200+ Online Course Ideas Across All Niches

Did you know that the e-learning industry was worth around $312 billion in 2023, but it's projected to skyrocket up to $661 billion by 2032? That's some impressive growth, and you don't need to be a full-time teacher to take a slice of that pie. 

In fact, all you need is to create an online course and start selling it, and doing this has never been easier than it is now.

Creating courses online can allow you to explore your interests and spread knowledge to the over 220 million people taking them. Online courses are scalable, easy to market with the right platform, and have very low overhead costs. Plus, they're a great source of passive income.

Are you loving the idea of making online courses, but you're not quite sure what to focus on? We've got you. Our list of 200+ profitable topics is the biggest compendium of online course ideas on the internet. Dive in and start earning money.

Profitable Course Topics: How to Find the Right Idea for You

To find the right type of online course to create, start by figuring out what you want to cover—your so-called niche. 

Start by making a list of your skills and experiences, and things that you're passionate about. Once you've done that, research market trends and figure out what kinds of courses are popular. (Or just look through our list and save yourself some time.)

You can do this by searching out online marketplaces like the one on Whop. The Whop marketplace allows you to explore hundreds of online courses from creators in a wide range of fields and see what they're offering.

You can also check out what learners are engaging with on social media or related forums. Tools like Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, and Ubersuggest can also be great if you want to dig a little deeper.

When you've done your research, you can compare the list of areas you're interested in with the courses you discovered there's a market looking for. You'll definitely find some overlap between what you're interested in and what people need, and even if not, there's no harm in making a course—it's usually entirely free to do.

200+ Online Course Ideas in Every Niche

If you aren't sure where to start or you need some ideas, we've done the brainstorming for you. This list of 200+ ideas for online courses should have something that strikes your fancy or coincides with your abilities. 

Make yourself a refreshing drink and dive in. (And if the drink is very good, then hey … maybe you can make a whole course on how to create it.) 

15 Online Business Course Ideas

Business courses are one type of e-learning that will never go out of style. It's certainly an advantage for hopeful business owners to learn as much as they can before they sink money into an idea. 

If you have the applied knowledge of having run your own business; or the learned knowledge of being business-savvy; you already have a boatload of useful information to share with budding entrepreneurs.

Online business courses can be diverse, as well. You can teach people who are just getting started how to come up with a business plan and market themselves. You can also offer people who are already involved in the business world specific skills to help them step their game up with courses like e-commerce strategies or investment advice.

Here are some ideas for business and entrepreneurship-related online courses you can create.

1. Leadership and management skills
2. Business ethics
3. Strategic planning
4. Sales techniques
5. Entrepreneurship
6. Marketing strategies for startups
7. Business plan development
8. Human resources management
9. Ecommerce business mastery
10. Lead generation
11. Project management
12. Digital technologies 
13. Corporate social responsibility
14. Customer experience management
15. How to start an LLC

12 Online Health and Wellness Course Ideas

The health and wellness sector has seen a drastic shift toward online learning over the past few years. With a market value of $399 billion, it's expected to keep on growing at a 14% compound annual growth rate. 

In simpler terms, this is a field that people are increasingly interested in, and if you know a lot about health and wellness, now is the time to start making courses.

It's not just people like you and me who are starting to pay more attention to holistic wellness. Businesses and corporations are starting to invest in the well-being of their employees, too, and an online course is an easy way to get started.

From guided meditations to fitness programs and work-life balance methods, there are many routes you can take. Here are the ones that are likely to bring in profit.

1.  Fitness and exercise programs
2.  Yoga for mental health
3.  Meditation techniques
4.  Holistic wellness
5.  Mental health and wellbeing
6.  Mindfulness
7.  Stress management
8.  Chronic pain management
9.  Natural remedies 
10. Pregnancy yoga
11. Work-life balance
12. Virtual coaching

12 Online Nutrition Course Ideas

As the public trends more towards health consciousness, nutrition is a huge factor many people care about. 

Food is a necessity for us all, but it can also frequently be a point of concern. Nearly 30% of adults are overweight and more than 9% have severe obesity. Weight loss isn't the only topic of conversation here, either.  Many other people seek out information on specific dietary interests or needs.  

From assisting with weight management to navigating food allergies and developing healthy eating habits, nutrition offers a wellspring of opportunities for anyone looking to create online courses.  

The global market for nutrition-related products and education is rapidly expanding—it's meant to double within the next 6 years, and there's a lot of interest in this type of content. In fact, almost half of all Americans have encountered food and nutrition content on social media. As a result, there is no shortage of topics to choose from.

1. Healthy cooking
2. Meal prep
3. Plant-based nutrition
4. Weight loss
5. Nutrition for seniors
6. Child and adolescent nutrition
7. Sports nutrition
8. Gut health
9. Cooking for a family
10. Gluten-free cooking
11. Cooking on a budget
12. Healthy desserts 

10 Online Self Development Course Ideas

Self-development courses give people a way to improve parts of their life that they feel might be lacking. Other than bringing inspiration to the masses, this is just a lucrative field to get into. 

Valued at $46 billion in 2023, the personal development market is expected to reach $67 billion by 2030. While this encompasses things like books, workshops, and seminars, it also includes things like private communities, coaching, courses, and forums.

These types of courses will always have value as long as people struggle with things like achieving goals, time management, and communication. If this sounds like something you could help with, here are some ideas:

1. Personal growth
2. Goal setting and achievement
3. Time management 
4. Effective communication skills
5. Self-confidence building
6. Creating healthy habits
7. Self-motivating
8. Coping mechanisms
9. Emotional intelligence
10. Organizational skills

14 Online Music Course Ideas

Teaching music lends itself well to e-learning, especially if you choose to offer one-on-one lessons as well. You can teach people things like how to play instruments like guitar and piano, improve their skills with sound mixing and electronic music, or market their tracks.

Music is an evergreen field to get into. After all, there will always be people who are still yet to experience their brief stint of playing the guitar and imagining that they're the next Kirk Hammett before dropping it and never picking it up again. (That could just be me, though, but I promise—lots of people want to learn music.)

With Whop, you can embrace the community aspect of learning as well, with Discord servers for students where they can discuss their progress and share tips! 

Here are some ideas: 

1. Guitar for beginners
2. Music theory
3. Songwriting and composition
4. Music production
5. Music history
6. Vocal training
7. Electronic music
8. Learn piano
9. The business of music
10. Music appreciation
11. Sound mixing
12. Drums for beginners
13. Music in media
14. Creating and selling royalty-free music

15 Online Career Course Ideas 

The online career course industry is a flourishing market worth around $19 billion. This market is built on the strength of new graduates looking to find jobs, but also people who are already part of the workforce who want a better job.

People just trying to figure out their careers can benefit from learning how to make a resume, carry out a good interview, optimize their online profiles, and just learn how to search for a job to begin with. You can even offer certifications to your students that might catch the eye of a future employer! 

For existing professionals, you can teach advanced skills like networking to climb the corporate ladder, how to strengthen their personal branding, and methods for managing time and stress in the workplace. 

Here are some juicy, trending ideas:

1. Career planning and development
2. Resume writing
3. Cover letter writing
4. Interview skills
5. Networking for career
6. LinkedIn optimization
7. Job search strategies
8. Personal branding
9. Career transition
10. Leadership skills
11. Public speaking
12. Time management for a career
13. Negotiation skills for career advancement
14. Professional writing
15. Remote work and freelancing

14 Online Marketing Course Ideas

Ah, digital marketing. The business of selling and marketing things to other people and other businesses, but doing so specifically online—it's an ever-growing field. 

The vast umbrella of digital marketing encompasses things like social media, content creation, advertising, SEO, and more. Given that this is a market that's as lucrative as it is volatile, there's a constant demand for courses and new information. 

By offering online marketing classes you can help small business owners hone their digital marketing strategies. You can also teach freelancers trying to maximize their reach and marketing pros who want to learn new skills. 

1. Social media marketing
2. SEO 
3. Content marketing
4. Email campaigns
5. Facebook advertising
6. Google Trends
7. Google Analytics
8. Affiliate marketing
9. Video marketing
10. Copywriting
11. Marketing on LinkedIn
12. Marketing analytics
13. Mobile marketing
14. Ecommerce marketing

19 Online Sports and Fitness Course Ideas

The online sports and fitness industry is experiencing some of the most staggering growth of any online learning niche. There are constantly new technologies coming out that propel users toward online courses. It's no wonder—with things like the Fitbit and the Apple Watch, all of this stuff is both useful and trendy. 

Since people of every body type, age, and level of physical fitness can still want to feel better about themselves you can choose which niche you want to serve. 

By offering your sports and fitness courses on Whop, you can also create a welcoming space for your students through Discord servers where they can share their progress. You can also offer different courses at varying levels and price points. 

1. Personal training certification
2. Strength training
3. Cardio workouts
4. HIIT at home
5. Yoga for athletes
6. Fitness nutrition
7. Pilates
8. Sports performance training
9. Functional fitness
10. Mental training for athletes
11. Fitness business management
12. Outdoor fitness training
13. Flexibility and mobility
14. Running for beginners
15. Advance strength training
16. Kettlebell training
17. Working out for weight loss
18. Injury prevention
19. Hot yoga

9 Online Relationship Course Ideas

Many people are either in a relationship or want to be in one. Relationship courses are evergreen in a world where everyone is using apps or websites to try and connect. 

You can create courses that offer strategies to people entering the dating world, and teach them the best way to structure their online profiles. Even people who are already committed to each other can benefit from help in learning or maintaining communication, trust, and conflict resolution.

Relationship courses catering to specific religions, sexuality, and stages of life are another great way to help others and get paid for it.

1. Communication skills for couples
2. Conflict resolution
3. Building trust
4. Dating strategies
5. Dating app profile building
6. Love languages
7. LGBTQ dating
8. Dating within your religion
9. Relationship maintenance 

14 Online Personal Finance Course Ideas

Everyone in the world has to deal with money, which is why it's not surprising that this is an industry worth over a billion dollars. Studies have proven that people with financial literacy are more likely to plan and save for retirement, have better credit scores, and carry less debt throughout their lives.

If you ask me, that sounds pretty amazing—but it's also something that most schools prior to university level don't teach. That makes personal finance courses useful for teenagers just learning how to manage money. Courses on budgeting and debt management can people of any age group, though.

Adults who want to start being fiscally responsible or are looking for ways to increase their wealth can benefit, too. Through Whop, you can create courses on how to capitalize through crypto, investment strategies, and stock market trading. 

1. Budgeting basics
2. Investing for beginners
3. Debt management
4. Retirement planning
5. Improving your credit score
6. Tax planning and preparation 
7. Personal finance management 
8. NFTs
9. Investing in cryptocurrencies
10. Stock market investments
11. Emergency fund planning
12. Currency trading
13. Passive income
14. Financial goal setting

18 Online IT and Tech Course Ideas

Let's be real—few industries are as lucrative, or as promising, as all manner of tech. With the current AI boom and an ever-growing demand for employees in the tech sector, if you've got skills that fall under that category, you're sitting on a goldmine.

The circumstances are in your favor, too. There is little to no benefit to in-person learning over doing it online when what you're teaching involves a computer and an internet connection. Everything from cybersecurity to SaaS to programming can be taught with flexible, distanced learning. 

Whop is the perfect platform to set up and sell your IT-related courses. All you need to do is make your whop and add the apps that work best for your course.

1. Cybersecurity 
2. Cloud computing
3. AWS
4. Machine learning
5. Web development
6. Blockchain technology
7. SQL and database management
8. Networking
9. Mobile app development
10. Ethical hacking
11. Software as a service (SaaS)
12. DevOps
13. Python
14. Java
15. JavaScript
16. C++
17. Game development
18. IT support 

13 Online Academic Course Ideas

With the pandemic starting a shift toward normalizing online education and the number of adults who want to continue to pursue learning in their own time, it's no surprise that so many types of academic courses are flourishing right now. 

For example, global online language learning has enjoyed a compound annual growth rate of 10.2% over the last 5 years, while the market for exam prep is a $13.5 billion industry. These rising figures are consistent through other types of academic learning, as well. 

This means that academic learning courses can serve as a good form of passive income. There's plenty to talk about, and a lot of these things don't change often, meaning you can keep the money rolling in without a lot of upkeep!

You can create e-learning courses for grades K-12 or homeschooling programs. And, if you're someone who's taken an advanced career exam like the LSAT or the MCAT, you can create a course on exam prep. 

1. Exam prep
2. Homeschooling
3. Language learning 
4. STEM for beginners
5. Social sciences
6. History
7. University prep
8. SAT prep
9. Academic writing
10. Memory improvement
11. LSAT
12. MCAT
13. Reading comprehension

16 Online Spirituality Course Ideas

Spirituality can be a flexible term with a different meaning for different people, leaving the field itself wide open for whatever type of spirituality you want to explore and teach. People from all different walks of life are looking for clarity and growth within themselves, and turning to methods like energy healing, learning about chakras, manifestation, and astrology to try and get their answers. 

The spirituality market overall is worth over $50 billion, and you can be a part of that by offering people the tools they need through online courses. Teach everyone, from young adults to successful career people to retirees, how to interpret the signs that life is giving them, manifest what they want from life, and heal parts of themselves they feel need healing. 

The spirituality industry is particularly geared toward forming a community and fostering an attitude of group support. This means that you can set up a helpful community alongside your course and see your business thrive even more.

1. Chakra healing
2. Exploring world religions
3. Spiritual awakening
4. Energy healing
5. Reiki
6. Spirit guides
7. Manifestation
8. Spiritual symbols
9. Shamanic Journeys
10. Past life regression
11. Developing intuition
12. Sound healing
13. Astrology for beginners
14. Learn to read birth charts
15. Mystical practices
16. Spirituality and self-care

12 Online AI Course Ideas

You can't open your fridge these days without someone telling you that it's got a million new AI features and how that means it's just the best fridge in the whole world. 

That's the reality of our current times—AI is everywhere. If you know how to use it, you're in for a treat, because this industry is a runaway train that's not going to stop. Its growth is so significant that global investment in AI doubled in 2021, and all the tech giants, from Nvidia to Microsoft, are capitalizing on generative AI. You can, too.

You can offer courses on things like prompt engineering, generative AI, or using AI to speed up various processes.

1. AI in the classroom 
2. Deep learning fundamentals
3. AI in finance
4. Neural networks
5. Generative AI
6. Ethics of AI
7. Applied AI
8. AI for business
9. Computer vision
10. AI in healthcare
11. Prompt engineering
12. Using AI to make money

13 Online Creative Course Ideas

Helping people discover and improve on their creativity is a great way to earn some extra money. There's incredible flexibility with creative content, meaning you can branch out into a number of different directions. 

It doesn't matter what you're good at: video editing, photography, physical arts and crafts, or even creative writing. Creative content creation is part of a global creator economy worth over $127 billion. This market includes professional creatives and hobbyists, all of whom are potential learners for any creative course you can make. 

Check out our ideas on how you can get creative!

1. Digital illustration
2. Creative writing
3. Fashion design
4. Video editing
5. Photography basics
6. Painting and drawing
7. Interior design
8. Graphic design basics
9. Design software 
10. Screenwriting
11. Calligraphy
12. Sculpting and ceramics
13. DIY

10 Other Online Course Ideas

While this article has introduced you to a lot of the online course creation niches, there are so many more potential courses that don't fall into any of those categories. If you have an interest that falls outside of those boundaries, don't let that stop you.

With online course platforms like Whop, you can turn pretty much any interest or speciality into something teachable. Some of the niches not covered as much in this article include teaching people how to care for pets, writing travel guides, beauty guides, and even teaching people how to set up their own income generation businesses like reselling tickets or writing ebooks to sell. 

Whop can help you to build your course from scratch, no matter if it's specialized or broad. Check out some of our other ideas, and once you're ready, sign up and make your course on Whop without needing to use any additional tools.

1. Twitch streaming
2. Guide to travel
3. Pet care
4. Becoming an influencer
5. Cosmetology for beginners
6. Stage makeup
7. Ebook creation
8. TikTok monetization
9. Ticket reselling
10. Dropshipping

Creating Your Online Course

Once you've decided on a subject, you're ready to actually start creating your online course. Here are some steps you can take as you get started to try and give yourself the best chance at success. 

Research your audience

Since you've already decided what kind of course you want to create, you need to start considering who will be taking this course. Study market research on the field you want to teach in and look at who is finding those courses most useful. 

Market demand will give you an idea of how much money you can potentially make from the course. You can still create courses in areas that aren't as in demand. Just be realistic about the amount of money you may make from it. You can also check out the competitor courses and see how successful they are as part of your research. 

Make a plan

Having a plan is pivotal to correctly marketing yourself. You should also know in advance what kind of position you want your students to end in. 

If it's a beginner-level course, you can advertise that you're teaching them the foundation of the subject. If it's more advanced, you can promise specific skills that they should be able to take away. This will help clarify your market and leave you with more satisfied learners. 

Create your content

Once you've decided what your objectives are for the course, you can begin making the course itself. There are a lot of different methods you can use to teach online courses. Some of these include: 

• Writing scripts for lectures 
• Creating slideshows or presentations
• Recording videos 
• Developing assignments to engage learners 
• Creating tests and quizzes

You can also create supplemental learning materials that you're then able to charge more for. But be aware—some platforms don't allow this, which we'll discuss more below.

Doing all of the above requires fiddling with all sorts of different tools, but there's an easier way. Did you know that using the Courses App on Whop lets you make a course in a matter of minutes?

Choose a course platform

Finding the right platform for your course is vital. Figure out what specific areas are most important to you and research platforms to make sure that they're adaptable to your needs. 

Here are some specific things to explore about a potential platform:  

• Fees that you might need to pay in advance
• How earnings are calculated (by minutes video, or whole course purchase) 
• The barrier to entry in terms of requirements for teaching
• Amount of training materials you're allowed to upload
• Whether or not supplemental materials are allowed

Market your course

Congratulations! You've done all of the groundwork and you know what your course is, who it's for, and where you're posting it. Now it's time to find your students by marketing your course. 

You can use social media, email marketing, and content marketing to try and find your potential students. Post about your courses in relevant areas to the subject, like forums, Facebook groups, or subreddits that allow advertising. 

To start off with, you may want to offer discount incentives to get students. These have the potential to turn into positive testimonials and help you spread through word of mouth. 

Launch Your Online Course With Whop

With all those fresh course ideas swirling around in your head, you might feel just a bit overwhelmed. It's not just making your content but also needing to market it later, after all.

What if you could achieve both of those things easier than ever, and for free? We're not joking. All you need to set up a successful online course is Whop.

Whop is the best platform for selling courses and other digital products. When you sign up with Whop, you'll create your very own whop hub and pick among tons of useful apps. For starters, the Course App. 

This app lets you make your course within seconds, and upload as many lessons per chapter as you need. Lessons can be done in a mixed media format, with options for uploading videos, images, presentations, or audio lectures. Whop allows you to include notes with each lesson that your students will be able to see as they go through the course. 

The best thing is that you're not limited to just courses. You can sell ebooks, access to forums and chat, downloadables, SaaS, and access to paid communities. Adding all this extra content only makes your future customers even more likely to buy your course, or even to get a monthly subscription.

There's no platform out there that gives you the kind of creative freedom and support that you'll get from Whop. With all the flexibility in the world, you can create your own unique learning experience and build a lasting business.

Sign up with Whop and start selling online courses in minutes.