I had an interesting email from Skillshare a few weeks back about a potential collaboration as they are doing a big promotional push on their business courses.

First of all, I have to say – I love the guys over there. They have an incredible range of training and have built a loyal brand following. I love the quality of their courses and think the business model is great for their consumer.

When you are scaling your business, exploring new distribution channels should be a core part of your strategy.

And with that in mind I have, for a while, been considering placing some of my content on some of the learning marketplaces such as Skillshare and Udemy.

I was intrigued when the email came back and so I gave this some further thought. On balance I decided it wasn’t right for me to put my courses on Skillshare for now, and I’ll share why.

Consider your effort vs the return on your investment

Top earners on Skillshare earn $40k a year, and most are creating one new course a month for the platform. You are paid based on how many minutes of your video content people watch. This based on a pool of funds they share between teachers.

So I did the maths… $40k divided by 12 months – $3333 a month. But that’s only for established teachers and new teachers may only earn up to around $1400 in their first 6 months. And top earners tend to create one new course a month for the platform.

These earning figures are all “maybes” and there are lots of variables – meaning that you may or may not reach those figures.

I can make more profit promoting my own courses within Profit From Products brand, and have tried and tested strategies that are working well.

There’s nothing wrong with risk in business, but the potential return wasn’t high enough for me to take a punt.
But if you’re new to products, have no audience and don’t want to do the marketing side of things this could be a great channel and opportunity for you.

I remember when selling $1000 in products was a big goal of mine, and certainly if I was to go back a few years this would feel like a much bigger opportunity to me.

You’re not promoting your own brand

Although you will definitely create visibility by being on marketplaces like Skillshare, you are still building another brand. Although it will take you more time and investment to build your own profile and brand, what you’re building with pay a bigger return long term.

Most teachers who are making good money on Skillshare are doing so by referring people to buy courses which means to get paid well, you will need to send people their way to hit the top earning bracket

Which means, for every person you are sending to Skillshare you could be sending to buy from your own brand and took a bigger slice of the profits at the same time.

That, for me, would mean a big chunk in revenue lost when I could be building my own brand at the same time.

Long term brand building beats short term profits and ease but again – if you have no audience this could be an option.

Trust your gut

Whenever I don’t trust my gut in business, things go wrong. So although this could have been a good opportunity to do a full test and report back on my finding to you all… right now its a not a good use of my time.

I have a lot of other projects I’m working on in my business and focusing my time on my own distribution channels.

 I have to be careful of where my time and effort is spent, and that isn’t on e-learning marketplaces right now.

Maybe when time allows in the future this is something I will outsource to my team… but for now, I’m all about building my own brand, playing the long game and being mindful of where my time is spent. For me it wasn't a “no, not ever”, it was a “no, not right now”.