I started teaching online in 2005 and it has allowed me to work form home, raise a family and travel the world. That's why I'm dedicating this month to side hustles for teachers or people who want to monetize their expertise. If you're a teacher, check out the four fast ways you can earn extra money on the side. If you're looking to create your account with Teachable, then let's get started.
Most of the strategies for making money are not legit or take too long to make decent money. Let's change that. When I think about side hustle money, I want two factors: Passive Income and Evergreen Content.
Passive income is money that comes in every month or every week similar to a rental house or a dividend stock. That's why I recommend creating online courses and charging your students a one-time fee or a monthly.
I've been creating courses online since 2004 when I first wrote a book on affiliate marketing & sold it as an e-book. Back when only a handful of people knew about affiliate marketing.
This strategy is a perfect fit for teachers looking to make money on the side.
Related: Four Ways Teachers Can Make Money
There are seven main online teaching platforms that allow you to easily create your content, start collecting money while they host your content & deal with the technical side of everything. Check out the seven main platforms here.
Teachable allows you to build an online school where you can publish online courses and make money. Wondering how you will get your Teachable setup?
Here is a simple step by step guide on how you can set up your Teachable account, build your school and make money!
Step 1: Visit Teachable.com
Open your browser and go to teachable.com. You should be able to see Teachable’s home page as shown below:
Step 2: Start the Teachable Setup Process
Click on ‘Create Your Online Course’ in the upper right corner. Creating a Teachable account is absolutely free.
Once you enter your email address and click on Get Started, you will be redirected to the signup page as shown below:
Just fill in the form and click on ‘Get Started’. If you already have an account, you can just log in.
Also, confirm your email address to verify your account. A link will be sent to your email. Just click on it and verify your account.
After confirming your email, you will be redirected to the dashboard that you will use to set up your school as shown below:
Step 3: Create Your Online School
Now that you have created a Teachable account, let’s create a school. Teachable allows you to create schools where you can offer multiple courses.
There are two ways to think about creating your school. For example, if you're a life coach specializing in helping people stop drinking – you could create a Your Name Coaching school (i.e. Tony Robbins Life Coaching)
Then, underneath the “Your Name Coaching” – you could create Weight Loss Coaching Course. This allows you to create multiple courses under your coaching brand.
The second way is to use Teachable to create a brandable course (one course only). I'll go into a more in-depth training on how to do a timed launch where you open the doors for 10 days & then, close the doors. That will give you more course sales & a bigger list as you present a limited-time offer to your life. That creates a “missing out” fear that will get people to join your course before the deadline.
Step 4: Pick a Plan for Your Budget
The next step involves picking a plan. You can pick any plan according to your budget. However, I recommend starting with the free plan and then you can upgrade as your school grows. The free plan allows you to have up to 10 students.
As your class grows, you can upgrade to the basic, professional or business plan. Here are the pricing for each plan.
Step 5: Create Your Online Course Using Teachable
You can skip signing up for the webinar and move on to create a Teachable course. This is the most interesting part of the setup. Just click on ‘Create a course’ and you will be redirected to the course creation page as shown below:
This is where you give your course a title as well as give the author’s details. Once you complete filling in the form, click on ‘Create Course’ and you will be redirected to the curriculum section.
Step 6: Create the Curriculum
In this section, you will be able to upload your course content as well as arrange the modules in order.
Creating course content may take days or weeks but it is worth it. Ensure you create high-quality videos that will engage your students and offer value. Remember to build rapport with your students!
The best way to build curriculum for your topic is to create an outline with bullet points. Each bullet point will have a 3 to 5 minute video.
Remember – you can create an hour long sales video, but the actual training videos are smaller, bite-sized easy to consume.
Step 7: Teachable Setup: Price Your Online Course
After uploading your course content, you can move on to pricing.
Teachable offers several pricing plans as shown below:
You can offer your course for free, charge a subscription fee, charge a one-off payment or give your students a payment plan with a fixed number of payments. Let's talk a good pricing strategy.
I recommend searching for your competition and seeing how they price their training. I personally like the $249 down and the $49 per month price point for life coaches if you plan to do more hand-holding when class is in session. If you're solving a more “pain-filled” problem like addiction, drinking or weight loss, then you can charge more for your specialization.
Drop a comment and let's discuss the best pricing model for your course.
Step 8: Publish Your Teachable Course
Once you price your course, you can move on to publish it! Congratulations on publishing your first course on Teachable and creating your first Teaching brand account!
Your new course will appear under your school. Teachable gives your school a dedicated domain name. To access your school via its domain name, just click on the school name on the top left corner.
You can also create more courses, but I recommend starting with one and getting the marketing down before creating another course or setting up another Teachable account.
Step 9: Customize Your School
To customize your Teachable school, first go to the ‘site’ icon. Then, you can change your school’s theme colors, the font, add a logo and even change the homepage background.
Just customize your school to your liking while keeping student’s needs in mind. Make it user-friendly and appealing to students.
Remember, you can always upgrade your plan to unlock more features such as using a custom domain name, having an unlimited number of students and many more.
Step 10: How to Make Money with Teachable
Making money is the last step. It comes after you have created your course and published it. The number of sales determines how much money you make. Focus on boosting your sales by marketing your course.
Most people think that once you setup your Teachable account, publish your course, sit back and wait for the money. This is rarely the case. You must actively market your course and reaching your potential students.
Easy Marketing Strategy for Your Online Course
There are three ways that I've seen to successfully market your course.
Take a concept and teach it on TikTok or Facebook or YouTube. These are small 1 minute videos that pack a punch. The idea is to grow your following by giving value that builds trust.
Then, when you open your course up for students, you will go to your new following on TikTok, YouTube and Facebook to let them know that the doors are open for ten days.
Then, close the doors & put up a waiting list. Use this list for the next launch and the next launch and the next launch…
Finally, ask your students for feedback & reviews so you can become the best teacher for your craft. When people see the reviews and feedback, that will increase the number of signups. I'm excited to see what you create & come up with. Drop a link below to your new course.
If you have any questions or need anything added to this Teachable account setup, please let me know in the comments below.
