How Does Skillshare Work? Guide, Plans and Review

Traditionally, most people learn by going into a classroom, a lecture, being taught by a tutor, or from books, but the world has changed in the last few years and learning has changed with it.

One of the ways that learning has changed is by using the internet to learn through videos or other online resources.

There are many websites that help people learn this way, but one of the largest is that of Skillshare, an online platform solely devoted to learning whatever people are interested in teaching, but most of the users don’t know how does skillshare works. Is it free or paid? Let’s find out.

However, while most people enjoy using the platform immensely and have benefited from it, they are not really sure exactly how it works. So, how does Skillshare work (see also our article on Skillshare pricing)? Is it pre-recorded or live to teach?

In this article, we will look at Skillshare more closely and see exactly how it works and how you can benefit from it.

What is Skillshare?

Skillshare is an online learning platform that is wholly devoted to teaching or learning a vast array of skills.

While there are other platforms that you can learn from, like YouTube, learning is not wholly built into the experience and may just be something that specific content creators will do as a part of their brand.

Yet, this is not the case with Skillshare.

If you are a student, there are over 30,000 courses and classes that you can watch and learn from on the platform, and if you are a teacher or a specialist in a certain subject or area, then you can publish a course in a series of videos and put them on the platform in order to teach others about your expertise.

Skillshare (see also ‘How To Cancel Skillshare‘) allows you to learn any topic or class as long as it is available. The most prominent classes featured are those that teach tech, illustration, design, and other difficult and niche creative topics.

However, they should be counted as the only ones as those are just the most popular right now to learn and there are many courses that deal with other topics, like cookery.

If you were looking to create a course, then it would be a good idea to see whether your area of expertise is fairly niched on Skillshare. Even if it isn’t, you could make a nice little bit of cash from the side hustle.

How does Skillshare work

If you wanted to get started on Skillshare (see also ‘Is Skillshare Free?‘), there are two different ways to do so – as a student or as a teacher:

Student

To get started as a student on Skillshare, you first need to create an account on the website. Either type into your browser skillshare.com/ or type Skillshare into a search engine and click on the option for Skillshare (skillshare.com/).

On the left-hand page, it will have the option for signing up for a Skillshare account through a social media profile (Facebook, google, or apple) or through your email address. If you use your email, you will also have to fill in your name and create a password.

If this is your first time, you will get 7 days of Skillshare absolutely free. In the case that it is your first time or not, you will still have to put in your billing information.

Once this is done, you can choose your payment cycle, as Skillshare is a paid service.

This is either a $15 monthly payment, an annual payment of $99 (or $8.25 monthly), or if you are planning to use it for a team then an annual payment of $99 per user of the team service.

Once you have paid, you have access to as many courses and videos on the service as you like.

Each course will have a video class to watch, which you can pause and play at any time, notes left by the teacher on the video and on documents under the video, and a project for you to do at the end of each lesson.

You can then use this platform as much as you like for as long as you pay for it.

Teacher

To get started as a teacher, you go to the exact same website and search at the bottom for ‘Teaching’ and click on ‘Become a teacher. Then create an account with the teacher platform on Skillshare, filling out the required information as you do.

Then, click ‘Start a Class’. Once on this interface, you can upload all the materials that you prepared or prepare for the course during this time.

You should upload video lessons, add a title and a description, and choose what category it goes into and its sub-category, the class type, and the level, before clicking on save a draft or publish course – depending on how complete it is.

You should also add some material and homework for students to do at the bottom of each lesson. Once you have finished, you can set up the class type to be free for people to view (when using the free trial) or for premium viewers only.

How much does Skillshare pay teachers?

Skillshare will pay each teacher between $0.05 and $0.10 per minute of their course watched by a premium viewer. So, if students watched 10,000 minutes of your videos in one month, you would receive $500 and $1000 for that month.

For most teachers, this makes Skillshare quite a lucrative passive income and can really help people out by getting a little spending money.

If you have a unique or difficult skill that you are sure others want to learn, then it is definitely worth thinking about creating a Skillshare account and creating a course.

It is not hard to do, all you need is your own expertise, patience, and a camera to do so.

Conclusion

Skillshare works by having an active community of teachers who want to teach unique skills and students who are willing to pay to learn those skills.

It allows many people to access skills that might otherwise be behind incredibly high pay walls for relatively little cost, and it allows you to learn at your own pace.