As travel bloggers, it’s important that we stay on top of new skills and keep our creativity fresh. But honestly, making time for learning is easier said than done. In-person classes are almost impossible for us given our schedule and online classes can run as much as $500 each.
Skillshare is a an online learning platform that offers over 16,000 online classes in business, entrepreneurship, technology, design, photography, film, writing, and so much more. They have classes on everything from learning a new language to designing your own video game, all for a low monthly membership fee. They’re pretty much like Spotify or Netflix for learning.
Skillshare recently invited us to try out their site, and we discovered a bunch of classes that would be great for aspiring travel bloggers.
In this article I’m going to show you how to get started with Skillshare and highlight a few of the best courses that newbie travel bloggers could use to grow their businesses. There’s also some opportunity for people to earn money from Skillshare by… you guessed it… sharing their own skills.
I’ll briefly touch on the possibility for you to earn money for travel through Skillshare at the end of this article.
Getting Started With Skillshare
Normally if you just went to the Skillshare website and joined the community, you’d have to pay $8.25 per month right off the bat. But right now Goats On The Road readers have special access to 2 free months of the service! Click Here to claim your free access now.
There are no commitments, and if you decide it’s not for you, you can cancel anytime. So in order to get started, click the link above to join Skillshare and get your free 2 months, then sign into your new account.
After signing in, you’ll be brought to a page that asks you what topics you’re interested in. Because you’re looking to learn about travel blogging, the most relevant topics are under “Creative”, so click on the “Creative” box and you’ll see a lot of new topics. Now choose Freelance, Photography & Writing as I’ve done in the screenshot below:
Then click Continue.
Now you’ll be brought to a screen that lists a bunch of the courses available under the topics you chose. There are some great courses in here to choose from! Because travel bloggers could always learn a lot about photography, writing and freelance, I clicked 3 courses and saved them to view later.
After you chose whatever courses interest you, click continue. Now you’ll be brought to another screen where Skillshare is just trying to get you to market them for free. Clever marketing I must say.
If you want to save some money on a premium membership, enter in some of your friend’s emails who might be interested in Skillshare or share it on your social media.
Otherwise hit continue. Now you’ll be brought to a new page that shows all of the courses you chose in the previous steps. It’s that simple guys.
On this page you’ll also see a lot of recommended courses for you based on the interests that you added in the first step. This is great for finding highly rated courses that you may not have seen previously.
There are over 16,000 courses available on Skillshare and from what I’ve seen, they’re well-reviewed and include a solid amount of video content.
Best Skillshare Courses for Bloggers
I’ve done a fair bit of browsing through the courses on Skillshare and I’ve found a lot of great courses for travel bloggers and online entrepreneurs in general. I was really surprised to see Rand Fishkin of MOZ on the platform as he has been one of the biggest names in SEO and blogging for the past decade.
Here’s a list of the best courses that you can find on Skillshare to help you become a better blogger:
- Going Freelance: Building and Branding Your Own Success
- Mobile Photography: Creating Consistent Look and Feel
- Fundamentals of DSLR Photography
- Make the Most of Instagram: Build Your Brand
- A Primer in Monetizing Your Creative Passion
Of course there are many more courses in Skillshare that are relevant to blogging, but the cool thing is that once you’ve put in your interests, you’ll get a bunch of other recommended courses and there is some real gold in here!
One of the best things about Skillshare is that it doesn’t pigeonhole you into one topic. You can learn anything you want, whenever you want, for however long you want.
Maybe you have never considered building an app, but when it appears as a course included with your Skillshare subscription, you may just choose to check it out. Who knows, you could discover a new skill that earns you a lot of money down the road.
Earning Money Through Skillshare
As this blog is about finding as many ways as possible to earn money online and on the road to keep your travels going, I’d like to briefly touch on the potential to earn an income through Skillshare.
If you have a skill that you know, you can sign up as a teacher and create your own content to be shown to the Skillshare community. The top teachers in the marketplace are earning as much as $40,000 per year, so there’s definitely some potential there.
You’ll have the opportunity to earn money through Skillshare’s royalty pool. Plus, if you decide to teach, you’ll be compensated for new Premium Members you bring to Skillshare through your Teacher Referral link.
- Earn Premium Referrals: Get $10 for every student you bring to Skillshare that signs up for a Premium Membership.
- Earn Royalties: Earn royalties based on the number of minutes watched in your classes every month.
Summary
Skillshare is the perfect place to find a wide variety of courses and video content to help you learn new skills. I found the interface easy to navigate and very easy to figure out. Within minutes I had signed up and saved my first few courses to go back and view later.
It’s really simple and easy to use and at just $8.25 a month billed annually, it’s a pretty great deal. There are courses online that are (justifiably) $500 or more, so to get this many courses for just $8.25 per month seems like a no-brainer.
I would say that I’d like to see more multimedia content added to the courses, like worksheets, blog posts, flash cards, calendars, planners and infographics. So far, the courses I’ve signed up for are pretty much all video.
For beginner travel bloggers, or even advanced travel bloggers looking to learn a new skill or improve on ones they know, I think this is an excellent tool, especially for the price. Click Here to try Skillshare out free for two months and let us know what classes you plan to take in the comments.
Disclaimer: This post is brought to you by Skillshare who we are happy to be working with to promote this great learning platform. I wasn’t told that I must write positively or in a certain way. This post is strictly my own opinion of using Skillshare as a learning platform.
Signing up! Thanks for the 2 free months 🙂
Thanks for all the details about Skillshare. I think blogging has become big business but even
when done as a hobby it is a good idea to stay on top of it and know how to make the most of it.
The platform looks really easy to use and I shall be giving it a try to see how it can help.