This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, what's up? My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host for Side Hustle School, going into week two of season two. Now, if you're just joining us every single day on the show, I'm bringing you a different story of somebody who starts a side hustle that is an income-generating project, not just a part-time job, not just something where they're working harder, but something that's actually gonna work for them. Now, sometimes people ask us, "Where do these stories come from?" Well, a lot of them come from our listeners. So if you have a side hustle, if you've just stumbled upon the show, or you've just been shy, or if you know someone who has a project we should feature on the show, well, we would love to know about it.
So if you come to sidehustleschool.com/about, like the about page, scroll to the bottom, there's a little link that says, "Submit your side hustle story." Funny enough, what happens when you click that link, you come to a survey where you can, in fact, submit your side hustle story. We are filling up our calendar for the next few months. We've got a bunch of great stuff coming out, but of course we do have room for a few more great stories. So let us know. And speaking of great stories, I have an amazing one for you today.
It's actually better than great. It's a college student that ends up creating a side hustle earning $40,000 a month. That's right, not $40,000 a year, $40,000 a month. And this story focuses on Udemy, which is an online educational platform. We've talked about Udemy a couple of times in season one.
There was episode 303, where a published author adds an income source and makes an extra $21,000 for first year. And also episode 237, "Stop Loafing Around." A woman on food stamps earns $86,000 teaching people to bake bread. That's actually one of my favorite episodes of all time. Well, today you'll hear about that college student who creates a series of courses on the topic of ethical hacking. What's ethical hacking?
Well, stay tuned and I'll tell you. And as I mentioned, he goes on to earn five figures in net income each month from these materials. It's a huge success. I'll tell you exactly how it happened right after this quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
For college student and self-described ethical hacker, Zayed Al Qarashi, everything seemed to be going according to plan.
His website teaching Arabic speakers how to ethically hack was making decent money. He was doing well in class and he even had some cash left over to buy himself a nice car. But then he encountered a challenge. Driving to school one morning, the engine of his car blew out and left him with no means of transportation for the coming months. Topped off with a few other financial commitments, Zayed was in dire need of $5,000.
Not exactly money a college kid has lying around in their dorm room. To help solve the problem, a close friend recommended that Zayed take a look at the website Udemy. That's Udemy.com, U-D-E-M-Y.com. They had thousands of people looking for courses like Zayed's and he could reach many more people than with his current website. Zayed thought it was a good idea.
He'd already created all the material for his ethical hacking courses. He just needed to translate the audio to English. He dubbed over his existing course using the free iMovie software that came pre-installed on his laptop. Now, what is this topic all about? I should point out that Zayed doesn't make his money teaching people to hack like the bad guys you see on the news.
Instead, Zayed is teaching something called ethical hacking which he describes like a martial art. If you were to learn kung fu, you could use it to either defend yourself or go out and hurt people. Black hat hackers would use their kung fu skills to steal your identity while you're using the free wifi at Starbucks. But white hat hackers like Zayed use their skills to hack pre-approved security systems and then help those systems improve their online defenses. All right, back to setting up the course.
Because Udemy charges no fees to upload a course and works entirely on a profit share basis, Zayed was able to create and upload his courses with minimal costs. In fact, he invested just $45 to get going, 25 bucks on a basic microphone that he found online and 20 bucks on a screen recording program. That was it. And guess what? Sales took off right away.
Oh, just kidding. They were actually really slow. For the first few months after uploading his course, Zayed saw virtually no sales at all. He admits he's not great at marketing and wasn't sure how to get his course out to an English speaking audience. He finally managed to see some initial sales through Reddit and Facebook and he felt like he was gaining momentum.
Then something major happened. Once he began to get those initial sales, Udemy stepped in to help. They noticed his potential to become a top instructor. So they distributed his course through their Udemy marketing boost program. This is essentially a program where they promote the course to their internal audience.
And by the way, if you're looking to use Udemy as well, you can request to be part of that program. It's not just a magical thing that happens, but you'll wanna make sure that your courses are strong and well received by those who've taken them so far. It's important to get some good initial reviews. After getting promoted by Udemy, Zayed did see his sales spike. Then he made another course and then another.
The students and the sales kept coming in the hundreds, the thousands, and then the tens of thousands. Zayed made more courses, there's now eight in total, and they retail between 50 and $200. What does all of this add up to? Well, first of all, Zayed has more than 87,000 students and these are not free students. There are some people who got a lower rate or did a free trial or something, but a lot of them have paid between 50 and $200 to take the class.
He's now averaging around $40,000 a month in total course sales. He's also stopped selling his Arabic courses and focuses full time on an English speaking audience. So what's his advice to you? What if you've got something that you're good at and you're thinking about developing a course? Zayed's advice is first of all, experiment, a lot.
Brainstorm ideas and try multiple approaches. When it comes to online training, it's really important to figure out what performs well. So do that, record the results and then refer back to them to help solve future problems. Second piece of advice is a bit unconventional. He suggests you create your own virtual team of mentors and these mentors don't have to actually exist, or at least you don't have to know them or speak to them.
The point is that when you have a problem, you think about how these people, perhaps they're business celebrities, perhaps they're somebody you look up to, perhaps it's just an avatar or some kind of imaginary person you create in your head. When you have a problem, you research how they would solve it and apply it to your own project. You try to learn from these people's mistakes and past problems and think about solutions for your situation. Looking to the future, Zayed is working to expand his courses into different languages. He's now in the process of turning one of his flagship courses into a book.
After spending that $25 on a microphone, he's now created his own recording studio and bought higher quality equipment to help him produce more valuable courses to his tens of thousands of students. And remember, this all came from the goal of having enough cash to fix his car. All right, let's look at this a little bit. First of all, congrats to Zayed. This is obviously a tremendous, huge success.
Does every Udemy course see these results? Let's just acknowledge upfront that the answer is no. In fact, most of them don't, but it's also not a complete fluke or aberration. Like there are dozens of them out there that sell in the tens of thousands of dollars a month. So it really is about finding that perfect topic, that perfect connection with the audience.
And it's not just about Udemy. This is just one platform. The same is true across lots of different online education platforms. Most of the courses don't do that well. Some of them do okay.
But then there are some market leaders like this one that really are leading the pack and showing tremendous results month after month. And it's not just about technology, by the way. Hacking is a hot topic, but remember that the other stories we featured using this platform are about baking bread and plotting your novel. Those are not exactly high-tech topics, right? What they are is useful.
So usefulness is the key. In fact, all three of these topics are things that a large group of people want to learn. Whether it's hacking, baking bread, or plotting that novel, there are a lot of people who want to do those things. So if you're the authority to teach them, well, your skills are valuable. And what you need to focus on is probably not advancing your skills further because you're already further along than the average person.
What you need to focus on is the packaging. Like how are you gonna present this knowledge? What is the best format? What are the primary benefits of someone acquiring this knowledge? Like how does it affect their life?
Thinking about those things and then developing a curriculum and then building the actual course. That's the best approach. That's why people like Zaid are succeeding. Well, I hope you enjoyed this story. There are so many more to come, as I said.
And do remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to everything I mentioned, all three of those Udemy courses, and some other free resources, are at sidehustleschool.com/368. Come on over and say hi. You can also follow me on social media. Send me a note, give me a shout.
And wherever you are today, whatever you're up to, I hope you do one small thing to work toward increasing your freedom. That's what a side hustle can do for you. I want us to make this happen together in 2018. Thank you for listening. I'll be back tomorrow with another story.
I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
