What if you didn’t even need a blog or audience of your own to bring your courses to the masses and earn a living from them?
Well, people are doing just that with Udemy.com. Which I joined a couple of years back - but my goodness - like everything in life you get out of it what you put in.
In case you are unfamiliar with Udemy, it is a website that enables anyone to teach and learn online. Launched in 2010, Udemy tries to democratize online education by making it fast, easy and free to create online courses. Oh and if you are here for the code - then it's at the bottom of the blog.
If you are a trainer and interested in the platform - then read on :)
First thing I will say is that when it was born - Udemy was UGLY. Sorry but it was and this is why I didnt do much with it.
However, without me, Udemy has done rather well in the last two years as it now:
Gets over 500,000 unique visitors a month
Has over 250,000 users in under 3 years
Can help you deliver your own course (free or paid)
Is redefining learning online
And has launched a b2b offering which is really rather clever too
And lets you (the trainer) keep 70% of the revenue from your courses (or 85% if you directly refer the customer to the course).
Not only this but Udemy now says that a quarter of its approved instructors will finish the year with more than $10,000 from sales of their self-created courses on subjects ranging from web development and entrepreneurship to yoga and photography.
Believe you me that is a LOT more than my own online video marketing course Your Marketing Trainer will make this year!
The company declined to share the total number of instructors offering classes on Udemy but said the figure has climbed 300 percent in the last year. About 60 percent of all instructors on the site are “approved,” meaning their courses meet a checklist of standards and can be searchable by students online. The site has attracted about 400,000 registered students, which is about a 520 percent increase from last year.
“[Teaching] doesn’t just have to be a service that is hourly work,” said Dinesh Thirupuvanam, VP of marketing for Udemy. “It can have more scale and that can reach more people.”
On Udemy, anyone can create a video-based course on a range of topics – from web design and entrepreneurship to yoga and photography. Instructors can choose to offer them for free, but the average price for a course is $19 to $199. Many of the top classes draw about 500 students, with some reaching students in the low thousands. For each class, Udemy takes 30 percent of the earnings.
Thirupuvanam said dozens of instructors in all kinds of disciplines are making upwards of $10,000 but the highest earners tend to teach more technical topics (Microsoft Excel and Python, for example) or business and entrepreneurship. The most popular instructors, he continued, are especially passionate and knowledgeable about their material. And they put in about 30 to 40 hours or more to prepare the curriculum, produce high-quality video and interact with students via message boards. Instructor Victor Bastos, for example, has earned $325,000 over the past 12 months from his class on web development. But even a class on the “art of black and white photography,” taught by photographer David Nightingale, has made $31,000 in just four months.
Still, success depends on several factors, including demand for topic, the experience of the teacher, student reviews and, importantly, the instructor’s own marketing efforts. Which I must confess for myself I did nothing at all.
But like all search social engines and platforms, Udemy’s algorithms will flag classes that are gaining traction on the site and then the startup will promote them to students via email and better placement in the marketplace. But it’s on the instructors to take early steps to get the first few students and reviews.
Earlier this week, New York based peer-to-peer learning marketplace Skillshare similarly reported impressive earnings for instructors of its online classes. Both platforms offer online video-based classes on professional and creative skills, but Skillshare also includes offline classes and even its online classes offer students live interactions with instructors and peers. And on Thursday, CourseHero, a startup offering different online education tools from flashcards to study guides to courses, also launched a marketplace enabling subject matter experts to make money from their knowledge.
As online education grows, it’s encouraging to see not just platforms like Udacity and Coursera that let professors and educational institutions reach millions more online, but learning marketplaces that allow all kinds of people with expertise to earn compensation for teaching. And the growing success of sites like Udemy and Skillshare point to a future of more open education and opportunities for lifelong learning.Whereas sites like memrise - i think point to an amazing future of learning with a more gamified experience.
Udemy, which was launched in 2010, has raised about $4 million from 500 startups, Lightbank and MHS Capital, as well as individual investors like Yelp cofounder Jeremy Stoppelman and Square COO Keith Rabois.
Funny to think I had emails with the owners back in the day as they started off. I really was a very early adopter.
But maybe its time to stop being right intellectually online - and get involved online as well.
I do so love to train people in digital marketing - and have at least 17 different workshops I could put online.
Oh and by the way here is 65% off any* course with coupon code MAYNSL65.
Discover a course today. Thanks Udemy - remember it what you know as well as who you know....
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