“Want to make $350,000 while sleeping at home?!”…is what a big fish would say to entice you to click on this article. Turns out, not all of us are big fish (>10,000 followers), and as a small fish (<1000 followers), I am here to bare all, of how much a small fish can realistically make online with a course.
Without social proof, you’re as good as dead when it comes to earning money online. And for a small creator like me, who has despised social media for a long time, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Enough foreplay, let’s dig in!
Who Am I?
I am an Engineer, with a background in Aerospace and Electrical Engineering. I’ve worked on cool projects in the Aerospace, Robotics, and Power industries. From the Boeing 777X to Trump Tower in Toronto, pieces of engineering bear my name on them, as someone who contributed to these colossal projects.
And so I decided to build a course on printed circuit board (PCB) design. The problem is, loads of PCB design courses already exist on the market.
Value Proposition
How is my course different than any other? My value proposition was adding industry practices to it, in addition to the basics. The value generated would be helping students, beginner PCB designers, and electrical engineers excel and stand out in those pesky job interviews while knowing industry practices, all in 1 hour 30 minutes. The result? A cushy $80,000+ job.
The course took me 2 months to finish. 3 weeks to structure, 2 weeks to film and, 3 weeks to edit. I first uploaded the course using Teachable, a website where you can host your course on. All the money you charge for the course, goes to you, with the caveat that you are in charge of marketing it. Naturally, this would not be a problem if you have an existing audience, but for someone like me who doesn’t, marketing your own course is a steep climb.
Needless to say, I made 0 sales.
And so I picked up my belongings and went to Skillshare, where the website markets your course, and already has an audience. The downside is, how much money you earn from a course, depends on the course’s watch-time. Much like Medium, Skillshare uses the pool system. Users pay a monthly fee, and creators get paid according to how much their course is viewed compared to other creators.
Is Skillshare worth it? Here’s a short and sweet Skillshare review. For a smaller creator such as myself, absolutely! $338 vs $0. You do the math.
The Juice
$338. Measly or a great achievement?
I uploaded the course on Skillshare in Jan 2020. Here are the juicy stats:
$338 in a year. Not bad for a course that took almost 100 hours to make, right? Right?!
Granted, I had no prior experience in screencasting, video editing, audio mixing, Adobe After Effects for cool transitions, etc. I gained much more than $338. I gained new skills while providing value to people who want to learn cool new tricks.
Let’s dig a bit deeper, shall we?
With a total of 2,385 visits in a year, 187 signed up for the course. That is a 7.8% conversion rate. Skillshare, unfortunately, does not have in-depth analytics, on how many of these visits were a result of audiences searching for a PCB design course, or if Skillshare presented the course to them on their homepage.
Therefore, a 7.8% conversion rate does not tell us much here, except that my audience, as a small creator, is not huge despite sharing this course on my social media platforms including LinkedIn and Facebook.
Engage and Sell
Besides snobbishly telling you to go get yourself a large following, I would suggest you do the following:
- Build a course more general than a niche, that appeals to a larger audience. Bonus points (in the form of a larger audience) if it based on something someone can do online
- If you do decide to make your course more niche, look for something that is in high demand, low volume, and well under the realm of your expertise. I know, easier said than done.
- Note how I used the word “engage” before “sell”. Think about value in mind. Value for the audience. Greed for the sake of making quick money never ends well when it comes to generating online income.
Happy course-building!
Check it out here, if you are so inclined (with a 14-day Skillshare Premium trial): https://www.skillshare.com/r/user/knn
