How to Make $1000 Teaching Coding Without Knowing Coding 😘

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

So, a colleague finds out that I’ve written some blogs and made a few YouTube videos for fun. They decide to do the same, after seeing the number of subscribers and thinking of the 💸💸.

It only took a minute to tell them the actual amount of money made (ProTip: for that account, I earn nothing at all, and YouTube for programming content has low CPM rates) which led to them dumping the idea and looking for another side-project to generate a passive income. They didn’t seem to understand that it made sense for me to produce content without remuneration (I earn enough in my main job) and that there might be other benefits for doing so.

“The attitude of programmers chasing money through any means necessary is damaging the whole industry. When it spreads to those providing content for the next generation, the sickness grows”.

A growing number of these content creators have a second (third?) income: getting new people on board the course creation treadmill. Selling top tips on how to build a Twitter user base being a favorite. It really does appear to be “anything for the money” (although at least it’s not OnlyFans).

Taken to the extreme

Ahh, Programming Twitter. Amongst the Tweets about crypto (still?), blockchain (you would, wouldn’t you?), and AI there are plenty of aspiring technical writers out there. Some even have the word aspiring in their Twitter bio.

Many of these seem to be creating a continuation of the “learn to code in 24 hours” culture of the last century, and the code camp “no need to study, just have fun” of this.

Phase 1: Hello world

Phase 2: ???

Phase 3: Profit

Where Phase 2 seems like a method wholly designed to promote yourself and your course. It doesn’t matter that your course isn’t yet finished, whack the video on YouTube and go make bank.

Beginner courses

Stanford and MIT publish a great number of courses online, and they are invariably brilliant. They are also free.

However, the programmer backlash against universities seems to mean that many don’t look there for great content (even though there are great Stanford and Harvard courses available for free, sans certification). They hook only Twitter and YouTube lurkers, and I guess the quality of the candidates for these courses mirrors the quality of the courses themselves.

I’ve mentioned that many of these content providers can be sub-junior themselves elsewhere, but there is something else going on here. There is a growing culture of mediocrity in programming content which has grown out of a mistrust of the education system.

Why might this be a problem?

When we think of educators in a formal system, they have qualifications for that. Like your university lecturer has some knowledge about teaching and learning (more than writing the same in their Twitter bio, specifically). That YouTube account? Likely have no clue about how people learn or how best to communicate. This stuff matters when you’re tempted to change careers or begin studying something and believe you’re gaining access to quality content in terms of either the content or the delivery.

I’m saying imagine a Venn diagram with programming talent and educational talent. Your YouTube or Twitter teacher isn’t in either circle, and they should be right in the middle of the intersection.

Like and Subscribe?

This isn’t to say the graphics on your favorite YouTuber aren’t of good quality. It isn’t to say that they aren’t attractive either to you or other subscribers. It is to say that many are advertising themselves as something they aren’t. Competent programmers, and teachers. We deserve better.

The programming course expert

I love good customer service. So, the one time I thought of buying a course for a new technology I looked around. It was a niche in a niche, so seemed only a single person had created a course in that area. They’d made videos and published them on GumRoad, which I guess is fine.

However, it was clear that the videos were 18 months old, and the last couple were not yet uploaded.

“I’ll write to them and find out when they’re going to finish this course. They’ll probably get right back to me.”

No response on Twitter. Or Email.

This course is several hundred dollars.

I think they’ve had time to respond (it’s been several months now), and I see them around on Twitter and trying to get gigs at low-quality conferences to speak about their work. Makes me think twice about going to conferences now I think about it.

I should have written to them and told them to write a script before putting the camera on too, on review of their preview content. That would be rude though, wouldn’t it?

I just don’t think it is as rude as asking money for something which just isn’t of good enough quality. Or finished. Or scripted. Or written by a competent coder.

Or are my standards just too high?

Conclusion

None of this is to say that all programming videos or courses are bad. There are of course gems in the rough, and there are some YouTubers I simply love. I really do think that as a programming community, we need to think about what is important, what we are paying for, and what we want before handing over our cash. I’m willing to bet that University courses are still of value to many developers, and that is something I’ll tackle another time.

Now, if you’re reading this stay with me just a little longer. If you’re going to develop a course on any topic consider doing the following:

• know something about the content

• know something about developing courses

• finish the product

• have passion for what you do, not just the rewards for success

The best courses are created by people who have actually done these. For the rest: Is this really too much to ask for?