OpenSesame - realistic earning potential?

Kelly Meeker is a member here - so hopefully she can chime in with some specifics to help you here.

Bruce

@andrew

It appears to me a lot of companies are really using Open Sesame to hopefully drive traffic to their own site. A real estate education company (that's my business so that's what I also look at) charges $100 on Open Sesame for the same 3 hour course you can buy on their own website for $30. ($25-$40 would be normal real estate CE pricing) 

I can only assume that's a marketing strategy in which they don't really intend to sell courses at the $100, but because of a link back their $30 course which then seems like a bargain, but who knows. To be honest, it never has made sense to me, and they might be selling a few courses at $100 a pop, but I really doubt it. As a consumer I would be ticked off if you charged me $100 and then I found the $30 on your own website. 

My main point is you might look at it from a broader marketing perspective as opposed to how many students will take the course from the Open Sesame website. 

Todd

Here is my 2 cents on this topic - Sites like Open Sesame have hundreds if not thousands of course listings which gives the consumer a lot of options, but as a seller if you just put your course up on the site and then sit back waiting for the big bucks to roll in you will probably be waiting a long time.

Before you create a course, you have to make sure there is a large enough market for it, and that the market is not already saturated with similar courses. If you decide to go ahead, you need a marketing strategy and you have to promote your product.

Hi Everyone - Alex from OpenSesame.com here! Thank you to everyone taking part in this discussion. @BruceGraham - sadly Kelly is no longer with us and we all miss her dearly!  To answer your question Andrew (and I believe we chatted briefly already) We have many elearning publishers, large and small, selling content on OpenSesame. The most effective approach to selling on OpenSesame is to offer high quality content at an appropriate price. Our most successful publishing partners do just that. I look forward to seeing you all on the boards. 

- Alex

Thanks for posting this question--I have been wondering the same thing.  

I can say that I have had a course posted on OpenSesame for about 5 months now at a price of $49 for an hour of learning and it has sold once.  I think the course has fairly broad appeal, but either $49 may be too high or nobody is interested in the content.  I just lowered it to $29, so we'll see how that goes.  

With courses on OpenSesame, there seems to be such a wide range of quality and pricing.  I think almost everybody is in the experimental stage.  I keep asking, and wish they would provide specific information on, what courses sell and what kind of results people are getting.  They seem to not want to disclose this information.  I also wonder who their target market is.  I don't think it's large corporations, but more small to medium-sized business and maybe individuals.  But then again, what individual is out there taking e-Learning for the hell of it.  

Bottom line: I'd like the know the same thing you're interested in.  If anyone else has had success on OpenSesame I'd love to hear it.  Or, Alexandra, if you could provide us some specific information on pricing and sales that would be extremely helpful.  It's difficult to want to spend the enormous amount of time developing courses with the uncertainty of any return.  

Hello everyone.

I wanted to share a great blog post that Kelly Meeker wrote about ways sellers can market their courses.It talks about getting the most out of OpenSesame.I hope you will find itresourceful.

https://www.opensesame.com/blog/marketing-your-elearning-courses

Andrew, Icompletelyunderstand your concern. Would it be useful to set up a call with an account manger here who can discuss specific recommendations? If so, please message me your number alexandra.hernandez@opensesame.com

I hope everyone has a spectacular weekend.

Alex

Hi Alexandra, I read the blog post and think the list is a bit simplistic. So sorry for being a debbie downer.

Does anyone know of a discussion going on around the business of eLearning?  I'm looking for people who are truly willing to share numbers and approaches to selling eLearning as a consultant....obviously without giving up too many secrets.  But I think some collaboration on quality and price might add some definition to what seems to be a bumbling along eLearning market.    

Andrew--have you found any clarity around your questions?  

Barry,

Can't point you to a discussion, but I've been doing some planning for the future recently and have some things you might contemplate. 

1) Being a middleman in any business right now is dangerous especially if you are not targeting a very specific market. Bizlibrary, Lynda.com, put in the name of the latest company here are all building their libraries and buying other providers/content. If you are selling e-learning whose equivalent is available elsewhere (more importantly could be shortly available given the size of the market growing) on these types of sites, either you'll need a very inexpensive price or your courses need to provide a value/unique content they don't offer. 

2) Courses as we currently know them might be disappearing within just a few short years. Granted this is IMHO, but content needs to be broken down into bite sized bits for quick/easy delivery so the nature of going to a specific course on XYZ topic will most likely change. The most probably outcome would be a niche subscription site that allows you to search for content. 

3) There's information about every topic available on loads of websites today. IMHO, the successful e-learning businesses of the future will be about the display/connection of information from a variety of sites as opposed to one "content" expert. In other words, if you had a subscription site based on your expertise, that kept people up to date with links to best articles/videos/etc. along with your own content people will be more willing to pay for the "time savings" over a "course". 

4) Large companies and organizations will take a while to retool their thinking and will be contracting for "custom courses" to be developed for quite some time. (Fee for service) I'm not suggesting this is always a bad thing because it will continue to be a good opportunity for course developers. Overseas based players are starting to undercut the prices for custom e-learning development and it wouldn't surprise me if some companies went to more of a "crowd sourcing website" type model in that the buyer selects the look/feel and they update with your content for X dollars. (Particularly for low end type stuff) 

My views are sometimes outside of the mainstream so as I say, "Take them with a grain of salt and a margarita or two". 

Todd

No I have not, unfortunately.  As an independent individual with limited time and resources, I have a hard time committing to build coursework for a platform with no sense of realistic metrics.  As a point of comparison, it is easy to figure out statistics for Kickstarter.  Granted, an entirely different market space, but as a creator I have a sense of what my realistic range of outcomes are.

At some level I get the apparent reluctance to talk specifics by OpenSesame, but at some point it becomes counter productive because creators like me ultimately won't commit to the platform.

This is an interesting discussion.

Hi, Andrew

GREAT questions!

I don't have any answers for you re: OpenSesame per se because I've never used it. So I certainly can't speak to Q3.

But... knowing a thing or two about marketing, I can respond -- in a combined manner -- to the other two (in part to Q1 and quite directly to Q2). And here it is...

The path to success is piled four deep with the frazzled corpses of better mousetrap builders. I'd strongly, strongly doubt whether a platform like OpenSesame "get[s] your product out in front of many potential buyers". (And before people start hating on me for hating on OpenSesame... I'm not. I've never offered a course through them and for all I know they could have tens of thousands of training officers browsing their catalogue on a daily basis, chequebook in hand.)

The long and short of it is, expect to do some serious marketing if you want anything to succeed -- especially in today's crowded online marketplace ("extra-especially!" with the low start-up costs and lots of amazing talent out there) -- which relies on other people taking an action you desire (e.g. buy your product or service, share your video on YouTube, vote for you or your chosen candidate, etc.).  

You mentioned an unsuccessful project in which you "learned that distribution channels are key". I agree... partly. A smooth set of distribution mechanisms is crucial, but you can have the most awesome system in place blah blah blah blah blah and yet... if the market doesn't want what you're offering...

I think you know how that story ends.

So... my advice would be to do some proper online research to determine whether or not there's even a market for what you plan to offer before you give over weekends in your back shed perfecting that mousetrap.

Then, if it turns out people actively want what you're offering, have the means to pay for it, are in sufficient number to make it worthwhile and there are opportunities to sell to these people again in the future... then look for a distribution mechanism.

Anyway, gotta go sell some stuff. I've been quite busy lately and haven't been on this forum very often. If you have any other questions, I'll do my best to get back to you.

Cheers,

Leslie