How to teach online courses and earn money from home

My earnings for the past three months, based on one course

A few days ago a curious friend approached me with some questions about how I teach online and make [some] money? How do I prepare courses? Where do I get the materials? And many other things.
I wrote an e-mail in response and long before the end of the e-mail I knew I was writing a blog post in hind site. 

The e-mail turned blog post is given below for you to enjoy.

Dear Friend,
How do I sell my courses?
Udemy.com is an online course market. It allows you to create video courses on various topics and sell to millions of people.

There is a 30 days money back guarantee, but none of the 100 students who have paid for my course ever claimed it. If your stuff is good enough, most of the people will not try to be clever.
I am selling one course through Udemy at the present moment. I created it in November 2014.

How can you create your own course?

Udemy.com itself offers free courses about how you can create your own video courses and those give newbies a good head start.

A link to one of such courses is given below:
https://www.udemy.com/official-udemy-instructor-course/

It is not necessary to show our face on the screen. I haven't done so for my first course, won't do it in the second one either.

Recording the screen:

I just record my screen using Camtasia Studio and edit it using the same tool. You can get one month free trial of Camtasia to learn and put together your first course as well.


The microphone:
For my first course I used the microphone mounted on my USB headphone. For second one I've spent a 400 rupees to buy a USB mic since the old one is broken.

The mic mounted on laptop does not work well since its 'omni-directional' and captures all sorts of unwanted sounds.

The slides:

Fancy slides take a lot of time to create and they distract the students as well. Its highly recommended to create simple slides instead.
I'm using the same template for my second course.

Do take a look at the slides I've used in my first course.
https://www.udemy.com/tcpip-socket-programming-for-coders-using-csharp-net

Redeem the coupon code PAKISTAN to get 100% discount on my first course and check things out. Notice that the audio quality is just average but still the topic is evergreen and people are paying.

Money matters:

Udemy keeps 50% of the cash generated by the sales of your course. I believe they rightfully deserve it since they've built such a market and they do a lot of publicity as well.

In Jun 2015 I made a $98.88 which is almost 10000 rupees. In July I've made $77.5 and the figure for August is $57.58. I hope it will cross the $60 mark in couple days.

The money is transferred using Paypal. You'll be able to use your husband's account.

​

My Personal Strategy:
I have three course ideas in my head right now. I am working on one of those. The plan is to put at least two out on the market by first week of November 2015. Combined, three evergreen courses will yield a healthy $150/month on average for at least 3 years(I hope). Noticeable thing is, I won't have to move a finger to make the money, all effort will be done upfront. It will be possible to pump things up through marketing efforts, but that's an option not an obligation.

If you've made it so far, perhaps you've recognized that in lieu of an e-mail for you, I'm actually writing a blog post which I will publish on my blog(without your name). That's just the way a content creator's mind works.

Please feel free to ask more questions and discuss ideas.

Sincerely,

Naeem.




PS: Link to my course about TCP/IP socket programming: 
https://www.udemy.com/tcpip-socket-programming-for-coders-using-csharp-net/?couponCode=FOUR