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What's the Ideal Distance for Online Courses? |

Feb 13, 2023

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What's the best course length when you teach online? The old adage has become accepted that you need 10,000 hours of training to get really good at some thing. However, that's a little too high.

So, if not 10,000 hours, then for how much time should you spend on your online class? How long do you need to make each part? Each video?

We've compiled statistics at to find out which average course lengths make the best profit. But that's just one part of the equation. Before planning your online course, you need establish your objectives.

How teaching goals affect the length of online courses

It's your idea to create an online course you've started sketching out the course outline. If that you are passionate about and would like to share, you may be unable to decide on an amount of hours students are spending learning.

If you own an online course--which means you make a substantial part of your earnings teaching online courses--it's tempting to pump out many hours of content. After all, the more content you offer means increased revenue, doesn't it?

Not necessarily. Keep in mind that customers have their own interests in mind--they want a thorough education in the subject, however, they do not want to invest their entire life learning the subject.

Imagine that your class, "Introduction to Music Theory," is 120 hours long, but your competitor's duration is only 48 hours. You could end up missing out on a swath of pupils eager to create their first orchestras ASAP.

Don't take the time to cut your class just but. Skip over the essentials of sight reading, and you could request a reimbursement.

If you are engrossed with the finer details and they may also jump ship for a faster solution. It is important to strike a balance between efficiency and thoroughness.

If you're a corporate trainer, your goal is to educate students on the field as quickly as possible. Although it's cliché, time really is money. The more time your client--who is also your students' employers--misses out on training their staff the more time (and the money) they're wasting.

In this instance, set concrete learning outcomes--proficiency with a certain app, for instance--that you and your clients will agree to. Then, find the fastest method to achieve those results.

The more efficient your plan, the happier your client. It could lead to more referrals as well as repeat business.

The most profitable length of online courses

We'll get to the meat of the matter. Based on what we've observed at the time, the most profitable course duration can be between 10 and 25 hours.

Just below that, 5-10 hour courses are about 75% more profitable. And at the higher range, longer courses--25-100 hours--are slightly less profitable than those.

Who says who?

According to us. We have gathered data on over 40,000 course creators to get our numbers. The average of course creators with courses ranging from 10 to 25 hours earn a revenue in the range of 10,000.

A graph that compares online course length to profits
LENGTH OF ONLINE CLASSES vs. Profitability

If you're thinking of launching your first online course, you could do worse than deciding on a timeframe of between 10 and 25 hours. However, beware of the vender. Although this information is helpful in providing a broad picture of course lengths and how they perform, we want to make an important point that course lengths are not an indicator of the growth of revenues.

Cautions for making the most profitable length of online courses

While based on our data, 10-25 hours is an ideal goal, it isn't the ultimate goal for course lengths. What matters more than your course length, is the benefit and value that you're able to offer through your course. Below are some aspects to take into consideration when deciding on course length.

The rarity of online courses materials

If you're teaching a niche area that's not extensively covered elsewhere on the internet there is less competition to compare themselves against. Students will have less thinking to make when comparing alternatives around the time investment required to get to their desired result.

Therefore, if you firmly believe the students you teach need 30 hours of training before breeding race pigeons, then you should definitely design an instructional program which will spend 30 hours in the classroom teaching your students.

The fact that there is no competition doesn't mean that you have to put your caution to the wind and extend your program for as long as is necessary. Be focused on the pupil's goals and the best way to give them the best chance of success.

However If your audience googles "how to breed racing pigeons" and finds all the details they require quickly on, you'll need to factor in the increased number of competitors offering. If this is the case duration of the course could become an even more critical competitive advantage. The course you choose to teach must be both more detailed and more efficient--taking shorter time and energy that it will take to sift through competing resources and research the subject extensively, and even teach themselves.

Complexity of the subject of the matter

Sometimes, you just can't speed up. It's only possible to condense the information until it begins diminishing in value. If that's the case focus on teaching the subject with care instead of sacrificing knowledge to meet the 10-to-25-hour sweet spot.

If your course is especially long--it turns out you need 50 hours of time to learn the fundamentals of breeding pigeons, and you're looking to cut the length of your program closer to 10-25 hours (maybe to keep up with other courses) Consider breaking up your topic into segments. It could be an eight-hour class about the background of racing breeds and the genetics behind them; a twelve-hour course in properly housing, feeding and training pigeons and on.

On the flipside, if your subject only requires 5 hours of instruction, don't stuff the course with irrelevant information just to reach 10 hours. Your students will not appreciate the dead weight, and so you'll lose them.

In this case, use brevity as a selling point--or offer a free introduction to the subject, and make it a point to encourage your students to improve their skills by taking paid classes. You can utilize the Mini Course Template to design an online course that functions as a complimentary lead magnet and gives them a taste of what else that you can offer at a cost.

Competing online courses

Find out about competing courses prior to creating the launch of your own. The places your competitors fail are also areas where you have the potential to excel. You should look for:

  • Knowledge gaps. Do your competition fail to provide a comprehensive overview of a area? It could be the focus of your own training.
  • Done-to-death subjects. Explore new angles, or find new methods to share the knowledge you have acquired. If you're an experienced woodworker, and there are 57 courses on building birdhouses, do one on building bat houses instead.
  • Out-of-date topics. Particularly in the field of technology, the realm of study is ever-changing. Your chances of winning over your rivals by teaching the latest edition of the programming language or even the most current web-based marketing tricks.
  • A highly successful course. If you have a outstanding competitor that is dominating your field look into what they're up to. What is it that makes them different from the rest? How can you do it better?

Course lengths that are required to be completed for continuing training

When your pupils are pursuing continuing education, or meet the criteria of a college or professional association it is important to consider this in determining the length of your courses.

In the case of the jurisdiction in which they work, REALTORS(tm) are required to take a set number of hours of continuing education per year. If this is your intended market, then you might want make your course content match.

What is the length of videos in online course be?

You may be able to talk for hours on the subject you choose, but it doesn't mean that educational videos must be feature-length.

It is true that, as a result that shorter video clips are most efficient in keeping students engaged.

An analysis by SumoMe has revealed that:

  • The engagement of the user drops abruptly after around 2 minute. It doesn't really matter if the length of your video is 26 second long, or exactly two minutes in length--the engagement remains about the similar.
  • Between 3 and 6 minutes  Engagement really falls off.
  • Between six and 12 minutes, engagement levels out.
  • In 12 mins, engagement once again begins to drop.

  Key takeaways:  

  • If your video content is brief, be sure you keep it under 2 minutes.
  • If the video is long be sure that it's not less than six minutes. However, if you're watching it for longer than 12 minutes take your time and be careful.

To keep your the viewers interested, you might need to break videos down (divide the four-minute subject into two separate sub-topics) or build them up (combine two three minute topics to create a more lengthy 6-minute video. ).

As always, keep the students' needs in mind. In the event that you don't want to compromise important information, you absolutely aren't able to reduce the length of your video from the two-minute mark to even two minutes you can keep the length as it was originally. It's just not worth creating a low-quality video just to boost engagement statistics.

How long must classes online be?

If it's about the optimal lengths of online classes, the issue is not as straightforward than it is with videos.

The ideal timing to run a lesson isn't just relevant for online course creators. Teachers from all backgrounds have to decide on the ideal duration of a lesson to hold students' attention. In the case of the public schools, this could depend on age; since there's a chance that you'll be instructing adults, it's important to take different factors into consideration.

As an example: Are students learning through the choice of their teachers or are they forced to learn? If they're already interested in the subject and are seeking to learn more about it to enrich their personal life, they might be more motivated to allocate large portions of time to study.

On the other hand, if they're taking your class in order to fulfill business or corporate standards, they're less likely to be enthused on the subject that you're covering. If that's the case it's possible keep to less-short lesson lengthsand break them up into tests or quizzes.

Five ways to hold the attention of online students

The science behind the attention span is a complex subject that is always changing. But, there are simple techniques you can use to help keep your students interested no matter how lengthy the online classes are.

  •    Have them laugh.

Students will pay attention to instructors who incorporate comedy into their classes. There's no need to be funny; some corny jokes and "dad jokes" could get the attention of students.

  •    Shake it up every 15 minutes.

It is important to rotate the topics frequently. will help to break up the lessons and keep students listening. Make sure to share interesting stories and asides, using new types of media like a video or an image, or even a question ("How do X apply to you ?").

  •    Convert abstract concepts into concrete.

Building breeding pigeons, racing them around and bat houses are both concrete examples of online course topics. Specific examples--whether real or imaginary--help students to grasp the particular topic.

  •    Motivate them.

The students you teach might have an idea of the reason they'd like to study a topic. Show them the real-life outcome of their learning. "Learning the HR software can make your job easier," or "Building bat boxes could help in sustaining decreasing populations of the tiny brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) in your area."

  •    Get away from your comfort zone.  

If a course is multimodal and uses various styles to teach students and keep them engaged. If you're most comfortable presenting slideshows online, try presenting some lessons with animations or live action videos. Or, instead of simply presenting a piece of information to students, provide them with the information they'll need to do research on and draw their own conclusions.

In sum, while 10-25 hours is on average the most profitable length of online courses for students Keep this in mind purely as a guidepost but not a definitive rule. There are numerous specific factors that you should be aware of when planning the length of the online course.