The education industry is an enormous field that generates billions of pounds yearly.
Regardless of how obscure an area may seem – if a person has knowledge about something, people are bound to want to learn it.
Using your expertise to create an online paid course can generate you a tonne of extra money.
Courses can be sold for thousands of pounds (if they’re of a high standard) – just think, university courses are sold for upwards of £30,000!
Udemy is an online platform through which ordinary people can purchase and create educational courses.
Depending on their value, the price of a course can range anywhere from absolutely nothing to £200.
Now, £200 isn’t quite £30K:
However, once created, your course can earn up to two hundred pounds instantaneously without you having to put any more hours into it.
It becomes a totally passive source of income and an incredibly easy way to earn extra cash.
And the best part?
If you’re already an expert in something, all you need to do it devote a week or two to converting your knowledge into a course and you’ll begin earning a tonne of money without you needing to actually go out and learn any new skills.
To begin, you’ll have to start mapping out the strategies to make your course a success.
Here’s the tools you need…
A computer or laptop.
A computer/laptop is essential to your course-creating journey and, without one, you won’t have any way of actually building your online course.
Macbooks are favoured by many and are a great investment, however they are considerably expensive.
For now, a decent quality laptop that isn’t going to break on you and is simple to use will do.
You don’t need to sell your soul to pay for a Mac – start simple.
A microphone.
Thankfully, it isn’t necessary to purchase the highest-quality, sound-engineer-level microphone you can find if you wish to be successful.
Blue Yeti USB microphones cost around £80-100 and will do the job just fine.
If you wish to improve your sound quality even further, you could purchase a pop filter online to stick over the mic and block out any unwanted sounds.
If you don’t want to buy any extras, simply recording in a quiet room with little noise pollution is the best way to block out extraneous noises.
Screen recording.
Now, to actually produce video content you’re going to need some sort of screen recording software.
This, again, doesn’t have to be crazy expensive.
In fact, it’s best to cut your budget as much as possible in the beginning – buying the best equipment you can afford without putting yourself out of pocket.
ScreenFlow tends to be a favourite for Mac users and Flashback Express is another strong option if you’re working from a PC.
Thankfully, editing is made easy using these softwares and you’re not going to need to be an expert in video editing and production to produce top-quality content.
Some pointers for creating your course:
As previously mentioned, you absolutely do not need to be an expert in your niche to make your course successful.
The content you produce can simply be your own conglomeration of information digested from other course and online resources – it doesn’t need to be information that you already know.
If there’s nothing that springs to mind when you begin brainstorming ideas for courses, perhaps you should consider becoming more educated in a field you’re interested in.
You can do this by reading books, purchasing online courses that already exist on Udemy, or even subscribe to a site such as Lynda. Lynda.com demands a monthly subscription of around £20 per month.
Once you’ve paid, you’re free to download as many courses that you wish and sponge existing information.
You could even just subscribe for one month and learn all you need know for just £20 – all the while making notes which you can later use to create your Udemy course.
If you wish to create a successful course, you’re going to need to show your face and talk to the camera.
The information you deliver will be most effective if done so in video and audio format, simply because it is easier to learn this way and looks more professional.
If you’re worried about doing this, now is a great time to break down that fear of putting yourself out there and start making some money in the process.
It doesn’t matter if you stumble on your words occasionally or use a lot of hedges when trying to make a point – these can all be edited out of the video before you publish it.
Don’t let your expertise stop you from going ahead and creating your course.
You may not have any worthy credentials or accolades that you can use to support your course’s success.
If you do have these, that’ll help – you can put them in your Udemy profile and biography to show that you are in fact fairly skilled & qualified in your field.
If not, don’t worry!
So long as you can create a strong, honest list of all of your strengths and achievements, you’ll be sure to draw people in.
Not every course-creator is going to be an expert in their field – people understand that.
People like honesty, and they trust others that have clearly made some successes in their area of expertise.
Your profile is the key to your Udemy success:
It’s the only real opportunity you have to show yourself off and let people know that you know what you’re talking about.
Treat it like the cover letter of a job application – sell yourself in a genuine and honest fashion, avoiding claiming that you’re an expert and instead being honest about your achievements.
Don’t let the fear of not being an expert stop you from creating a course.
The Steps Towards Your Udemy Success
To summarise the previous points into a few simple points:
- Learn more about something you’re interested in.
- Keep doing this until the point where you could easily teach it to others.
- Invest in adequate equipment to create a course.
- Forget your fears.
- Create your course and teach your knowledge to others.
Creating the Outline for your Course
To swiftly create a logically-structured, easy-to-follow course, it’s best to create an outline for what it’ll include before you begin.
To do this, first start to think of what it is you’d like to teach people and come up with a plan for how you could do this through a set of simple steps. These steps will form the basis of your lectures.
Then, once you’ve got an idea of what each lecture will include, begin to create the first lessons of your course using your camera and microphone, carefully editing each video and perfecting it before moving onto the next.
The entire course shouldn’t really be longer than an hour or so, however you can go over this guideline if you deem it necessary.
This course should be broken into a series of short, around 5 minutes each, videos containing top-quality information delivered in a clear and logical way.
Then, once you’ve made all of your step, tie all of these videos together and publish them to Udemy for a set price and you’re all finished!
How to Price Your Course
Now, the tricky bit is deciding how to value your course so that it’ll earn you a decent amount of money without driving people with a limited budget away.
To decide this, you’ll need to take into consideration the following factors:
The length of your course.
Courses can range anywhere from ten minutes to forty hours so you should consider this when choosing the price of your course.
It’s no good pricing a half an hour course at £200 when there are two-day long course out there for far less.
Topic & leve
The topic and level of expertise your course includes is also a significant factor that will contribute to its pricing.
If you have zero qualifications and credentials then you shouldn’t be charging crazy amounts for your course.
You’ll simply be pushed out of that niche by competitors with far more accomplishments that are charging the same prices and less.
Quality.
If your course lacks quality and detail or isn’t as thorough as it could be, more a general overview of a subject rather than a comprehensive guide, you shouldn’t price it inappropriately highly.
Instead, take into consideration the educational value of your course to decide how much it should be priced.
A good way of doing this is to ask yourself – how much would you pay for a course of this standard?
Additionally, you can ask others how much they’d be willing to pay to gain a rough idea of its monetary value.
Additional Resource:
5 Free Udemy Courses With High Demand You Need To Succeed In 2020
