What is Skillshare? A 2024 Review of the Online Learning Platform

If you’re a teacher in a creative discipline looking to sell your knowledge and skills online, you’ve probably heard of Skillshare. While there are many learning platforms out there, Skillshare is one of the most popular. It is an online learning community for creators of all kinds, allowing teachers to upload video lessons, online classes, or projects to help students learn new skills.  

But what is Skillshare like for teachers and students – and is it a good choice for a teacher looking to upload their creative courses? Read on for a total overview of what Skillshare has to offer. 

What is Skillshare? 💻 

Skillshare is an online learning platform with a heavy focus on creative disciplines and community. First launched in April 2011, it has become a key alternative for academic learning. Since its launch, it has gone through many different iterations, adding new features and streamlining its user experience to become more effective.  

Today, Skillshare is one of the most popular online learning communities on the internet. With a user base of 8,000 teachers and 600,000 learners studying from 25,000 unique classes, its catalog is diverse. The creative fields featured on Skillshare include music, social media, animation, creative writing, graphic design, photography, film & video, drawing & painting, and marketing. 

What Can You Sell on Skillshare?

Signing up to become a teacher on Skillshare allows you to create comprehensive courses that share your knowledge and skills in a creative field. Skillshare accepts teachers from a number of disciplines, separated into: 

• Creative (General) 
• Business  
• Lifestyle 
• Technology  

Within these categories, Skillshare allows teachers to submit classes that cover a broad range of topics. For example, within Business, some classes focus on the intricacies of marketing, but there are also classes that delve into general productivity and how to use this in business endeavors.  

Skillshare requires all teachers to apply. This means being approved by the Skillshare team before you can publish classes as part of the wider teaching community. So while anyone can apply to be an instructor on Skillshare, acceptance is not guaranteed. The platform has extensive class quality guidelines and various ideas about teaching approaches that need to be followed (or at least considered) before a teacher or class is approved.  

How Much Does it Cost to Teach on Skillshare?

The good news is that it does not cost anything to publish a class on Skillshare. Once a teacher and course has been approved by the platform, there is a straight line towards being paid.  

So how do teachers get paid on Skillshare? Well, Skillshare is different from other online learning platforms, in that it does not let students pay for classes individually. Instead, students pay Skillshare a monthly subscription of $19.99 to access all classes. Then, roughly 20% of Skillshare's total subscription revenue is allocated back to teachers, meaning around 80% is kept by the platform itself.

The share a teacher gets of this revenue is calculated based on a few key metrics. The first is “minutes watched” – the more users watch your content, the more you will be paid. Students need to watch at least 75 minutes of your class in order for teachers to get paid. The second is “engagement” – which refers to the amount teachers interact with members learning from their content. 

How Much Are Teachers Earning With Skillshare? 

You might be wondering what the earning potential is when publishing course content on Skillshare.

The average teacher on Skillshare earns between $200 - $3,000 a month. However, Skillshare claims that the top teachers on their platform earn upwards of $100,000 per year.  

Applying to Skillshare 

While Skillshare is an accessible platform to teach on, it can be tricky to become an approved teacher. To become a teacher on the platform, you will have to go through the application process. The first step is to head over to the teaching page on Skillshare’s website, where you will be prompted to make an account and begin the application process.  

During the application process, you will outline your first class topic. This will be the only class that will need to be approved, but there are some strict class-quality guidelines for you to follow. The application process also requires you to provide: 

• Answers to a list of 10 questions 
• An outline of your first class 
• Some examples of class projects 
• A list of some of your key lessons 
• A short sample teaching video 

As you can see, the Skillshare approval process is comprehensive and requires you to show that you are a good fit for the platform. This is both a positive and a negative of the platform for teachers – while you join part of a wider community, all with similar goals, it does mean that not every teacher will be right for Skillshare, and to be approved you’ll have to ensure your content fits their guidelines.  

Getting Started as a Teacher on Skillshare

Once you have become an approved teacher, Skillshare will invite you to a program for first-time teachers. These programs have been set up to support teachers in creating their first classes for the platform. If you’re new to teaching or need more guidance, these courses offer you help to get started. 

From there, you can begin to create your first class for the platform. The process of uploading your class content is made simple with Skillshare’s class draft system. All you need to do is use a desktop community and sign into your Skillshare account. From here, you will be able to click the green Start a Class button in the center of the screen.  

Next, you will be asked to choose a category for your class as well as some primary goals for teaching on the platform. Press Continue near the bottom of the screen and load your first class draft.  

Now you can begin to upload class content. You can do this all at once or come back later with your draft saved to your account. If you’ve ever uploaded a video to a sharing platform such as YouTube, then Skillshare will look familiar to you. Processing time for videos over 10 minutes (the minimum requirement for course content) can take up to 30 minutes.  

Skillshare has a list of content you can upload outside of videos. Some of the most comprehensive courses on the platform include the following: 

• Projects 
• Transcripts 
• Additional resources 
• Links to other content  

Is Skillshare Worth It? Pros & Cons for Teachers

Now that we’ve covered how Skillshare works as a platform for teachers, let’s consider the pros and cons of this platform. While it is a popular platform, it is not without its downsides:

Pros:

Free platform to host courses 

First off, Skillshare is a free platform for teachers. Once you are approved, you will be granted all the community tools and a platform to start uploading courses.  

No exclusivity 

Skillshare doesn’t require you to sign the exclusivity of your teaching to their platform. They allow you to publish content to your own website too, so you will be given a lot of freedom and flexibility. 

Popularity 

Skillshare has one of the largest user bases of any learning community on the internet. With 12 million registered users, you will have a gigantic audience to access. Contrasted with the comparably small number of teachers (approximately 8000), it means your courses will reach a serious audience! 

Teacher community  

One of Skillshare’s missions is to create a global community of teachers and students. The community focus of the platform allows you to easily connect with students and other teachers. If you’re a person who wants a lot of support or loves to connect with students taking their course – Skillshare is a fantastic option for you.  

Cons :

Approval process 

The downside to Skillshare’s platform is its exclusivity. While it’s not impossible to become a teacher on the platform, the approval process means that you will have to adhere to the specific guidelines to become part of the community. As a result, Skillshare might not be the right place for you if your course is unconventional. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes you might not get approved, even if your course is in line with their guidelines. Some reviewers have even stated that they have initially gained approval, only to have their course removed later on.

Growth/exposure 

While Skillshare has a lot of tools for new or first-time teachers, it can be difficult to get exposure for your course. Skillshare indexes and displays courses based on their popularity. So, for a course to become popular, it needs to rank well in terms of reviews and engagement.  

In many ways, Skillshare is similar to video hosting platforms such as YouTube, with popular teachers getting a lot more attention.  

Inconsistent income and low revenue share

We have already outlined Skillshare’s monetization process for teachers, but it’s important to note the downside here. Because a teacher’s income is ranked based on views and engagement, the payment you receive can be inconsistent. If a course doesn’t do well, or your number of students drops, you will receive considerably less money at the end of the month. Plus, Skillshare only gives 20% of its total subscription revenue back to its teachers.

Lack of insights 

To pair with the issue of inconsistent income, Skillshare is also lacking in the insights department. Aside from your earnings dashboard where you will find some simple metrics such as total watch minutes and subscriptions, you won’t get any detailed information. This can make it tricky to figure out how to improve and how users are interacting with your course content. 

What are Users Saying About Skillshare?

When reviewing any platform, it's also important to consider what other users are saying. Skillshare is listed on Trustpilot and is a verified company with over 1600 reviews. However, these reviews are overwhelmingly bad, leaving Skillshare with a 1.3 out of 5 star rating.

There are plenty of poor reviews from users who have signed up to Skillshare as learners, stating issues with unauthorized payments, poor communication, and poor quality of content. For the sake of this review we focused on creator reviews and found that teachers reported stolen content, strict rules, and again, poor customer service.

A Skillshare Alternative for all Creators: Whop

Skillshare is a popular learning platform for a reason – the exclusive and strict nature of its teaching gives users a streamlined experience. But this causes a lot of restrictions for teachers, especially when it comes to flexibility.  

If you are a teacher looking for a more flexible experience with higher earning potential, Whop is the choice for you. Whop is a comprehensive platform that allows creators to sell a range of digital products including courses, eBooks, Telegram or Discord group Memberships, or even access to websites or services. With a dedicated course builder, you can create courses for your students with certificates upon their completion. 

Whop also makes marketing your uploaded courses or products easy. You can embed a widget on your existing website or use your social media to make use of different sales options. With a diverse audience of potential customers, Whop Marketplace gives you a chance to be discovered outside of your normal demographic.  

Flexibility for creators and teachers is the central design of Whop – you will have a range of options at your disposal. Whether you want to sell courses for a one-off payment, or as part of a wider subscription model, you can give your users options.  

Whop also offers an unobtrusive pricing plan, with no monthly fee and just a 3% commission on each sale. So, you keep 97% of the money that you make from your course sales.

If you are a creative teacher looking to sell courses and create a learning community, Whop you can get started for free – so join today!