Teachable: The Best Online Course Platform for Creatives Business Owners in the UK
I’ve been using teachable to host my online courses for years, and I wanted to share why I think it’s the best option for creative business owners!
When I first started creating my online courses back in 2018, I tried to do a lot of research to figure out the best way to actually present my course materials to my students.
There are so many tools and options out there for doing this, and I know it can be a confusing space, so I thought I would share why my top choice is Teachable* (plus one very important reason why you might want to use it if you’re based in the UK/EU!).
Table of Contents
Why create an online course in your creative business
Alongside my website design business, I also create online courses for creatives to learn how to market their business (using Pinterest, email marketing, blogging etc.) and how to streamline their business systems.
There are a few reasons why I started creating online courses, and why it might be a good option for your business:
Impact more people and reach a wider audience (in less time!)
When you offer 1:1 services to clients, you’re only able to help that one client at a time, whereas with online courses, you can help many clients at once by sharing your knowledge and expertise. Also hosting online courses (rather than in-person classes) means you can reach an audience from all over the world!
Diversify your business income & revenue streams
Creating an online course means you don’t have to rely on just your 1:1 client income anymore. It adds another way for you to make money in your business (that doesn’t take as much time as client work).
Generate income that isn’t reliant on your time input
Lots of people call online courses a source of ‘passive income’, but I’m not a fan of that word because it insinuates that not a lot of work is required. This isn’t true; creating an online course takes lots of time and effort to set up, and ongoing effort and resources to promote and update. HOWEVER, it is true that the income is ‘residual’ or ‘automatic’. You can put in the work initially and make money again and again without the same initial work required (unlike 1:1 client work).
Help your clients with other things you have expertise in
As a website designer, I knew that my target audience (creative business owners) need help with creating a strategy for their blog, once they have it set up on their website. This is something I have 7+ years experience and expertise in, but I don’t have the capacity to help people individually with this, so I created an online course all about Blogging Strategy!
The different options for creating an online course
Online courses come in many different shapes and sizes, but let’s say for the purposes of this article that you are planning to create a course that has 3 modules (with 5 lessons each), and the lessons are made up of videos and some text.
There are several ways you could deliver this course to your audience:
Send the course as downloads Or Deliver via email
You could upload the course videos and lessons to a Google Drive folder, for example, and send students a sharing link to this to download them. Or send an automated email series with the text of the lessons and file or Google Drive link to download the videos.
This would require you to have some kind of ecommerce system on your website or with another tool that allows you to take payment from customers for the course, and sends an automated email with the downloads in.
This is a good basic option, but doesn’t offer a nice ‘course-like’ interface for students to keep track of their progress, or for you to get reports on their engagement.Host the course on your website
Depending on what website platform you use, it might be possible to create a hidden area on your website where you host your course lessons, and people who purchase your course could get access to this.
Setting this up will differ depending on your platform, and you may need to pay for extra plugins or add-ons to help you achieve this. It’s also unlikely that this option would give students the ability to track their progress, or for you to see reports on engagement.Use a course hosting platform (like Teachable)
Using a dedicated course hosting platform is a great idea because they are designed to create an enjoyable, streamlined experience for your students! With features like progress tracking, engagement reports, sales page builders etc. this is the most professional option. And Teachable*, in my opinion, is amazing for this!
Important: If you don’t choose to use Teachable, with all of these options above, it’s important to consider the potential legal/tax implications of using these if you are based in the UK/EU where we have a special digital product VAT that sometimes needs adding at the checkout. More info on this in the ‘The top reason I use Teachable as a business owner in the UK or the EU’ section below!
My favourite Teachable features as a creative business owner
Intuitive layout for my students (+ keeps Track of their progress)
I love how appealing and easy Teachable is for my students to use. They get their own secure login details, can view each module and lesson individually and keep track of where they’re up to each time the log in.
Easy-to-use sales page builder
If you find website design tricky or you’re not able to edit your own website that much, Teachable offers an easy to use sales page builder where you can create landing pages that promote your courses.
Easily set up payment plans and discounts
If you want to offer payment plan options (eg. 3 x monthly payments of £50, rather than just ‘pay in full’ for £150), Teachable lets you do this easily. Plus you can easily create discount codes for your whole school or for individual courses!
Sell coaching, digital downloads and bundles as well
Teachable doesn’t just let you create and sell online courses, you can also use it to sell digital download (eg. ebooks, PDFs, templates) and 1:1 coaching services too. It also lets you bundle up multiple courses, or multiple products & coaching, into bundle products to sell too.
referral program or affiliate marketing tools
Generate more income by rewarding your students when they share about your online course! You can create a referral program where students can get a % credit to use in your school, or use affiliate tools to automatically pay students a commission when they share your courses.
Sales and progress/engagement reporting
In Teachable you can easily see which courses have made what amount of money, plus you can also keep track on how each student is progressing, and get data for your overall course engagement. Want to know which videos/lessons are being watched the most? No problem!
Connects with Zapier for advanced automation
If you need to connect your course platform with any other marketing tools, such as ads, email marketing, or countdown tools, Teachable integrates with Zapier (a software that connects multiple apps) to allow you to easily do this.
The top reason I use Teachable as a business owner in the UK or the EU
However there is one feature that I haven’t mentioned above which is one of the main reasons why I choose Teachable as my course hosting platform, above any of the other tools on the market, and that is:
Teachable calculates, collects and remits UK/EU Digital Product VAT!
Did you know that if you’re based in the UK or EU, you have to charge a special Value Added Tax on digital products EVEN if you’re not VAT registered as a business?
It always shocks me how little information there is about this for course creators, and how few people realise this, but it’s something you should be aware of.
It doesn’t apply to every business, so you may need to do your own research or seek advice on whether this applies to you (the UK GOV website has some guidance here, but it can be confusing).
It’s a big confusing topic (and one that I could rant about for days!) but the long-and-short is that it’s likely you should be charging VAT on your online courses, however it’s complicated because that VAT amount can change depending on what country your customer is based! And technically you should remit that VAT individually for each country.
For a small business owner this is just completely unrealistic and impractical, BUT thankfully Teachable offers a feature to manage all of this for you!
If you use Teachable’s payment gateway to accept payment from students of your courses, and switch on ‘EU VAT Tax Collection’, Teachable will automatically calculate, collect and remit tax depending on the student’s locations. This means that you do not need to worry about it if you use Teachable!
As of writing this, there are currently no other course hosting platforms (that I know of) that offer this, so that is why I recommend Teachable* to anyone selling online courses in the UK/EU.
Please note: None of the above constitutes as official legal advice and may be incorrect or not apply to your business and your situation. I’d recommend you do your own research or speak to a legal professional if you need more advice.
How much does Teachable cost?
If you only want to create one course, and only need one user, Teachable* have a free plan that could be perfect for what you need (including unlimited students)! However, any sales you make when on this plan will have a transaction fee of $1 + 10%.
They also offer a Basic plan, which costs $39 per month (at the time of writing this), allowing you to create up to 5 courses, and takes a 5% transaction fee on any sales made.
Or their Pro Plan ($119 per month at the time of writing this) allows unlimited courses, 0% transaction fee, and affiliate marketing features too.
How to connect your Teachable courses to your website
If you decide to use Teachable to host your online courses, you may be wondering how this can connect with your website. How I personally do this is:
Create the course and set up my pricing plans for the course inside Teachable.
Create a sales page for my course on my website (eg. like this one) with details about the course, what’s included and the price options.
I’ll create a button alongside the price options, go into the pricing plans for the course on Teachable and click ‘copy url’ next to the pricing plan, then paste the url into the button on my website sales page. This URL will take people straight to the checkout on Teachable to complete their payment & course login!
However you can also just create a button or link on your website that takes people to the sales pages you’ve built in Teachable, if you’d prefer to use Teachable’s sales page templates and design tool (sometimes easier if you don’t have a website designer to help you create a sales page on your own website!).
Want to create an online course for your creative business?
Give Teachable a try!
*Indicates an affiliate link. I get a small % if you sign up for Teachable with my link, but please know I only recommend tools that I personally use and love!
