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Comment by belter | Hacker News Reader

"...Our research found that only 1% of Udemy instructors earn a full-time income (>$50K/year), and only 4% would cross the US poverty line ($14.5K/year). The majority of instructors (75%) make less than $1,000 a year..."

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I created a course a long time ago - didnt generate that much but was only about 3 weeks work - but it did improve my understanding of the subject, and also made it easier to get work and consultancy opportunities

It comes down to how you view the opportunity

Artists can be paid with exposure, teachers with the self-learning opportunity ;)

More seriously, teaching is usually the best way to learn.

I find that putting together a presentation is a good way to think about a topic more deeply.

I'm sure you know this given the ;-) but in case someone takes it the wrong way, although I speak at events even now that I'm not being paid a salary because I feel like it, very few things irk me more as analyst/consultant than someone who asks me to do something free "for the exposure."

I doubt very much that teaching on Udemy is the best way to learn, because you don't get the kinds of questions and experiences that challenge your understanding in the way you do teaching in-person.

Or, maybe what it's the best way to learn is how to make videos for Udemy. Not sure I think that has much value.

With very few exceptions, the value of creating content is in support of "real" income. Made very little from the books I've written. But being known as an author, doing book signings at industry events (where someone else was paying for the books), etc. was probably pretty valuable to my career.

That's a reasonable argument. It's the same reason people write tech books, for the most part. But it also results in a market full of courses that people aren't that invested in, since even a fairly poor class can make you look like an expert at a superficial level.

While there are rare exceptions, basically the only way to have a decent shot at making more than hobby loose change because you like doing it at creating content (writing, video, podcasts) etc. is to be paid a salary to do it. (Or do it on the side in support of your salary--which is what I did with books.)

Maybe I missed this in my skimming of the article, but; the obvious question is ‘what fraction of their time do these instructors spend on Udemy work’. I doubt most people teaching a course or two at a traditional learning institution get paid a full time salary either - even at institutions that pay well - because their work is not full time.

Adjuncts apparently get paid pretty poorly. But the fact that it's hard to make a living as an adjunct professor/lecturer doesn't change the fact that it's at least as hard to make a living doing online courses.

Right - and I’m all for paying a living wage for all jobs. Being a full time professor should pay well. And what we pay teachers in most places in the USA is ridiculously little.

What I’m saying is that we generally don’t expect that part-time jobs get paid as much, in total, as full-time jobs. Someone working 1/4 time getting paid 1/4 what a full time person gets (maybe a little more - or a little less - for the flexibility and/or privilege) is normal.

So asking what fraction of their time Udemy instructors spend on Udemy tasks seems like a prerequisite for judging the fairness of their pay, and I don’t think this article covers that.

I imagine it varies a lot and probably depends on what you have in your head and the design of custom graphics and the creation of real-world video content.

But I would assume a month of work would probably cover most new course content (and could be less)--given my experience in putting presentations together for conferences.

That said, given that assumption which I think is at least somewhere in the ballpark, typical revenues most seem to get don't really move the needle except as a very part-time hobby. Once upon a time I had a shareware business which brought in $7K/year for a bit but that only made financial sense in that it was something I enjoyed doing for a time and I walked away once I was sort of tired of it.

Post secondary professors have a median income of just over $84,000 in the US [0], which is above the median personal income of about $42,000 for 2023 [1].

Both those numbers took me less than a minute to find.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Posts...

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N

I strongly suspect that the income for lecturers at community colleges and continuing education (which is what someone on Udemy is competing with) is quite a bit lower.

This, plus the stat about higher earnings going to people who started courses before 2020, is telling.

Paraphrasing Jeremy Irons’s character from Margin Call: “It’s a hell of a lot easier to be first.”

https://youtu.be/ag14Ao_xO4c?t=4

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