She was reading a blog for authors that suggested turning published material into an online course. "I thought, thank goodness, because it's very hard to teach body language in a book," Van Edwards remembers.
Van Edwards is a behavioral investigator, meaning she researches, analyzes, and coaches body language to help professionals foster better people skills.
Clients come to her looking to "elevate their presence in some way," she explains. "Either to sweeten up their elevator pitch, be a better networker, or find a new job."
Since she had all the material, she set up shop in her living room, filming with her iPhone propped up on her kitchen table. "I was like, this is probably not going to work," she laughs.
In a few weeks, she had a finished course and submitted it to online education site Udemy. "I put it up and was like, 'My goal is 30 people. If I can sell to 30 people, I'll be so excited,'" she says.
With the $49 course not yet approved by Udemy, she headed to bed. When she woke up, she had hit her goal of 30 people - and then some. "My inbox was filled with sales," she says. "Just pages and pages of sales."
Today, Van Edwards has produced seven courses and has over 25,000 students. One of her courses has been translated into Japanese, and more translations are planned for the future to help meet overseas demand.
"I think that it was a unique topic for the platform," Van Edwards says of her initial course's success. "At the time especially, it was very tech-heavy, and my courses are all about people skills. So for a lot of professionals who wanted to round out their skill set, this was the first course of its kind on Udemy."
Van Edwards now spends months preparing her courses, and uses a professional film studio. Once a course has been published, she makes a point of answering questions from her students, providing follow-up work to keep them engaged, and updating research in the course to make sure it's the most timely and relevant.
In fact, since publishing her first course, she has completely changed her business model. "When I started, my business model was coaching and online writing and ads," she explains. "Because of the amount of income from and the demand for my courses, I completely switched my business model. I'm still a full-time entrepreneur, but now all I'm doing is researching the courses and speaking to corporate groups."
Van Edwards estimates that her Udemy courses make up about 40% of her income, and she was able to use those profits for a down payment on a house. While she won't share exactly how much she's earned through the courses over the last few years, we can do some guesstimating: If three-quarters of her 25,682 students took only her cheapest course for $49, the remaining quarter took her free course, and she had to split the money 50/50 with the company (like Nick Walter explained), she would bring home about $471,000.
This is without taking into account the fact that many students take more than one course, some students pay $199 for a course, and if she directs students to a course instead of them finding it through the site, she gets to keep more of the proceeds. Plus, the number of students she has continues to increase.
However, her courses' success isn't just due to luck. She advises people who are considering undertaking a similar project not to neglect marketing their products. "It was not a passive process," she says. "It was partially magic, but also a lot of work went into it. If you're going to upload a course, just know that you're going to want to double your efforts - put some budget towards marketing."
"My goal was to have a little supplemental income," Van Edwards reflects, "but the real goal was to reach more people on a deeper level. Those 25,682 students are 25,682 students I wouldn't reach on my own. I get emails on a daily basis saying, 'Your courses have changed my life,' and that's better than any money or down payment that Udemy could have offered me."