3 months on Skillshare. My results
3 months ago I posted my course on Skillshare.
The Skillshare business model:
- Students pay a subscription fee of around $15/mo
- Teachers get paid based on how many minutes students watched their course videos (Skillshare courses are VIDEO-ONLY)
To see how well the course will sell organically, I did not do any promotion of the course myself.
Here are my results:
STUDENTS ENROLLED =
15 students "enrolled" into the course in 3 months.
EARNINGS =
The enrolled students watched 1,109 minutes of my video lectures, resulting in me earning a total of 29$.
29/1109=0,026 (2,5 cents per minute watched).
My course: "Ruby on Rails 6: Learn 25+ gems and build a Startup MVP 2020" (Target audience: Ruby on Rails developers that want to advance their knowledge).
The course on Skillshare: https://www.skillshare.com/classes/The-Intermediate-Ruby-on-Rails-6-Web-Development-Course-2020-Learn-25-gems-and-build-a-Startup-MVP/141468652?via=search-layout-grid
The course on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/course/draft/2519558/?referralCode=4721E9D437DEE1734159
LESSONS LEARNT =
- Skillshare is for video content only (think youtube premium)
- Each minute of video content should be "engaging" and unskippable (student drops out while watching one of your videos = you don't earn)
- Maybe not the best platform for tech courses (feels like it's more for "soft skills & design")
- Maybe not the best platform for organic growth (I'm growing MUCH faster on Udemy)
=> If you are a course creator/educator - sell courses, not minutes watched!
=> If you are an entertainer/animator - sell minutes watched!
I you have already an audience, you should try Podia.
You can host all your courses for 30 dollars per month and decide the price of your courses...
I have a small audience, 100 student and I making an average of 2K $ a month...
Thanks for sharing! Interesting results. Good to see concrete numbers for sure!
I would also experiment with the course title (or content, if the title is very accurate). I rarely look for courses when I'm "intermediate" in something. I'd do that if I consider myself a beginner or expert. In the beginner case, I want a short-cut that would save me from reading detailed boring developer docs. In the advanced case I'd feel that I reached an excellent level yet I want to be better. It's not an objective rating of my skills, it's more of how I perceive my skills and when that perception pushes me to take courses to improve. Good luck!
Seems like you've got a good quality course, I wouldn't imagine an average student will watch that many hours.
Indeed. On Udemy I already have 40,000 minutes watched https://i.imgur.com/8lHjbCF.png
I thought skillshare it's fit for host some giveaway. we didn't charge user directly but we got money from premium referral then your can create some group then call your learner to join this group and make another giveaway like when your overall watch time will reach goal all of learner will got reward. and your will got money from royaltie
wow, this sounds like an unusual, interesting approach
Interesting, I've always been intrigued by Skillshare. If you do decide to go down the self-hosted route the CourseMaker beta discount may be of interest. Udemy allows you to run your own site in parallel.
Thanks a lot for the recommendation, Christopher! Is there some key feature that distinguishes CourseMaker from Teachable or Gumroad?
CourseMaker is built for technical course authors: We're open-sourcing the gatsby app so that you always have the option to use that if you want to manage hosting yourself further down the road. It's not ready yet, but we're looking at github integrations so you can manage your course curriculum with just markdown and git.
And it's much more affordable than teachable, with all the video hosting and paywall protection (i.e. course-specific features) that gumroad doesn't have.
Thanks for sharing, I like concrete figures!
Very interesting , thanks for the tip!
This is a conservative view of a educator-centric model, markets have evolved to appeal to learner-centric models. They are not mutually exclusive, the underlying assumption is that a course/educator does not needs to be engaging by deploying humour, and to really grow as an educator, you have to proof-check your underlying assumptions, that's the only way you distinct yourself from the mediocre ones.
So you are saying that to be a distinguished educator you have to be engaging and humorous (except of just being knowledgeable)
Such a funny attempt to rephrase what I said.
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
I will include ways that will improve the learner experience. Strictly labelling them restricts you options. It's your call :)
Maybe my English isn't that good to understand your meaning :( . Could you please explain/rephrase?
Very helpful advice, thank you
That's very interesting. I didn't know this was the model for skillshare creators.
Thanks for sharing