My first foray into the world of the side hustle is online teaching. I am currently a medical physicist working full time at a cancer center. Last year I got an opportunity to teach physics to students in my field for a college in Washington state. Thing is, I live in Alaska, so the whole thing was done online. The money was not great per hour the first year, but with the initial investment of time already over, I can teach the same course next time without all the startup costs of planning lessons, writing assignments, etc.. In fact I am considering pre-recording my lectures next time I teach, so that I can cut my time even further for subsequent courses. Once that is done I would only need to spend a couple hours per week interacting with students, grading assignments, and improving course materials.
Does it scale?
That remains to be seen, but in my mind I could use the course I developed for one college and sell it to other colleges. I would still have to teach each college course separately, but the more I pre-package the course, the less effort I would have to spend on scaling out my teaching empire. This is still trading time for money, but the economics get to be pretty dang good if I don’t have to do a live lecture for each class. Also this is something I can do from anywhere, so it fits the post pivot lifestyle.
Could it scale more?
I am also currently experimenting with Udemy courses. I’m not sure if a college level course on medical physics would have a large audience among the general public, but it’s a possibility. A Udemy course would have even less time invested per pupil, so it would scale better in theory. I’m doing a 3D design course using OpenSCAD as a trial course on Udemy to test the waters. More on that in another article once I get it up and running.
