Mums, the world has never been so technological before. That means there are plenty of opportunities to work from home. One of them is teaching online and you do not need to be a real teacher to do that, just share with the world the knowledge about a subject you are good at.

What do you need to start teaching online?

Firstly you need to outline the course structure, dividing it into sections. Imagine yours is about Healthy Cooking.

1. Identify what is the main goal of the lessons. In the example given it could be something like encourage people to cook healthy food, giving them knowledge about the way they can do healthy recipes but also mention some important tricks and tips about that.
2. Outline the course, dividing it into sections. Example:

• Section 1 – Introduction (welcome your students to the course; show some healthy ingredients versus non-healthy ones; teach one cooking trick that makes people feel you are already giving them something to learn; attach a pdf with some information connected to this subject).
• Section 2 – Fundamentals of healthy cooking; why should we eat healthily;
• Section 3 – Mediterranean diet – healthy recipes;
• Section 4 – Veggie recipes…

3. Choose the video style for your course :

• Slideshow with voice over (you can use Keynote, PowerPoint, Google Slides).
• Videos with slides or graphics (you can use the software mentioned above).
• Video-based (use iMovie to edit the videos. It is such a great editor and free of costs, as all the software I mentioned in this post).
• Screencast courses (these are the videos in which you show the computer screen to explain something. You can use OBS if you have a Mac or Quicktime if you have Windows).

4. Material needed:

• Computer/tablet/Laptop.
• Camera (can be from your computer, iPhone or smartphone. Invest just in what you can now. Update later).
• Microphone – it is usually recommended that we buy a microphone. In the books I’ve read, Blue snowball, Audiotechnica ATR2100 or Rode Podcaster are the ones recommended with decent prices and good quality, but I cannot tell you about my own experience. Honestly, I will try the cell phone microphone or the mp3 one at first and see how it works.

Where can you start to teach online?

1. Udemy

2. Teachable

3. Your Own Website

I’m now starting to prepare the lessons (I’m in the outlining), so just tried Udemy and Teachable. As soon as I try others, I will put the information on the blog and give you more details about it and also about the ones I am using.

What I can tell you until now is that the experience I am having with both is positive. They are easy to manage, you do not need to have amazing technical skills and they are free (of course you have the option to pay and have some extra features that can be helpful, like have extra help with marketing or have the possibility to put your own domain there, but in a beginning I recommend just options for free, once we are not earning money yet ).

Have your own domain is almost a most. You can put the same content there, but try to offer some extras on your own website, because you can earn more and have more loyal subscribers, that are really searching for you. In Udemy and Teachable you have to pay them commissions and can be harder to find that loyalty. However, their marketing is very powerful and can help you to increase your income considerably.

General advice

1. Before structure and launch your course, make a search on Youtube, on the platforms you are teaching and even in  Google Keywords or Amazon bestsellers, to check if the subject you are teaching is saturated or not and to find out what could be improved that leads other people to choose your lessons instead of others.
2. The better your content is the more subscribers and good reviews you will have. That is what can lead you to the top 10 in e-learning platforms.
3. Try to start with courses for beginners and then jump to the other levels.
4. Create several courses, so your opportunities to be successful will increase.