Squarespace Courses and Digital Products
Squarespace Courses are intended to be an easy way for individuals and small businesses to build and sell professional online digital products. The all-in-one platform hopes every professional, wellness instructor, marketer, and photographer will want to “turn their knowledge and expertise into income” by sharing their skills via monetized digital offers—but is investing time and resources in building online learning products right for everyone? Let’s dive into the pros and cons to help you decide.
Squarespace Courses and Digital Products
Using Squarespace’s built-in functionality, you can design, host, and sell multimedia courses, memberships, and other digital offers on your own domain with relative ease, while maintaining brand consistency. There are a number of ways to structure digital products on Squarespace. Fees for the platform’s many offerings can be confusing, so refer to our in-depth pages on Squarespace’s pricing plans and customer payment options to learn more about the plan fees and transaction fees.
Squarespace 7.1 and 7.0 differ in their features and page types for creating online products. Also keep in mind, none of the options below are as robust as stand alone best-in-class solutions, but they are more than sufficient for many use cases.
Tip: Courses can be paywalled or open to the public. A public course is available to search engines for crawling and indexing. If you do not want a public courses’s individual lesson pages to be indexed, learn about hiding content on Squarespace. Membership sites are not accessible to search engines.
The Appeal of Digital Courses
Diversified revenue stream: Digital products can allow creators to monetize their expertise, creating a source of income to complement other revenue streams.
Scalability: Unlike physical classes with limited seating, online courses can be sold to an unlimited number of students simultaneously without any significant additional costs per student.
Global reach: The online nature of these products means they can be accessed and purchased from anywhere, potentially expanding your audience base. Note, you’ll already want to know how to reach your audience with various strategies such as: SEO content, email marketing, social media marketing, or search engine ads.
One-time creation, recurring profits: Once a digital product is built, some can be sold an infinite number of times without additional production costs. Unfortunately, this benefit doesn’t apply universally, particularly if your product centers on a topic with frequent changes.
To illustrate, when we launched in 2013, the Squarespace platform had minimal support documentation. We briefly considered developing a “how to use Squarespace” course and watched with interest as another business implemented the idea. The issue? Their in-depth course was focused on Squarespace 6.0 and within weeks Squarespace released version 7.0.
The dismay experienced by the course provider was palpable. And it underscored an important point: if you build a product based around someone else’s product, you give up control over your product’s lifespan and adaptability. It could mean perpetual adjustments and amendments to your course material, negating the initial appeal of “one-time creation, recurring profits.”
Drawbacks of Digital Products
Time-intensive creation process: Creating high-quality digital products, especially courses or ebooks, requires a significant time investment upfront.
Updates and maintenance: Many digital products will require updates to stay relevant, incurring additional time costs.
Market saturation: Over the years, many creators have jumped on the digital product bandwagon, so it’s easy for your content to be lost in the noise. Offering authentic courses with unique value propositions is important for differentiation and achieving long-term success.
Loss of authenticity: As some creators become more focused on monetizing digital products, there’s a noticeable shift in priorities. The initial drive, authenticity, and ethical principles that once defined their content can get overshadowed by the lure of increased revenue. Partnering indiscriminately with affiliates, allowing others to use your brand to market substandard products, or endorsing products without genuine backing will dilute your credibility. This trajectory risks alienating your audience and compromises the trust you built over time.
Revenue dependency: Over-reliance on digital product sales can be risky if market demand drops or if there’s a shift in audience behavior.
Who should consider creating a course?
Subject matter experts: If you possess deep knowledge in a particular field, developing an online course or certification can be an effective way to share and monetize your expertise. Classes can be built across numerous domains, depending on your area of expertise, interests, and market demand.
Effective courses are built by those with genuine passion and deep expertise in a given topic. A teacher’s authentic connection to the subject leads to richer content and a more engaging learning experience.
Established content creators: Those with an existing audience can leverage their followers to market and sell digital products. If you have healthy organic site traffic or a social media following, you will have an easier time than starting from scratch.
Businesses seeking value-adds: For SMBs looking to add value to their customers or diversify their offerings, digital products can be a natural extension.
Who might want to reconsider?
Novices without a defined niche: Without a clear target audience or area of expertise, building a digital product can be directionless and less profitable. Experts can benefit from brainstorming sessions with AI as an exploratory phase, but if you’re asking ChatGPT “what course should I build,” it’s a sign you’re not ready.
Those seeking quick profits: The creation of valuable digital products takes time. If immediate revenue is the goal, other avenues might provide a more immediate revenue stream. Don’t fall prey to the get-rich-quick gurus that want to sell you a course on how to make a course about making a course.
Businesses with bandwidth constraints: For small businesses already stretched thin, the additional demand of product creation, marketing, and maintenance might be overwhelming.
The Realities of Building an Online Course
In the world of online courses, user-friendly platforms like Squarespace serve as accessible gateways for creators and small businesses. However, despite the perceived ease and potential benefits touted, the reality is that the market is increasingly saturated. This makes it a challenging venture, especially for those without a background in marketing or a substantial following.
Platforms and course creation mentors paint an optimistic picture, but keep in mind, they will profit regardless of whether your course succeeds or fails. Potential creators need to be aware of the realistic challenges they will face.
Furthermore, you’ll want to consider the “sunk cost fallacy,” a phenomenon where individuals continue to invest in a project due to the resources already spent, even when it might not be the most rational choice. When people invest considerable time and effort into building a product, it can be difficult to halt or withdraw it, even if it’s underperforming. Creators cling to the hope that sales might pick up in the future or feel attached to the content they created. It’s important to maintain an objective viewpoint, evaluating the current circumstances rather than being swayed by past investments.
Nonetheless, we’ve seen that creators who hone in on specific niches, offer high-quality content, and know how to reach their ideal audience have the potential to carve out a success story, even in a crowded market.
Final Thoughts
Selling digital products on Squarespace offers an easy way for creators and businesses to tap into the digital economy. Success will hinge on the quality of your content, clarity of your target audience, and consistent marketing efforts. Before diving in, evaluate your resources, expertise, and market demand.
And when pursuing monetization, make sure the drive for revenue doesn’t overshadow the authenticity and ethical principles that originally defined your content. Genuine value and integrity are what set successful creators apart in a competitive environment.
As you contemplate joining the online course movement, ensure your approach is well-planned and grounded in the realities of the market. Yes, courses offer numerous opportunities, but your business moves should be guided by strategic decisions.
More Resources
With Squarespace’s new course builder, there will likely be an influx of courses on “How to Build a Squarespace Course.” Yet, with video tutorials and free how-to resources available, we think DIYers are already well-equipped. Squarespace’s support documentation also includes:
Building a Squarespace Course?
We help clients build and QA virtual summits, digital courses, membership sites, video libraries, online books, and paid newsletters.