Online teaching is undoubtedly a flourishing market throughout the world. In fact, it’s estimated that the online teaching market would be worth $319.167 billion by 2025. Whether you’re a teacher planning to move physical classes online or simply looking for a side hustle to earn some extra money, online teaching can be an excellent solution.
But how do you make money with online teaching? You may ask! The truth is that online teaching is extremely lucrative, and you don’t have to be an educator to teach online. If you’re a thought leader in a particular topic or discipline, you can make a decent income by sharing your knowledge with others. Let’s now look at how to make money with online teaching.
1. Choose a Topic
If you have time and interest, you can generate some decent earnings by teaching online. Selecting a topic is the first step to teaching an online course that will earn you money. You might be passionate and knowledgeable about various topics, but select the one that inspires confidence in you the most. For example, if you’re a fitness coach, you can rake in some passive income by creating online courses on fitness and selling them.
2. Acquire the Relevant Skills for Online Teaching
While you may not be an educator by profession, there are various skills that you can develop to keep you from feeling like an imposter. Here are skills that will help you build the right connection with your students, develop better instructional materials, and promote your online courses more efficiently.
Computer skills – Given that online teaching/learning happens on the web, you’ll require computer skills to develop your instructional materials and deliver them successfully to the learners.
Marketing expertise – You must have exemplary marketing skills. You should know how to blog and use social media, email marketing, and a variety of other tools to help you grow your audience and engage them.
Communication skills – You must have excellent communication skills to succeed as an online teacher. If you’re a better writer than a speaker, for example, consider creating text-based content. If you’re an excellent orator, creating video and audio content for your students would be a great idea.
Ability to explain – To be a successful online teacher and actually make money by teaching online, then you must have the ability to explain your topic. Before meeting your students online, consider explaining the content you’re planning to teach to your friends or family, and gather feedback from them.
3. Get the Relevant Equipment, Tools, and Technology
Some course creators require only a few tools to start online education. With just word processing and the right platform, they can create high-quality courses. Others use sophisticated video recording technology and editing software. Sometimes they might even go to studios to record their course content.
Your comfort level and the kind of online course you’re developing will determine the technology you’ll use. If you want to equip your customers with landscape photography skills, for instance, video content would be a perfect choice. With videos, your audience will see and probably perform each step of taking a landscape photograph.
If you’re planning to host live online events, use video platforms like Google Meet and Zoom. Don’t use Eventbrite for your online events, as that platform is built with in-person events in mind.
Since you will constantly be communicating with the online world, you need to ensure virtual safety. The best solution for this is choosing the right VPN which allows you to browse privately and securely. If you are not sure which one makes the best choice, then you can learn more about NordVPN online.
4. Develop a Profitable Online Course
Now that you have selected your topic, sharpened your teaching skills, and acquired the necessary equipment and technology, the next step is to convert your knowledge into a skillfully crafted, easy-to-understand course. Here are a few practical tips to help you do that:
Perform some market research. Review other online courses in your niche to get an idea of how creators are approaching the lessons in terms of content and format. Also, check out which course providers in your selected topic are doing well on Google and then come up with a strategy that will help your courses rank well on search engines.
Use a wide array of mediums. Use text, live webinars, audios, videos, and a variety of other mediums meant for different learning styles. That way, you’ll make your courses more lively and engaging.
Outline your lessons in advance. The objective here is to have a well-defined plan to follow in place.
Gather all of your resources ahead of time. If you’re considering incorporating images, videos, statistics, and a broad range of other items, ensure they’re ready before you begin.
Choose the right course plans. Countless course platforms are available out there, so be sure to do your due diligence. This helpful list of the 10 best online course platforms by Eduard Klein will be a good place to start.
5. Promote and Sell Your Course
As mentioned earlier, you must have some marketing skills to succeed in the online teaching space. You need to grow your following on social media networks, publish blog posts, send personalized emails, answer questions from current customers and prospective ones, and look for new groups and fans in your communities.
However, if you don’t have the time for it, no worries! There are many digital marketing companies, such as Tactica, that can take care of all of this and more. Their team of professionals will help you create the best content online that will attract many new students to your virtual classes!
Final Thoughts
Teaching online is one of the most effective ways to position you as a thought leader in a specific subject matter and earn some money in the process. It’ll definitely take time and work to make a high-quality, easy-to-absorb course. But your efforts will pay off in the long run.
