Sell a course from my own website
Teaching what you know shouldn't mean renting a second platform. (And when one course becomes several, Run a membership or paid community - people pay monthly for my courses turns them into a subscription your people pay monthly.) Course platforms sell you a website, hosting and email you already have - wrapped around the one thing you're missing: lessons, enrolment and access. On a bernard-hosted site, that one missing piece is built by asking.
How it works
- Describe the course. Build it on your courses page or tell Bernard - the course name, the price, and where your first video lives. A YouTube or Vimeo link is perfect (Use the videos already on my YouTube or Vimeo), or drag a video file straight in (Put my own video file into a lesson). One lesson behind one payment is a complete course; you can grow it later.
- Shape it. Add lessons (Add a lesson to my course) - even from Reels you've already made (Turn an Instagram Reel into a course lesson) - set one free to watch (Let people watch one lesson free), attach worksheets (Give learners files with each lesson), choose pay-once or a fixed term (Charge once, or sell a year of access), and give the course page a trailer cut from your own lessons (Give my course a trailer).
- Test it as a student. Before any price is set, close the public door, enrol yourself and walk every lesson from their side (Test my course as a student before I sell it). It is the step people skip and the one that catches everything.
- Publish and approve. Everything drafts privately. Publish the course, check the preview, approve - and enrolment opens.
Selling here is the default door, not the only one. Give a course away instead to build your list (Give a course away free to grow my list), or leave it invitation-only when enrolment or payment happens somewhere else entirely.
When someone enrols, they pay on your site through your own Stripe account (Where the money goes when someone enrols) and get a welcome email with their way back in - a link, not a password (Let learners in without accounts or passwords). A fuller welcome series - a warm hello, a check-in while they learn - attaches to the course in one click (How do automatic emails work?). You see every enrolment on your Courses page, including when a term ends.
The lessons themselves are a pleasure to watch: they play on any phone, with captions a tap away and a transcript that follows along (Captions and transcripts, written for me) - and the course remembers where each learner left off, offering the next lesson when one ends.
Your course page carries the same invisible labelling as the rest of a bernard site, so search engines and AI assistants can read what you teach, what it costs, and which lesson is free to try - and recommend it when someone asks where to learn your craft.
The prompt
“Make a course called [the course name], priced at [the price]. Add the first lesson called [the lesson name] using this video: [paste the video link], with these notes: [a few lines for under the video].”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- Can I sell an online course from my own website without a course platform?
- Yes. On a bernard-hosted site you describe the course - the name, the price, where your videos live - and bernard builds the course page, the lessons and the enrolment. There is no separate learning platform to run, and learners pay on your site.
- Who takes the money when someone enrols?
- You do. Enrolment payments go through your own Stripe account - bernard takes no cut of a sale. The only per-sale fees are Stripe's own.
- Does the course go live as soon as I make it?
- No. A course starts as a private draft. You add lessons, set the price, publish it when it's ready - and even then it only appears on your real site when you approve the change, like everything else on a bernard site.
- Do I have to sell my course, or charge for it at all?
- No - selling here is one of three doors a course can have. The other two are free (anyone enrols with an email, no price) and by invitation (no self-serve door; you enrol people by hand, useful when payment happens elsewhere). Switch a course's door any time; it drafts privately and waits for approval like any other change.