Skillshare Guide - Overview, Courses, Teacher Earnings and Competitors - DigiNo (2024)

Skillshare began as a company in 2010, created by founders Michael Karnjanaprakorn, the CEO, and Malcom Ong. Even from the beginning, their purpose has been to keep education accessible to everyone, no matter their economic or social status.

This would not only level the playing field for all students, but also help the perception of teachers as available to everyone and willing to share information as their passion. It is clear that Skillshare’s formula has worked, and the website currently boasts over four million students, who have all contributed to help teachers earn more than five million dollars.

For Teachers

Skillshare is an online learning platform that allows teachers to make online video course on a range of subjects. This is a platform where you can earn passive income by revenue calculated through watch-time of your course.

This is a different form of online teaching compared toonline ESL tutoring– which is a live video chat experience, that many teachers are turning to as asource of income compared to classroom teaching.

For Students

If you are seeking knowledge rather than looking to teach, Skillshare is a great platform where you can watch unlimited online courses for a cheap monthly fee, or watch as many as you want for free within a two month period.

This online learning platform attempts to keep their education environment as tight as possible. It is easy to say that the entire set up of the website allows for a sense of community between the educators releasing videos and the students, with interactive methods for contact. Not only do students complete simple tasks to check for understanding and completion, Skillshare also allows teachers to add assignments under their respective videos.

The projects assigned are generally long-term and meant to be completed throughout the full course.

Learners can then post their final products to other students, who can rate them and give feedback. However, it doesn’t stop there. There is also a huge “Class Project”, which gives all the students of a single course to work together and pool their knowledge to create a crowd-sourced product that is extremely refined and advanced.

These final creations are recognized on their own separate page on Skillshare, providing exposure and further feedback from peers.

The courses offered are not just academic. They can offer a range of skills useful in any situation, from the workplace to the kitchen.

Language Courses

Here are some examples of courses you can view on Skillshare for free as part of a free trial:

• Teaching Languages Online: How Anyone Can Become an Online Teacher
• Bite-Sized French for Beginners: Introductions and Greetings
• How to Introduce Yourself in Chinese Mandarin
• Learn to Speak – Conversational German for Beginners
• 5-Minute Study Motivation – Japanese Procrastination Cure
• Learn Basic English Conversation
• English Grammar Pro | Beginner to Advanced (A1-C1)
• Spanish for Beginners. The complete Method. Level 1
• American English Pronunciation

A common question for prospecting teachers looking to make some extra cash off sharing their expertise is, “how much do Skillshare teachers make?” Due to the community-based nature of the website, payment is based on how many Premium students enrol in your class through your referral link.

This may seem complicated and difficult for some, but keep in mind, if you are truly passionate about your subject and provide high-quality courses, it is only a matter of time before learners stream in to your classes. Educators also have the advantage of an extremely large membership count which makes it even easier to reach the milestone.

To figure out how much Skillshare teachers earn, there are two elements that we will look at:

• Skillshare student referral bonus
• Royalties from students viewing the courses

Skillshare teachers have the opportunity to earn extra income through Skillshare student referrals.

For example, we can offer you aone month free trial right now if you sign up through the DigiNo Skillshare teacher link.

Once you sign up for the free trial, we would receive $10. It's as simple as that.

I think the best way to explain how much money you can make with Skillshare is to show you some earnings of a Skillshare teacher:

So as you can see, most of the earnings come through referrals through offering the free trial.

‘Royalties' are the revenue from minutes watched of the classes.

In this example, the teacher only has one class that they promote, so it is a good example of potential earnings from just one course.

Let's use the image below as an example listing, total amount earned, number of students and minutes watched of courses. Then we can do some calculations.

So let's do the math!

4,732 minutes watched.

$743 earned, but we need to minus the referral income of $530, so that we can base this purely on the revenue per-minute watched.

So this leaves us with $213.

$213 divided by 4732 (minutes watched) =

0.045 cents.

Rounded up this is 5 cents per minute.

So you see, Skillshare will be only be a good source of revenue if you make a lot of classes and have a decent promotion strategy.

For your course, you could create a website and use SEO to get it ranking on Google using keyword research – you can find out how to do all of this in the article on how to create a niche website.

This would allow for passive traffic…and passive income.

But you can also share your Skillshare referral link through social media.

More referrals equals more royalties for minutes watched of your course.

And once you have a good number of students watch your course, it will begin to rank in the Skillshare discover page. So you will start getting organic traffic watching your course and earning you revenue.

So if you make classes regularly and define a good promotion strategy, then there is a huge potential to earn a lot of money on Skillshare.

A similar platform to Skillshare is Udemy. Udemy no doubt has the greater market share of this e-learning industry, but it operates slightly differently to Skillshare. Let's see how they compare:

Udemy

Udemy started a long ways before many other similar sites, and this gives the veteran an upper hand in streamlining the process of getting students and educators together.

Its outreach is massive, with 24 million students who together have engaged in about 80,000 courses. Topics of study can range from Programming to Lifestyle, with thousands of teachers in each category assigned.

Udemy for Students

Students are faced with a massive selection of teachers waiting to teach learners. Students may be pleasantly surprised at the options available for all aspects of the learning process, from providing different ways of learning the content to giving feedback on how or what they learned.

In the duration of the course, instructors can give out quizzes and manual assignments for students to finish, turn back in, and receive feedback on how to improve.

Udemy does not share the same “Project” feature as Skillshare does, so it is considerably less interactive between the learners.

Udemy can also come across as overwhelming, as there are simply way too many people on the site, and it is difficult to find exactly who is your right fit in terms of how the content is taught. In addition, though creating an Udemy account is free, learning is not. You have to bust open your wallets again to pay for the subjects of your choice, with prices ranging from a few dollars to over 20.

Udemy for Educators

Educators certainly benefit from the wide pool of students, and are therefore forced to produce meaningful classes that truly help the learners engage and retain the information.

Udemy teachers earn 50% of their listed price for the courses, but this can go up to 97% if students come due to the educator’s specific referral.

It can also be easier for you to create courses to your liking, with Udemy providing PowerPoints as well as PDFs, and videos as acceptable course material. This site may fit educators who wish to find a way to market their skills without creating their own advertising or website.

And finally, what you’ve all been waiting for: which site should I use, either as a student or educator?

Though Udemy has a veteran status and a gargantuan community, Skillshare has the advantage of an extremely tight-knit community of learners and teachers. This bond is created by the very interactive projects and group projects set forth by coursemakers.

In addition, Skillshare also diversifies into the realm of self-improvement of non-academic skills, while Udemy gears towards the highly technical field.

This is not to say that Udemy is subpar. Their content and user interface are simple and easy to navigate, a pro further amplified by a wide pool of content and people eager to learn.

However, Skillshare may just be better for the average student, who simply wants to save money, connect with other learners just like them, and discover many interesting subjects to learn about.

If creating video courses isn't your thing, or if you prefer to teach kids rather than adults, then Outschool may be a better alternative to Skillshare or Udemy. Allschool is an online teaching platform that allows teachers to earn by giving live classes to kids on a whole range of subjects. This isn't just limited to Maths or Science, but incredibly niche specific things such as acrylic paint pouring or even how to perfectly draw anime eyes.

If you are looking to add some new skills to your arsenal, then grabbing a free-trial and exploring what's on there is a no-brainer.

Then if you're thinking about creating your own classes on Skillshare, then you now have the knowledge about revenue potential to see if you believe it is worth your time and effort. It could be a great addition to your live online teaching through online teaching jobs. This guide previously mentioned Outschool, but you can find a list of other online teaching platforms below: