One of the most common questions we get is: how should I price my course, workshop, or self-paced offering? Across every format, our guidance anchors on the same two dimensions that drive student value: live interaction with you and hands-on projects.

The most valuable learning experiences come from applied projects and direct expert guidance. These are transformative elements students can't find elsewhere, and they're willing to pay more for them. As you scale up the live interaction or project depth in any format, you can scale up the price with it.

Audience size doesn't move the needle the way people expect. Looking only at visitors coming from the Maven marketplace (not direct landing-page traffic from your own audience), courses priced at $950 or higher earn 50–100% more per landing-page visit than lower-priced courses.

A few things to keep in mind, straight from our Guide to running a great workshop:

Self-paced is a newer offering on Maven, so this guidance will keep evolving as more self-paced cohorts launch and we learn from conversion data. Our guidance: self-paced should be priced as a percentage of your live cohort price, not set independently.

A couple of guardrails from our Designing your self-paced cohort guide, since they directly affect what you can charge:

⭐️ More expert feedback and guidance → more student willingness to pay.

Our research shows that access to trusted guidance is what makes professionals decide to buy. When a topic really matters to someone's success, self-directed learning on its own isn't enough. They want an expert's judgment, and that's true whether they're in a live room or working through your content on their own time.

⭐️ More practical, applied projects → more student satisfaction.

Thoughtful instructor feedback on student work is a hallmark of premium courses. Even brief, personalized responses to project submissions and questions will dramatically increase student engagement and satisfaction For example, you can share a Loom, comment on a doc, or respond in your course community.

If you are running your course alone, you might find it hard to offer more personalized feedback to all your students. In this case, think about how you can scale your impact and deliver more value by hiring a course manager or part-time Teaching Assistant to help you (this could be an alum from your past cohorts, for example). When you add more value, your course price can increase.

In addition to providing feedback on student work, use Maven's Reflections feature to understand your students' goals and challenges at key moments (pre, mid, and post-course). These insights help you tailor content, prepare resources, and adjust Q&A time as needed.

Transform your students' learning into real-world success through hands-on projects. While traditional self-paced courses often give students theoretical knowledge, projects empower them to create tangible results they can proudly showcase, get feedback on, and use to apply their new skills. Provide projects that directly support your learning objectives. Some examples:

👉 For more project guidance including examples from real Maven courses, check out the guide here.

Your live sessions should be high-impact learning experiences. To design these experiences, aim for less presenting, and more doing. While it's tempting to create elaborate slide decks and pack every minute with information, your students will get more value from focused, interactive workshops. Build each session around 1-2 key objectives and follow the proven "I do, We do, You do" framework:

This approach helps your students internalize and actually use what they're learning, rather than drowning in information overload.

In a 90-minute workshop, you might cycle through the "I do, We do, You do" framework a couple times. Here's a timing breakdown with teaching ideas:

👉 For more guidance on building your lessons using “I do, We do, You do,” including a video that explains each section, check out our guide here.

In Maven, asynchronous content is referred to as a lesson. How many lessons, and what type of each, you include will depend on what course format you pick. Your goal is to amplify student learning by choosing the best format for your learning outcomes.

In both formats, your lessons might include:

👉 For real lesson examples from top-rated Maven courses, review our lesson and asynchronous content guide.

We suggest emailing your current waitlist about any planned price increases.

This is a powerful opportunity to create urgency while building trust. Giving advance notice with the option to lock in current pricing (for a limited time) will create a compelling reason to enroll now. Your transparency will also create trust in with these students.

We've provided a template below as a jumping-off point. Remember to write in your own voice with your unique POV. Tip: lead with the student impact and share student testimonial screenshots that align with your price increase

💡How to email your waitlist from Maven