Why did you start teaching online?

Hey instructors

In this community, there are many different instructors at various stages of their teaching journey. However, there is one thing you all have in common: You all started at one point to teach online. There can be many reasons for you to start your teaching career online, and we wanted to hear about your specific start of your journey.

Why did you start teaching online?

Feel free to share your answer in the comments below!

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ThomasMitchell

I had a notebook full of notes from an Exchange Online migration I completed (I’m an ACTUAL expert in my field).

Was curious about Udemy (and the pay split was fair at the time).

That first course was a best-seller, so I built more courses.

MarinaT

Thank you for sharing, @ThomasMitchell!

HimanshuRana

Not sure how I came across udemy few years back and I saw that Teach with us option, that prompted me to record a course and I was happy to see students across the world enrolling into my course. Another thing was the course was an instant hit and earned good money, which prompted me to hone my course creation skills and put more quality courses. But it seems the golden era has passed away as the marketplace is now more saturated.

Btkrausen

So I created my original course because I had to learn the software I specialize in the hard way and told myself that nobody should have to learn it the same (hard) way. So, I created a course to make learning it much easier before that vendor had tutorials or videos on the topic. After that first course started doing well, I created content and managed it on Udemy myself without going through another company.

Today, I have 17 courses, most of which hold the Best Seller or Highest Rated tag in their respective category.

PhilEbiner

In 2012, I was working full time as the lead media creator at a small college and they were building out their own online courses. At the time, there were very few options for individuals to easily host their own courses. I had found Udemy while researching platforms, and we used it as inspiration for how the college's own platform could work.

At the time, I had a ton of college loan debt and was always looking for side gigs to make some extra money to help pay them down (wedding videography, freelance video work, etc). I thought, let me just try and put out a course on Udemy and see how it works. I created a course on what I was most passionate about at the time (motion graphics in After Effects), published it, and started making money with it the first month it was live. At that time, any course published on Udemy ended up on the home page!

After I made $60 my first month - which was A LOT of money for me at the time - I figured I'd keep at it.

Never looked back!

RisdanKristori24

I like to hone my Python skills by working on coding problems on platforms such as Leetcode and HackerRank, sometimes after working on a coding problem I write the explanation in the solution column. I often get feedback that my explanations are easy to understand and help many people who also solve the same coding problem. That's when I became interested in creating a complete Python class, and it turned out to be the best-selling class on Udemy. Since then I started taking other classes.

HofmeyrdeVo128

The short version, I love teaching, and wanted to reach a wider audience than what is possible with Face to Face.
I saw instructors like @ColtSteele reach a MILLION people, and was instantly sold on the idea.