Software programming? Yeah it’s an okay way to make a living. But the real money is in teaching.
Or at least that’s the recent experience of Scott Allen, a programmer and teacher the tech-y online education platform Pluralsight.com. Allen has earned more than $1.8 million through fees and royalties from Pluralsight over the last five years. He says each monthly royalty check has increased in size over that period — the smallest increase being 10 percent month-over-month. That far outdid his expectations when he started making educational videos for Pluralsight. “It’s amazing,” he says.
I got pitched this story this morning with the subject line “Online ed’s first millionaire teacher.” I was drawn to it, because I could imagine the same story being pitched about blogging or online journalism several years ago. There are a lot of parallels between what those two industries are going through, and how each are grappling with the Web’s potential for disruption.