i agree 100%, social media platforms lately earn all the money while giving nothing but the place for creator publish their work. Until all of us leave these platfofms, to make them realize they exist due to creators, nothing will change.
I’m an old teacher and just have a couple classes. Been making around $250 a month now I’ve been making only $20 I’m beyond disappointed in Skillshare and I’m so tired of being taken advantage of. I actually wrote to them expressing my disappointment. They said they are not planning on changing their method so I guess we either suck it up or quit. I also experimented a huge drop in minutes watched after the new implement which was kind of odd. How they calculate how to pay us is so unclear. Everything seems so briefly talked about not giving us specific details. I’m sorry your earnings dropped so much and that you’re disappointed as well. Thank you for speaking up and sharing how you feel with us. I love your videos. ❤
Teoh, I am so sorry that Skillshare is treating its teachers so poorly. This is a terrible business model for teachers, and Skillshare is shooting itself in the foot by taking away the profits from art teachers, who already don't make too much money as it is! I have never joined Skillshare due to its subscription model where you lose access to all courses if you stop paying a monthly charge. Thank you for telling us how it works for artists and art teachers, and I hope you get the full recognition you deserve through Patreon and other places. Also, if you ever decide to teach courses and make them available through a one-time buy model, definitely let us know! wishing you the best as always!!!!
Sheesh, a teacher of your level making 300 dollars a month is criminal. I’ve watched so many of your videos over the years, and am always impressed. I can’t do patreon no matter how much I like a channel. I’m on a fixed income and there are so many channels I appreciate, it would use up all I have each month! But I do appreciate them and would love to see teachers like yourself compensated. I’ve used skillshare before, I think I joined with you but I don’t remember. I remember it being difficult to find what I wanted.
Same here, but I do try to do my bit by telling all my friends, liking and subscribing and occasionally clicking on an ad. Not sure how much this helps, but hopefully something is better than nothing!
Nothing lasts forever for creators online. I had books on Amazon that did great for 5-8 years, then died. I had a YT account (oh, this one) that had 55 million views (I've since removed some popular videos) and was making good money for about 8 yrs. It died too. Websites made have done well, then died as I didn't keep maintaining them. These platforms prefer the new stuff coming in. The old stuff doesn't make the money anymore. You need to constantly innovate, create, maintain, adjust, etc to keep it all going. You're doing fine in other areas, make sure you keep something going! Best of luck, love your stuff. You do city watercolors like my uncle - an artist in the states. Love to see it. Cheers man
Yeah, I've always been underwhelmed with Skillshare. Not the teachers or the courses they put out but the way Skillshare runs it's business. I don't like having to pay for an empty subscription and what I mean by that is that unless I keep paying each year or each month, I lose all access to the courses I like. I much prefer Domestika, Creature Art Teacher and such which are based on buying and owning individual courses. I have heard from other teachers on Skillshare that they throttled Teacher earnings and I think it's disgusting. It basically comes down to Skillshare making 40,50% more profit while pushing teachers to work even harder. I'm sorry this happened to you, and many others. Hopefully it doesn't create problems for you and your family.
I absolutely agree with you. I would rather pay for a course and have lifetime access, and would also prefer to buy directly from the teacher, and have the teacher benefit from the amount I pay!
Teoh, thank you for speaking about this. The reason why they can simply pay teachers less now is because they have stopped basing the teacher payments upon their revenue. They're now basing payments on a fixed teacher fund (which was announced to become higher over time, but it has now been lowered), and this is presumably much lower than the revenue-based pool was before - otherwise we wouldn't have our payment cut in half. The pro for them is they can directly control the money that goes out of the fund to the teachers, which they couldn't do as easily with the revenue-based model. The other money goes directly into the investors pockets - this is their business model. I would be cautious with the thought that Skillshare will change their payment model in any way in the future so it benefits the majority of teachers - whenever there were changes in the past, it always came with less payment and more hoops to jump through. They obfuscate the payment rules to a point where not even their staff can explain what the changes result in. I think teachers, even new ones, will be much better off building their own platform, since this is something that can't be changed or taken away as easily.
I’m a skillshare student. I was really nervous at first bcuz it’s a large upfront fee for the whole year, but I’m SO HAPPY!!! I’ve created more in the past 2mo’s than I ever have since my art journey began 18 mo’s ago. I’m so excited with my sketches and my confidence has grown immensely. I’m painting and drawing things I wouldn’t have thought possible. What’s important for me as a new student and fairly new to art is that a teacher doesn’t spend the bulk of their time listing supplies and then warp speed through the drawing and painting. Reference photos help a great deal, but if not then walk the student through the drawing process in at least a few classes. Or list them from beginner to intermediate to advanced. I post my work bcuz I want feedback (and serious feedback not kindness bcuz that doesn’t help). I absolutely leave reviews bcuz some teachers have helped me so much. My favorite teacher is a self taught Italian artist who only has 900 followers and I had never heard of her before. I’m just dipping my toes into perspective, but now I know to look for you.
Interesting, I follow you for so long and never knew you were on Skillshare! I do know about the courses you have on your own platform. I think you should advertise them in your videos here and just leave skillshare. At least you make your own rules.
One of the biggest problems was how they communicated about the all changes...they were not transparent about just how drastic the cut would be. Luckily I don't rely on Skillshare and have multiple income streams, but it has left me very unmotivated to invest time in the platform. I am looking forward to the possibilities RUclips is working on for paid courses! This might be a nice option for your classes too!
Thank you for sharing your experience with being a Skillshare teacher, Teoh! I just started a bit over a year ago, was starting to get my hopes up as my earnings were increasing, and then the new payment model happened. It's really discouraging.
And I also found now that they are accepting anything and everything there is just a lot of poor content on Skillshare. And it makes it near impossible to get through all those creators to find a decent creator like yourself! Teachable is another platform that costs a tone of money to run as creators have to pay a hefty subscription fee but the platform is incredibly annoying to use on the creator side I find. We need a new platform that is well designed and supports artists and creators without ripping them off!! 😁🧡
You are right. And now they're encouraging it even more as the better teachers are getting fed up and either leaving or not creating more content. They're actually inviting all students to become teachers and are starting a program to coach everyone through the process. The compensation is a year of free skillshare *eye roll*. While I'm sure there will be some great first time teachers out there, most of it is likely to be poor content. As a student, I'm very disappointed in skillshare's handling of the whole situation. This is not the proper solution to the problem they caused to begin with.
Wow, I had no idea how Skillshare worked and appreciate the information. I tried Skillshare in the past but didn't see much return because my life got so much busier and I didn't have time to take the courses.
If anything has convinced me to put my work-in-progress coloured pencil courses on my own website it would be this. This change is just insulting to the teachers. Tired of companies scalping the people actually providing them with the content. This move was made purely to line their shareholders' pockets.
I had a job that said “you are going to be working another extra hour in the day, yey.! Because we care so much about your work-life balance, and working an extra hour will fulfill you and your work goals and improve everyone’s morale!” This was before the term gaslighting was so well known… there was a resounding NOPE from the employees and it never got implemented…
Skillshare courses are all for beginners. There are no instructors who seem to go past beginner level. I think they stick to that level because it’s safe. Beginners won’t know if you’re wrong about something.
This is so very frustrating to me as a student of Skillshare for over 3 years now. Frustrating because I really wish Skillshare made us (the students) aware of this so that we can know how to better support our favorite instructors. (So thank YOU for telling us so that we can do better!) I will say that while I really enjoy and appreciate what I learn there, I do find the search function poor, and have always found my best classes via social media - RUclips and IG mainly. For now, I am going to keep up with it, as I pay for it by the year, but if a lot of teachers start bailing, then I will move to another platform.
Their search function is alright I guess. It's just that there are too many courses of similar topics so it doesn't make sense to teach yet another course on the same topic. For students, they can just go with courses that have good reviews. I teach a few courses that don't have much competition, but those courses also don't have much students because the subjects aren't as popular.
Teoh, I’ve watched and learned a lot from your classes on Skillshare. I started taking sketchbooking seriously because of your sketchbooking classes, and to date I have found the way you teach sketching in another class the best, and I have watched sooo many tutorials on sketching that didn’t help. I am on my fourth subscription year with Skillshare (just renewed) as even though there are many poor quality classes, I have also found many great quality teachers like you. Just have to find a way around their lousy search algorithm. I am disappointed that teachers are being fleeced like that by Skillshare. I think early last year I had already heard (through Facebook groups) teachers talk about leaving Skillshare to start their own online websites or other platforms. Sounds like this is worse than before. I am one of those people who fall asleep with a tutorial running then go back and re watch the next day. So my way of helping teachers like you I guess will be to keep doing this for my favourite teachers so they get more $ 😂. And to leave great reviews!
Thanks so much for sharing this. I am a person who originally subscribed to Skillshare because I was interested in art and tired of TV. After the original thrill of so many classes with good instructors passed and my email was inundated by Skillshare teachers I followed, I got really tired of it and plan to discontinue after this year. Like Domestika, Skillshare seems totally focused on total beginners, so you are forced to watch the same boring basics for every class. Patreon seems like a good idea, but then you are limited to a few artists and, if you work during the day, you can't do the live part that you are paying the most for. With dollars becoming more precious every experience costs more, and artists deserve to be paid fairly, but it seems like this is leading to only the most well-known artists making anything. Sad. I enjoy your classes wherever they are.
I have been watching the AI Art debate as well as the teaching site changes. And then additionally the social media and Etsy issues. It seems there is becoming a larger and larger gap between the artist and the platform. And with all the AI talk of late it makes me wonder if the companies will be using AI to attempt programs or products which is something I find troubling. It is similar to chatbots replacing people on customer service lines. Helping sometimes but there are nuances that cannot be filled by nonhuman programs. I have stayed away from these coursework companies much for these reasons. I and friends used to sell on Etsy until arbitrary changes and decisions were made that impacted incomes. It isn't farfetched to think every platform or storefront site will be similarly squeezing both artists and consumers and I am not comfortable with these changes.
As a wanna be but never to be artist I've always found your work and your reviews very interesting because I do subscribe to your RUclips channel. As an oldie who lived in Singapore in the 70's I do have an affinity with that part of the world but it seems to me that you're working for skillshare for a few plates of chicken rice per month. This is the new economic model. Pitting multitudes of people against each other while the only one that makes any money is the platform. Of course there will always be a few that are allowed/promoted to succeed but they will be few and far between
Patreon's "90% of the money pledged goes to the artist" is going to go way down in the near future too, it's what they all do. Again, *Cory Doctorow's "enshittification of online platforms"* explains their process. It's a must-read.
Patreon tried in 2017. They introduced a new fee and many creators were unhappy. Patreon had to backtrack. The reason why Patreon had to backtrack was because these creators could bring all their fans to another platform easily (e.g. Gumroad), and that would reduce the revenue and users significantly.
@@teohyc I hear you, but... when has an online platform 'backtracked' **for good**? It's just not in their life-cycle. They'll be seemingly nice at first, until they reach critical mass and a position of power, and then will start exerting it. Or someone bigger will buy them out, and then **they'll** exert it, a la Facebook-buys-Instagram-style. We've seen this show way too many times before to not know how it all ends. (And honestly, them keeping 10% is still too much for my taste 😤)
Hi Teoh! Thank you very much for sharing the teacher’s perspective about Skillshare. I never thought about your point of view and I am grateful that you bought this to our attention. Best of luck for you!
In other words: free labor to Skillshare where they reap all the benefits and you make diddly-over-squat (nothing). *They are experimenting with "payment models" to pay you less, while reaping all the economic benefits* Don't play this game.
This is totally unrelated to Teoh's content here, but am I the only one who feels like his videos are so calming?😅😂I do love his content, it's great!! But he's so relaxing and calming to listen to!!😌✝️Thanks Teoh!! After a long day, God helps me to unwind through you!!☺️😌👍✝️
I never liked Skillshare as a student. It is very disorganized as a site. I followed you and one other teacher…or at least I tried to…but I really struggled to just FIND the courses of the two teachers I wanted to follow. Then there’s the way they charge you for the next year’s subscription with no warning that it’s getting close to renewal time or any warning of how much they are going to charge you. I also found many of the random courses I tried to be of super poor quality, so you could spend loads of time just searching for something you like. I hate this “rental” model that every business is using now. You can’t buy anything anymore, only rent it, and it’s a monthly payment that keeps going forever unless you actively cancel out. End rant. I’ve supported another artist through Patreon in the past, but again, it was a recurring payment model. Maybe Patreon has a one-time gift option that’s not too complicated to use…
Thank you for explaining the changes. I’ve often wondered how the Skillshare model works, and I keep getting invites to teach, although I am not an artist by any stretch. It’s terribly disappointing, although I knew that number of minutes watched counted towards income, the engagement thing is exhausting, both for the student and overwhelming for the teacher. It’s bad enough that we need to do it in YT to make the algorithm happy. I liked the model because for one payment I could see many different teachers, but I cant bear that they are crushing the creators ( with maybe the exception of a chosen few).
I’ve thought of this too. Just start up the course and walk away. But you can’t speed up slow-talking teachers or sections you are already familiar with because that will affect the teacher’s pay. Weird model…
Wow!! Thank you so much for sharing this with us!! Truly it is an eye opener for sure. I am deeply disappointed and even a little disgusted with how the Skill Share has made themselves a priority instead of acknowledging the skills the artists bring to the table. Truly without the artists they have nothing! I have been sitting on the fence about renewing my subscription with them and this video helped me make my decision. It will be a definite no. Instead I will be doing just as you said support the artist through Patron! Thank you again for so willingly sharing your expertise and talent! I always learn something new from you. ☺
Just yesterday I watched a video from Julia Bausenhard who also explained the situation. I am not on skillshare but have bought courses from independent teachers and also from Domestika who, I believe, are based in Spain and who film and produce their courses at their studios. As a student you make a one-time payment and have unlimited if not life-long access to that particular course. That is something I feel much more comfortable with not least because I have limited time to do in-depth courses. Also, I noticed what Julia says: skillshare is promoting heavily accross the board with RUclipsrs. I am not sure if they are all on skillshare as teachers, I just find it somewhat annoying unless the particular RUclipsr introduces some new teachers with each promotion. So far I have only seen Holly Exley do this in some of her older videos as it must be very time consuming.
Skillshare pays for those sponsored ads. Skillshare used to pay just $10 for each student that signs up so no RUclipsr is motivated mention Skillshare without getting paid. I don't like having sponsored ads in my videos which is why I don't have them. One-time purchase courses may be better. Domestika courses are good, and pricing is very reasonable. The Skillshare yearly subscription can make you feel overwhelmed because it's like going to a buffet and you'll try to eat all you can to make sure your money is well spent.
@@teohyc That's my problem with subscription-based model like Skillshare and the likes. I'm always stuck in the mindset "let's try to watch many courses as possible so I don't waste my money". Now I try to nail down a few teachers whose teaching resonates with me and learn from them exclusively. It's not less expensive, but I feel like I get more value that way.
@@barefacedquestions @Teoh Yi Chie Don't we do courses to learn something? When we are under duress the learning effect is definitely impaired. I also take courses to de-stress, to get inspired and to explore. All this cannot be done in a stressful climate. I like to take my time, not least because of a stressful day-job. 😉
@@teohyc Hi Teoh! 👋🏼 Sorry, but I must disagree with your point on Domestika’s pricing. Domestika is expensive. I could only afford them during discounts. I appreciate and respect the effort they put into each course and I really like their studio setup and I enjoy the way the teachers deliver the content. And I appreciate and respect that teachers also have to be paid. But that does not change the reality for many of us: they are expensive.
i think those platforms are oversaturated with offer of different quality of courses. they used teachers to promote and grow the platform and now the start earning. they dont need more teachers or courses, they need to earn more per teacher. this is the way to do it. promote your own work and sell it on your own website.
Friend; I'm going to give you an overview of what happens in Brazil with people who watch your channel. - Internet in Brazil is expensive. Most common posts, with videos, are not even watched for these reasons. The second point is that here in Brazil, they charge 3 to 6 times the value of the same artistic material, sold on the international market. These absurdities are the obstacles faced in Brazil. For there, you can consider, as for other countries, and their import fees, added to the cost of the internet. Another factor is that most people use cell phones. Therefore, they don't stay long in a video, because of battery life, among other factors, unrelated to your content. I wish you Success and Good Luck!
Well, I uploaded a course about upcycling packaging waste into a night light 6 months ago and received 5 euros once and nothing else. I think the payment only came about because I took part in the Teacher Challenge and that's probably how the views came about. None of my viewers wrote a comment or posted photos of their work. I thought this was a nice topic to do with children but apparently I didn't market it enough or it's not that popular. You never know beforehand which theme will be well received. I thought it would be good for Skillshare because I wouldn't have known how much to charge for a course like this because it's more about having a simple project without spending a lot of money.
This is good to know. My skillshare subscription is coming up for renewal and I’m on the fence about continuing it. I want to support the artists, not a greedy business model. It seems that all online platforms are going the way of greed.
Thank you for sharing. I was looking into starting a skillshare class but this poor payout system means I probably won't. I was just curious, so I looked up the skillshare CEO salary. One man is paid 525K annually. Other exec salaries are around 200K. These aren't enormous executive salaries by most big corporate standards, but even so, this means that skillshare is paying a HUGE portion of their income to their executives compared to their teacher fund. Greed, pure and simple.
So sorry to hear this. I saw many of your classes there. Skillshare changing the rules in indicates they are not very clear about their strategy. You could easily move all your courses to something like Teachable or Gumroad where you audience will find you.
Pretty sure they will change/test the payment model a few more times before they settle down. Unfortunately, teachers are the ones affected the most with these tests.
I have just recently heard about Skillshare. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts & knowledge of this with us. I am not really sure how I feel about this. I definitely think the teachers need to be paid for making the courses. Thanks for sharing this informational video with us.
Sorry to hear of the randomness of skillshares payment plans and how it’s affecting you. I’ve found you through RUclips some years ago and I just watch your videos as well as from some other artists when I have a short break to inspire me for those moments in the week when I can actually spend some creative time myself. So I would not consider paying for a artistic course, it’s too recreational for me. I do however support some content creators just for their content, in the hopes that many small contributions will make a substantial one. Might be worth to mention it to you, in case you reference patreon in future YT videos. So you can call on these people in the audience too, to support you on patreon, not just those who would look into more in depth video tutorials. Hope 2023 brings you better financial circumstances Teoh.
I appreciate your thoughts on this so much! I'm looking for a platform to share my videos but now I probably won't do it with Skillshare. Thank you and good luck with your teaching business :)
Sorry to hear Teoh, what a racket! Plus the double whammy of having to pay US govt 30% of earnings. Maybe if you have time/inclination, would be better to host teaching on your own platform, as others have mentioned you certainly have a big following. Take care, all the best
What happens if you want to stop teaching at Skillshare? I assume your courses will stay on there forever, as people might still sign up because of you… Subscription models (especially the ones with lifetime access) are always difficult to price - at the beginning they just need subscribers, so focus on quantity. Then later they have to improve the experience for the subscribers, to navigate the masses of courses, so some sort of quality evaluation is necessary - and they still seem to work out how to do that... I assume you only hear from people who earn less now, I’m pretty sure there are teachers whose income has benefited from the change (or maybe the owners are taking more money out of the company…) Btw, I’m neither Skillshare teacher nor subscriber (nor owner 😜), I’m just interested in the business model, so I found it very interesting what you said in the video 😊
You can only stop teaching when you remove your videos. Otherwise, the videos will still be on Skillshare and you'll still be considered as teaching. I'm pretty sure there are teachers who earn more due to the change. Actually I think there's a smaller group of teachers who earn significantly more. I don't think Skillshare's revenues has dropped that much. So the pie should still be the same size. But since many teachers now have a smaller piece of the pie, it will mean few teachers have much larger piece. Because otherwise, where did the money disappear to? How was the same amount of money distributed?
@@teohyc I agree, there are probably a number of people who get much more money now. The end of the pandemic probably stalled the rise in subscribers, but together with the new payment scheme they might loose a lot of teachers too, neither is in their interest. It looks like they are still calibrating their algorithm, and hopefully they will come up with a better scheme for you teachers soon, as they benefit from the wide range of teachers and courses that they are known for. I do hope that you can find a combination of platforms that, overall, will pay you fairly for your efforts!
@@teohyc The difference is that they don't base their payouts on revenue anymore, so they can control directly what amount goes into their teacher fund, and this is apparently significantly lower than the revenue-based system. So it's not the same amount of money to begin with. All teachers I've spoken with so far (even those from their Top Teacher program) have reported they get much lower payment now - maybe the others are hiding shamefully in the shadows, but somehow I doubt it. Skillshare is redirecting the money inside of the company, but not into the direction of the teachers. If they were interested in making the situation better for the teachers, they could stop changing the payment rules - over the years, those have only gotten worse, I've experienced a few of those changes. These kind of companies are interested in margin for their investors, not in teachers or students per se.
Thank you for making this video so transparent! It's very obvious they are getting greedy and want artists to spend a lot of time on their website. I thought about one day becoming a teacher there but if they continue like this I won't. I bet a lot of artists were happy with the money they were making from skillshare alone and that gave them a boost in their confidence to pursue art as their career but since they are making 50% or higher less then they probably need to keep art as their hobby or just extra income. Such a shame.
Thank you Teoh for the information. I've been thinking about teaching on Skillshare but now I don't think I will. I have a subscription to Skillshare, but now think I should cancel and subscribe to the artists Patreon accounts that I enjoy watching and want to support. It is very disappointing to hear that the teachers are not getting much for all their hard work and that artists yet again are being taken advantage of.
Very disheartening Teoh. I am sorry to hear this. I know how hard you work and the effort you put into everything you do. It seems the artist/artisan is really experiencing the online squeeze. I hope that these online course providers come to a great awakening and rethink this business model. Without great creators such as yourself they are shutting down their own market. It sounds like the artist must now become the creator, the marketer and the sales force. Just not good. I truly hope this can be turned around. All the best to you.
This was really informative, thank you. I'd love to hear an update in a few months about how that latest email update has affected you, if you'd be happy to share.
Hey ,thank you so much for your content! I heve a question. I have redmi 9 phone and thinking of getting an active stylus , but im afraid that the drawing experience wont be as smooth as using a drawing tablet ,so what do you suggest?
I don't think Redmi phone supports active stylus. So only those disc or rubber tip stylus will work. There are digital stylus from Adonit that will work but line performance is not good.
Very enlightening! Not a very smart move on Skillshare. Common sense dictates you take care of your employees (or teachers) who work for you. To do otherwise is to lose the quality of teachers and discourage the students. The minute an organization starts cutting back on its service, it's only a matter of time before their downhill slide. My subscription is about to run out at Skillshare and this made my decision whether to continue an easy one.
About how long does it take to make a course for Skillshare? Also, how much time per month is spent on engagement? It seems like it could be difficult to make a reasonable amount of money for the time it took to make the class without also posting the class on another site such as Patreon.
It took at least 3 weeks for me to make a class from planning, filming, editing and voice over....and last week they closed 2 of my classes in which 1 of the class is a popular class 🥹
it cant have been worth it to begin with unless you had a builtin audience like teoh did. writing down instructions is hard. writing them in a way someone that doesnt know it can understand, harder. putting it all together in a video series with diagrams and cut in footage and whatever else... sell it on dvd at that point lol
I usually take 2 weeks, or 10 days to make a course. The 10 days could also be spread out over a month or two depending on how busy I am. My courses are split into smaller lessons. And these smaller lessons are created for my patrons. After all the lessons are available to my patrons, I consolidate them into a course for release on Skillshare. As mentioned in the video, it is incredibly difficult now to earn due to the intensive competition and reduced earnings. So unless you already have a huge following on social media, it's going to be difficult to get the students (and watch time) needed to earn at just $0.004/minute.
Very interesting video, thank you for the transparency : you're perfectly right, people go to Skillshare to follow teachers, so if they quit, their audience will quit for sure. I will consider quitting too if my favorite teachers decide to use other platforms.
A friend and I had talked about joining Skillshare during the earlier part of the pandemic. Now that her job has changed, there was even more impetus to try it out in our spare time. However, having seen your video, and Julia Bausenhardt’s on the topic, I do not want to go to a platform that doesn’t pay its teachers properly. Thank you for sharing this information. As a sidenote, I did a little research about US-Singapore tax treaties and US non-resident tax filings, to see if I could find a way for you to reduce the 30%. I couldn’t. :(
I've been a teacher on Skillshare but have decided not to put anything else up there. Just not working for me and too many hoops to jump through, and their policies are not consistent.
It's interesting to see where Domestika is headed. They started off with selling courses individually. Will they head down the subscription model too? lol
@@teohyc The offer both now, an optional subscription with some benefits or just single courses. I hope the won't go full subscription, even if their prices are more reasonable than skillshare. I wonder how the model works with all those sales they keep having...
Wow, 30% tax is brutal! 😢 So is that drop on your graph; it’s so frustrating when income drops like this after all of the hard work that creators put in. I hope things improve again for you. Oh the harsh reality of trying to earn money online! 😭
I have watched courses on other platforms, but not on Skillshare, as i think the subscribtion is too expensive. I rather pay for the courses that really interest me than pay monthly. I have used Udemy a little, but Domestika has become my go to for art courses. I think the courses are mostly well made and are quite affordable. Only downside for me is that many courses are in spanish, and watching courses with the subtitles isn't always easy (especially if the translations are sometimes off) Do you have experience with Domestika? Do you know how their payment model works out for those who make courses?
It's not easy to watch art courses with subtitles because you have to watch two things at a time: the process and the subtitles. I usually avoid non-English courses. Domestika pays an advance fee, royalties and referral commissions. You can read more here www.sketchlikeanarchitect.com/blog/behind-the-scenes-the-making-of-an-online-course-with-domestika
This is totally unrelated to Teoh's content here, but am I the only one who feels like his videos are so calming?😅😂I do love his content, it's great!! But he's so relaxing and calming to listen to!!😌✝️
As a user of skill share, I usually just quickly look for the information and then leave to use it in real world projects I'm not going to make a whole new project to upload. This just sounds like a money grab as they know for a fact That many people will not be able to qualify for a payment. Also sounds like they're trying real hard to build engagement in order for investors to look at the site and perhaps buy it.. Again as a user I'm so over social media trying desperately to take all of my attention
@@teohyc I opened my Etsy shop in 2013. Back then it was a marketplace dedicated to handmade and vintage items. Back than I wat paying 50 cents per listing and around 5% from every sale. At a certain point they started introducing all kind of fees (sales fee, processing fee, VAT, tax on VAT so just before the pandemic I payed 30% from a sale). However, the things that made me leave were abusive things like taxing the shipping fees as well, then they started showing in search only those listings who offered free shipping on orders over $30. The drop that filled my glass was when they enrolled you in 3rd party advertisment without your consent and took that payment out of any sale you made 30 days after someone had clicked on that advertisment. Before this, they made you adopt their payment system and would not let you go back to PayPal. They started showing alternative listings from other sellers on your shop page, plus they let the marketplace be invaded by all kinds of things made in China. So yes, they became greedy.
@@teohyc they increased their cut from each sale from 5% to 6.5%. So for each sale, on average you are losing around 15% to fees. Honestly nowhere near as bad as what they've done on Skillshare. But still means I am much more cautious of holding sales now because I am already charging very low to keep with the market prices and people undercutting.... (I make art, pet portraits, stickers and greeting cards)
This is exactly why I stopped putting effort into Skillshare. My revenue was cut in half in a single month and continued to drop. It feels extremely demoralising and to be honest disrespectful to the work we do as teachers.
I watched reviews of xiaomi pad 5 and people say the line come out wobbly and poor line taper , do you think if i use line stabilizer on clip studio paint will solve this issue ? Or would it be too laggy
Just one more addition to objectionable issue with Skillshare: I tried updating my payment method with them and they don't have a system for letting me change from my current payment method (PayPal) to a bank card. How can that be. I am sharing this more so that anyone signing up chooses which payment method they use as they won't be able to change it. For me this is a deal breaker, it breaks trust. NOW hearing that teachers receive less revenue for their courses breaks my loyalty to Skillshare even more. Won't this mean that all the very popular teachers will simply take their courses to private hosting platforms to maximise their profits instead? I assume that Skillshare was subsidised with Startup funding and that they had favourable rates to improve user growth. Many companies change their terms once they hit their user number target. - So much to say about this. Sorry for spamming you with my verbal avalanches here.
Are you currently using PayPal payment? Skillshare should have phased that out or phasing it out. The payment should go yo Tipalti and from there you can connect to your bank. Check your email for the Tipalti sign up link, or contact Skillshare.
I am not impressed with their office. I had a question regarding a price of a course (or the subscription, not sure as it was few years ago) because it seemed unclear. I can't remember the details now but there seemed to be a bit of a glitch on the site. Anyway I found them quite unhelpful and unwilling to put any effort in.
Skillshare prefers to hide the price of the subscription instead to show it upfront. You can only find out the real price after signing up for a trial. For the general public to find the price, it will have to be from word of mouth.
Same here… Does anyone have any experience with deleting courses from there? I sent them an Email last week asking them to delete a few of my courses, but so far, no reply.
Patreon is better for creators and their supporters. For creators, you'll building something that's not going to disappear overnight. It gives you the flexibility for your own projects, projects your patrons like, or just rest when needed. For supporters/patrons, 90% of the money pledged goes directly to creators. Patrons don't have to pledge much individually, but collectively the support adds up to something significant.
Hi Teoh, I've followed you on RUclips for years now. Very sad to hear about this. Seems that Skillshare has failed to plan for its own growth and is flailing about changing things on the fly, without proper diligence. Very typical of Internet platforms! Avoid if at all possible! Also, 30% US tax is prohibitive in my opinion. You have a big RUclips presence and an established Paytreon base. I think you need to rethink your marketing. Could you and a group of teachers pool resources and pay a software designer to produce an app for individual teachers. Each teacher would manage their own system. You might incur extra bandwidth fees from your Web service provider but that would be very small in the scheme of things. You could advertise your courses on the content you already put out on platforms on which you already have an established presence (don't underestimate this). The old adage "if you want something done properly, do it youself" is very relevant here. Remember, pupils rarely find you on Skillshare. They find you elsewhere and have to use Skillshare to access your courses. Best of luck, Jerry
I have found some teachers/aritsts I like on Skillshare that I would otherwise never came across because they didn't have that big of a social media presence at that time. For teachers that I like, I try to buy courses from their platforms if possible. So I suppose there's a slight benefit in doing Skillshare if you consider it as a marketing platform.
The advantage of Skillshare is there are existing students so it's easier to reach out to them. I also have the same courses on Gumroad but I'll have to market those courses myself since Gumroad is more of a tool than a social platform. It is the marketing that requires lots of time and CONSISTENT effort. Once the marketing stops, the momentum goes down significantly. Patreon is the best since it's something you can build onto bit by bit, just like adding videos to RUclips channels and getting subscribers. You can take a break of a week or two and that won't affect anything.
I'm pretty sure you can find free content for whatever you need. It's just how much time you want to spend, and whether it's easier to learn from structured content where learning in sequence actually works better. E.g. Should you learn drawing first or painting first? And if you don't know what you don't know, you can't search for that on RUclips.
I hate Skillshare and will never use it nor buy any course at Skillshare: Skillshare is an abo model and it forces me to be a member. Therefor I prefer Teachable course, where I can buy only those courses I'm really interested in - and that's it, no abo, no membership.
😢 That is so sad that you are earning less money then it costs you to create the course in the first place! There are a lot of other platforms out there that offer similar course, such as Domestika. Do they all work the same way?
This is disgusting. I am not a SS teacher but have been a subscriber of yours for years, now. Many creators I watch elsewhere indeed offer SS classes. No one should be asked to work for a pittance. I'm so sorry to hear this, Teoh. You have worked long and hard using and sharing your artistic endeavors. Prayerfully, SS will shortly find their patronage very disappointed with the treatment of their educators and arrive at a better more equitable decision.
Oh, Teoh, I so wish that this wouldn't have happened to you and other fine teachers. There seems to be a pattern here. A site flush with venture capital lures in creatives and followers with glowing promises and good terms. Once the VC runs out, the exploitation begins and those who have done the work to build the site get cheated and pounded into the ground while the followers go elsewhere. It's so wrong and it's not at all what you deserve!
i agree 100%, social media platforms lately earn all the money while giving nothing but the place for creator publish their work. Until all of us leave these platfofms, to make them realize they exist due to creators, nothing will change.
I’m an old teacher and just have a couple classes. Been making around $250 a month now I’ve been making only $20 I’m beyond disappointed in Skillshare and I’m so tired of being taken advantage of. I actually wrote to them expressing my disappointment. They said they are not planning on changing their method so I guess we either suck it up or quit. I also experimented a huge drop in minutes watched after the new implement which was kind of odd. How they calculate how to pay us is so unclear. Everything seems so briefly talked about not giving us specific details. I’m sorry your earnings dropped so much and that you’re disappointed as well. Thank you for speaking up and sharing how you feel with us. I love your videos. ❤
Same figures as me, around 200 - 300 a month for years now between 20 and 40 - not worth the toruble and they have closed most of my courses!
Even with the minutes watched, it depends on the type of membership (free or prepaid, etc).
Teoh, I am so sorry that Skillshare is treating its teachers so poorly. This is a terrible business model for teachers, and Skillshare is shooting itself in the foot by taking away the profits from art teachers, who already don't make too much money as it is! I have never joined Skillshare due to its subscription model where you lose access to all courses if you stop paying a monthly charge. Thank you for telling us how it works for artists and art teachers, and I hope you get the full recognition you deserve through Patreon and other places. Also, if you ever decide to teach courses and make them available through a one-time buy model, definitely let us know! wishing you the best as always!!!!
Many of my courses are available on Gumroad too parkablogs.gumroad.com/?_ga=2.37428000.1231304152.1628402947-298183439.1624359880
Sheesh, a teacher of your level making 300 dollars a month is criminal. I’ve watched so many of your videos over the years, and am always impressed. I can’t do patreon no matter how much I like a channel. I’m on a fixed income and there are so many channels I appreciate, it would use up all I have each month! But I do appreciate them and would love to see teachers like yourself compensated. I’ve used skillshare before, I think I joined with you but I don’t remember. I remember it being difficult to find what I wanted.
Same here, but I do try to do my bit by telling all my friends, liking and subscribing and occasionally clicking on an ad. Not sure how much this helps, but hopefully something is better than nothing!
Nothing lasts forever for creators online. I had books on Amazon that did great for 5-8 years, then died. I had a YT account (oh, this one) that had 55 million views (I've since removed some popular videos) and was making good money for about 8 yrs. It died too. Websites made have done well, then died as I didn't keep maintaining them. These platforms prefer the new stuff coming in. The old stuff doesn't make the money anymore. You need to constantly innovate, create, maintain, adjust, etc to keep it all going. You're doing fine in other areas, make sure you keep something going! Best of luck, love your stuff. You do city watercolors like my uncle - an artist in the states. Love to see it. Cheers man
Thank goodness for Patreon being more fare to artists, creatives, and makers.
Yeah, I've always been underwhelmed with Skillshare. Not the teachers or the courses they put out but the way Skillshare runs it's business. I don't like having to pay for an empty subscription and what I mean by that is that unless I keep paying each year or each month, I lose all access to the courses I like. I much prefer Domestika, Creature Art Teacher and such which are based on buying and owning individual courses.
I have heard from other teachers on Skillshare that they throttled Teacher earnings and I think it's disgusting. It basically comes down to Skillshare making 40,50% more profit while pushing teachers to work even harder.
I'm sorry this happened to you, and many others. Hopefully it doesn't create problems for you and your family.
same, Domestika is excellent and the courses have very high production quality and are more detailed. I'd much rather spend my money there.
I absolutely agree with you. I would rather pay for a course and have lifetime access, and would also prefer to buy directly from the teacher, and have the teacher benefit from the amount I pay!
Teoh, thank you for speaking about this.
The reason why they can simply pay teachers less now is because they have stopped basing the teacher payments upon their revenue. They're now basing payments on a fixed teacher fund (which was announced to become higher over time, but it has now been lowered), and this is presumably much lower than the revenue-based pool was before - otherwise we wouldn't have our payment cut in half. The pro for them is they can directly control the money that goes out of the fund to the teachers, which they couldn't do as easily with the revenue-based model. The other money goes directly into the investors pockets - this is their business model.
I would be cautious with the thought that Skillshare will change their payment model in any way in the future so it benefits the majority of teachers - whenever there were changes in the past, it always came with less payment and more hoops to jump through. They obfuscate the payment rules to a point where not even their staff can explain what the changes result in. I think teachers, even new ones, will be much better off building their own platform, since this is something that can't be changed or taken away as easily.
I’m a skillshare student. I was really nervous at first bcuz it’s a large upfront fee for the whole year, but I’m SO HAPPY!!! I’ve created more in the past 2mo’s than I ever have since my art journey began 18 mo’s ago. I’m so excited with my sketches and my confidence has grown immensely. I’m painting and drawing things I wouldn’t have thought possible. What’s important for me as a new student and fairly new to art is that a teacher doesn’t spend the bulk of their time listing supplies and then warp speed through the drawing and painting. Reference photos help a great deal, but if not then walk the student through the drawing process in at least a few classes. Or list them from beginner to intermediate to advanced. I post my work bcuz I want feedback (and serious feedback not kindness bcuz that doesn’t help). I absolutely leave reviews bcuz some teachers have helped me so much. My favorite teacher is a self taught Italian artist who only has 900 followers and I had never heard of her before. I’m just dipping my toes into perspective, but now I know to look for you.
So in other words ...
SKILLSHARE is becoming RUclips.
People might as well put their courses on RUclips.
Wow, crazy. I watched a video from Arleebean on this recently. Hate it for Artists !!
Interesting, I follow you for so long and never knew you were on Skillshare! I do know about the courses you have on your own platform. I think you should advertise them in your videos here and just leave skillshare. At least you make your own rules.
One of the biggest problems was how they communicated about the all changes...they were not transparent about just how drastic the cut would be. Luckily I don't rely on Skillshare and have multiple income streams, but it has left me very unmotivated to invest time in the platform. I am looking forward to the possibilities RUclips is working on for paid courses! This might be a nice option for your classes too!
So glad I saw this. I am on skillshare and just clicked on your classes and followed you.
Thank you for sharing your experience with being a Skillshare teacher, Teoh! I just started a bit over a year ago, was starting to get my hopes up as my earnings were increasing, and then the new payment model happened. It's really discouraging.
And I also found now that they are accepting anything and everything there is just a lot of poor content on Skillshare. And it makes it near impossible to get through all those creators to find a decent creator like yourself!
Teachable is another platform that costs a tone of money to run as creators have to pay a hefty subscription fee but the platform is incredibly annoying to use on the creator side I find.
We need a new platform that is well designed and supports artists and creators without ripping them off!! 😁🧡
Hi Alyona! Thanks for sharing your thoughts about Teachable :)
You are right. And now they're encouraging it even more as the better teachers are getting fed up and either leaving or not creating more content. They're actually inviting all students to become teachers and are starting a program to coach everyone through the process. The compensation is a year of free skillshare *eye roll*. While I'm sure there will be some great first time teachers out there, most of it is likely to be poor content. As a student, I'm very disappointed in skillshare's handling of the whole situation. This is not the proper solution to the problem they caused to begin with.
Wow, I had no idea how Skillshare worked and appreciate the information. I tried Skillshare in the past but didn't see much return because my life got so much busier and I didn't have time to take the courses.
If anything has convinced me to put my work-in-progress coloured pencil courses on my own website it would be this. This change is just insulting to the teachers. Tired of companies scalping the people actually providing them with the content. This move was made purely to line their shareholders' pockets.
I had a job that said “you are going to be working another extra hour in the day, yey.! Because we care so much about your work-life balance, and working an extra hour will fulfill you and your work goals and improve everyone’s morale!” This was before the term gaslighting was so well known… there was a resounding NOPE from the employees and it never got implemented…
Skillshare courses are all for beginners. There are no instructors who seem to go past beginner level. I think they stick to that level because it’s safe. Beginners won’t know if you’re wrong about something.
This is so very frustrating to me as a student of Skillshare for over 3 years now. Frustrating because I really wish Skillshare made us (the students) aware of this so that we can know how to better support our favorite instructors. (So thank YOU for telling us so that we can do better!) I will say that while I really enjoy and appreciate what I learn there, I do find the search function poor, and have always found my best classes via social media - RUclips and IG mainly. For now, I am going to keep up with it, as I pay for it by the year, but if a lot of teachers start bailing, then I will move to another platform.
Their search function is alright I guess. It's just that there are too many courses of similar topics so it doesn't make sense to teach yet another course on the same topic. For students, they can just go with courses that have good reviews.
I teach a few courses that don't have much competition, but those courses also don't have much students because the subjects aren't as popular.
Teoh, I’ve watched and learned a lot from your classes on Skillshare. I started taking sketchbooking seriously because of your sketchbooking classes, and to date I have found the way you teach sketching in another class the best, and I have watched sooo many tutorials on sketching that didn’t help. I am on my fourth subscription year with Skillshare (just renewed) as even though there are many poor quality classes, I have also found many great quality teachers like you. Just have to find a way around their lousy search algorithm. I am disappointed that teachers are being fleeced like that by Skillshare. I think early last year I had already heard (through Facebook groups) teachers talk about leaving Skillshare to start their own online websites or other platforms. Sounds like this is worse than before. I am one of those people who fall asleep with a tutorial running then go back and re watch the next day. So my way of helping teachers like you I guess will be to keep doing this for my favourite teachers so they get more $ 😂. And to leave great reviews!
Thanks so much for sharing this. I am a person who originally subscribed to Skillshare because I was interested in art and tired of TV. After the original thrill of so many classes with good instructors passed and my email was inundated by Skillshare teachers I followed, I got really tired of it and plan to discontinue after this year. Like Domestika, Skillshare seems totally focused on total beginners, so you are forced to watch the same boring basics for every class. Patreon seems like a good idea, but then you are limited to a few artists and, if you work during the day, you can't do the live part that you are paying the most for. With dollars becoming more precious every experience costs more, and artists deserve to be paid fairly, but it seems like this is leading to only the most well-known artists making anything. Sad. I enjoy your classes wherever they are.
I have been watching the AI Art debate as well as the teaching site changes. And then additionally the social media and Etsy issues. It seems there is becoming a larger and larger gap between the artist and the platform. And with all the AI talk of late it makes me wonder if the companies will be using AI to attempt programs or products which is something I find troubling. It is similar to chatbots replacing people on customer service lines. Helping sometimes but there are nuances that cannot be filled by nonhuman programs. I have stayed away from these coursework companies much for these reasons. I and friends used to sell on Etsy until arbitrary changes and decisions were made that impacted incomes. It isn't farfetched to think every platform or storefront site will be similarly squeezing both artists and consumers and I am not comfortable with these changes.
As a wanna be but never to be artist I've always found your work and your reviews very interesting because I do subscribe to your RUclips channel. As an oldie who lived in Singapore in the 70's I do have an affinity with that part of the world but it seems to me that you're working for skillshare for a few plates of chicken rice per month. This is the new economic model. Pitting multitudes of people against each other while the only one that makes any money is the platform. Of course there will always be a few that are allowed/promoted to succeed but they will be few and far between
Patreon's "90% of the money pledged goes to the artist" is going to go way down in the near future too, it's what they all do.
Again, *Cory Doctorow's "enshittification of online platforms"* explains their process. It's a must-read.
Patreon tried in 2017. They introduced a new fee and many creators were unhappy. Patreon had to backtrack.
The reason why Patreon had to backtrack was because these creators could bring all their fans to another platform easily (e.g. Gumroad), and that would reduce the revenue and users significantly.
@@teohyc I hear you, but... when has an online platform 'backtracked' **for good**?
It's just not in their life-cycle. They'll be seemingly nice at first, until they reach critical mass and a position of power, and then will start exerting it.
Or someone bigger will buy them out, and then **they'll** exert it, a la Facebook-buys-Instagram-style.
We've seen this show way too many times before to not know how it all ends.
(And honestly, them keeping 10% is still too much for my taste 😤)
Interesting article, thanks
@@sketchbookblue6033 You're welcome!
Hi Teoh! Thank you very much for sharing the teacher’s perspective about Skillshare. I never thought about your point of view and I am grateful that you bought this to our attention. Best of luck for you!
In other words: free labor to Skillshare where they reap all the benefits and you make diddly-over-squat (nothing).
*They are experimenting with "payment models" to pay you less, while reaping all the economic benefits* Don't play this game.
This is totally unrelated to Teoh's content here, but am I the only one who feels like his videos are so calming?😅😂I do love his content, it's great!! But he's so relaxing and calming to listen to!!😌✝️Thanks Teoh!! After a long day, God helps me to unwind through you!!☺️😌👍✝️
YOU ARE AWESOME. 😇GOD BLESS.
Thank you so much for sharing! It completely sucks with this system. I will make sure to binge watch all your super cool courses!
You are always very honest! Thank you.
This was really eye opening! I'm going to start "engaging" with RUclipsrs that accept sponsorships from skill share
This is good to know. I was considering starting lessons on Skillshare, but after this, I’m changing my mind now. 😢
Thank you for being so open and sharing your experience of Skillshare 🙂
I never liked Skillshare as a student. It is very disorganized as a site. I followed you and one other teacher…or at least I tried to…but I really struggled to just FIND the courses of the two teachers I wanted to follow. Then there’s the way they charge you for the next year’s subscription with no warning that it’s getting close to renewal time or any warning of how much they are going to charge you. I also found many of the random courses I tried to be of super poor quality, so you could spend loads of time just searching for something you like. I hate this “rental” model that every business is using now. You can’t buy anything anymore, only rent it, and it’s a monthly payment that keeps going forever unless you actively cancel out. End rant. I’ve supported another artist through Patreon in the past, but again, it was a recurring payment model. Maybe Patreon has a one-time gift option that’s not too complicated to use…
Thank you for explaining the changes. I’ve often wondered how the Skillshare model works, and I keep getting invites to teach, although I am not an artist by any stretch. It’s terribly disappointing, although I knew that number of minutes watched counted towards income, the engagement thing is exhausting, both for the student and overwhelming for the teacher. It’s bad enough that we need to do it in YT to make the algorithm happy. I liked the model because for one payment I could see many different teachers, but I cant bear that they are crushing the creators ( with maybe the exception of a chosen few).
I will not be buying another Skillshare subscription. Ever.
So I can help out my favorite teachers just by playing their courses over and over.😅
I’ve thought of this too. Just start up the course and walk away. But you can’t speed up slow-talking teachers or sections you are already familiar with because that will affect the teacher’s pay. Weird model…
Wow!! Thank you so much for sharing this with us!! Truly it is an eye opener for sure. I am deeply disappointed and even a little disgusted with how the Skill Share has made themselves a priority instead of acknowledging the skills the artists bring to the table. Truly without the artists they have nothing! I have been sitting on the fence about renewing my subscription with them and this video helped me make my decision. It will be a definite no. Instead I will be doing just as you said support the artist through Patron! Thank you again for so willingly sharing your expertise and talent! I always learn something new from you. ☺
This is very informative. Thank you for sharing your thoughts
I’m actually shocked but not really, really appreciate the info✌️😊
that really sucks :( i hope companies soon let go of this subscription based bussiness
Just yesterday I watched a video from Julia Bausenhard who also explained the situation.
I am not on skillshare but have bought courses from independent teachers and also from Domestika who, I believe, are based in Spain and who film and produce their courses at their studios. As a student you make a one-time payment and have unlimited if not life-long access to that particular course. That is something I feel much more comfortable with not least because I have limited time to do in-depth courses.
Also, I noticed what Julia says: skillshare is promoting heavily accross the board with RUclipsrs. I am not sure if they are all on skillshare as teachers, I just find it somewhat annoying unless the particular RUclipsr introduces some new teachers with each promotion. So far I have only seen Holly Exley do this in some of her older videos as it must be very time consuming.
Skillshare pays for those sponsored ads. Skillshare used to pay just $10 for each student that signs up so no RUclipsr is motivated mention Skillshare without getting paid.
I don't like having sponsored ads in my videos which is why I don't have them.
One-time purchase courses may be better. Domestika courses are good, and pricing is very reasonable. The Skillshare yearly subscription can make you feel overwhelmed because it's like going to a buffet and you'll try to eat all you can to make sure your money is well spent.
@@teohyc That's my problem with subscription-based model like Skillshare and the likes. I'm always stuck in the mindset "let's try to watch many courses as possible so I don't waste my money". Now I try to nail down a few teachers whose teaching resonates with me and learn from them exclusively. It's not less expensive, but I feel like I get more value that way.
@@teohyc I can imagine the buffet analogy to be 100% of what it would be for me. 😅
@@barefacedquestions @Teoh Yi Chie Don't we do courses to learn something? When we are under duress the learning effect is definitely impaired. I also take courses to de-stress, to get inspired and to explore. All this cannot be done in a stressful climate. I like to take my time, not least because of a stressful day-job. 😉
@@teohyc Hi Teoh! 👋🏼 Sorry, but I must disagree with your point on Domestika’s pricing. Domestika is expensive. I could only afford them during discounts. I appreciate and respect the effort they put into each course and I really like their studio setup and I enjoy the way the teachers deliver the content. And I appreciate and respect that teachers also have to be paid. But that does not change the reality for many of us: they are expensive.
i think those platforms are oversaturated with offer of different quality of courses. they used teachers to promote and grow the platform and now the start earning. they dont need more teachers or courses, they need to earn more per teacher. this is the way to do it. promote your own work and sell it on your own website.
Friend; I'm going to give you an overview of what happens in Brazil with people who watch your channel. - Internet in Brazil is expensive. Most common posts, with videos, are not even watched for these reasons. The second point is that here in Brazil, they charge 3 to 6 times the value of the same artistic material, sold on the international market. These absurdities are the obstacles faced in Brazil. For there, you can consider, as for other countries, and their import fees, added to the cost of the internet. Another factor is that most people use cell phones. Therefore, they don't stay long in a video, because of battery life, among other factors, unrelated to your content. I wish you Success and Good Luck!
Well, I uploaded a course about upcycling packaging waste into a night light 6 months ago and received 5 euros once and nothing else. I think the payment only came about because I took part in the Teacher Challenge and that's probably how the views came about. None of my viewers wrote a comment or posted photos of their work. I thought this was a nice topic to do with children but apparently I didn't market it enough or it's not that popular. You never know beforehand which theme will be well received. I thought it would be good for Skillshare because I wouldn't have known how much to charge for a course like this because it's more about having a simple project without spending a lot of money.
Thank you for this information! I appreciate it!
I literally never had any idea you had classes on Skillshare till now!!! Wish I'd known earlier!
This is good to know. My skillshare subscription is coming up for renewal and I’m on the fence about continuing it. I want to support the artists, not a greedy business model. It seems that all online platforms are going the way of greed.
You can support the artists directly through their Patreon page, and you'll know exactly where your money goes to.
Very informative. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing. I was looking into starting a skillshare class but this poor payout system means I probably won't. I was just curious, so I looked up the skillshare CEO salary. One man is paid 525K annually. Other exec salaries are around 200K. These aren't enormous executive salaries by most big corporate standards, but even so, this means that skillshare is paying a HUGE portion of their income to their executives compared to their teacher fund. Greed, pure and simple.
So sorry to hear this. I saw many of your classes there. Skillshare changing the rules in indicates they are not very clear about their strategy. You could easily move all your courses to something like Teachable or Gumroad where you audience will find you.
Pretty sure they will change/test the payment model a few more times before they settle down. Unfortunately, teachers are the ones affected the most with these tests.
I have just recently heard about Skillshare. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts & knowledge of this with us. I am not really sure how I feel about this. I definitely think the teachers need to be paid for making the courses. Thanks for sharing this informational video with us.
Thanks Teoh. These websites are getting to be like Gallery owners.
Sorry to hear of the randomness of skillshares payment plans and how it’s affecting you. I’ve found you through RUclips some years ago and I just watch your videos as well as from some other artists when I have a short break to inspire me for those moments in the week when I can actually spend some creative time myself. So I would not consider paying for a artistic course, it’s too recreational for me. I do however support some content creators just for their content, in the hopes that many small contributions will make a substantial one. Might be worth to mention it to you, in case you reference patreon in future YT videos. So you can call on these people in the audience too, to support you on patreon, not just those who would look into more in depth video tutorials. Hope 2023 brings you better financial circumstances Teoh.
I appreciate your thoughts on this so much! I'm looking for a platform to share my videos but now I probably won't do it with Skillshare. Thank you and good luck with your teaching business :)
Sorry to hear Teoh, what a racket! Plus the double whammy of having to pay US govt 30% of earnings. Maybe if you have time/inclination, would be better to host teaching on your own platform, as others have mentioned you certainly have a big following. Take care, all the best
It's really sad that you and other artists/teachers are being treated that way. I'm sorry to hear that.
What happens if you want to stop teaching at Skillshare? I assume your courses will stay on there forever, as people might still sign up because of you… Subscription models (especially the ones with lifetime access) are always difficult to price - at the beginning they just need subscribers, so focus on quantity. Then later they have to improve the experience for the subscribers, to navigate the masses of courses, so some sort of quality evaluation is necessary - and they still seem to work out how to do that... I assume you only hear from people who earn less now, I’m pretty sure there are teachers whose income has benefited from the change (or maybe the owners are taking more money out of the company…) Btw, I’m neither Skillshare teacher nor subscriber (nor owner 😜), I’m just interested in the business model, so I found it very interesting what you said in the video 😊
You can only stop teaching when you remove your videos. Otherwise, the videos will still be on Skillshare and you'll still be considered as teaching.
I'm pretty sure there are teachers who earn more due to the change. Actually I think there's a smaller group of teachers who earn significantly more.
I don't think Skillshare's revenues has dropped that much. So the pie should still be the same size. But since many teachers now have a smaller piece of the pie, it will mean few teachers have much larger piece. Because otherwise, where did the money disappear to? How was the same amount of money distributed?
@@teohyc I agree, there are probably a number of people who get much more money now. The end of the pandemic probably stalled the rise in subscribers, but together with the new payment scheme they might loose a lot of teachers too, neither is in their interest. It looks like they are still calibrating their algorithm, and hopefully they will come up with a better scheme for you teachers soon, as they benefit from the wide range of teachers and courses that they are known for. I do hope that you can find a combination of platforms that, overall, will pay you fairly for your efforts!
@@teohyc The difference is that they don't base their payouts on revenue anymore, so they can control directly what amount goes into their teacher fund, and this is apparently significantly lower than the revenue-based system. So it's not the same amount of money to begin with. All teachers I've spoken with so far (even those from their Top Teacher program) have reported they get much lower payment now - maybe the others are hiding shamefully in the shadows, but somehow I doubt it. Skillshare is redirecting the money inside of the company, but not into the direction of the teachers. If they were interested in making the situation better for the teachers, they could stop changing the payment rules - over the years, those have only gotten worse, I've experienced a few of those changes. These kind of companies are interested in margin for their investors, not in teachers or students per se.
Thank you for making this video so transparent! It's very obvious they are getting greedy and want artists to spend a lot of time on their website. I thought about one day becoming a teacher there but if they continue like this I won't. I bet a lot of artists were happy with the money they were making from skillshare alone and that gave them a boost in their confidence to pursue art as their career but since they are making 50% or higher less then they probably need to keep art as their hobby or just extra income. Such a shame.
Thank you Teoh for the information. I've been thinking about teaching on Skillshare but now I don't think I will. I have a subscription to Skillshare, but now think I should cancel and subscribe to the artists Patreon accounts that I enjoy watching and want to support. It is very disappointing to hear that the teachers are not getting much for all their hard work and that artists yet again are being taken advantage of.
Very disheartening Teoh. I am sorry to hear this. I know how hard you work and the effort you put into everything you do. It seems the artist/artisan is really experiencing the online squeeze. I hope that these online course providers come to a great awakening and rethink this business model. Without great creators such as yourself they are shutting down their own market. It sounds like the artist must now become the creator, the marketer and the sales force. Just not good. I truly hope this can be turned around. All the best to you.
This was really informative, thank you. I'd love to hear an update in a few months about how that latest email update has affected you, if you'd be happy to share.
Hey ,thank you so much for your content! I heve a question. I have redmi 9 phone and thinking of getting an active stylus , but im afraid that the drawing experience wont be as smooth as using a drawing tablet ,so what do you suggest?
I don't think Redmi phone supports active stylus. So only those disc or rubber tip stylus will work. There are digital stylus from Adonit that will work but line performance is not good.
Very enlightening! Not a very smart move on Skillshare. Common sense dictates you take care of your employees (or teachers) who work for you. To do otherwise is to lose the quality of teachers and discourage the students. The minute an organization starts cutting back on its service, it's only a matter of time before their downhill slide. My subscription is about to run out at Skillshare and this made my decision whether to continue an easy one.
I suggest artists make their own platform, no intermediaries. Why not a shared platform of which each artist would be an actionary
About how long does it take to make a course for Skillshare? Also, how much time per month is spent on engagement? It seems like it could be difficult to make a reasonable amount of money for the time it took to make the class without also posting the class on another site such as Patreon.
It took at least 3 weeks for me to make a class from planning, filming, editing and voice over....and last week they closed 2 of my classes in which 1 of the class is a popular class 🥹
it cant have been worth it to begin with unless you had a builtin audience like teoh did. writing down instructions is hard. writing them in a way someone that doesnt know it can understand, harder. putting it all together in a video series with diagrams and cut in footage and whatever else... sell it on dvd at that point lol
I usually take 2 weeks, or 10 days to make a course. The 10 days could also be spread out over a month or two depending on how busy I am.
My courses are split into smaller lessons. And these smaller lessons are created for my patrons. After all the lessons are available to my patrons, I consolidate them into a course for release on Skillshare.
As mentioned in the video, it is incredibly difficult now to earn due to the intensive competition and reduced earnings. So unless you already have a huge following on social media, it's going to be difficult to get the students (and watch time) needed to earn at just $0.004/minute.
@@Kaioin They didn't say, they just sent me an email informing me that these classes will be closed by 31 January.
Very interesting video, thank you for the transparency : you're perfectly right, people go to Skillshare to follow teachers, so if they quit, their audience will quit for sure. I will consider quitting too if my favorite teachers decide to use other platforms.
A friend and I had talked about joining Skillshare during the earlier part of the pandemic. Now that her job has changed, there was even more impetus to try it out in our spare time. However, having seen your video, and Julia Bausenhardt’s on the topic, I do not want to go to a platform that doesn’t pay its teachers properly. Thank you for sharing this information. As a sidenote, I did a little research about US-Singapore tax treaties and US non-resident tax filings, to see if I could find a way for you to reduce the 30%. I couldn’t. :(
The 30% tax reduction only applies to countries with tax treaty with USA
I've been a teacher on Skillshare but have decided not to put anything else up there. Just not working for me and too many hoops to jump through, and their policies are not consistent.
I think Skillshare passed its prime.
3-4 years ago I saw lots of people talking about it.
Domestika on the other hand has been growing a lot.
It's interesting to see where Domestika is headed. They started off with selling courses individually. Will they head down the subscription model too? lol
@@teohyc The offer both now, an optional subscription with some benefits or just single courses. I hope the won't go full subscription, even if their prices are more reasonable than skillshare. I wonder how the model works with all those sales they keep having...
Wow, 30% tax is brutal! 😢 So is that drop on your graph; it’s so frustrating when income drops like this after all of the hard work that creators put in. I hope things improve again for you. Oh the harsh reality of trying to earn money online! 😭
Hmm, was considering Skillshare but looks like they are getting greedy so nope. Thx for the heads up.
good info ... can you talk about patreon how to... thanks
I have watched courses on other platforms, but not on Skillshare, as i think the subscribtion is too expensive. I rather pay for the courses that really interest me than pay monthly. I have used Udemy a little, but Domestika has become my go to for art courses. I think the courses are mostly well made and are quite affordable. Only downside for me is that many courses are in spanish, and watching courses with the subtitles isn't always easy (especially if the translations are sometimes off)
Do you have experience with Domestika? Do you know how their payment model works out for those who make courses?
It's not easy to watch art courses with subtitles because you have to watch two things at a time: the process and the subtitles. I usually avoid non-English courses.
Domestika pays an advance fee, royalties and referral commissions. You can read more here www.sketchlikeanarchitect.com/blog/behind-the-scenes-the-making-of-an-online-course-with-domestika
So disappointing to hear this information. However, thank you for sharing this. Hopefully, alternative platforms will provide fair remuneration.
I’d much rather be a patreon or take classes. Not liking that the teachers don’t get paid as they should!
This is totally unrelated to Teoh's content here, but am I the only one who feels like his videos are so calming?😅😂I do love his content, it's great!! But he's so relaxing and calming to listen to!!😌✝️
As a user of skill share, I usually just quickly look for the information and then leave to use it in real world projects I'm not going to make a whole new project to upload. This just sounds like a money grab as they know for a fact That many people will not be able to qualify for a payment. Also sounds like they're trying real hard to build engagement in order for investors to look at the site and perhaps buy it.. Again as a user I'm so over social media trying desperately to take all of my attention
I had considered joining Skillshare recently, but after seeing this I have decide against it!
Just support the artists directly. There are some who sell courses separately too.
Sounds like a real money maker for them, and a loser situation for the teacher.
Sounds like Skilshare is getting greedy.
Same thing happened ti Etsy so I left.
What happened on/to Etsy?
@@teohyc I opened my Etsy shop in 2013. Back then it was a marketplace dedicated to handmade and vintage items. Back than I wat paying 50 cents per listing and around 5% from every sale. At a certain point they started introducing all kind of fees (sales fee, processing fee, VAT, tax on VAT so just before the pandemic I payed 30% from a sale). However, the things that made me leave were abusive things like taxing the shipping fees as well, then they started showing in search only those listings who offered free shipping on orders over $30. The drop that filled my glass was when they enrolled you in 3rd party advertisment without your consent and took that payment out of any sale you made 30 days after someone had clicked on that advertisment. Before this, they made you adopt their payment system and would not let you go back to PayPal. They started showing alternative listings from other sellers on your shop page, plus they let the marketplace be invaded by all kinds of things made in China.
So yes, they became greedy.
@@teohyc they increased their cut from each sale from 5% to 6.5%. So for each sale, on average you are losing around 15% to fees. Honestly nowhere near as bad as what they've done on Skillshare. But still means I am much more cautious of holding sales now because I am already charging very low to keep with the market prices and people undercutting.... (I make art, pet portraits, stickers and greeting cards)
This is exactly why I stopped putting effort into Skillshare. My revenue was cut in half in a single month and continued to drop. It feels extremely demoralising and to be honest disrespectful to the work we do as teachers.
It doesn't sound very fair to teachers.
I watched reviews of xiaomi pad 5 and people say the line come out wobbly and poor line taper , do you think if i use line stabilizer on clip studio paint will solve this issue ? Or would it be too laggy
Xiaomi Pad 5 works fine for drawing for me www.parkablogs.com/content/artist-review-xiaomi-pad-5-2021
Just one more addition to objectionable issue with Skillshare: I tried updating my payment method with them and they don't have a system for letting me change from my current payment method (PayPal) to a bank card. How can that be. I am sharing this more so that anyone signing up chooses which payment method they use as they won't be able to change it. For me this is a deal breaker, it breaks trust. NOW hearing that teachers receive less revenue for their courses breaks my loyalty to Skillshare even more. Won't this mean that all the very popular teachers will simply take their courses to private hosting platforms to maximise their profits instead? I assume that Skillshare was subsidised with Startup funding and that they had favourable rates to improve user growth. Many companies change their terms once they hit their user number target. - So much to say about this. Sorry for spamming you with my verbal avalanches here.
Are you currently using PayPal payment?
Skillshare should have phased that out or phasing it out. The payment should go yo Tipalti and from there you can connect to your bank.
Check your email for the Tipalti sign up link, or contact Skillshare.
I am not impressed with their office. I had a question regarding a price of a course (or the subscription, not sure as it was few years ago) because it seemed unclear. I can't remember the details now but there seemed to be a bit of a glitch on the site. Anyway I found them quite unhelpful and unwilling to put any effort in.
Skillshare prefers to hide the price of the subscription instead to show it upfront. You can only find out the real price after signing up for a trial.
For the general public to find the price, it will have to be from word of mouth.
@@teohyc That is a shady business model i.m.o. I really appreciate your videos here and manner of explaining what and how you are sketching. 🙂
Same here… Does anyone have any experience with deleting courses from there? I sent them an Email last week asking them to delete a few of my courses, but so far, no reply.
You may have to contact them again because only they can delete the courses
thank you so much for this video , Teoh.. This was really amazing to learn, and I appreciate this very much ..
Norakag
How about patreon model?
Patreon is better for creators and their supporters. For creators, you'll building something that's not going to disappear overnight. It gives you the flexibility for your own projects, projects your patrons like, or just rest when needed. For supporters/patrons, 90% of the money pledged goes directly to creators. Patrons don't have to pledge much individually, but collectively the support adds up to something significant.
All the skillshare teachers need to leave to make a statement. Until things change for their benefit otherwise what's the point of staying on!!!! 🤨
Hi Teoh, I've followed you on RUclips for years now. Very sad to hear about this. Seems that Skillshare has failed to plan for its own growth and is flailing about changing things on the fly, without proper diligence. Very typical of Internet platforms! Avoid if at all possible!
Also, 30% US tax is prohibitive in my opinion. You have a big RUclips presence and an established Paytreon base. I think you need to rethink your marketing. Could you and a group of teachers pool resources and pay a software designer to produce an app for individual teachers. Each teacher would manage their own system. You might incur extra bandwidth fees from your Web service provider but that would be very small in the scheme of things. You could advertise your courses on the content you already put out on platforms on which you already have an established presence (don't underestimate this).
The old adage "if you want something done properly, do it youself" is very relevant here. Remember, pupils rarely find you on Skillshare. They find you elsewhere and have to use Skillshare to access your courses.
Best of luck, Jerry
I have found some teachers/aritsts I like on Skillshare that I would otherwise never came across because they didn't have that big of a social media presence at that time. For teachers that I like, I try to buy courses from their platforms if possible. So I suppose there's a slight benefit in doing Skillshare if you consider it as a marketing platform.
The advantage of Skillshare is there are existing students so it's easier to reach out to them.
I also have the same courses on Gumroad but I'll have to market those courses myself since Gumroad is more of a tool than a social platform. It is the marketing that requires lots of time and CONSISTENT effort. Once the marketing stops, the momentum goes down significantly.
Patreon is the best since it's something you can build onto bit by bit, just like adding videos to RUclips channels and getting subscribers. You can take a break of a week or two and that won't affect anything.
"earns more from referrals than selling content" sounds like MLM to me...
Why not just put on RUclips? Like do a live, then its saved and making money forever.....
i personally would never ever pay anyone for anything like this. f that. there is free content everywhere now
I'm pretty sure you can find free content for whatever you need. It's just how much time you want to spend, and whether it's easier to learn from structured content where learning in sequence actually works better. E.g. Should you learn drawing first or painting first?
And if you don't know what you don't know, you can't search for that on RUclips.
Probably people have different leaning styles, so there's no one piece of advice that would apply to everyone.
I hate Skillshare and will never use it nor buy any course at Skillshare: Skillshare is an abo model and it forces me to be a member. Therefor I prefer Teachable course, where I can buy only those courses I'm really interested in - and that's it, no abo, no membership.
😢 That is so sad that you are earning less money then it costs you to create the course in the first place!
There are a lot of other platforms out there that offer similar course, such as Domestika. Do they all work the same way?
Teachers on Domestika are by invite only
This is disgusting. I am not a SS teacher but have been a subscriber of yours for years, now.
Many creators I watch elsewhere indeed offer SS classes. No one should be asked to work for a pittance.
I'm so sorry to hear this, Teoh. You have worked long and hard using and sharing your artistic endeavors.
Prayerfully, SS will shortly find their patronage very disappointed with the treatment of their educators and arrive at a better more equitable decision.
Oh, Teoh, I so wish that this wouldn't have happened to you and other fine teachers. There seems to be a pattern here. A site flush with venture capital lures in creatives and followers with glowing promises and good terms. Once the VC runs out, the exploitation begins and those who have done the work to build the site get cheated and pounded into the ground while the followers go elsewhere. It's so wrong and it's not at all what you deserve!