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How I made $43K in 2020 with my Flutter courses: Udemy & YouTube income report

submitted this link to Icon for group Course Creators
Course Creators
on January 1, 2021
  1. 10

    In the article I share a full income report from my Udemy & Teachable sales and all the numbers from my YouTube channel.

    In sharing this, I hope to give a realistic picture of what it's like to be a content creator in 2020, with pros and cons.

    A few highlights:

    • I've been a content creator for 3 years, sharing free tutorials on YouTube and paid courses on Udemy
    • This year I earned $43K, compared to $15K last year
    • I invested 1200 hours in the business, earning $36 per hour on average
    • Udemy is a very crowded platform. You need a top 10 rank for your course category to make meaninful sales, and ranking is determined primarily by number of reviews and average review score
    • I used YouTube, Twitter and my own website to grow my audience, but tried to focus on the right metrics, not just vanity ones (number of followers etc).
    • Drawbacks: programming languages and frameworks change all the time, and content goes out of date quickly. Keeping stuff up to date takes time (this ain't passive income)
    • I'll try to diversify my income in 2021. A bit of consulting work is an excellent safety net for anyone trying to bootstrap a business.

    Hope my insights are helpful.

    Happy new year!

  2. 1

    I've watched alot of your videos! Nice job.

  3. 1

    Fantastic write up Andrea - you've done great work in 2020!

  4. 1

    Great share! I tried a Udemy course before starting Alchemist Camp, but failed the identity verification step (likely due to being a nomad).

    One thing that stuck out to me was that you said it would take you six months to re-record a twenty hour course. Given that you already know the material and have already recorded it once, why would it take so long?

    What does your recording process look like?

    1. 2

      Yeah, I didn't explain that well.
      What I meant was to replace it with a brand new shiny course of the same length.
      That would make it a lot more valuable, but it's a lot of work.

      1. 2

        I understood it would be a shiny new course.

        Why would a 20 hour course covering material you already understand take half a year to create? What does your recording process look like?

        1. 2

          For project-based courses:

          • Build the completed app upfront
          • Figure out the entire course structure: which topics I will cover and in which order. Roughly each topic translates to a chapter. Then for each chapter:
          • Write a complete script of all the lessons. This takes a lot of time, but I can work out exactly which concepts to cover
          • Record each lesson following the script. I tend to record 15 to 20 seconds at a time, depending on how many mistakes I make, then put the pieces together into a single video.
          • Edit the video: cut out pauses, mistakes, and add overlays

          Scripting, recording and editing take the vast majority of time. For my last course, it took 300 hours to produce 10 hours of content.

          I'd love to be able to do this quicker and hear your suggestions.

          1. 1

            Okay, this is useful! I don't do steps 3 or 4. I never write out a script.

            I code it, commit to a git branch and then reset and code while recording. If I make a mistake, I keep the video rolling, take a deep breath, think and then say/type that part again.

            My cuts tend to be 2-7 minutes apart and it takes me about 2-5 hours to record, edit and publish 1 hour of video. 30 hours would completely demoralize me.

            1. 2

              Yeah I was finding that without script I was making a lot of mistakes, but I definitely need to find a better way of doing this.

        2. 2

          I'm interested in understanding this as well. That seems quite long, although I've never made a course before.
          How many hours a week do you put into your course to come up with a 6 month timeline?

  5. 1

    I found this report super interesting, thanks for sharing!

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