How Much Does Skillshare Pay?

Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links that I get a kickback from.

So you want to create your own courses?

Skillshare is one of the best online learning platforms to create a course because of how they pay their teachers.

Instead of a one-time payment for a course, Skillshare has a subscription-based pricing model which pays course creators royalties based on watch time.

And Skillshare averages 9.3M visits to its website every single month (Similarweb).

So there’s money to be made.

Skillshare website traffic

How much you can earn on Skillshare depends on a few factors, such as the length of your class, the number of students who enrol, and your referrals. 

But according to Skillshare, on average, top teachers earn $1300 per class every month.

With millions of students and counting, there’s a big potential to reach a huge audience and make income online.

How much money can you make on Skillshare?

As a Skillshare teacher, you get paid for the range of minutes watched. Teachers generally earn between $0.05 and $0.10 per 1 minute-watched.

If you have 10 students who take your course for 30 minutes each you’ll earn between $15 and $30 from Skillshare.

If you have 1000 students who watch 30 minutes each, then you’ll earn between $1,500 and $3,000 per month.

Here’s a table to better illustrate how much you can earn from a 30-minute class per month with different amounts of students (assuming they watch the whole course all the way through):

Skillshare course earnings excel table

How much money do top teachers make on Skillshare?

Thomas Frank and Ali Abdaal are one of the most successful teachers when it comes to Skillshare.

Here’s how much they earn from their online courses.

How much does Ali Abdaal earn on Skillshare?

Picture of Ali Abdaal

In one of his YouTube videos Ali actually revealed how much passive income he earns on Skillshare.

On average, Ali Abdaal earns $70,000 per month through Skillshare.

This table shows his total earnings, his royalties from courses, and premium referrals:

Ali Abdaal Skillshare earnings table

And these are no small numbers.

Just a small percentage of Ali’s monthly earnings could land you a comfortable living in most countries around the world. 

That’s crazy.

How much does Thomas Frank earn on Skillshare?

Picture of Thomas Frank

Unlike Ali Abdaal, Thomas Frank has never publicly shown how much money he earns from Skillshare. 

But here’s a rough estimate:

  • Currently, Thomas has over 225,000 students from his most popular courses
  • On average each course is 60 minutes long.
  • Assuming that students watch 70% of the course the number of minutes watched amounts to 9,450,000 minutes.
  • Since teachers on Skillshare earn anywhere from $0,05 to $0,10 per minute watched we can safely assume that Thomas Frank has made at least $472,500 to $945,000 from his courses on Skillshare.

What are the best ways to earn money on Skillshare?

There are two best ways to make money on Skillshare:

  • Affiliate revenue – the best way to make money on Skillshare without creating a course.

It’s a simple process: when someone clicks on your affiliate link and signs up for a Skillshare membership, you’ll earn 60% of their first payment

The more people you refer, the more money you can make. 

Plus, Skillshare has a great selection of courses covering a wide range of topics, so you can find something to promote that your audience or friends will love.

  • Course royalties – the best way to make money on Skillshare with a course.

When a student signs up for a Skillshare membership and watches your class you’ll earn a royalty

The more students that sign up for the class and watch your curse, the more money you’ll make.

How to become a teacher on Skillshare

There are 2 crucial steps you must take to become a teacher on Skillshare:

1. Read Skillshare guidelines carefully!

Skillshare Class Quality Guidelines

When it comes to teaching on Skillshare there are many little things that you should be wary of.

For example:

Did you know that mentioning any quantitative outcome your students can expect after taking the course is forbidden?

You can’t title your course “Prepare a delicious tortilla under 10 minutes” because it specifies the amount of time.

The acceptable wording would be “Prepare a delicious tortilla: for people who like saving time”.

You can read more about that and other caveats in the class quality guidelines.

2. Create and publish your course.

Creating a course on Skillshare

When it comes to publishing your course it’s very important to come up with a SEO-optimized description so people on Skillshare are able to find your course through search. 

Here’s an article from Skillshare that’ll help you optimize your course title and description SEO before publishing.

You can read more about how to make an online course for free here.

How to make money from Skillshare as an affiliate?

Skillshare has a referral program that will give you a link that you can then share with someone and earn affiliate income.

If someone signs up to Skillshare and purchases a membership after clicking your link, you will get a cut (typically 60% of their first payment).

To join the Skillshare referral program you simply have to have a Skillshare account. 

Once you do, you can share a unique link from any course on the platform and if someone watches the course and signs up for a Skillshare membership you will get paid. 

Was this guide on how much money can you make from Skillshare useful?

Skillshare is a great platform for people who want to share their knowledge and skills with others.

I hope this guide on how much money can you make with this platform was useful.

On Skillshare you can create online courses, teach live classes, or even just provide helpful tips and advice.

 Just make sure to follow their class guidelines!

The most amazing thing about Skillshare as a teacher is that you make the course once and you then relax forever as it will continue bringing in monthly passive income

And, with a wide range of topics to choose from, there’s sure to be something that interests you.

You might be surprised at just how much top creators can earn.

Also, you could publish a course on multiple course creator platforms and earn money from multiple platforms at the same time.

With that said, I’ll leave you with a few useful resources:

Thanks for reading 👋!

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