As I’m sure any follower of my Social Media accounts is aware…I completed creating my first online class. It was a difficult process for me as I was learning new skills (video recording and editing) and overcoming my fear of the camera. I’m happy to say I’m MUCH better with the skillset and still working on looking more natural on film.
I’ve gotten some questions on why I decided to publish on Skillshare. I did a bit of research before choosing that platform and I thought I’d share that with you:
Cost of Class
One-time Fee vs Subscription
This took quite a bit of research before I even started on the class. There are several popular sites for online learning: Skillshare, Udemy, and Craftsy are three of the biggest in the creative field. Both Craftsy and Udemy offer a one time price for each class. After you purchase a class you may watch it anytime, including offline. At time of this article, Craftsy is closed to new instructors and Udemy seemed a little overwhelming plus I read some negative feedback from instructors on their sale policies and other issues.
Skillshare is a subscription style service. You pay a monthly (or for a better price at yearly) fee and can watch unlimited classes. I had subscribed to Skillshare in the past and had been a subscriber a month or so before starting to work on my class. While I’m not a huge fan of subscription-based price,I do find Skillshare’s pricing structure an extremely good value for what you get. At the time of this writing their yearly price is $96 which is $8 per month for access to over 15 thousand classes. That’s less than the price of any individual class sale!
You can almost always get the first month for 99 cents or for free if you use my instructor link. That allows you to evaluate to see if you’d use it. I figure if I only watch one class a month (when really I watch 2-3 per week) then I’m still getting a bargain.
Personal Use
I’m a life-long learner. I am constantly reading, signing up for classes (free and paid) and listening to podcasts. Skillshare has not only creative classes but writing, marketing, business and technical class as well. In fact, I was watching Skillshare classes on how to do videos to help prepare me for my class!
Although I initially joined for creative classes, I have found myself watching videos on writing, blogging, marketing and, of course, videoing. Most classes I have encountered are 15-30 minutes in length and broken down into 1-5 minute videos. This is great when you have only a short break or get interrupted often. You can easily stop at the end of a lesson instead of trying to remember what point you stopped the video.
Supportive Community
I’ve used Skillshare so much and have been so happy with their setup, it felt natural to pick it to do my class on. When I decided to teach my class, the support was incredible! Skillshare runs a Challenge every month for instructors and provided deadlines with prizes (I won the first one so they are real!), guidelines, a teacher handbook, question and answer sessions plus several ways to get feedback from other instructors and students.
I even received help from other users. The video editing software I am using is quite a bit out of date and. I couldn’t find any video tutorials. Another student/teacher (lots of people are both!) found a link to the manual for me. While I initially chose Skillshare from my own learning experience, it was reinforced by the support I received from Skillshare and the online community during the class creation process.
So if you are a life-long learner like myself or have something to teach the world (or most likely both!) you’ll love Skillshare.