I have been making online courses since 2014. I wanted to learn how to use a program but I didn’t find any course in Spanish that had what I needed so I threw myself into making one and sharing it.

Now I have 8 courses, some free and others paid, and more than 40,000 students in 100 countries! Just yesterday I launched the newest of all: Android Avanzado con Kotlin and that is why I decided to talk a little about my experience doing this.

This is more a labor of love than anything else. Developing a course of about 8-10 hours takes me around 200 hours in its 5 stages:

  1. Planning: Seeing what the course is going to be about and what it includes, and putting together exercises and a project. 20 hours.
  2. Recording: 80 hours
  3. Editing: 80 hours
  4. Review: 10 hours
  5. Launch and promotion (I am terrible at this 😅🥲): 10 hours.

The good news is that once finished, the time I have to invest is little and that generates semi-passive income for me. Practically the time is to answer questions; I do like to be very attentive to that.

Why do I say it is more a labor of love?

Actually, although it generates semi-passive income, it is not much. If you are interested in knowing how much I earn you can see it here. I know of people who make a living from this, but they have to make it their main job, something I do not plan to do in the medium term. For now, I prefer to see it as a side project that leaves me residual income.

So why do I keep doing it?

It will sound cliché, but what encourages me most to continue making courses is when someone (And it has happened to me many times) sends me a message like “Teacher, thanks to your course I found a job, seriously thank you very much.” Uff at that moment I start planning the next thing to do. It also serves me to update myself on what I do because to teach a subject you must know it thoroughly. As a side effect, it has served me for my resume; companies seem to like that I do this [1]. Of course, having extra income will always be a good thing.

The hardest part

The hardest part, as in any personal project, is to stop doing other things, like going out for a walk or watching Netflix. Normally when I am doing a course the work is intensive and my day consists of doing my daily job and in the afternoon/night working on the course, also weekends. That’s not counting that you have to do daily adult things. It is quite tiring; I would say that making a course of this type has the same difficulty as writing a book or doing a thesis (And I know that very well, I have done two 😓). Another difficult thing is impostor syndrome; once I launch the course I tend to think “What if they don’t like it? What if everyone gives it a bad rating?”, but the good news is that so far ALL the courses are very well rated, I must be doing something right.

What has worked for me

I think what has worked for me are the following things:

  • I always try to resolve doubts, even if they are not from the course.
  • Both the lessons and the complete course are short and to the point, no filler to make them longer.
  • I am informal explaining, maybe I crack a joke (very dry) or say a swear word (without abusing).

Where I have failed

I am terrible at marketing. I have taken courses, read books, tried many things but it still doesn’t work for me. I would say because my product is educational and it is difficult to sell, but I see others for whom it works so I must be doing something wrong in this part. By the way, I have tried hiring two different marketing agencies and it hasn’t worked either. I have also failed in discipline; this last course took me almost a year to finish because I tend a lot to take other projects that excite me more and I put it on hold.

I want to make courses too, what do I need?

In addition to your materials (For example, if your course is about sewing, well you will need materials for that), you need the following:

  • A reasonably good computer, that at least is not freezing.
  • A good microphone is the most important thing, I recommend the Blue Snowball to start, or any of that brand. Note: They don’t pay me for this.
  • Recording software, I normally record the computer screen. I used to use Camtasia and now I use Filmora, both are good, both have a price but you can obtain them in another way (cough cough) to start and then buy them later.
  • If you are going to record yourself, do not invest in cameras, with the cell phone you are good. But I do recommend a ring light, whatever one, don’t go for the most expensive.

To finish, I just want to mention that for now I do not plan to release another course. This last one has been the most intense of all and I want to dedicate myself to other projects I have in mind, but I do not rule out continuing to do it in the future.

[1] As a curious fact, once I did an interview with a company and they told me that if I worked with them they no longer wanted me to make courses “because they wanted me dedicated 100%” 🤣, needless to say, I told them “Thank you very much, but I think I am not a good fit for you”.

[2] Another curious fact: When starting this I thought I was going to encounter more haters but on the contrary, most of my students have been very encouraging and kind.