Start with the end in mind. Always Setup Your Finances First
At the end of the day, after you’ve sold your programs you want to be sure that the money gets deposited into the right places, and everyone has an easy way to pay through a protected source.
This is why I always set this up first. Here’s a quick overview on how you want to set up yur finances when getting ready to launch an online course.
Who is Collecting the Money?
First off, you need to establish who is collecting the money. Most likely it’s you, but we need to clarify if YOU are a singular person, or a company.
If you are a singular person, and you operate as a sole proprietor, you will be using your own bank accounts to collect money. In this case for organization reasons, I would suggest opening up a separate checking account for these funds so you can monitor this income flow for tax reasons.
If you are an LLC or Incorporated, you should visit your branch and open up a dedicated set of accounts under the name of your company. Your funds should go directly into these accounts once people pay for your products.
How is the money being collected?
People who are purchasing your online course will not be sending you money directly, as there needs to be a payment processor in between the two parties to receive online payments, and then transfer the money to your accounts.
The payment processors you’ll need to setup are Stripe and PayPal.
These are the two most highly used and trusted payment processors in North America, and are generally well accepted around the globe.
These processors are free to setup, but take a fee off approximately 3% from every transaction they process.
When you set these up, they will ask to be connected to your bank account as one of the setup steps. This must be done to achieve the transfer of funds into your accounts.
You can create links to send buyers inside these payment processors, and use these as a checkout for them.
There are other softwares that you can integrate with these payment processors to create a more robust checkout experience like ThriveCart and Sam Cart, but we will dive into these in more depth in future posts.
The Final Flow
The checkout software step is optional, so without it the funds would go directly from the purchaser, through the payment processor, and ultimately deposited into your account in a few days.
Happy course creation!
Stay posted for next week when we cover all in one solution, and I’d love to hear any questions I can answer to support you in your online course journey.
M