Teaching for Fun and Profit

It’s taken me a while to figure out what I want to do with my life. After obtaining a master’s degree in engineering and doing structural engineering for four years I quit and went into IT. I would commute downtown, travel to other cities sometimes which involved flying, stay in hotels, rent apartments, you name it. I never really enjoyed the office/cubicle environment.

At times I’ve been fairly depressed, wondering why I have so many issues with the typical work environment, when others seem to be okay with the situation. One of the key thoughts I had was ‘There’s got to be a better way.’ I’ve never accepted the status quo, which is good in many ways but also bad as you tend to be unhappy this way. During the last few years I started to work at home for my IT contracts and it’s worked out great for both the client and myself. I knew I was onto something!

During this time I’ve realized that I really enjoy working at home, as well as learning and sharing that knowledge with others. I like teaching and getting feedback from others. And to sell anything online these days requires teaching even if you do this via your own blog. I also wanted to work from home, be able to live anywhere (not dependent on major city for employment) and have more freedom. Freedom to take my dog for a walk during the day, take a nap and work into the evening if I want.

I can’t think of anything better than an online business, especially in the area of information and affiliate products. The online learning market is huge and growing exponentially. Distance learning even at universities is very popular – people don’t have to commute or quit their jobs to study online. Plus there’s no office space to lease, no equipment and no employees!

You can easily create your own information products such as ebooks, videos, software demostrations and podcasts and sell them online. If you’d like to learn how to do this I highly suggest checking out Teaching Sells which has just re-opened for a little while (a while back they closed their doors to new members for many, many months). I was a member of Teaching Sells until I absorbed all the content and got my own sites up and running.

You not only learn how to create content in a variety of multimedia formats, how to organize your content, how to set up your sites (or get others to do it for you), how to market your site online, how to outsource content creation or any other part of the business, and how to joint venture with others (even if you don’t have your own content – find an expert and partner with him or her).

One of the big benefits of teaching online is the scalability and potential for much larger income. If you get paid by the hour, say working downtown, or teaching music one-on-one, you will be limited by the number of hours in the typical week. By creating content once, you can resell this information again and again even when you’re sleeping!