Creating Content Online to Diversify Your Income Streams
This week’s blog post is about what to do when your freelance business slows down.
I’ve been running my CADdesignhelp.com business now full time for 5 months. I estimate that my average week I was working around 60 hours. I would guess that only about half of this time is what I would call “billable hours”, as I spend many hours answering customer questions, submitting quotes, making follow up calls, etc.
Since the start, I have never been in the situation I am in now. I have only a few active projects (but many pending that could soon have me busy again). My point is I am finding myself with a lot more free time than I had before. I imagine this has happened to many entrepreneurs and freelancers before.
Sleep at work? I suppose that’s an option
I think it is important to diversify income streams for freelancers. My situation right here should make it obvious why I think this is so. One trending method of creating a diversified income stream is to create training content and selling it online. Some people do this via their own websites. But many use a platform, such as udemy.com, teachable.com, and pluralsight.com. The downside to using one of these platforms is that they will take a good portion of the sales, as well as controlling the price of your content. However, these platforms do provide value. For example, they have already acquired a customer base and they provide an effective means of advertising to this customer base. Therefore, it is a lot easier to get noticed and get sales if you create content on one of these sites.
Recently, Pluralsight.com reached out to me to create content. They are specifically looking for engineers to create 3D CAD tutorials. I have 10 years of experience in various CAD programs, especially SolidWorks, so this was a great opportunity presented to me. My plan this week is to start creating a training course and seeing how it goes (this is my first attempt at creating online content). They require an audition video (just a short 10-minute video) to become an approved instructor. I have created my slide deck for the audition and next I will start working on the actual video and audio. I am pretty excited to be creating some online courses! I hope that this will lead to a well-diversified income stream that will pay me down the road.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Have you created online training content? If so, what was your experience? What tips do you have?
