Monetizing Learning in 2025: How Open LMS eCommerce Empowers Higher Ed and Corporate Training

Higher education and professional development are changing. This blog post explores how you can take your training initiatives beyond traditional enrollment models by using Open LMS eCommerce to provide flexible, on-demand learning opportunities that users can purchase at their convenience.

The demand for flexible, skills-based learning in higher education and corporate training environments hasn’t slowed down. Your learners want access to flexible learning opportunities that give them practical skills they can use immediately in their jobs and lives.

In response to these evolving attitudes, institutions and organizations are exploring ways to monetize their courses and expand their reach. One method that’s gaining momentum involves embedding ecommerce functionalities directly within your learning management system. Solutions like Open LMS eCommerce are empowering companies and higher learning institutions to sell, manage, and scale their online learning programs. Whether you represent a college or university, a training provider, or a business, an ecommerce-enabled LMS can help you capitalize on the growing lifelong learning economy.

READ MORE ABOUT HOW TO MONETIZE LEARNING | ‘How an LMS With Ecommerce Capabilities Benefits Your Bottom Line: 5 Tips for Implementation’

The Shift Toward On-Demand Learning

When organizations hire new talent, they’re putting more emphasis on a candidate’s skills and competencies, rather than the degrees or certifications that person might have. A recent survey found that 80% of responding employers value experience over education when assessing job candidates. The same survey found that 55% of organizations had eliminated bachelor’s degree requirements for at least some positions.

The perceived value of a bachelor’s- or master’s degree is changing, leaving more people to consider bypassing traditional degrees. High school graduates and young professionals are hesitant to invest in three, four, or sometimes five years of their lives, plus the associated costs, to earn a degree that might not land them a desirable job. Additionally, professionals aren’t likely to engage with training or development courses that aren’t directly aligned with their career goals, especially if the programs aren’t offered at flexible or convenient times.

Higher education institutions and organizations are recognizing these evolving attitudes, as well as the limitations of their old course enrollment models. Having to wait for semester start dates or onboarding cycles to begin doesn’t align with the “always-on” expectations of today’s learners. Offering on-demand learning opportunities ensures your people can access the courses they need to pursue their personal or professional development goals while keeping your institution or organization competitive.

PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE OF LEARNING | ‘Top L&D Trends for 2025: Embracing AI, Skills-Based Hiring, and Immersive Tech’

What Is Open LMS eCommerce?

Open LMS eCommerce combines the power of learning management with digital commerce tools. Instead of just hosting and delivering courses to pre-registered users, you can use Open LMS eCommerce to:

• Sell single courses, entire programs, certifications, and access to quiz attempts directly to individuals or organizations
• Offer subscriptions to your learning site
• Add premium upsells to your free content
• Allow users to purchase content for themselves or others
• Manage payments with secure gateways

Higher education institutions and organizations alike can leverage Open LMS eCommerce to diversify their course offerings and bring in additional revenue. Learn how below.

Higher Education

If you’re a college or university, Open LMS eCommerce makes it easy to offer non-degree programs or ad hoc courses that appeal to broader audiences, such as non-traditional learners looking for specific content. You can also sell individual courses from your degree programs, making it easier for students to sample a program before they commit to a full course load. Additionally, this option makes it possible for students to “pay as they go” or build their own degree programs.

By offering microcredentials, continuous learning opportunities, and certification programs, you can supplement traditional students’ tuition and grant money with additional funds. You could also potentially increase your overall revenue without adding more courses or staff members by designing on-demand programs around the content you already offer.

Organizations and Businesses

If you manage learning and training for an organization, you can add a revenue stream by using Open LMS eCommerce to monetize your internal expertise. Replace your siloed systems with a centralized platform that handles course administration and ecommerce, and leverage it to sell partner training, customer enablement programs, or industry certifications to external audiences.

Training Providers

If your organization is a training provider, you can use Open LMS to offer tiered access, course bundles, certification tracks, or pay-as-you-go plans, diversifying your business model and potentially reaching wider audiences.

READ A CASE STUDY | ‘How Canada Learning Code Delivers Technology Skills Training With Greater Customization Options From Open LMS’

Monetize Your Learning Content

You can capitalize on Open LMS’s ecommerce capabilities and start monetizing your learning content with the following four-step process.

1) Identify Your High-Value, In-Demand Courses

Focus on subjects with clear market appeal and professional relevance. Evaluate who your potential learners are and use your ecommerce tools to offer the courses, programs, and certifications they want.

If you lead a college, university, or other higher education institution, consider compact programs that appeal to non-traditional students. Microcredentials for personal development and practical skills-based programs, such as home improvement or personal finance courses, are good options that most adult learners would find useful and relevant to their lives.

For organizations, consider which industry-specific training, product certifications, or leadership development programs could serve your partners, customers, or even a wider public audience. Research market demand using job boards, professional forums, and competitor offerings to ensure your courses align with real-world needs.

Additionally, both higher education institutions and organizations should stay aware of emerging trends. Aligning your content and programs with topics like AI literacy, sustainability, and digital transformation can increase the likelihood of engagement from potential customers.

2) Package and Price Your Content Strategically

While you certainly can sell individual courses and call it a day, there’s usually a more strategic approach. How you package and price your learning content will depend on whether you’re managing programs for a university or a corporate organization.

Higher education institutions might consider providing free access to some courses and offering a certification assessment as premium add-ons. Some learners might take the course for the knowledge alone, but many people will want access to the assessment so they have tangible proof of their newly acquired skills. Training providers and corporate organizations can consider offering course bundles or tiered access to their content. Remember to think about your audience and their needs, and how they align with your ecommerce goals.

READ ANOTHER CASE STUDY | ‘How Sodimac Colombia Overcame an Unexpected LMS Migration and Boosted Training Delivery by 25%’

3) Promote Your Learning Content

Take advantage of the built-in tools in Open LMS eCommerce to reach your target learners. You can use the platform to create a public catalog of your learning offerings that can be discovered by search engines. This way, your individual course descriptions, as well as your entire catalog, can be easily discovered by potential learners who are searching for the exact learning opportunities that your higher education institution or organization has to offer.

Each program in your public course catalog will have a unique URL that can be embedded into websites, promotional materials, and social media pages. This makes it easier for you to use multiple channels to get your monetized learning products in front of your audience. Open LMS eCommerce also lets you embed direct course purchase links, meaning people who encounter your course offerings through a social media post or similar channel can be taken directly to a purchase page. This reduces the number of clicks a prospective learner experiences, leading to a smoother experience for end-users and higher conversion rates.

4) Track, Refine, Repeat

You won’t need to just assume that your course catalog is generating additional revenue. Open LMS includes extensive reporting tools that can help you determine the effectiveness of your ecommerce initiatives.

Higher education institutions and businesses can use the LMS to run reports that demonstrate how each ecommerce product performs with various audiences. These reports help you make informed future decisions so you’re able to offer programs and learning opportunities that your ideal students want to purchase. Use the reports to identify purchase trends, course completion rates, and other helpful information. Open LMS empowers you to make strategic adjustments to your monetized learning content so you can maximize your revenue.

You can also use the reporting tool to see how many course enrollments are specifically driven by your ecommerce suite, as well as how many people purchase a course but don’t complete it. You can use this data to see which courses are selling well and which ones might need refinement to improve the user experience.