FWIW I think you're right to take this approach--most in-depth technical classes aren't good fits, for that matter, from a pricing perspective if nothing else. I charge a few hundred dollars a head to teach somebody in-person. The Fundamentals of Cloud Architecture course that I typically do is one I could, for the most part, extend to an online course...but, given that it includes the ability to contact me, etc., I wouldn't want to charge less than $100 for it.

It's a good course; better, IMO, at what it teaches than equivalent Udemy courses. And I'm a pretty good teacher, I can be pretty engaging while talking about this stuff and it's fun. But at the race-to-the-bottom prices of the MOOC economy, it's a nonstarter. The Udemy "every class is ten bucks" disease discourages really capable, competent people from sharing what they know.

(And Packt et al. finding somebody to read some slides is not a good counterexample. I said "really capable, competent" for a reason. I was approached by one of their competitors--a bigger company than they are--to write a book on Mesos on the back of two blog posts...)

Have you explored high level consulting in inception phase of distributed system design? (and p.s. thank you for your exceptional work and knowledge sharing.)