue." (nathanbarry.com).
• Daniel Vassallo sold an ebook and a video course after leaving his job. In his Product Hunt AMA he writes: "I made $550K+ in revenue since I started working for myself, with over $400K coming from info products." He also says: "I had about 11,000 Twitter followers when I released my first product" (Product Hunt).

Our read: these are outliers, published because they went well, and they should not be read as typical results. The repeatable parts are the method: tiered packages, a list built by teaching in public before launch, a hard deadline, and relaunching.

Step 8: evergreen marketing after the launch#

"Evergreen" means the course sells between launches. Pure evergreen sales are usually slow for a new course. Our recommended mix is evergreen channels that feed the email list, plus a launch or relaunch two to four times a year.

Search#

Write articles that answer the exact questions your students asked in the cohort. Each one teaches something real and links to a free lead magnet. Search traffic compounds slowly, so start during the first cohort, not after.

YouTube#

Courses and YouTube fit well: the lessons that perform best as free videos show viewers your teaching style, and video viewers are already comfortable learning from video. Our guide to YouTube marketing for bootstrapped founders covers formats and cadence. A practical start: publish one lesson from the course in full, unedited, and link to the rest.

A free mini-course as the lead magnet#

A three- to five-email mini-course that solves one small problem from the full course is the best lead magnet we know for a course business. It shows your teaching, delivers a real win and ends with an invitation to the full course. Keep it short enough that people finish it.

Affiliates and partners#

Your best affiliates are past students who got the result, and creators whose audience matches yours. Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy and most course platforms have affiliate features. Our guide to affiliate marketing for bootstrapped founders covers commission levels and how to recruit the first partners.

Relaunch on a schedule#

Nathan Barry's second launch added $22,600 to the same course (nathanbarry.com). Every relaunch is a chance to add a new module, update outdated lessons, raise the price slightly and email everyone who joined the list since the last launch.

Step 9: completion, testimonials and the next run#

Completion drives everything after launch: testimonials, referrals, fewer refunds and a reason for past students to buy the next thing.

Our checklist for completion:

• Onboarding email on day one that tells students exactly what to do in the first 30 minutes.
• Quick first win. The first module should produce a visible result within an hour.
• Deadlines and accountability. Cohorts have them built in. For self-paced, send a weekly email with "this week's lesson".
• Short lessons with tasks. Every lesson ends with something to do, not just something to watch.
• A place to ask questions. A community space, email or office hours. Answer fast in the first week.
• Check-ins at known drop-off points. Your platform's analytics usually show where students stop. Fix or split those lessons.

Ask for testimonials when students hit the result, not at the end of the course. Ask a specific question: "What could you do after module 3 that you could not do before?" Specific answers make specific testimonials, and specific testimonials sell.

Refunds and piracy#

Refunds#

Offer a clear refund policy and put it on the sales page. Platforms set some of the defaults: Teachable and Kajabi both mention a 30-day guarantee for their own subscriptions on their pricing pages, but your refund policy to students is yours to choose within each platform's rules, so read their terms.

Our advice:

• Use a time-limited, no-questions refund (for example 14 or 30 days). It reduces purchase anxiety more than it costs in abuse.
• For cohorts, set the refund window before the second live session. After that, the seat cannot be resold.
• Do not make refunds conditional on "doing all the work" unless you will actually check. It reads as a trap.
• Remember processor fees. Maven notes that Stripe fees are not returned when a student is refunded (Maven: Getting paid); check the same detail for your own checkout.

Piracy#

Some copies of a successful course will end up shared. Our read: fighting it hard costs more than it saves. Practical steps:

• Host videos with a player that does not expose a direct download link, or on a platform that streams.
• Put the most valuable parts where pirates cannot copy them: live sessions, community, feedback and updates.
• Send takedown notices to hosts that list your course, when it is easy to do.
• Accept that people who pirate are mostly not lost buyers.

Stage table: what to focus on#

Your 90-day plan#

This plan is ours. It assumes 10 to 15 hours a week alongside a job or a product.

Days 1 to 14: topic and validation setup#

• Score three topic ideas with the topic test and pick one.
• Interview five to ten people who match the buyer. Write down their words.
• Write the outcome sentence and a four- to six-session outline.
• Build the pre-sale page and checkout (a merchant of record checkout is fine).
• List ten places where buyers gather and what you will offer each.

Days 15 to 30: sell the founding cohort#

• Publish one genuinely useful piece in at least three borrowed channels (guest issue, community post, podcast pitch).
• Run one free live session through a community, with an offer at the end.
• Message your own network personally, one by one.
• Hit the threshold (five or more paid seats) or refund and return to the topic.

Days 31 to 60: teach and record#

• Run four to six live sessions and record them all.
• Collect every question students ask into a document.
• Ask for testimonials at each student's first visible win.
• Start the waitlist page for the self-paced version and invite everyone who did not buy the cohort.
• Write two search articles from student questions.

Days 61 to 90: productise and launch#

• Edit the best recordings into short lessons and add workbooks.
• Choose the platform using the fee and tax tables above.
• Set the price ladder and launch price.
• Write the launch emails and run launch week to the waitlist.
• Book the next live cohort date and the next relaunch.

Common mistakes#

1. Recording before selling. Months of production for a topic nobody buys. Pre-sell first.
2. Teaching a subject instead of an outcome. "Learn X" competes with everything free. "Do Y in Z weeks" stands out.
3. Making it too long. Students buy a result, not hours. Shorter courses get finished, and finished courses get recommended.
4. Paying for a big platform too early. $100+ a month before the first sale is a cost you do not need.
5. Ignoring tax. Selling to customers in other countries without a plan for VAT and sales tax creates work later. Pick a route that handles it.
6. No email list. Social reach is rented. The list is what you launch to.
7. Fake deadlines and fake scarcity. They work once and cost trust permanently.
8. Never relaunching. Waiting for passive sales after one launch leaves money behind.
9. Treating the course as finished. Update lessons, add modules from student questions and let past students know.

Checklist#

• Outcome sentence written for a specific person
• Five to ten buyer interviews done, with their exact words saved
• Pre-sale page with outcome, audience, outline, proof, price, seat limit, date, refund policy
• Checkout that handles tax for your buyers' countries
• Ten borrowed-audience channels listed, at least three used
• Threshold set and met (or refunds sent)
• Live sessions recorded, questions and wins collected
• Testimonials gathered at the moment of each student's result
• Self-paced version in short lessons with tasks and workbooks
• Price ladder with a launch price and a real deadline
• Waitlist with a free mini-course lead magnet
• Launch week emails written and scheduled
• Next cohort and next relaunch dates booked

Frequently asked questions#

Can I sell an online course with no audience?#

Yes, but you have to borrow attention before you own any. Pre-sell a small live founding cohort through places where your buyers already gather: niche newsletters that take sponsors or guest posts, podcasts, communities, forums and your own professional network. Five to twenty paying people is enough to validate the topic, and each one is a future testimonial and the start of your email list.

What is the cheapest way to sell an online course?#

A merchant of record checkout with no monthly fee. On 11 Nov 2026, Lemon Squeezy charged 5% + 50¢ per transaction with no monthly fee, Payhip's Free Forever plan charged a 5% transaction fee plus standard PayPal or Stripe fees, and Gumroad charged 10% + $0.50 on direct sales. Host the videos as unlisted or private files, or on your own site, and deliver access after purchase.

Should my first course be cohort-based or self-paced?#

Our advice is to start with a live cohort. It sells at a higher price, needs no polished video, gives you direct feedback on where students get stuck and produces testimonials. Once you have taught it two or three times, record the best version and sell it self-paced, keeping a live tier for people who want access to you.

How much should I charge for my first online course?#

Price on the outcome, not the hours of video. A practical ladder is a low-cost entry tier, a core course and a premium tier with extras or live access. Adam Wathan's Refactoring to Collections sold at $29, $59 and $135, and Nathan Barry's course had $119 and $199 packages; in both launches the higher packages brought in most of the revenue. Give founding students a discount in exchange for feedback and a testimonial.

Which online course platform has the lowest fees?#

It depends on volume. With no monthly fee, Lemon Squeezy (5% + 50¢) and Payhip Free (5% plus processor fees) are cheapest at low volume. Teachable Builder ($89/mo, or $69/mo billed annually) and Podia Shaker ($99/mo, or $84/mo annually) drop the platform transaction fee to 0%, which only pays off once monthly sales are high enough to cover the subscription. Kajabi charges 0% revenue share but starts at $179/mo.

Launch your course on ZeroRaised#

ZeroRaised is a launch directory for products built without institutional VC, and a course you made and sold yourself fits right in. Before launch week, run through our product launch checklist for bootstrapped makers, then submit your course for free. For more guides on making money without investors, join the ZeroRaised newsletter.

Sources#

• Teachable pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Thinkific pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Podia pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Kajabi pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• LearnWorlds pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Gumroad pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Lemon Squeezy pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Payhip pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Maven help: Getting paid, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Maven help: Pricing your course, workshop, or self-paced offering, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Circle pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• OBS Studio, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Descript pricing, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Camtasia, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Adam Wathan: The $61,392 Book Launch That Let Me Quit My Job, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Nathan Barry: Should you launch more than once?, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Nathan Barry: Authority, last checked 11 Nov 2026
• Daniel Vassallo AMA on Product Hunt, last checked 11 Nov 2026