Know This Before Creating Courses for Skillshare
SKILLSHARE TEACHER PAYMENT IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE.
Let me start by saying this. I like creating courses. I like teaching.
As an attorney, I’ve taught continuing legal education courses to attorneys and entertainment and business law classes to law school students. I’ve done in-person and virtual teaching with both of those.
But now I’m online. I teach whatever I want to teach. Some courses have been successful. Some have not.
THE START OF MY SKILLSHARE JOURNEY
I started my Skillshare journey at the end of 2018. I published a course about being healthy and fit during the holiday season.
I didn’t know a lot about courses. I didn’t understand that my course wasn’t “evergreen,” meaning no one was going to sign up for it after the holidays had passed.
But that wasn’t my biggest issue.
I had very little confidence in what I was doing. I didn’t think I had the proper equipment. I didn’t think I was professional enough. I didn’t feel like an expert on the topic or any topic, to be honest.
So, I left the course on Skillshare while I focused on other things. I didn’t return until 2021, and when I did, I saw that I had made a few coins, literally.
In April and May of 2020, I made 0.74 and 0.89, respectively, without doing anything. That means I didn’t earn anything for over a year. I earned nothing in 2019.
In July of 2020, I made $1.63. In September, I made $1.76. And that was it for 2020.
THE ROAD TO MAKING CONSISTENT PASSIVE INCOME
One day in June of 2021, I checked out my stats. In February of 2021, I’d made $2.24. That turned on a light bulb for me. It made me realize that if I actually worked at it, I could grow a course catalog that would bring in passive income.
I hadn’t done anything for that $2.24, and yet, there it was.
As I liked to say to my daughter: if you can make $2.00, you can make $20.00. If you can make $20.00, then you can make $200.00. I decided to start creating courses for Skillshare again.
Of course, I did it wrong the second time around also.
I had no real plan. I didn’t do any research. I made courses that I thought people would want to take. I wasn’t necessarily wrong in thinking that. I just wasn’t as right as I thought I would be.
But with more courses, I started making more money.
In August, I made $8.94. September was $9.46. October was $63.97. November was $46.58. December was $60.22.
At the end of 2021, I felt good until it came crashing down.
THE HOUSE OF CARDS FALLS DOWN.
By January of 2022, I had eleven courses on Skillshare. I made $66.80. My earnings stayed in this range until May when I finally hit the $100 mark. Over the next few months, my earnings went up and down, and then it hit $121 in September. I continued to add new courses and felt like $100 was getting ready to be my new normal.
But that was not to be.
Skillshare announced a change in its payment terms, and the next month I sank down to $56.07. That was October. At the time of this article, it appears that the November payment will be in the $40s. That’s from $121 in September.
I immediately lost my enthusiasm for Skillshare.
It can be hard to put your energies into something and watch it be away from you just as you’re figuring it all out. It can be hard to stay committed. You wonder how much you’ll have to do to return to where you were. You ask yourself whether it is worth it.
I know that I did.
Skillshare’s reasoning for the change in teacher compensation was that it wanted to bring it in line with industry standards.
I guess that’s one way of putting it.
I’D BEEN PREPARING FOR THIS DAY ANYWAY.
The worst mistake you can make is to think that the platform you are using will never change.
Thankfully, I recognized that nothing stays the same and started building my own course platform. I had already stopped actively referring people to Skillshare for my courses, and I started building a platform that I controlled. I started doing research. I got smarter.
Within a month, I had my platform set up and ready for a trial run.
I’ve been in situations before where my job was no longer my job anymore. As a result, I’ve been working to build extra streams of income while I continue to work as an attorney.
I’ve become a proponent of income diversification, especially after the pandemic.
Many people lost their jobs and had to find a way to replace their incomes. Businesses closed. People lost their homes. Many of them are still struggling to recover.
There will always be challenges that will knock us off our feet. The key is getting back up and moving forward.
So, while I’m no longer enthusiastic about being on Skillshare, it’s alright. I’ve found replacement platforms, and I’ve made my own.
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