- Erin Booth has created courses on Udemy to help other virtual assistants skill up.
- She started with one course and now has 24 that earn her up to $6,000 a month in passive income.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erin Booth, a virtual-assistant coach based in Washington, DC. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I've been a virtual assistant since 2012, and I started creating online courses for other virtual assistants in 2018. I met a woman while I was traveling who made courses on Udemy, and she told me that she was making about $10,000 a month in passive income from her courses. This was a light-bulb moment for me because I hadn't known this opportunity existed.
I chose to use Udemy because of the platform's access to millions of people. I knew that as a new course creator with virtually no audience, I wouldn't have as wide of a reach on my own.
Five years later, I now have 24 courses listed, and they bring in between $3,000 and $6,000 a month. Here's how I got started.
I asked myself what I wished I knew I when I started as a virtual assistant
I realized there are many holes in the industry because there's no set path to becoming a virtual assistant.
The first course I released was about calendar management for executives, which is listed at $69.99. I picked this topic because calendar management is a necessary skill for all virtual assistants, and it's a lot more nuanced than people think.
The course content included tips and tricks I'd learned on my own through trial and error that I thought new or aspiring VAs could benefit from. From there, I continued to create courses.
Course creation takes a lot of time
One course takes about 100 hours to create from start to finish.
My process starts with brainstorming different topics that I think would be helpful or interesting to new VAs. From there, I do research to see if there's interest in each topic or if there are courses already available on that topic.
For example, there are a lot of courses available already on how to handle common tasks. It was only after I started to amass popularity on YouTube that I made my own course on common tasks, called Must-Have Skills (Training) for Virtual Assistants, listed at $89.99. It's become my best-selling course and has made more than $53,000 since it was released a year and a half ago.
When I decide which topic I'm going to cover, my next step is outlining the course and diving into research, keeping the student's transformation from start to finish in mind.
Then I'll build out the course, which takes about 50 hours. So far in 2023, I've created four courses and I have a handful more in development.
Next, I film the course. If I can film it all in one day, I will, but those days are exhausting because I'm filming nonstop.
After filming, I'll edit the video and upload the full course to the platform. My courses vary in length — some courses are about three hours, while others are what I call "micro-courses," which are about 30 minutes long.
I keep my overhead as low as possible
For the first few years of course creation, I used iMovie for editing and my phone for filming. The cost of making courses was basically free.
I now have light boxes, a Yeti microphone, and editing software called WonderShare. I still film on my iPhone, but the quality of the iPhone camera is better than when I first started.
Pricing high doesn't work for me
I tend to price my courses low compared to other courses on Udemy, which is something that other creators give me a hard time about. This pricing model works for me because it's a low barrier to entry that allows students to easily access the course, return to my other courses if they like it, and talk to me if they have questions.
I do offer two more expensive packages on my own site. These courses, which I sell for $199 and $599, include one-on-one personalized coaching. I price these courses higher because I'm including my time.
I also realized early on that Udemy's internal marketing is very effective and it funnels hundreds — and sometimes thousands — of people to my courses each month, which is just incredible.
Since I've opted into their promotional program, Udemy markets my courses for me on their platform but discounts the courses heavily. Even after the pay cut, I make more through Udemy than I would on my own, so using it is a no-brainer for me.
My advice for aspiring course creators is to research your niche first
There might already be a lot of content out there on your topic, and you need to know what you're competing against.
Once you've determined that there's a need for courses in your niche, make sure that you're setting a schedule for yourself where you can make, design, outline, film, and release the course successfully.
I've seen aspiring creators get excited about the prospect of course creation and not follow through on their intentions. I also see creators overcomplicate courses quite a bit. You have to be mindful of how people learn — I usually tell people to make courses short and actionable.