Udemy Teaching Details
Udemy is among the names that you will come across when you are considering learning online. However, if you are someone who wants to make a living or earn extra money through teaching online, will you also find Udemy teaching as a brilliant opportunity? Read here and find out.
Udemy regards itself as the leading global marketplace of online courses. Anyone can create and sell courses here. Standard courses on Udemy are video-based. A course should have at least 30 minutes of video and at least 5 learning modules or lectures. You may add additional learning tools such as quizzes and assignments.
Based on this info, you know that Udemy is like Bitdegree and Skillshare where you can create video or text classes, which an interested person could purchase and learn from. The platform differs from other online tutoring (Chegg, Takelessons, Wyzant, Skooli, TutorMe, Preply, Buddyschool, Tutor.com, Connections Academy, Superprof, and Course Hero) or online English teaching websites (VIPKid, iTutorgroup and Magic Ears) with live sessions and Q&A style tutoring.
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The image above shows the statistics of Udemy that are worth checking out.
If you sell your created course here, you will join its community of 57,000 instructors.
While a course will not provide a learner with any certification or degree when he finishes it, he may still earn extra knowledge about the topic. Although you are selling your own course, learn new skills yourself so you could also add to the 295M enrollees and check out 150,000 courses in the Udemy marketplace.
Perhaps what makes Udemy an attractive source of online learning for many people is that its courses are available in over 65 languages. With courses on a wide selection of subjects and topics (in Development Finance & Accounting, Business, IT & Software, Office Productivity, Design, Personal Development, Lifestyle, Marketing, Health & Fitness, Photography, Teaching & Academics and Music), about 80% of Forbes 100 companies seek this marketplace of courses for their employee up skill.
Thus, Udemy claims that it can help organizations to stay ahead in the developing work future. As an instructor, you could create courses that target this audience comprising companies, government agencies and non-profit organizations all over the world aiming to develop the skills and knowledge of their employees.
Course Uploading, Course Rights
You need to upload the course on the Udemy platform so students can see it. Udemy has a standard uploader, but you may also import the course via file storage tools like Dropbox and Google Drive.
A complaint about another online learning platform, Course Hero, is that they cannot get back the lesson they uploaded here after the website kicked them out. Therefore, they assume that Course Hero keeps the uploaded materials without giving the creator his appropriate remuneration.
At Udemy, you keep the rights to your courses and contents. When you upload the course at Udemy, you grant it a permission to host your course so that users can avail it. You are free to offer the same course on other platforms, but make sure that the price of your course on every platform you upload it is the same.
Creating A Course
1. Select A Topic
Before you proceed to making your course, make sure that your course adheres to the guidelines such as which topics Udemy allows and which ones it restricts. You need to read the help articles explaining this in detail. You might wrongly assume that the topic you have in mind is among the restricted topics, although it can be one of the trending topics in this marketplace. Thus, you lose the opportunity to monetize your skills.
For example, the restricted topics on Sexuality are adult pleasure toys, sexual techniques, sexual performance and seduction. Yet, Udemy allows topics on consent and communication and safe sex courses.
For Nudity and Attire, Udemy allows courses on medical footage or demo, fine arts or figure drawing and anatomical illustrations. It does not permit courses on naked yoga and boudoir photography.
When choosing a topic for your course, keep in mind that Udemy does not allow underage learners to avail the courses unless with the consent or guidance from their guardians or parents.
2. Define Target Students, Describe Course Goals
Learners here are of different ages and backgrounds. Thus, determine who you want to teach and what you want your students to learn.
3. Decide How Students Will Practice What They Learn
This is where you must decide on what practice methods you like your students to use when applying what you have taught. You may add quizzes, activities, case studies and exercises.
4. Prepare Your Course Outline
This course outline will determine the structure of the course and will help you visualize your course’s contents.
5. Create A Script
Since you will need to film yourself delivering the course, you must prepare a script for the lecture.
Video Production
Video Content is an integral part of Udemy courses, so this is another aspect that you should know about if you pursue Udemy teaching.
1. Choose The Type Of Video Recording
You could either film yourself discussing the topic. You may also film your screen as you do the course on your computer or you can use both. Choose the recording that is most appropriate for your topic or content. A technical course or coding, for example, would be best shown through screen cast or recording your computer screen as you discuss what you do.
2. Gather And Prepare The Filing Equipment
You will need a camera, microphone, editing software and other tools for video recording. Check out this video on how to find suitable equipment for creating Udemy courses at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSSH8CzO1EI .
The recommendations in this video are for the type of video you like to produce. If you want a video with a talking head, you need a microphone, camera, home lights and editing software. For a screencast video, you need a microphone, screencast software and editing software.
3. Set Up The Recording Studio.
Choose a quiet place or room at home where you will film your course.
4. Test Video
A test video will help Udemy team to determine if you are on the right track of video production. Thus, you need to send your test video to Udemy. Send a 1-3 minutes sample video using the same equipment you will use to film your actual courses.
5. Video Editing
Editing is necessary for creating the final version of your course.
Audience Building
There are millions of Udemy users you could get your audience from, and there are also many other instructors in this marketplace you have to compete with. Thus, learning how to build your audience means knowing how to stand out and have a good head start.
1. Course Landing
NO matter how students find your course, they will just have one destination to reach and this is your course landing page. This is also where the students can decide outright if they will avail your course or not. The landing page needs to have a captivating title, interesting course description, preview lectures, etc.
2. Course Price
Set the price of your course from $20 to $200. You may offer your course for free and you may also avail of Udemy promotions wherein Udemy will market your course to its worldwide community of 50 million learners all over the world.
3. Social Proof
The social proof involves honest reviews and paid enrolments. Develop social proof by sharing the course on your social networks to your friends and family.
4. Other channels
Since you have gathered social proof on other networks, might as well expand your business outside Udemy. With an established course at Udemy, you may start setting up an email list or a YouTube channel to drive awareness about your Udemy course.
Requirements
Based on the details above, you could surmise that it requires more than the knowledge or expertise of a subject to become a qualified instructor at Udemy since you have to deal with every aspect of your class. From the outlining of a course to the setting up of your filming equipment, and even up to the marketing of your course (as an addition to Udemy promoting your course), you are the person in charge.
Being an Udemy instructor differs from being a VIPKid, Magic Ears or Connections Academy teacher where you will follow the already prepared lessons and class programs. However, this is not like Takelessons or Wyzant where you need to pay for a background check or meet very strict qualifications before you can start teaching.
Even your location or country of origin is not a big deal to worry about, except if the payment method is not available in your country. Filipinos with skills and talents could create their courses (even in Tagalog) and sell them on Udemy.
How To Apply/Join
You need not pay any fee to become an instructor at Udemy, as mentioned in the video below. There is also no approval that you must first get to begin your course.
Revenue sharing is the payment model that Udemy uses in compensating its instructors. It sends monthly payments to your linked PayPal or Payoneer account.
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Start your Udemy teaching venture at https://www.udemy.com/teaching/. Here, you could first read the details about an Udemy instructor. Once you have decided that this is an opportunity hard to pass, click on the red ‘Become an Instructor’ or ‘Get Started’ button.
Enter your full name, email address and password. After agreeing to the terms by signing up, you will start the first of 3 on-boarding steps.
You will see a page that will ask about your teaching experience (in person/informally, in person/professionally, online or other).
The next page is the second step that will ask about your skills in creating a video course (a beginner, with some knowledge, experienced or with ready to upload videos).
Finally, tell about your capability to reach an audience.
When you finish the 3 steps, you will immediately have access to the instructor dashboard. Here, you may browse further to learn more or you could create your video course right away.
Potential Income
I think teaching at Udemy is overwhelming at first since you have to deal with every part of the video course production. Yet, you might also feel inspired to get over this initial apprehension and continue with the venture after reading positive reviews, such as shown in the image below.
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Do not expect to earn a lot in your first month, especially if you are an amateur at creating and selling video courses. The amount of money you could earn is hard to estimate.
According to its blog post, you will never surely know what you could earn at Udemy as an instructor.
I think you will have better chances of earning more from your courses if you will further invest effort and resources on marketing your course.
The revenue sharing of Udemy entitles you to get 50% of the sales of your course. You may also take advantage of Udemy affiliate program to earn more.
Work Schedule
Unlike other tutoring platforms we have looked at previously, where you have to choose time slots of your availability to teach, Udemy does not require you to stay online at any given time.
The only time you will need to invest is the time to produce the video course and the time you will put in marketing or promoting it to your audience.
One Udemy FAQ mentioned that many of its instructors complete their courses within 30-45 days. While this is a lot of time just to create the course, keep in mind that after you upload the course to the Udemy marketplace, you can spend your time elsewhere.
You could go to various social media networks to share the news about your course.
If you think creating video courses and selling them on Udemy is too much of a task for you, look at other online jobs you can take on. If you are an avid social media user, look for a job as a social media marketer and lead generator.
If you have some administrative or secretarial skills, search for online opportunities as a virtual assistant, data researcher and data entry specialist.
Since the pandemic limited a lot of 9-to-5 jobs, you may search the web and make the switch to work from home jobs as content writer, web designer, transcriptionist, proofreader, video editor or software engineer.
You could also start your career as an affiliate marketer and make the most out of programs like Wealthy Affiliate.Benefits / Bonus/ Increase/ Training Provided
Speaking about affiliate marketing, here at Udemy, you could increase your potential earnings if you will join its affiliate program on different networks, as shown in the image below.
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You could earn baseline commission (15% of the valid affiliate sales).
Conclusion
PROS
CONS
Anything that you do for the first time requires a serious amount of learning and familiarization. If you are serious about earning money online, Udemy offers something worthwhile that skilled, knowledgeable and talented people could pursue. It is not something that you can finish in one sitting, but one that requires patience and perseverance. One positive thing I find about Udemy is that it provides resources that will help first timers to learn the ropes of becoming an instructor.