Have you ever considered teaching online? Kody Bateman has helped thousands of people do that. He’s an expert on the subject and has done all the “hard work” for you, meaning it won’t take years for you to find out what works and what doesn’t. Instead, he shows you exactly what he did to be able to make money teaching online.
Ways to teach online
Once you’ve decided, “I want to teach online and earn money,” the first step is choosing the right method. You can teach online courses in several ways, depending on your subject matter and comfort with online teaching technology.
Evaluate the subject you aim to teach, and consider the most effective way for students to receive the information. Ask questions like:
- How did you learn this knowledge or skill?
- Were there written materials that you could print out?
- Did you watch videos that helped guide you?
- And most importantly: did this type of teaching benefit you, or do you think there’s a better way to learn?
Also think about your target demographic. Are you teaching teens or young adults, who increasingly learn via elearning gamification? Or are you teaching older adults, who may have less familiarity with newer technologies?
Consider that you can implement a hybrid approach to your online lessons. Perhaps you create a YouTube channel and offer links to additional material within a PDF workbook.
Or maybe you create your own online course, complete with quizzes and infographics.
Whatever you decide, make sure that your chosen medium is appropriate for students who want to learn online.
Next, figure out how you want to deliver your course to the world. For instance, some professionals sell courses from their own websites, which gives you the ability to customize and control the students’ experience. Just make sure you have the technical know-how to monitor and optimize your site.
Or maybe you partner with an online course marketplace that will do most of the heavy lifting as far as hosting the course goes. Only thing is, you don’t have access to marketing tools or control over where your course lives in their marketplace.
You’re probably better off seeking out an all-in-one platform that lets you host your online course while you market and promote it.
Kajabi, for instance, lets you push your online courses live while also allowing you to:
- Set up sales funnels
- Send out marketing emails
- Host your website
- Create a blog
- Get deeper insights with a CRM and analytics suite
You don’t have to visit multiple websites or launch several tools to accomplish all of those tasks.
Since creating an online course can represent a serious time investment, you don’t want to waste precious minutes learning how to code, install plugins, or set up merchant accounts. If you use a medium that already exists, you can hit the ground running with your first course.
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Benefits of teaching online
If you love the idea of setting your own hours and developing your own products to make money teaching online, entrepreneurship might fit your personality well.
Make no mistake: when you learn how to teach online classes and earn money, you become an entrepreneur. You get to decide how much you charge for your courses, what material you include, and when to release your material.
With this freedom comes tremendous opportunities to earn money. You might spend weeks or even months building a solid online course, but you can sell it over and over again without having to perform any more work, other than responding to your customers and helping them through the material.
Plus, you can let your creativity run wild. Many online learners have grown tired of stale, repetitive information. They’re not just looking for answers to problems or ways to create things; they’re also looking for an interesting approach to the material.
Incorporate your unique personality, background, experience, and approach to online learning in your course. You might be surprised by how quickly you develop an online following.
Of course, the benefits of online classes aren’t limited to just your own experience. When you teach online courses, you also deliver tremendous value to your customers. As an entrepreneur, you’re creating a product that your customers can use to their own advantage.
Some students might decide to find work in a new industry, try a new craft, or build something with their bare hands. Others could use your course material to inspire a different lifestyle.
The possibilities are endless, which is why online classes have become so popular among regular people who just want to add to their knowledge banks.
How to Teach and
How to make money teaching online
As already mentioned, the simplest way is to work at an hourly rate for an online education company. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of such companies available, usually teaching languages. You can get started in a matter of weeks and begin earning a steady, reliable income from teaching online.
And, even if you do plan to offer your own online courses, teaching for someone else can be a good way to keep money in and gain some online teaching experience while you are developing your own online course business.
The most successful edupreneurs tend to host complete online courses where a student can learn everything about a particular subject or skill. These courses are usually structured similarly to college classes, with lessons building on each other toward a specific outcome, be it mastering software such as Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Excel, or learning how to knit a sweater. Popular courses can cost each learner thousands of dollars, and generate the six-figure incomes that are the goal of many edupreneurs.
To take this approach, you typically need to license a platform designed specifically for selling online courses. Nearly all of these provide tools for creating course and then selling them on an on-demand basis or as part of a subscription or membership package.
Explore the best online course platforms for selling courses >>
If licensing and managing an online course platform sounds like more than you want to do, then you might consider creating and selling your course through a “marketplace” platform like Udemy or one of its alternatives. Just be conscious when you do this that there are downsides to the Udemy business model. You’ll need to decide whether these downsides are worth it for you.
Be aware, too, that if your focus is primarily on creating educational videos you can host and sell these on popular streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video Direct or Vimeo On Demand, both of which stream through apps to millions of customers, who can purchase individual episodes as and when they want to view them.
Or, if you are interested in offering subscriptions without having to license and manage your own platform, many edupreneurs use sites like Patreon to produce content and share it with their followers for fixed rates that are paid monthly or upon particular triggers, such as a new lesson being posted.
Finally, charging directly for courses is not the only path to making money by teaching online. As mentioned earlier, you can use ad revenue splitting to earn money every time someone watches an ad before your video classes, or affiliate programs, which give you a cut of the profits from every sale you refer. Hosting ads on your site can also be profitable, providing you get enough visitors who click on them.
No matter which route you take, once you’ve built a successful online teaching business, it can continue to generate income for years – often with little further input from you. Working for someone else, of course, you’ll only get paid for the hours you put in – and when you stop, the money stops.
Getting started teaching online
It doesn’t take long to get started teaching online.
While applying to online teaching companies can take weeks of applications, testing, and negotiations before you’re accepted and begin earning (assuming you had all the qualifications they required already and you don’t need to take lessons yourself!), you can record your first online class and upload it to YouTube or an online course platform today. All you need is a webcam (or smartphone camera), a quiet location, and a lesson plan.
Here is some guidance on how to create an online course to sell >>
If you want a more professional setup, you can create a simple home video studio quickly and cheaply with some basic equipment.
Coming up with a subject to teach might seem daunting, but start by creating a list of what you know and are passionate enough to educate others about. It could be your language, something from your own educational background, work-related, or a favorite hobby. With a topic in mind, follow my tips for validating your online course ideas to narrow down your options.
Once you’ve chosen your subject and started planning and creating your lessons, you can find the right hosting platform and monetization methods. Within a day or two you could have a free WordPress site monetized by affiliate links, and video lessons hosted on YouTube with ad revenue splitting. You can also upload courses onto specialist online course platforms, where millions of learners go to seek out new online classes.
Keep in mind, too, that offering a live online course – for example, using a platform like Webinar Ninja – may be the fastest and easiest way to get a course up and running. A major benefit of this approach is that you can get feedback – and testimonials – from your initial students that will help you improve your course and market it effectively whether you decide to continue in a live or on-demand format.
It might seem too good to be true at first – and, as with anything, success doesn’t come without work – but teaching online is a viable source of revenue, whether you’re looking for a passive income stream or a new and exciting career. Keep in mind, though, that it is only one of the many options to make money online with your expertise. Be sure to also see our ultimate guide to monetizing your expertise for additional ideas.
Conclusion
Teaching, regardless of the subject area, is a fun and fulfilling thing to do if done properly. But what if you could teach while making money? Let me explain more in detail…