3 Smart Ways to Make Money With Teachable

Gaining new knowledge is empowering and the internet has made this process a lot easier and affordable for many people. Positioned strategically in this evolutionary learning paradigm is a program called Teachable. Not only is it an effective teaching tool, but it’s also an awesome online business tool. 

Online teaching, after all, is a booming business these days. Let me explain further.   

First, What Is Teachable? 

In essence, Teachable is a Learning Management System (LMS) that helps content creators set up and sell courses online. It’s regarded as an all-in-one platform because it does everything from hosting your course files (in the form of videos/PDFs/quizzes and etc), handles sales pages and process payments from the customers. 

There are 4 monthly and annual plans to choose from – Free, Basic, Professional, and Business – and selecting one will largely depend on several factors like how much you’re willing to pay for transaction fees and the size of your class – just to name a few.

Since its inception in 2014, the platform has helped YouTubers, authors and small businesses hosted more than 125K courses and engage with more than 10 million students. And according to Google Trends, there’s no sign of this company’s growth slowing down. 

Impressive uh? So what are the ways smart people make money with Teachable? Let’s explore each method and find out which one suits you the most. 

(1) Create an Online Course 

Creating an online course is very much like finding a niche to monetize. Basically, anything that people search on Google these days can be expanded into a course program. As long as you have got the knowledge and skills to deliver the subject matter, you can certainly become a course creator.  

Ideally, you want to offer something that can benefit people. Do you know how to lose weight in 30 days? Are you good at dog training? Or maybe you’re really passionate about mathematics. Guess what? Somebody out there across the world will want to learn what you know and having a well-planned course is going to connect you to THAT student AND generate some extra income at the same time.  

Teachable is one of the pioneers in online course creation and here are some cool features that will not only help to build your first course but also scale it for profit. 

• Upload all kinds of media to make your course engaging. 
• Easy-to-use website builder – no coding knowledge needed. 
• Allow students to learn from desktop and from mobile phones. 
• Use a brandable domain name to promote your course. 
• Offer attractive coupons, pricing options and customize sales page for conversions. 
• Create your own affiliate program to boost sales without incurring additional expenses. 
• Hosts as many courses as you like and enroll an unlimited number of students (except for free plan)…and much more.

For the most part, Teachable is widely praised for its good user experience, smooth integration with other software and hosting stability. 

There are just a few things to take note of though. Before you can sell anything, there’s a need for an audience so having a blog that generates traffic BEFORE creating a course is crucial.  If you haven’t got one already, simply use this tool to create a WordPress blog for free. 

And while higher plans/sophisticated features can certainly do business a lot of good, it can also be very expensive to maintain on an on-going basis. If you aren’t making any significant amount of profit just yet, make full use of the free-forever plan when starting out to impose less burden on your expenses. 

(2) Become a Teachable Affiliate 

One of the factors that drive the growth of Teachable over the years is perhaps affiliate marketing. This additional channel allows users to promote the platform while selling their own courses. Often times, the point of conversion is in a product review. 

In other words, it’s an additional monetization route for existing content creators to show potential creators what they can benefit from this software. For example, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income is a Teachable affiliate because he has such positive experience hosting several of his online marketing courses through the platform. 

So, what can you benefit from the Teachable affiliate program? Here’s the breakdown; 

• Earn 30% recurring commissions – that means for as long as the customer stays as a member, you’ll get paid. 
• Enjoy longer cookie duration that lasts for 90 days. 
• Have funds deposited straight into your PayPal account. 
• Leverage tested funnels for better audience targeting. 

Meanwhile, it’s also important to check out other competing LMS programs to see how they stack up against Teachable. 

Do they have the same winning features as Teachable (or perhaps better)? Are they more cost-effective? Do they also offer free trials? Make sure to include this information because your readers will want to know the nitty-gritty differences. 

Teachable Competitors (dedicated teaching platforms)

• Mighty Network 
• Udemy
• Google online open education
• Thinkific 
• Learnworlds
• Kajabi 
• Podia 
• Ruzuku
• Teachery
• Academy of Mine 
• Wiziq
• Skillshare 
• Edjet

WordPress Plugins

• Learndash 
• Lifter LMS
• Learnpress
• Sensei
• WP Courseware

 Just like selling courses, it’s also recommended to begin building an audience first and you can do this in the form of an email list, a social following or a niche blog. The good thing about reviewing multiple platforms is that it builds authority for your site and lets you earn multiple sales commissions if you choose to become affiliates with those programs as well. 

To help generate online traffic to your site, I dug into my favorite keyword tool to come up with these content ideas for you. Go ahead and use them whichever way you like. 

• how to create online courses for free
• how to sell training courses online
• Teachable vs Thinkific
• Udemy vs Teachable
• Teachable online courses
• online course creation template
• how to design an online course
• Teachable plan comparison

(3) Become an Affiliate for a Teachable Course 

In the earlier days, Teachable never had a marketplace that sells online courses, but that’s about to change with the launch of Discovery – a dedicated section for selling courses – just like what you see on Udemy or Skillshare. 

This feature is still in BETA mode so we’re not seeing a whole lot of courses yet, but those that are listed seem to be produced by top-notch experts. So far, only four learning categories are available – Course Creation, Business & Marketing, Health & Fitness, and Tech & Programming.  

The monetizing opportunity here is that you can enroll in any of these high-quality courses as a student and if an affiliate program exists, you can then recommend that particular course to new students. As the rates are decided by the content creators themselves, commissions may vary between courses. 

This feature is something worth keeping an eye on if you’re interested in checking out new courses within a certain niche. Presenting different options for your audience is always helpful and it also goes to show how much you really know about a topic. 

Riding The Wave of E-Learning 

On YouTube, we see people teaching new stuff all the time. From make-up to sky diving, the number of videos just keeps growing. And no doubt there are several ways to make money from YouTube, I believe they can earn a whole lot more by making their content more elaborated and exclusive. 

That’s where software like Teachable (and the competitors) will come handy for content creators who’re looking to take it to the next level AND for students searching for a good quality course to learn from. These desires will only make premium virtual classrooms more prominent moving forward. 

By the year 2025, this industry is expected to be worth $325 billion dollars. Regardless of which side you’re on, there are clearly more ways to make money with Teachable now than the previous years.  

I hope this article has been an eye-opening piece for you. Do let me know if you’ve used Teachable or other online course programs before and if you’re interested to learn more about starting an online business in this niche, please check out my recommended training platform here.