Frequently Asked Questions about Selling Courses
The following question relate to Selling a Course.
Q. Do you support selling courses in bulk to organizations?
Answer: Yes. The "Self enrolment (Advanced)" method is supports bulk course sales. This method accommodates selling courses to (a) individuals (similar to standard self-enrollment), in bulk (e.g., with or without volume discounts), and for entire organizations (e.g., site licenses).
Q. Can we offer discounts for bulk purchases?
Answer: Yes, discounts can be applied for bulk purchases. Through methods such as volume discounting, you can offer reduced rates based on the number of licenses purchased, either as a percentage discount or a fixed price per unit. Additionally, you can set a fee for entire sites, making it easier for organizations to purchase training for their entire team without the concern of running out of licenses.
Q. What happens when a user makes a bulk purchase? How can they enrol their team members?
When a user makes a bulk purchase, they receive an email containing a unique link or license key. This email not only provides the link/key but also includes detailed instructions on how to distribute it to team members for course enrollment. The entire process is automated, meaning that you, the administrator or instructor, do not need to take any additional steps to facilitate this. Once the email is sent, the purchaser can forward it to his/her team members, who can simply follow the provided instructions to enroll in the prepaid course, making the enrollment process smooth and hands-off for the administrator while ensuring quick and easy access for participants.
Q. Does the system enforce the number of licenses purchased?
Answer: Yes. If an organization only purchases 100 licenses, the system will automatically track the number of licenses that are consumed and they could not enrol users above 100. They would be required to buy additional licenses.
Q. What happens when a license expires?
Answer: When a license expires, all users who enrolled in the course using this license will lose access to the course. In other words, if an organization buys a license on January 1st for a course where "License expires after" is set to 365 days, then users will no longer have access to the course after December 31st of the same year, regardless of when they enrolled in the course. Note that if the "Enrolment duration" is set to a lesser number such as 30 days for example, a user who would have used the license on January 1st would lose access to the course on January 31st, but could re-enroll in the course using the same license key after January 31st. Re-enrolling in the course however would consume an additional license.
Q. Is a site license an unlimited license?
Answer: Not really. When a site buys a site license, they buy a number of licenses based on an estimate of the number of users they could potentially train. If the enrolment method determines that they may potentially train up to 1,000 users, their license will be restricted to 1,000 users. If the estimate is incorrect and the site turns out to have 5,000 users, they will not be able to train all 5,000 users. They will need to buy additional licenses to train the additional 4,000 users they wish to train.
Q. What payment methods are accepted when selling courses?
Answer: The Dual Code learning environment supports two types of payments:
Payment by credit card. This is integrated with a payment gateway such as Worldline or PayPal.
Payment by cheque / electronic funds transfer (EFT). This allows users to download a quote / invoice and then send you payment by either mailing you a cheque or sending you an EFT. Once you receive payment, you are responsible for marketing the quote / invoice as "paid in full"
Note that note all organizations will support both payment methods. To enable both payment methods, please contact your administrator.
Q. Can Dual Code help us process the payments?
Answer: Yes. If you do not want to bother with processing the payments yourself, including managing refunds, chargebacks, credit card fraud and marking cheques / EFT payments as paid, Dual Code does offer a service to manage all of this on your behalf. Additional fees apply. Please contact us via our Help Desk to inquire about this premium service.
Q. What is a “Volume Discount”?
Q. What is a "site license" in regards to selling / buying courses?
Answer: When someone visits your site from their workplace's learning environment powered by Dual Code via the OCI, the enrolment method can estimate how many users work at that workplace. For example, if someone visits your site from "Northern Healthcare" (a fictitious hospital), the enrolment method is able to estimate that Northern healthcare may have up to 10,000 users. In this example, it doesn't mean that Northern Healthcare has 10,000 employees nor that it needs to train 10,000 learners. It simply means that they could potentially have 10,000 users access your course. In practicality, Northern Healthcare may still only require 3,000 users to take your course.
For budgeting purposes, many organizations prefer to buy site licenses rather than buying a specific number of licenses. This prevents them from running out of licenses, and having to go through another procurement process to buy additional licenses after they run out. As such, it's usually a good idea to set the site license prices whenever selling your courses. It's also generally a good idea to offer a significant discount for site licenses, with the understanding once again that generally speaking, a site with "up to 10,000" users will not likely train 10,000 users. Generally speaking, Dual Code recommends setting the price point for site licenses between 40% to 60% of the individual fee, but that is totally at your discretion. For example, if the price for an individual license is set at $10, we would recommend setting the following fees for site licenses:
Site license (up to 1,000 users): Between $4,000 and $6,000
Site license (up to 10,000 users): Between $40,000 and $60,000
The fees above are simply suggestions and you are free to sell your courses at the fees you want.
Q. Can a site with "up to 10,000 users" only buy 100 licenses if that's all they need?
Answer: Yes. A site is not required to buy licenses for all their staff. They can still purchase a specific number of licenses. Continuing on the example above, if Northern Healthcare only needs to train 3,000 users, it would be advantageous for them to buy 3,000 licenses at $10 each (total = $30,000) than it would be to buy a site license between $40,000 and $60,000.
Q. How long does it take for the "Self enrolment (Advanced)" method to process orders?
Answer: The time it takes for the enrolment method to process orders depends on the payment method you choose.
If the payment method is by credit card, the sale is processed automatically within seconds.
If the payment is by cheque or EFT (electronic funds transfer), the payment is only processed after an administrator marks the invoice as paid in full.
Q. Do I need to notify the client when I mark an invoice as paid in full?
Answer: The learning environment will automatically notify the user who downloaded the quote / invoice when that quote / invoice is marked as paid in full. The body of the emails contains instructions, along with a link and a license key that they can use to access the course. The receipt is also attached to the same email.
Q. What happens when I "delete" a receipt?
Answer: Deleting a receipt (see Managing Sales Receipts) deletes the current copy of the receipt. A user however can still click on the "View receipt" button to regenerate and download a new receipt. Deleting a receipt is generally only used if there is wrong information on the receipt (e.g. a bad address or cancellation policy) and you need the receipt regenerated based on a new template.