Skillshare Review 2024: Is Teaching on Skillshare Worth it? (2024)

Skillshare is an online learning platform launched in 2010 and headquartered in New York. It was founded by Malcolm Ong and Michael Karnjanaprakorn. It offers more than 41k courses to 8+ million users on the platform.

Skillshare allows you to;

• Become a teacher and sell your course online.
• Get paid for selling your course.
• Connect to over 8 million learners.
• To earn passive income while working with the site.
• Design courses to help students learn new actionable skills.

How Much You Can Earn With Skillshare?

You can make $200 to $300 per month on the platform selling courses. As a teacher, you’ll receive compensation of $0.05 to $0.10 every minute Premium students watch your videos.

Earn Royalties

Earning royalties is how you will get paid for your content. You’ll receive a royalty for every minute a Premium student spends on your videos.

The royalty pool is made up of 30% of the total Premium Membership revenue in a month. You will receive a certain percentage of this royalty pool as your income depending on the time Premium students spent watching your course videos.

For example, if 5% of total Premium student minutes are spent on your videos, you’ll receive 5% of the total royalty pool.

Earn Premium Referrals

Apart from getting paid for your course content, you can earn more through their Premium referral system. Each time a new Premium member signs up with your referral link, you get $10 as a bonus.

Refer a Friend to Teach on Skillshare

If you have friends who are willing to teach on Skillshare like you, you can refer them to the platform. When they sign up and publish their first class, you will get a bonus of $50.

Who is Skillshare Best for?

Skillshare is best for teachers who want to sell their courses and earn money. It is also best for learners or professionals looking for an e-learning platform offering various courses

Skillshare Benefits: What Does Skillshare Offer?

Easy to Use

You can upload your courses, manage your team and add seats anytime.

Earn Steady Income

You will be paid for offering courses to your students.

Connect With Instructors and Building Relationships

Building networks with other instructors helps you to be more engaged and more productive.

Teaching Your Class on Skillshare

What Can You Teach on Skillshare?

The four main categories you teach on Skillshare include;

• Creative
• Business
• Technology
• Lifestyle

You can teach any topic you’re comfortable with under these categories. Let’s say you’re good in graphic designing, you publish a graphic design course under the Creative category, and if you’re good at coding, you can submit a course under Technology.

Likewise, you can teach anything that you feel will attract the Skillshare audience. According to Skillshare, the most popular topics on the platform are illustration, graphic design, writing, photography, branding, and creative freelancing.

Topics You Can’t Teach

According to the Skillshare guidelines, you are not permitted to teach certain topics on their platform. These include;

• Passive income business strategies or amassing fast followers.
• Dating, romance, or relationships.
• Teaching on other educational platforms.
• Showing students how to resell existing products or services (such as drop-shipping or multi-level marketing).
• Medical content that is related to the medical field.
• Mathematics, standardized testing, physical and life sciences, or classical engineering.
• Religion, spirituality, politics.
• Fitness and exercise.
• Pet care (e.g., grooming, training).
• Beauty regimens or cosmetology.

Skillshare Requirements

To Become a Teacher at Skillshare, You Must:

• Provide valuable educational content.
• High quality HD videos (720p to 1080p).
• Have a complete bio and your profile picture.
• Unique landing page.

Skillshare Tips

Tips that might help you become a successful Skillshare teacher.

Bring Your A-Game

If you want to get more Premium minutes on your videos, try to choose an area you are already familiar with. You can polish it up with some research and then create the course.

Choose Popular Topics

Choosing a popular topic is vital to earning more revenue on Skillshare. Do some research yourself on the popular topics, and then decide on your topic.

Also, it is wise to check out courses of other successful teachers to get an idea of how they choose topics and what they do to promote them.

Publish Frequently

If you want more engagement and views on your videos, you must publish videos frequently.

Market Your Classes Outside of Skillshare

You can market your Skillshare course on social media platforms or on your blog. You can as well market your course by word of mouth. For example, you can get some students from your class to review your course and give genuine feedback.

Even if you don’t have an audience, you can always refer your courses to your friends or family or share them on social media.

Pro tip: Share your Skillshare course on LinkedIn and topic-specific Facebook groups – where your potential students are.

Become a Brand

Think of yourself as a content creator on YouTube. Keep in mind that your content matters, but how you present it matters even more.

Try to use intros, logos, artificial lighting, backgrounds, or anything that will add a better value to your videos.

Skillshare Fees

The platform offers a one-month free trial, after which you will be required to upgrade to premium membership for $32 per month or $168 annual.

Skillshare Payout Terms and Options?

Skillshare pays you through Tipalti. Tipalti supports payment methods like PayPal, ACH, e-check, and Wire Transfer. Payments for each month are paid out on the 16th of the following month.

The time funds take to reflect on your account depends on your payment method. For example;

• PayPal; takes 1 business day.
• ACH (Domestic Bank Transfer); takes 3 business days.
• E-check (International Bank Transfer); takes 3 to 7 business days.
• Domestic Wire Transfer; takes 1 business day.
• International Wire Transfer; takes 1 to 2 business days.

Skillshare covers transaction fees done through PayPal and ACH/e-check. However, you will be responsible for transaction charges if you use Wire transfer or any other payment methods.

SkillshareReviews: is Skillshare Legit?

Having a rating of 4.3 on Google Play, a 3.79 rating on Sitejabber, a 4.8 rating on Apple Store, and a 1.9 rating on Trustpilot show that Skillshare is a legitimate and trustworthy e-learning platform.

According to most teachers, Skillshare is one of the best e-learning platforms to learn new skills and gain additional professional knowledge. Other teachers also liked the platform because it allows you to earn extra cash selling courses to learners or professionals.

However, some teachers complained that most courses are only available in English. Overall, Skillshare is a reliable e-learning platform.

What Are the Skillshare Pros & Cons?

Skillshare Pros

• 2 ways of earning as a teacher – royalties and referrals.
• Skillshare has a rich community of engaged students/
• You can modify courses you’ve created for other platforms and publish them on Skillshare.
• Allows you to create short bite-size courses of 20 to 60 minutes.

Skillshare Cons

• No guarantee that you’ll earn revenue after publishing your course.
• Competition from other teachers on the platform.

How Good is Skillshare Support and Knowledge Base?

Skillshare has a detailed FAQ page for teachers, where you can find instructional articles to help you out. You can also contact the support team via email or fill out a ticket and submit it.

Skillshare Review Verdict: is Skillshare Worth It?

Teaching on Skillshare is a great option if you’re thinking of monetizing your expertise. It provides an easy way to upload your video courses and gives you different ways to earn money, e.g., referrals.

You can make $200 to $300 per month selling your courses on the platform. Additionally, you also get paid $0.05 to $0.10 per minute for videos watched by your students. Even though the software is not the best, if you are looking to upgrade skills or acquire recognition, it is worth trying.

Pro tip: Publish your video courses on various platforms like Udemy and Teachable at once to diversify and maximize your teaching income.

How to Start Earning With Skillshare?

Becoming a Skillshare teacher is a straightforward process consisting of 4 steps.

Step 1 – Plan

This is the phase where you choose your topic, organize your thoughts on how to present your topic, and outline the video lessons.

This is perhaps one of the most important steps to being successful on the platform. Students are there to learn, so make sure you choose an interesting topic and provide value.

Step 2 – Produce

This is where you initiate your plans and produce the course content with the necessary tools and equipment. If you’ve never produced a video in your life, this process might be challenging.

But how do you succeed on Skillshare? Let me share some useful, actionable tips to produce high-quality video courses to set you up for success.

Tip #1: Teach with confidence

Confidence is the key to success, so try to be clear and relaxed in front of the camera. Don’t be afraid to speak casually, smile, and show your personality – students love seeing a confident and friendly teacher rather than overly formal and serious.

Here are some tips and tricks to appear comfortable and confident in the camera:

• Think of your video course as a conversation rather than a lecture, and use your hands while talking like you normally would.
• Look directly into the camera as if you’re speaking directly to your students.
• Speak clearly and naturally – allow yourself to be casual and let your tone go up and down. Showing enthusiasm and excitement is what makes video lessons more engaging.
• Avoid “ums” and “ahs” in your speech. And if they still sneak in, do a quick retake, or edit them out later.
• Keep track of your outline to stick to talking points and not ramble or get off-track.
• Smile! Smiling is the easiest way to set a friendly and relaxed tone for your class.

Tip #2: Equipment

The right equipment is critical for producing high-quality video classes. However, “right” doesn’t always mean expensive.

You can take your videos using just your smartphone. Just make sure you have enough natural lighting in the room, or add some led lighting.

Pro tip: Use your headset to maximize the quality of your audio.

Alternatively, you can record your video lessons using the webcam on your PC or laptop.If you have professional equipment like a camera, lights, and microphone, you can also use those.

Tip #3: Editing your class

To get the best quality and cut out any bloopers from your video, you’ll need to use editing tools.

If you’ve never used them before, don’t worry, you don’t have to be a pro video editor. The internet has all the information you need to learn basic editing skills. You can also find courses on Skillshare or Udemy that may help you develop this skill.

Here’s the list of the best video editors you can use:

Step 3 – Publish

After producing your course videos, it’s time to publish them for the students to access.

At this step, you’ll be wrapping your course together, meaning you’ll need to add the following details to your course listing:

• Class title
• Lesson titles
• Cover image
• Class description
• Class category
• Relevant tags to your topic so that people can find your course when they search for what they want
• Your teacher profile

Step 4 – Promote

Promote your videos to your friends, family, or audience outside Skillshare.

Plus, promoting your courses outside Skillshare can help you a great deal in both earning royalties and getting referral bonuses.

Sites Like Skillshare

Skillshare vs. Udemy

Like Skillshare, Udemy is a famous platform letting you upload your courses and earn money when students purchase them. The only downside of Udemy compared to Skillshare is that the students have to pay for individual courses.

While Udemy offers a seven-day free trial, Skillshare offers a one-month free trial. In addition, Udemy offers a 30-day money-back guarantee compared to Skillshare, which has a seven-day money guarantee on its annual membership plans.

Teachable is also a good platform for teachers and is quite similar to Skillshare. Skillshare and Teachable are great platforms if you’re already a teacher or thinking of becoming a full-time teacher. Moreover, Teachable is best for building courses on WordPress compared to Skillshare, which is best for online learning.

Like Skillshare, Teachable offers you analytics tools to help you understand where you are generating sales. Both e-learning sites offer you detailed transaction reports.

Skillshare vs. edX

edX is another popular platform students choose to learn new skills. Since most of the courses on edX are accredited, you don’t have the freedom of creating courses yourself as you have on Skillshare.

While edX has a 14 days refund policy, Skillshares has a 30-day money-back guarantee. Compared to Skillshare, edX awards you verified certificates on completion. Like Skillshare, edX allows you to learn at your own pace.

Skillshare FAQs

The company’s primary mission is to inspire discovery through creativity. Skillshare is one of the largest e-learning sites that offer quality courses to learners, entrepreneurs and professionals.

Who owns my class content?

You are the owner of your content. You have the right to retain full ownership, and you are free to host them anywhere you want.

How long does it take to create a class?

Typically it takes around 1-3 weeks to create a class. The Sooner you plan and outline your videos, the sooner you can create and publish them.

Will Skillshare promote my class?

Skillshare promotes classes in weekly emails and their social media posts. If your class appears high up on the ‘trending page,’ it will get featured on emails sent to the community.

How can I download Skillshare app?

You can download Skillshare App on Google Play Store or App Store.

Is Skillshare trustworthy?

Skillshare is safe because it has a secure payment system. Additionally, it does not share your information with third parties.