College Lecturer Profits from 3D Design Tutorials

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

For anyone out there who is a college teacher, instructor, lecturer, professor, whatever, especially in the adjunct or part-time world, I am aware it is a hard life out there. I got some friends doing that and it's a struggle. Education funding has been cut in lots of areas, both in the U.S. and abroad. In the U.S. in particular, more and more institutions

are opting to hire adjunct instructors, positions that typically pay very little and provide no security in the form of tenure possibilities or other traditional benefits of academia. Now, today's story comes to us from the UK, where somebody's having similar but different challenges. It features a college instructor who loves his students but has grown increasingly frustrated with the system. In need of creating an alternative future for himself, he turns 3D video tutorials into an online venture, teaching people around the world to design beautiful things. He stumbles upon this project by accident but then takes action to optimize, improve, and pursue it to profitability.

In recent months, he's actually been earning more from the online tutorials that he does in his day job. So naturally, he is excited and already asking himself, "What's next?" So for any college teachers out there, there is hope. Listen up and pay attention to this guy's story. I'll bring it to you in just 30 seconds. [Music]

Shane Whittington, a digital art and game development lecturer in the United Kingdom, was looking for a way to help his students.

They were mainly teens and young adults new to the college environment, and he wanted to make study aids to help them refresh their memory of what they learned in class. One day, he created a quick tutorial to show them how to get a student version of a popular design software at home, and he posted it on YouTube. When he checked back on that video, he saw it had gotten thousands of views, which was a lot more people than were in his class. He was intrigued. He loved the fact that the video was so useful to his students, but he was also encouraged that it had been discovered by others.

He wanted to create more content and decided to officially launch a channel now called the Game Dev Academy. He didn't waste time overthinking it, which is one of the things that he credits with his success. He made his first video tutorial course for Maya, another kind of design software, in August of that same year. The videos were basic, there was no editing whatsoever, and Shane says you can even see him pressing stop on the screen recorder at the top of each video. He used the computer and editing software that he had at school, and his only startup costs were about $2, which he used to buy a microphone.

That microphone was worth every penny, meaning that it was terrible, but it did the job and it got him up and running. There was no business plan. Shane continued uploading periodic videos to support his lectures, but he was busy at work and didn't pay much attention to the channel. This was years ago, way back in 2012, if we fast forward nearly three years to the summer of 2015, Shane was on his summer break and went to visit his channel, where he was surprised to see he had 2,000 subscribers. At the time, he didn't even know you could subscribe to a YouTube channel, but he thought this seemed promising.

He'd been thinking about updating his Maya tutorial for the new version of the software and wanted to reach a broader audience. He watched other videos from YouTube on how to gain subscribers and learned about many of the best practices. He saw all the things he was doing wrong and a few things he was doing right, and he got excited about the possibility of using YouTube as a business. He spent four weeks completely revamping his tutorial. The new videos looked great.

He included his face in the video, used metadata, including tags and keywords, made custom thumbnails, and added on-screen explanations. He published them at the end of August 2015, a time that he now says changed everything. Soon, he was regularly earning more than $350 a month, and he saw a greater opportunity if he could produce content more consistently. To decide which tutorials to work on, Shane says that he thinks about his students. Most are absolute beginners, completely new to game art and game development.

He knows that if the videos are suitable for them, then they'll be of interest to people wanting to learn these subjects anywhere in the world. He doesn't chase clicks or pursue what he thinks is popular at any given moment. It might seem counterintuitive, but he says he actually chooses to create tutorials that are for longer projects. He feels that this helps keep the audience invested and gives them something they can show off and feel proud of when they're done. He also likes to solve big problems.

For example, one of his most important videos shows how to restore the default settings and software. Shane found that his students were accidentally changing settings that hindered their work, but then didn't know how to change them back because they didn't do it intentionally in the first place. This is the type of problem that stops students completing their work, as evidenced by the tons of appreciative comments that Shane gets along the lines of, I have a deadline tomorrow and you just saved my life. This makes him happy. No matter the subject, he creates content that is evergreen, which he recommends for any type of online education.

He also tries to keep his tutorials interesting and entertaining. So you'll find memes, puns, and jokes peppered throughout, which we at Cytosol School obviously appreciate. So far, Shane has earned over 20,000 pounds. It's about $25,000. And he's on track to earn over 15,000 pounds or $19,000 this year alone.

In fact, in the last couple of months, his Cytosol has started making more than his teaching position. It's allowed him to drop two days a week at work, which helps with maintaining his sanity. It also means he's able to spend extra time with his kids. In addition to a Patreon campaign and AdSense revenue, Shane has recently started selling assets as paid add-ons in his tutorials for people who don't want to make or find their own. You can think of assets like digital versions of arts and craft supplies.

With this new income source on the rise, he hopes that by the end of the year, he'll have the option of doing it full-time. He doesn't think he'll ever give up teaching at the college, but he would like that flexibility. This game designer is well on the way to designing his freedom. [Music]

So on book tour earlier this month, we had a lot of group conversations about why it's so important to build your own assets, like Shane's tutorials, so that you can handle whatever comes at you. If you love college teaching, for example, but don't love the lack of benefits or security that comes in this increasingly adjunct-focused environment, having a regular source of income can allow you to make changes like teaching fewer classes, like dropping those two days a week, like he's doing, so that you have more energy and mental focus for the ones you do take on.

Doesn't mean you have to quit teaching, but creating more security is always good. And of course, this applies to more than just college teachers. Everyone needs options. Everyone could benefit from the ability to choose for themselves, how they spend their time, and how they do the work that's important to them. So I'll leave you with that today.

That's my encouragement for you. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. I hope you'll find a way to do something today to get closer to a goal you believe in. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/908. I'm gonna link up everything I mentioned in the episode, and I will be back again tomorrow.

Thank you so much for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.