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Solution That Will Help You Build a Course Marketplace in 24 Hours

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Have you been dreaming of starting your own online course marketplace but feel daunted by the technical challenges of building it from scratch? Fear not, it’s now possible to launch a minimum viable product (MVP) marketplace in just 24 hours using Bubble – a versatile no-code platform.

In this article, I will guide you through the entire process of setting up a basic yet fully-functional marketplace on Bubble without writing any code. By the end of the day, you’ll have a launch-ready site where users can browse courses, enroll, make payments and more – all without technical expertise.

Choosing Bubble as the Development Platform

When it comes to no-code development, Bubble stands out as one of the most powerful and easy-to-use options. Here are some key reasons to choose it for your course marketplace project:

Visual Drag-and-Drop Interface – Bubble allows even non-technical founders to visually design pages, sections and build app functionality without coding. Everything can be done visually through an intuitive interface.

Mobile and Web Apps – With Bubble, you can build responsive web apps as well as native Android and iOS mobile apps simultaneously with shared code. This future-proofs your marketplace for multi-device usage.

Built-in Database – Bubble powers apps with its own flexible database to store and retrieval user data, courses, orders and other entities. You don’t need external services.

Integrations – Popular integrations like payments (Stripe), analytics (Google Analytics), hosting (Netlify) are available out-of-the-box via Bubble’s integration library.

Version Control – The built-in version control in Bubble allows you to easily roll back changes, collaborate with team members and manage app updates.

Free Plan – As a founder with a limited budget, you’ll appreciate that Bubble’s Starter plan is entirely free for basic functionality. Only a Pro subscription is required for advanced features.

Given these advantages, Bubble is ideal for launching your MVP marketplace on a low budget in a very short timeframe. Let’s proceed to set up the project.

Setting up the Bubble Project

To get started, sign up for a free Bubble account at https://bubble.io. Once logged in:

  1. Click “Create new app” and choose a name for your marketplace project like “CoursesHub”.
  2. Choose a template – select the “Basic” template which provides a blank canvas.
  3. Add the starter pages – Create pages called “Home”, “Courses”, “Course Details”, “Cart”, “Checkout” etc.
  4. Add navigation – Design a common navigation bar widget to allow users to switch between pages easily.
  5. Publish your app – Click “Publish app” to deploy it on a free subdomain like yourname.bubblesite.io.

This forms the basic skeleton of your marketplace. Now let’s start building key functionality section-by-section.

Creating User Accounts

User profiles and authentication are essential for any marketplace. On the Home page:

  1. Add a register form to collect name, email and password from new users.
  2. Connect the form to Bubble’s database to securely store this user data.
  3. Add login and logout buttons linked to pre-built auth pages.

For the profile pages:

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  1. Create “My Profile” and “Edit Profile” pages to manage account details later.
  2. Consider allowing social logins via Google/Facebook using Bubble’s OAuth integration.

Now users can sign up to browse courses. Next, build the catalog. Checkout Zipprr Readymade Udemy Clone Script

Building the Courses Catalog

The “Courses” page will showcase all available courses. Here are the steps:

  1. Create a courses collection in database to store course objects.
  2. Design a CourseCard widget to display titles, images, prices per course.
  3. Query the courses collection to dynamically populate the page with CourseCards.
  4. Add filters like category, level, price to refine search.
  5. Allow infinite scrolling to load more cards as the user scrolls.

With this, users can browse educational offerings. Now add a course page for more details.

The Course Details Page

When a user clicks a CourseCard, lead them to individual course pages with the following:

  1. Pull course data from the tapped object in courses collection.
  2. Display detailed title, description, lessons, requirements etc in sections.
  3. Add an “Enroll” button linked to the cart.
  4. Collect instructor details – link to their profile later.
  5. Embed sample videos using YouTube/Vimeo integrations.

This provides all necessary information for informed purchases. Let’s create the shopping cart now.

Building the Shopping Cart

A cart widget will keep track of selected courses. Here are the steps:

  1. Create a cart collection to store cartItem objects referencing course IDs.
  2. On the Cart page, query cart and display CourseCard widgets of added items.
  3. Allow removing/updating quantities of items in the cart.
  4. Automatically sync cart on enrollment via the “Add to Cart” button.
  5. Calculate and display total price of selected courses.
  6. Add a “Checkout” button to proceed to payments.

Now users can easily browse courses and manage their cart before checkout.

Enrollments and Checkout Flow

When users click “Checkout”, lead them through the following process:

  1. On Checkout page, redisplay cart items and totals.
  2. Collect customer’s name, email and address using built-in forms.
  3. Send enrollment and order objects to a new orders collection.
  4. Integrate popular payment gateways like Stripe for one-time/recurring payments.
  5. On successful charge, display order confirmation with receipt and enrolled courses.
  6. Send enrollment emails to users and instructors.
  7. Empty customer’s cart on completion.
  8. Allow downloading course content from profile pages later.

This fully automates the key marketplace flows end-to-end.

Building Instructor Portals

To manage the supply side, create instructor dashboards:

  1. Design an “Instructor Signup” page to register new teaching accounts.
  2. Add a protected “Instructor Portal” with left nav for key actions.
  3. Allow adding new courses with categories, levels, descriptions etc.
  4. Provide options to edit/archive/delete existing courses.
  5. Display stats on course enrollments and earnings to date.
  6. Integrate payouts to linked bank accounts based on sales percentage.
  7. Consider a course authoring panel for managing lessons/assessments.

This empowers instructors to easily manage their offerings on the marketplace.

Additional Features

There are many other features that can be added to enhance the user/instructor experience:

  • Course reviews/ratings on listings pages
  • Notifications on enrollments, messages or course updates
  • Forums for community discussions around courses
  • Instructors can share announcements, updates or blog posts
  • User profiles to follow favorite instructors
  • E-learning tracks to organize course progression
  • Certificates/badges on course completions
  • Integrate LMS features via platform partnerships
  • Build an admin dashboard for central marketplace management

While not possible within 24 hours, this illustrates the ongoing potential your no-code marketplace has for deep customization and growth over time.

Pre-Launch Preparations and Launch

Before unveiling your MVP marketplace:

  1. Thoroughly test all core functionality across devices.
  2. Prepare commonly used help resources for initial users.
  3. Consider a soft launch among friends/family for feedback.
  4. Promote your launch on social platforms with sneak peeks.
  5. Integrate Google Analytics for post-launch audience insights.
  6. Set up onboarding sequences to guide first-time users.
  7. Establish basic workflows for support/refund policies.
  8. Continuously capture feedback to prioritize improvements.

Once testing is complete, unveil your fully-functional marketplace to early adopters! Continuous engagement will turn them into your advocates as your project takes off on its journey.

Conclusion

Through this detailed step-by-step process spanning just 24 hours, you now have a fully-functional MVP online course marketplace launched without any coding knowledge. Built on the robust and easy-to-use Bubble platform, your site allows:

  • Users to browse courses, enroll, make payments and access enrolled content
  • Instructors to manage their offerings, view stats and earn from teaching
  • Central marketplace admin features for overall management

While basic at this stage, you now have a validated foundation to iteratively add intuitive features, deepen functionalities, launch effective marketing campaigns and build a thriving marketplace community over time. All this has become possible through the tremendous power of no-code development.

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