This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello and welcome. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. We are starting a brand new week. Today is episode 303. And in every episode, I'm telling a story of someone who creates a new source of income.
Usually by using the skills they already have, just perhaps applying them in a different way. Now, today's is a great one to kick off the week. It's about a successful published author who's done books with major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, and others. But like a lot of people, she wanted to diversify her income. And not just diversify it, but increase it through a new revenue source.
I'll tell you how it came about and what she's learned through the process. And she's also got some tips, some advice, and a lot of details in this story for you. I think you're gonna like this one. It's coming up right after this quick message. [Music]
A recent transplant to Portland, Oregon, Jessica Brody is a seasoned author with over a decade of experience under her belt.
She's written more than 15 novels for teens, kids, and adults. Those novels have come out from big publishers including Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan. And she's also the author of The Descendants, School of Secrets series, published by Disney Press and based on the hit Disney Channel original movie, Descendants. Having found the success many writers dream of, Jessica thought it might be worthwhile to share her knowledge with others. And like many before her, she started leading in-person workshops on writing with her local community.
She even began to get paid speaking opportunities at middle schools, high schools, book festivals, and writing conferences. But this was a mixed blessing. As much as she enjoyed having an opportunity to share what she's learned, it was time intensive and provided little flexibility. But all of that changed when she heard about Udemy. Jessica's husband runs a software consulting business and he stumbled on Udemy when he was looking into platforms for him to host training sessions.
Udemy's online marketplace is essentially the digital version of what Jessica was doing with her in-person workshops, but it would require far less of her attention since you'd only have to create the courses once. Naturally, he suggested that she look into it for converting some of her in-person workshops into online courses. Similar to ideas for side hustles, ideas for courses are sometimes challenging to develop. So Jessica started by reflecting on problems she encountered when she first began writing. Things like how to be productive as a writer, how to approach publishers and deliver a winning pitch for your novel, how to develop compelling stories, and just some general guidelines for how to write fiction and nonfiction.
From there, she built her courses with the intention of solving these problems. Jessica said, "You can start with problems you've had in the past and had to overcome, or you can talk to people just starting out in your field and ask them what their biggest areas of frustration are. If you have the knowledge to fix these pain points, you have a great course on your hands." Sometimes, though, you want a muse with a more validated idea. Another useful resource she found was Udemy itself. Jessica was able to research which course topics were most searched for on their platform, then narrow it down to one to three topics that seemed promising and start creating outlines of what her students would be able to get out of the course.
To keep things manageable, she broke the content down into smaller course goals, and from there, she broke down those goals or sections into smaller one-off topics, which ended up becoming her course lectures. So what exactly goes into creating a course? With the foundation for her courses laid, Jessica started scripting and getting feedback from her friends and colleagues. She builds slides in PowerPoint and uses a video editing program called Camtasia to film her slides, her screen, and to record audio. She has an app called PromptSmart that helps as a teleprompter for filming, and depending on how much video the course has, she'll edit it in either Final Cut or Camtasia.
If you don't know what any of those resources are, I will link them all up on the show notes page. Just a couple of different software programs that she uses to make the course. Between the scripting, filming, and editing stages of the process, she estimates that each course takes her about 100 to 200 hours to complete. Depending on length, complexity, and production style. For example, the courses that are mostly video take longer than the courses that are mostly audio and slides.
But in the end, her efforts have been well worth it since she only has to do it once. Jessica's first course launched on Udemy in April 2016, but when she got her first customer, she didn't even know it. She had put the course online, promoted it through social media, and waited. She was traveling with her husband that day, and she thought she would get an email whenever she had a sale. So when they landed in Dallas to visit family, they sat down at a Mexican restaurant in the airport and obsessively checked her inbox.
Unfortunately, that inbox remained empty, and Jessica began to think nobody was interested in her course and that she'd just wasted a ton of time. But when she actually logged on to her Udemy account, it turned out that she just hadn't signed up for notifications. In fact, she'd already sold over 30 courses. She was ecstatic, so naturally they ordered another round of margaritas and celebrated right there in the airport. Since she already had a following from her job as an author, with 1,000 newsletter subscribers, 4,000 Facebook fans, and 5,000 Twitter followers, she decided to market and pitch the course to her existing audience.
She posted coupons in her newsletter and on Facebook and Twitter, and paid $50 for the post to be boosted on Facebook. Within the first week, Jessica made $1,000 just using those channels. That's when she realized teaching online could be a lucrative side hustle, not just a small one. It was also a great way to help her reach a new audience. Since that first launch last April, she's launched four courses in total.
Productivity hacks for writers, sell your novel to a major publisher, develop blockbuster story ideas that sell, and fiction for young writers, which is for ages nine and up. Each of those courses relates to one of the challenges that she had when she was getting started. She now has over 3,700 students in more than 90 countries, and she was able to bring in an additional $21,000 her first year on Udemy, with just $2,000 in startup costs. These days, she still markets her courses through those same social channels, but she's also built up a writing mastery newsletter with 1,500 new subscribers, completely separate from her reader newsletter. With this new subscriber group, she sends out free writing tips each month, and is better able to market her courses to them because it's specifically targeted to writers.
Roughly a third of her students are enrolled in multiple courses, and she's planning to launch her fifth course soon. Jessica recently heard from a student who's a mother to a child with autism. That mother had struggled to find time for herself to write, but thanks to the productivity for writer's course, she was able to make some adjustments in her schedule and get back to writing. Jessica says that success stories like that have been rewarding and also motivational in terms of helping her think about making new courses. Now, even if you don't have an existing audience, she recommends utilizing Udemy to get your courses out to potential students.
If you can create a course that has high quality, get some early, great reviews, Udemy will then market your course to their huge audience. And she says that really works because now more than 70% of her course revenue comes from Udemy promotions. So she's only bringing in 30% of the customers herself. Since her books are her primary source of income, Jessica's writing deadlines come first, but this side hustle allows her an opportunity to create a more flexible stream of income that isn't dependent on the schedule of others. Now that she's a year into her new course writing side hustle, she's found a rhythm where she can work on her novels in the morning and her courses in the afternoon or evening.
When she has a book deadline coming up, she has to put her courses on hold for a few weeks, but that's okay because the ones that are out there are still earning money. And this flexibility means she can build and alter her schedule to fit her needs, which is a freedom she didn't have with those in-person workshops. So what's next? Well, Jessica has several new books in the works, including a novel called "The Chaos of Standing Still" and a highly anticipated nonfiction book coming out next fall about how to plot a novel. Two of Jessica's novels are also in development as movies.
And despite all these things on her plate, she's now thinking about creating an accompanying course for that nonfiction book and developing a version of her productivity hacks for writers, specifically for course creators. Jessica is full of ideas and she's been able to go from idea to income. What a novel idea. [Music]
So let's go back to the mission of side hustle school. You need more than one source of income, even if you love your job.
And even if like in this case, you're self-employed in a creative career. Diversifying and increasing your income sources is always good. And as you heard from Jessica, being able to reach a whole new audience has been a major additional benefit for her. Among other things, I like how Jessica divides her time to where in the morning she's focused on her main responsibility, writing those books. And in the afternoon or sometimes the evening, she focuses on the courses.
When you have two different areas of focus like this, I think it's helpful to have just a little bit of separation or you kind of work in blocks of time where this morning block is for my novel and this afternoon block is for building out this course. Also, Jessica gave us a ton of info for this episode. She was super helpful and also included several specific tips if you're thinking of creating an online course of your own. So naturally, those tips will be up on the show notes page along with links to her website, her books, and that platform Udemy. Where might you find those show notes?
Well, they are at sidehustleschool.com/303. That is for episode 303. Thank you as always for listening to the show. I hope it helps with your goals, your action plans, because as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. I'll be back again tomorrow.
I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.
