Can You Actually Earn Passive Income From Online Courses?
I took a 30 day online course challenge to find out!
Each month this year I’m taking on a new 30-day passive income challenge. Then I’m sharing the details with full transparency.
My challenge for March: Create and sell an online course.
I did that and then some!
Today I want to share exactly how it all when down and the steps I took so you can hopefully do the same — but better.
This is the part where I tell you I set out to make one course, but… I essentially made two.
Let me explain…
My First Online Course Facelift
In the beginning of March I got started by reflecting on my first course from years ago. It’s called Save Money Resolution and the only place you could find it was on my website themoneyresolution.com.
I dug into my Kajabi dashboard to familiarize myself with the platform. I even watched some of my course videos back as a student and, to be honest, I felt a little bit embarrassed about what I saw. It wasn’t the video quality.
I’m the problem. It’s me.
I filmed my first course a few years ago when I wasn’t super confident on camera and it shows. I didn’t display any confidence or enthusiasm.
I took a deep breath and realized what needed to be done…
Before I made my new course, I needed to refilm and reedit the entire 2 hour and 20 minute course.
It just had to be done.
That alone would have been a huge undertaking but I didn’t stop there. I also decided to refresh the course content itself. I cut the fluff. I added some tips. I updated the resources referenced.
It needed to be perfect because I’m definitely not making this course a third time. After a week of rewrites, the scripts were ready.
In week 2 I refilmed. I got the recordings done in 2 days after work. Editing took me another 2 days. Uploading the new videos to Kajabi and making some edits to the course landing page took another day.
But presto — my new and improved course was live mid-month and I was very happy with it.
I’m an overachiever so I didn’t stop there (or was I simply avoiding that whole make a brand new course task?).
Regardless, I struggled to sell my course the first time. I know why. It was because I hosted it on my own Kajabi website where very few people could discover it.
I decided to put my new and improved save money course on a totally new course platform to see if I could reach and help more people.
I landed on Udemy because Udemy is essentially the opposite of Kajabi.
Kajabi is an all-in-one platform that has a website builder, email service provider, and so much more. You can also use Kajabi for podcasting, coaching, community groups and more.
It’s amazing and excellent and you should totally consider Kajabi for your course. But again, having my course on my own website does make it difficult to get eyeballs on it.
Udemy on the other hand is a massive marketplace dedicated to courses.
And I do mean massive.
Udemy has nearly 50 million users worldwide. Plus, it’s the simplest way for anyone — yes, even you — to make and launch a course for sale online.
I want exposure to that marketplace. By putting my course on Udemy, it’s like putting my product on the shelf in the popular course supermarket where the buyers are shopping.
The pros: I found the platform super easy to use, it’s free to use, and I can set my own price.
The cons: Udemy takes 63% of all course sales unless sign-ups use your specific referral link. They also put courses on sale quite often. Plus, the Udemy approval process also takes a couple days and there are course rules and restrictions.
For example, they flagged that I can’t reference money in my title or description which is pretty hard considering my course is all about saving money.
Needless to say, my updated course is now live on my website and the renamed “Save 10K Fast Masterclass” is also live on Udemy.
Mission 1: Accomplished.
I made this course trailer to help promote the relaunch:
My Course Creation Process
Now the hard part: Creating and launching a BRAND NEW course, ideally on both platforms as well.
Here are the 5 steps I took you should take note of if you’re thinking of doing the same:
Step 1: Brainstorm
Right away I thought of a dozen or so course topics. The ideas ranged from paying down debt, self-publishing a book on Amazon, YouTube, writing on Medium, Kajabi, iMovie, email marketing, and even fantasy football for beginners.
I narrowed it down to two topics:
1. Self-publishing on Amazon
I’ve published 3 books and it’s what people ask me for help with in real life the most. Plus, I enjoy teaching others and it’s where my brand and online content creator career started.
2. Writing on the platform Medium
Yes, the Medium you’re on right now! I’ve posted close to 200 articles and I’m now earning as much on Medium as I make on YouTube in a year. Plus, it’s easy for anyone to use and get started.
I went back and forth a least a dozen times. Ultimately I landed on a Medium course for a two big reasons.
With Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing there is SO much to cover. I only had time to make a mini-course.
Further, I have a Medium audience I can sell a course to. I’ve made a few YouTube videos about Medium and one of them really took off. It recently crossed 83,000 views and is my second most-viewed video.
Best of all, I was smart enough to promote a Medium tips PDF giveaway in that video which is gated by an email sign-up form on my website. I’ve gathered over 900 email address of people interested in writing on Medium.
Beautiful.
Plus, I could post about my course in the video description of all my old Medium videos for free marketing.
Step 2: Figure out the course focus
I decided to survey my audience.
I emailed my list of 900+ Medium email subscribers asking them to take a 5-minute survey. I also posted an article on Medium asking Medium writers to do the same.
All told I received 13 survey completions. This wasn’t as many as I was hoping for. I should have made the survey and questions a little shorter and perhaps offered an incentive like a raffle giveaway.
Regardless, I went digging for a theme and one definitely stood out:
How to make money on Medium.
Step 3: Create my course outline.
I wanted my mini-course to be around 1 hour long. My first course was 7 modules with 4 to 5 lessons within those.
I decided to make a course with 5 modules with 2 lessons in each or less. That would get me to around an hour.
To create the outline I needed to think about my audience and even course title. Unfortunately, my survey takers were all over the map. Some were looking to get started while others had been writing on Medium for years.
I decided to make my course for every Medium writer. That might be a mistake but I had to make decisions quickly…
The title needed to nod to “making money” without saying “money” (per Udemy’s rules). I wanted it to be appealing for beginners and experienced writers struggling to make money. I landed on:
Medium Income Quickstart Masterclass: How to get into the Medium Partner Program and earn $100+ a month consistently
$100 sounded like a feasible goal. I also didn’t want to overpromise and underdeliver.
I won’t bore you with the rest of the outline process but I landed on these 5 topics for each module:
- Medium editor basics and tricks
- Writing and editing tips
- Medium secrets and hacks
- 20 free writing resources
- How to make money on Medium
Step 4: Write the course lessons
I figured out the course needed to be around 10,000 words because my 2 hour and 20 minute course was 22,000 words.
Since it was 5 modules I simply needed to write one 2,000 word module a day Monday through Friday right after work. This made it feel a lot more doable.
Luckily, I worked way ahead of schedule because I know the topic so well. Plus, I was working off a great outline I made via Google Sheets in Step 3.
On Monday I was on fire. I wrote Module 1, 2 and most of 3.
On Tuesday I finished Module 3. Then Module 4 and 5 poured out of me.
On Wednesday I wrote the introduction, Conclusion and course trailer. Plus, I started editing.
On Thursday I edited the entire thing… again. Then I decided to go for it and I began filming. I tried to do it all in one sitting but it wasn’t meant to be. I ran out of steam after a 2 hours.
On Friday I finished filming and jumped straight into editing. It was much easier to edit than a standard YouTube video because I didn’t need bells and whistles like music, sound effects, stock videos, and so on.
On Saturday I wrapped up editing and started uploading to Udemy.
On Sunday I finished the Udemy submission process.
On Monday of the following week I uploaded the course to my Kajabi website as well.
I was exhausted. I was done.
All told, I went from idea to published on both Kajabi and Udemy within 9 days.
But how did I market it and did it sell?
Step 5: Promote and sell the course
I promoted the course to my 900+ Medium email list. I promoted it to my 13 survey takers via email. I even promoted it to the remaining 1,100 subscribers on my email list that probably don’t even know what Medium is.
Once again I posted on social media and wrote an article about the course on Medium. I also made a video trailer:
How did it perform?
I launched my Medium course as FREE to get people taking it. I needed reviews and testimonials before I charged. I plan to up the price slowly over the next few weeks.
30 people joined the course on my Kajabi website in the first 48 hours. I upped the price to $5 on day 3 and I made $25 in the first 24 hours of at that price point.
Not too shabby.
The Udemy course took longer to get approved but 221 people joined the course in the first 24 hours. Wow. Plus, the first review was fantastic!
That’s all I’m going to share about results for now. In the next week I’m sharing a BIG update.
I’m going to provide a 3 month passive income summary. It’ll be a recap of all of my 30 day passive income projects so far in 2023: how much I made, the wins and loses and more.
Here’s what my passive income projects were:
- January: A new YouTube channel
- February: Alternative investing
- March: Online course creation
Let me know what passive income challenge I should take on next or later this year. And let me know your questions about my two courses or the platforms I used: Kajabi and Udemy.
Final Thoughts
I hope you feel inspired because the truth is there absolutely are people out there willing to pay for what you know.
Online courses might be the future of education. They’re here now. They’re here to stay. They’re a great way to earn passive income online. And you can make a course better and faster than you probably thought if you’re committed and passionate about it.
I proved that to myself this month.
I’m extremely proud of my courses. I hope you’ll consider checking them out!
Save Money Resolution (Kajabi) | Save Money Resolution (Udemy) | Medium Income Quickstart Masterclass (Kajabi) | Medium Income Quickstart Masterclass (Udemy)
Watch the video version of this article here:
If you want to start writing on Medium yourself and earn money passively you only need a membership for $5 a month. If you sign up with my link, you support me with a part of your membership fee without additional costs.
Frankie Calkins (M. Ed) is a Digital Marketing Director by day. On nights and weekends, he’s an author, YouTuber, and finance course creator. He lives in the Seattle, Washington area. Contact: [email protected]
