Videos have become a primary tool for online instruction for good reason. For course creators, videos allow you to speak directly to your learners in a more casual way. For learners, video lessons provide both a visual and auditorial style of learning that can increase engagement.

You may already be using videos to engage learners on your own YouTube or Vimeo channel. So, why not reuse your videos in a paid LearnDash course to increase your passive income? 

For example, if you’re already using Vimeo to host your video content, then you can benefit from another opportunity to monetize your videos by turning them into an online course. 

Additionally, create a free course with your existing videos on Vimeo and use them to promote your paid course. Creating a free course from your existing content helps you establish credibility, which makes it easy to sell future courses and products to your audience. 

Before we show you how to use Vimeo to create a LearnDash course, let’s consider how Vimeo compares to YouTube. 

Vimeo or YouTube?

YouTube has obvious appeal. It’s free to get started, and it’s already the second (or third) largest search engine on the Internet. YouTube is a great way to get videos out easily, with a simple uploading process. 

While YouTube exposes your videos to a large audience, that might not be ideal if you want to protect your course content. If you’re offering paid content, you’ll want only your students to access those videos. If they’re free and public on YouTube, then anyone who has a link can access and share with others. 

Vimeo has advanced privacy options so you can lock down your videos to ensure that only your students have access to your content. Vimeo also presents videos without pre- or mid-roll ads. And unlike YouTube, Vimeo has 24/7 support to help you troubleshoot or assist in navigating their platform. 

Vimeo does have a free option, but for course creators, you’re not going to be able to get by with the free tier. You’ll be restricted on upload and storage options, and you’ll lose out on all the additional features of their paid tiers. There’s a popular $35/month option that unlocks powerful creation tools and features, such as custom branding on videos. 

With that said, let’s show you how to take a Vimeo showcase and turn it into a LearnDash course. 

Turn Your Vimeo Showcase into a LearnDash Course

The Course Create Wizard allows you to create and publish courses using a YouTube Playlist, a Vimeo Showcase, or a Wistia Project URL. The wizard automatically loads all the necessary data from your videos and creates a course with lessons corresponding to each individual video. 

The Wizard was designed to save you time embedding videos into your new online course, so you can focus on marketing and selling your course instead. Here’s how to get started: 

• Create the showcase in Vimeo. You can do this by clicking the “plus” button next to showcases in the left panel. You’ll be taken to a page where you can input the showcase’s title, description, and privacy level.
• Add your videos. Remember to arrange them in proper order, as this will be the order of your lessons in LearnDash. You can drag around the order in your Vimeo showcase before importing. 

• Copy the playlist link from your Vimeo account and head over to your Courses tab in LearnDash.  Click on “create from video playlist” button in the top right and paste in your Vimeo showcase and click load. 
• From here, you’ll be presented with options on the course access settings and course progression. Choose your settings and take a look at your new course made with Vimeo! 

Want to see it done in action? Here’s our video walkthrough of how to turn your Vimeo showcase into a LearnDash course:  

For a written walkthrough, we’ve got you covered in our knowledgebase article.

Ready to give it a go? Try using a Vimeo showcase to create an entire course the LearnDash demo and watch a new course come together in minutes.