eCourse Growth Strategies

Monetizing Your Mind: Experts Choose Entrepreneurship Over Teaching

5 min read | Feb 12, 2014
Monetizing Your Mind: Experts Choose Entrepreneurship Over Teaching cover image

The thing that you’re really good at is likely also one your main passions. It’s the thing that you’ve probably spent a lot of money and a copious amount of time perfecting. For many, this is the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning.

And now you’re finally good at it, others want the opportunity to learn from you. And why not? You love talking about it and helping people with the same passion as you.

In the “real world” this is where schools have traditionally come in. They broker the educational exchange between student and teacher. They have acted as a sort of “middle-man” in the educational world.

But in today’s online economy many teachers are asking themselves why they are accepting an hourly payment from a school when they now have the opportunity to access students themselves using the internet.

Essentially, entrepreneurial minded teachers and experts can take out the middle-man and earn more from their knowledge.

Teachers or experts with even the slightest bit of business acumen can now sell their courses online using what is known as a Learning Management System (LMS). In short, it’s a complex system that allows teachers to teach online, and students to learn online. It’s not as complicated as you might think. But we’ll get to more on that soon.

TEACHERS TRANSFORMING INTO EDUCATIONAL ENTREPRENEURS

The Huffington Post recently wrote an article showing the average salary of teachers from around the world. The results ranged from roughly $20,000 to $50,000 for the countries they profiled.

Compare that with what some course sellers on online education sites are making. Take us at AcademyOfMine.com for example, some of the teachers on our network make over $100,000 / year. We’ve found reports that some educators on the site Lynda.com have made over $30,000 / year. Udemy is another example of an education platform where their content creators make an average of $7000 / year (some make a lot more). You can even read a poll we started recently on our blog which asks our readers “how much do you make selling courses online“?

So teaching online, at best, can help you create thriving full time business for yourself or at a minimum help you earn supplemental income on a year to year basis.

NEW SCHOOLS

These new teaching platforms are acting as the “new school”. A new way for teachers to gain access to students and a way for students to be picky about the teachers they learn from. No longer are students beholden to a school’s roster of teachers. They can pick a course taught online by an instructor they admire, pay a fraction of the price they would have normally paid if they went through a traditional school, and hopefully still learn just as much.

EFFICIENCY OF EDUCATION

And it is possible to learn as much online as it is in a “real world” classroom setting. Learning online isn’t a compromise for teachers or for students as long as the subject matter translates well online.

IT’S NOT HARDER TO TEACH ONLINE

It’s not harder to teach online, it’s just that the tools and processes are a little different.

One of the biggest upsides of online education, for both teachers and students, is the efficiency of the online learning platform. Pre-recording material means teachers are not teaching the same content over and over again. And this means that students can save money because the teacher can streamline and digitize some of the educational experience (the non interactive elements) and then pass the savings in efficiency onto the student. So students often get very good value for money if they decide to learn online.

THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

The only thing that stops most teachers or experts from bringing their courses online is a lack of technical knowledge. They simply hear the word Learning Management System (or LMS) and they cringe. They think “no thank you, I’d rather make half as much and not have to worry about learning how to build or configure complex online learning software“.

Well, the good news is that there are various free and paid options available that do this for you.

Academy Of Mine is probably the most robust company out of them all. Of course, we’re biased, but we love what we offer. Our company was designed by eCourse sellers for eCourse sellers. We know the hurdles you need to jump through. We’ve jumped through them ourselves and watched our client’s jump through them. We then analyzed the results and created a streamlined system that works.

By signing up with us not only will you get an LMS, but we also help you build and optimize a sales front-end. We are like the Holy Grail for people wanting to bring their courses online. You pay a monthly fee and you get access to pretty much everything you need to run a successful eCourse company. You get your own dedicated system and you keep 100% of your course enrolment sales, you’re paid every day and we give you so many great tools to help you sell your courses and keep your paying students happy.

We offer a really powerful site but it’s also really simple and beautiful. We do however charge a monthly membership fee to our services but this fee ends up being a small price to pay to keep 100% of your enrolment sales. It’s an investment in your company. Not a cost.

Other companies have lower barriers to entry (no cost to join) but they take a big chunk of your enrolment sales (up to 50%). So it’s free to join, but it’s not a “free service”. You’ll also be selling on their system (not your own dedicated system). But this route might be a great option for someone looking to get started quickly and for someone who doesn’t want to deal with setting up their own dedicated eCourse site.

Many free open source Learning Management Systems options, as well as “freemium” options, exist as well such as Moodle, eFront or Atutor to name only a few.

Each one has its ups and downs. Some have great functionality but are not very intuitive. Others are very intuitive but you might find the design standards a little outdated. Or you might love the functionality and design but you find the setup too complex for anyone other than a computer programer.

If you really want to learn about designing an LMS with “the end in mind” you should listen to our free 40 minute podcast that simplifies the entire process. We even include a real time walk through of our demo LMS so you can see how everything works from the student’s perspective. You can listen to it here:

Free 40 minute Podcast: Creating A Learning Management System

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