My Content Creation Blueprint for Coding Tutorials & Courses

In March 2018, I started what has now become a promising content creation business. 2.5 years later, I'm approaching $50,000 in lifetime earnings and $4,000 MRR.

I've created and shared content on YouTube and Udemy, as well as on my website and other social media platforms.

This article is a breakdown of all the platforms and channels I've used (and I'm planning to use) to continue growing my audience and business.

I'm currently juggling a lot of activities. Writing this has helped me get a high-level overview of my business, and a clear direction going forward. I hope that other content creators can benefit from this.

Udemy paid courses: > 95% of earnings

Ongoing: Publish high-quality, comprehensive courses about Dart, Flutter & Firebase (and keep them updated) - this takes the highest chunk of my time.
Ongoing: students Q/A - 15 to 30 min/day.
Ongoing: regularly cross promote courses with promotional announcements.
Planned: add free courses to acquire new students.
Planned: livestreams for enrolled students (value add).

Teachable paid courses: additional income

Host same courses with same pricing as on Udemy (1 course done, others TODO).
Ongoing: offer student discounts.
Planned: webinars to drive more of Teachable's audience to my school.
Planned: offer subscriptions once I have 5+ courses.

Other paid course platforms

Ongoing: evaluate other platforms (LinkedIn Learning, EggHead, etc.).
Long-term: build my own platform. This will be an extension of CodeWithAndrea.com, and will keep my audience where I want it to be.

YouTube

Ongoing: regularly post high-quality Flutter tutorials to increase my audience (really hard to do this consistently).
Planned: All video descriptions should have links to my website and courses.
Ongoing: occasional promotional videos when I launch new courses.
Planned: free crash-courses.
Ongoing: earn small revenue via YouTube ads.
Ongoing: I started experimenting with livestreams on separate YouTube and Twitch channels.

CodeWithAndrea.com

Ongoing: post articles, tips & YouTube video transcripts.
All posts should be SEO optimized.
Done: include cards showing my courses at the end of each page.
Planned: include newsletter sign up inside all pages (middle or end).
Planned: other website improvements.

Mailing List

This includes all the people that signed up from my website or Teachable school.
Ongoing: send out monthly updates + course promos.

GitHub

Planned: more open-source reference Flutter apps following best practices.
Ongoing: open-source demos for my tutorials.
Done: official repos for all my courses.

Twitter

Ongoing: share links to all my new content.
Ongoing: share other relevant content about Flutter.
Ongoing: engage with community.

Slack

Ongoing: discussion + Q/A for my followers.

Ongoing: share links to all my new content.
Ongoing: engage with community.

Email

Ongoing: Answer questions and other queries.

Live Talks / Presentations

Guest talks at conferences (I rarely ever have/make time for this).

Behind the Scenes

Ongoing: keep learning and skill up (coding).
Planned: keep learning and skill up (video production).
Ongoing: admin.

Wrap-up

All of the above amounts to a TON of work. Creating courses and video tutorials alone takes a lot of time. With my schedule (30h/week), I can (and probably should) only focus on one or two things at a time.

As a result, I can only meet my growth targets on one platform at a time, while others grow slower or remain flat. Every year, I try to allocate time in proportion to the (perceived) value of each platform.

I'll post a full retrospective of my content creation business at the end of the year, just like I have done last year.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any tips / questions, or want to share some feedback, feel free to reach out on Twitter or email me.