It’s creative, it’s fun, I’ve built a six-figure business on the back of it I can work when and where I want to- at home, here at a café on the beach, as I’m travelling- or- maybe more importantly, I can just take time off when I want to.

I'm Jo Gakonga from ELT-Training.com and if this sounds good to you then stay with me because over the next week, I’m going to be sharing with you some thoughts and ideas about how you can make educational video that makes you money.

I’m not telling you to give up your current job. I’m not asking you to take any huge risks. I’m just going to give you some tips for how you might want to start to incorporate this into your worklife and see where it leads you.

Are you ready? Buckle up!

Let’s start by thinking about the kinds of video that you might want to make. There are basically four types.

Two of them are to bring people to you – to your website. To attract potential customers. And two of them are going to be part of your paid offer- things you can make money with.

Let’s start over this side, the earning money end of things. Video is a crucial element of any online course these days and if you can make an online course to sell, you can literally earn money while you sleep. It’s a bit deceptive to think of it as a completely passive income, because you do need to market it – we’ll look at that in a minute- but once it’s got some momentum, it’s a steady earner and it’s definitely scalable. It takes time to make a course, but once it’s done, you’re no longer trading your time for money in the way that you are when you’re teaching in real time.

But what am I going to make a course about, you ask- the sweet spot to find is where three things intersect- the first is a problem you know exists, the more urgent the better- you want a difficulty that people will pay to overcome. The second is your skills and experience - to solve this – and the final one is something you enjoy or it’s never going to be sustainable for you.

For me, the starting point was teaching grammar terminology to potential CELTA candidates. I could see that although they had native speaker fluency in English, they didn’t know what a preposition was, or the past perfect, or articles. I’m a CELTA tutor and love teaching this so I made an online course for it. Self access. Over a dozen years later, it’s still a top seller.

Think about the issues that your learners have? Is there an exam they have to pass? Are there certain skills they struggle with that need extra practice? What’s your teacher superpower? Something that’s been of particular help to people? If you’re drawing a blank here, your situation to ChatGPT and ask it for 20 ideas for online courses. You won’t like most of them, but it’ll give you a starting point.

OK, that’s an online course. The other way to generate income from video is to use it as an additional selling point for your one to one or class teaching. You could make video to use as a flipped class approach or for extra homework practice and think about the hours of frustration you’ll save yourself if you don’t have to repeat the same things over and over again.

On the other side of this, we have how you can use video to market yourself and your products. It’s a BIG world out there and if you want to stand out and get people to know, like and trust you, video is the key. As you can see, there are two types of video here, too.

The first is simple promotional material. You need to tell people as clearly as you can, what you have for them and why they should trust that you can offer a solution to the problem they have.

The second is what’s called social media marketing- free material that you put out on a regular basis that helps to grow an audience, to show people who you are and build their confidence and trust in you. This doesn’t have to be video, but video works better than images and text, because it allows people to get a really good insight into who you are and feel as if they know you.

Consistency is the key. Now, I put out a new video every week but when I started, I only made one a month because I had three small children and a job! You can just do what you can do, but you need to keep doing it regularly.

What kind of content are you going to make? You want something that’s useful for your ideal client BUT- and this is crucial- NOT the same kind of material or knowledge that you’re selling in your services or courses- otherwise, why would they pay? Again, AI is your friend here- put in a description of your situation and ask it for 20 ideas for social media marketing content.

Oh Jo, you might be thinking… this is all very well, but it seems like a big mountain to climb. I feel more comfortable getting my regular paycheck at the end of the month.

That’s definitely how I felt and my video making was just a bit of a hobby for quite a while. It made me a bit of money BUT more importantly at that time (and I didn’t expect this when I started) it also brought me great work opportunities because once you stick your head above the parapet a little, people see you, they know your work and they’re more likely to offer things to you. What employer these days wouldn’t want someone on their team who had those skills and could build online courses for them?

Even if you do think you’re more of a paycheck person, I wouldn’t rule out your own business in the future, even if not now. Once I put a bit more time and energy into my business, it rocketed and I now earn more than I ever earned as a teacher- even in my very nice MA TESOL tutor job at a top British university.

One final thought on making money – you might be wondering whether you can earn a living from a YouTube channel and I’m sorry to disappoint you but no, you probably can’t. YouTube IS a fantastic way to get noticed, and clearly people with millions of followers DO make significant amounts … but I don’t know many people in the English teaching game who are in this category.

I hope that this has given you some ideas about how you could make money from video. Remember, it can just start out with a side-hustle – you don’t have to take any big risks. Just play with it and see if you like it.

In the next video – coming in a couple of days so look out for it- I’ll answer the next big question I get asked- how do I overcome the fear of getting started? It might not be as hard as you think!

See you then.