It might sound almost impossible to teach art online, but many people do, proving that teaching art online is possible.
There are some obstacles to teaching a practical course in the virtual environment, but it is also possible to overcome these challenges.
Considering how many online art courses are available in several formats, teachers clearly make money using this skill.
Aspiring artists get to share the benefits of other people’s skills in the process.
If you are an artist and wonder how to monetize your talent, read on to find out more about all the available opportunities.
Can you teach art online?
Anyone with talent and education can teach art classes online.
With a bit of guidance and lots of technical help, you can create and sell your skills online via a course, ensuring that many students share in the joy of your passion.
Use this guideline as a tool to begin an exciting new chapter in your life.
1. Plan your online art course
Planning for teaching art online is fundamental to a virtual course.
Decide whether you want to teach beginner, intermediate, or expert art courses, or all three. Plan each art class as if you were giving training in person.
Let your students know what materials they need for each lesson and what training you will include in the overview and each following class. You may want to share the foundation of drawings, such as coloring, shading, and perspective.
Or you may want to begin with simple drawings like clouds or still life. Alternatively, you may want to start with charcoal or pencil drawing, watercolors, or oil paints.
Plan how you want to approach teaching art online before setting up your courses.
2. Transform live classes into virtual lessons
You are probably familiar with teaching art in person, so it is not significant to reproduce live sessions for online teaching.
However, it is best to use short training sessions when transitioning from live to online courses as new students may find long classes overwhelming.
You can always tackle longer training sessions at a later stage. For now, the focus should be on breaking hour-long live sessions into five or ten minutes.
Smaller sessions are easier to follow and absorb in the virtual space.
3. Choosing a teaching method
You can do teaching art online in person or via pre-recorded lessons.
Online teaching involves setting up equipment and offering live sessions via Zoom, CrowdCast, Microsoft Teams, or Google Hangouts.
Check the free options on these platforms or select a basic plan to teach more than two or three people at a time. All these formats allow for interaction with students while teaching art online.
If live online sessions don’t appeal to you, pre-recorded sessions are equally viable for teaching art online.
You can decide on your lesson layout and video record each session with instructions. Or you can video each lesson and add verbal instructions afterward.
An HD Webcam or smartphone on a tripod with lighting is an excellent video recording tool to begin your journey.
Include written art instruction, add PDF documents to your videos, and package each lesson for sale to earn a passive income.
Add a live chat feature to the package to answer student questions once they have gone through the classes.
4. Marketing your teaching art online course
If you don’t have a website to market your art courses online, you may want to follow through by creating one on any available platforms.
Platforms such as Wix, WordPress, and many others offer free or paid options.
You will need to include video-sharing features like Dropbox on your site.
Instead of Dropbox, you might prefer to include a feature on your website where customers can access the teaching material with a password (see also ‘The Best Alternatives To LastPass‘).
You will also need to have a payment plugin and a feature to automate emails.
Add email platforms like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, or Constant Contact to invite prospective students to view your website and lessons.
Remember to include social media platforms on your website as outlets for additional marketing to attract customers if you want a personal website.
Starting your website can be challenging, in which case you may want to opt to present your courses via established teaching platforms.
Several of these platforms facilitate teaching art online or any other online class you wish to give.
Best platforms for art courses
Luckily for you and your aspirations for teaching art online, there are many platforms that you can use to market your talent.
Besides website-building platforms to create your website, you can sell your courses on established platforms.
Some of these platforms offer space to upload your courses, while others provide the opportunity to build a quick website within the forum.
Udemy and Skillshare are two successful companies where you can create an account, upload your courses, and immediately start earning a passive income if you’re planning to teach online art classes.
Both these platforms make teaching art online a hassle-free destination for monetizing your skills.
The drawback of these platforms is that so many courses are available that yours may get lost in the mix.
If you want to earn from your skill, you will need to market your courses via email or social media to reach your target market.
Other platforms like Teachable focus on you taking control of your business by providing the tools to develop your website.
Additional resources include quick steps to course creation and marketing features.
Teachable also integrates well with existing WordPress sites, which opens new doors for marketing your online art courses.
While platforms like Teachable offer many benefits, there are also drawbacks.
One of the main drawbacks of this and similar platforms is that you are responsible for creating your website, using the site’s teaching and marketing tools.
You can access many of these benefits with free or paid plans.
Weigh your options between using a content management system (CMS) like Udemy against a learning management system (LMC) like Teachable before deciding on the best option.
Alternative platforms on which you can create a website, or sell your art courses direct to the public, include:
- Ruzuku
- Patreon plus YouTube
- Coursera
- Kajabi
- Mightynetworks
- AccessAlly
- BlackBoard LMS
- Ontraport
Whatever platform you select for teaching art online, the biggest hurdle you will face is marketing.
Because competition is stiff for online courses, you must work the marketing angle if you want this entrepreneurial effort to work. Or it would be best if you found a way for your course to stand out among many others.
You could develop a ten-part course and offer the first two introductory courses free of charge. You can also use the power of social media platforms to market your art courses.
If you have a website, the best tactic is to provide an email subscription form where you send out regular newsletters to market your courses.
After putting so much effort into creating your teaching art online courses, you may be wondering whether the investment will pay off.
Can you make money by teaching art online, and is the effort worth the trouble?
How much can you earn teaching art online?
How much you can earn from teaching art online depends on how much marketing you are willing to do.
If you start with virtual art lessons, you will need to find your audience and make it worthwhile to use your services over other art teachers.
You can also establish your website and then search for students looking to study art online and make them aware of your services. Costs per hour range from $20 to $50 for online teaching.
If you plan and implement your art course creation well and include multiple teaching formats, you can price your courses at the high end of the marketable range.
Explore teaching platforms like Udemy and Skillshare to see what every other online art teacher is charging per course. Find out what their courses include, and price your online art lessons accordingly.
Comprehensive online art courses sell for $300 to $500 each and include live chats, multiple videos, and additional training material.
How many lessons you sell in a month will depend on how much you market your business.
If you prefer to focus on short courses of around 40 to 60 minutes each, you can price these at approximately $20. Smaller courses are cost-effective in the short term and more manageable for students interested in learning fine art.
Lower-priced courses are also more likely to sell better and generate a higher passive income, especially if they make it easy for students to apply new learning.
You can also increase sales by offering one or two free courses within a module. In other words, if you sell ten short courses as part of a complete teaching art online session, you can offer the fifth and tenth sessions free of charge.
If you already give live art lessons, you can use a similar pricing model for online classes. Remember, though; those online lessons should cost less than live lessons as students won’t be able to interact with you on a live platform.
Of course, this method assumes the sale of preplanned courses rather than live lessons online.
Also, if you want to give live lessons online with an interactive feature, charge less than you would for live classes as the experience is different.
Intense marketing can generate a monthly income or use the online environment to complement current earnings.
Either way, the income you can generate monthly depends on your marketing skills.
Conclusion
Teaching art online can be rewarding and lucrative.
You can choose various platforms to market your talents and open your own online art school, such as Udemy,
Prepare to sell your services extensively and offer a unique selling point that differentiates your lessons from competitors to build a customer base.
With hard work and tenacity, you can add a generous passive income to monthly earnings or make teaching art online your full-time career.
