Teachable Creator Challenge: Exploring the Platform and More on My Upcoming Course

It’s hard to believe but the second month of Teachable’s Creator Challenge is nearing its end. Therefore, just as I did last month, I figured it was time to check-in and see how things were going for this participant. As it turns out, a lot has happened in the past few weeks and I’m excited to share what I’ve learned about Teachable’s platform as well as what’s in store for my upcoming course.

Exploring Teachable

Since my last update, I’ve not only been able to watch more of Teachable’s Q&A streams and Teachable U curriculum but have also had a chance to explore the platform’s course creation tools. Honestly, second to coming up with an actual course idea that I felt had value, assembling the material was my biggest fear. That’s why I’ve taken to doing some exploring of Teachable’s administrative options and testing out their capabilities.

Building a course

While I haven’t uploaded any of my actual course material to Teachable just yet, that hasn’t stopped me from poking around the site and figuring out the process. Sure, there’s a Teachable U course I could watch before jumping in, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, I figured I’d try out some of the various options and get a feel for how to assemble my course.

The first thing I really like about Teachable’s course creation workflow is that you’re able to preview how your work will look at pretty much any point. This allowed me to experiment with different media types and options and see how they look in practice. I will say that some of the terminology Teachable uses in their curriculum assembly tool did freak me out a bit at first. Namely the fact that, in order to fully preview your course content altogether, you have to “Publish” it. Obviously this doesn’t automatically send your work out of the world or anything but I’d still prefer to use the terms “Save” or “Add to Draft” instead.

That said, so far I’ve been impressed with the number of ways you can add content to your course. For example, in addition to uploading files saved on your computer, you can also link a Dropbox, Google Drive, or One Drive. As someone with a relatively small hard drive in his laptop, I appreciate the additional options.

Speaking of things I appreciate, just like in Teachable’s own courses and live streams, your video lectures can be played back at various speeds. I can definitely see this coming in handy as I perform dry runs of my own course. Plus, being someone who tends to speak a bit fast in my videos, it’s nice to know my students can slow me down if need be.

Creating your pages

Something that makes Teachable stand out from other course-hosting sites is that you’re essentially creating your own business website. As result, there are several pages you’ll want to customize using Teachable. This includes your school’s landing page, a course’s sales page, a checkout page, and a “thank you” page. Luckily, just like when you’re building your curriculum, you can preview these pages as you make changes and explore the various options that way. In other words, you can really tailor the entire user experience for your students.

Pricing

One aspect of Teachable I haven’t fully explored yet is how their payments work. However, while I was looking around, I did find some interesting info. It seems there are four pricing plan options you can set up for your course:

• Free
• Subscription (billed monthly or annually)
• One-time purchase
• Payment plan (fixed number of monthly payments)

Even though I’m not quite sure which of these I’ll use for my course, it’s pretty cool that I can offer multiple payment options to my future students. Similarly, I also found where you can set up custom coupons for your courses. Again, I could definitely see these coming into play as I launch and market my course.

My Upcoming Course: Starting on YouTube and Making Your First $1K

As I revealed in my last update, my course will revolve around getting started on YouTube and making your first $1,000 on the platform. This starts by overcoming some common stumbling blocks that prevent people from making their maiden video. Some examples of these include:

• Buying equipment
• Finding a unique voice
• Being on camera
• Time management
• Editing
• Learning the technicals of YouTube
• Mean commenters

In my course, I’ll offer actionable tips that will help students find solutions to these problems — many of which I’ve personally utilized. We’ll go over everything you’ll need (and everything you won’t) to create your first video, how to grow your channel while still balancing your other jobs and commitments, ways to monetize your content even before you’re accepted into the YouTube Partner Program, and much more. Plus, we’ll cover some of the technical questions you might have about YouTube’s platform including how to upload a video, how to keep your audience on your channel using cards and end screens, how to navigate the new YouTube Studio, etc. 

New article series

Ahead of my course’s launch this fall, I’ll be sharing some sneak peeks along the way. Every few weeks, we’ll dive into some of the topics I’ll be expanding upon in the course itself. In fact, I actually kick off this series by looking at the top five things stopping you from starting on YouTube. I’m really looking forward to sharing more of my experiences and insight in the coming weeks.

So stay tuned for more updates — and, while you’re at it, be sure to subscribe to Money@30 on YouTube!

With two months of the Teachable Creator Challenge down, I’m making real progress toward launching a course of my own! Sadly, my projected completion date will fall outside of the challenge period, but there’s no doubt that this event has pushed me to finally gather my thoughts and take these important steps so far. Therefore, with another month to go, this Challenge has already been a win in my book.