15 Course Bonus Ideas to Increase Course Conversions

A bonus is additional content that you offer to your course students when they enroll for one of your online courses. It is a value-add that can help your students get better results.

When selling an online course, adding bonuses can also drastically increase the perceived value for your course.

Before we get into the different course bonus ideas, let’s look at some of the best practices when it comes to adding bonuses to your online courses.

 

Course Bonus Best Practices:

 

1.The best kind of bonuses are related to the course topic. For example, if you are selling a course on email marketing, an email swipe file would be a great bonus to add because it is related to your course topic, and will help your students to write better emails.

2.It helps to clearly state your bonuses on the course sales page.

3.When you state your bonuses on the sales page, make sure to assign a monetary value. This helps increase your course’s perceived value

4. Bonuses should be exclusive, which means they shouldn’t be available outside the course for free.

5. The best kind of course bonuses ideas are those that help you overcome objections. Let’s look at the same example. Someone might be interested in your email marketing course, but they might think that they don’t have enough time to write emails from scratch. 

Then they see that you are offering an email swipe file as a bonus which means they will not have to write emails from scratch. So the email swipe file bonus helps you overcome their objection.

 

Let’s look at the different course bonus ideas that you can add to your online course to increase conversions.

 

1. Access to Facebook group/ Slack

Creating a paid member only Facebook group or Slack community is one of the easiest ways to add more value to your course.

Most online courses prices over $200 offer a Facebook group as a bonus, although I believe that a Slack community is much more valuable- but also requires more work.

Once you have enough students, you can hire a virtual assistant or community manager to help you run the community.

2. Workbook

Workbooks or Google Spreadsheets are one of my favorite kind of bonuses because they truly add value to your course and offer a good learning experience.

Most of the courses I have created over the years have had at least one workbook or spreadsheet as a bonus.

 

3. Graphic templates

Graphic templates are another great bonus option, especially if you are offering a course where graphics would be needed.

For example, a course on social media would mean your students will need to create graphics. 

Offering a template bundle would make graphics creation easy for them.

My favorite tool for creating graphics is Canva.

 

4. Office hours

Office hours could be a weekly/ bi-monthly Q and A call in your Facebook group, or it could be a once a month call over Zoom.

 

5. Swipe files

Swipe files like the ones mentioned in the example above are a great way to add more value to your courses while optimizing your students’ time and effort.

 

6. Expert sessions

Getting your expert friends to offer masterclasses as a bonus for your online course can not only add value and expertise to your course, but can also help increase its perceived value.

 

7. Free ticket to an online event

A free ticket to an online event you are hosting could be a great course bonus idea.

 

8. Past event recordings

If you have run online or live events in the past that relate to your course topic, the recording of that event can be added as a bonus to your course.

 

9. Personal review

Offering a personal review is a really powerful way to add value and accountability to your online course.

If you have an online course on website design, reviewing a student project would really help the student get better, and it would help you understand exactly what needs to be added ( or removed) from the course for a better learning experience.

 

10. 1:1 calls

1:1 calls are one of the most valuable course bonuses. If you are offering 1:1 calls as a course bonus, you can charge a lot more for your course since the students will get personal attention and feedback from you, and you are able to charge for your time.

A lot of course creators add one 1:1 call in courses, which not only helps them increase the perceived value of their course, but it also gives them a chance to build a relationship with their students and understand their struggles, while getting feedback from them.

 

11. Group coaching

Group coaching is similar to offering a 1:1 call, only in a group setting. It is a bonus to add to your course.

 

12. Email support

If you don’t want to offer 1:1 calls or group coaching, you would offer email support as a bonus where you can  let your students know that they are free to email you questions or feedback, and you will respond to emails within a certain timeframe, for example, within 48 hours.

 

13. Discounts on tools

If it makes sense, you can collaborate with software tools brands and offer a discount for your course students.

 

14. Discounts on other courses

You could provide a discount when a paid student decides to purchase another course from you.

 

15. Free access to one of your other courses

If you have a mini-course or masterclass that would be helpful for your students, you can add that as a free bonus. 

For example, if you are selling a course on Facebook ads, and you have a mini-course on the Facebook pixel, you could give this mini-course for free to the students who purchase your Facebook ads course.

 

16. Working Pods

Another great online course bonus idea is to have pods or study groups built into your online course. Study groups not only help your students to get more engaged, but they are also a great way for them to interact with others on the same journey as them and in turn, be more accountable.

17. Working Sessions

Another course bonus idea is to schedule working sessions for your students every week where they can get together to work through the course materials giving them some structure to follow.

By adding these bonuses to your course, you can easily 2X or 3X the price of your course.

If you are adding a 1:1 call as a bonus, you can 5X the price of your course.

Do you have any other course bonus ideas that I am missing here?

 

Let me know in the comments below.