How To Become A Successful Edupreneur (Ultimate Guide) . 2024

You may already teach classes online but perhaps you are beginning to develop a larger vision as an educator. With the growing trend of online education (438% increase in past 5 years) and a clear shift to eLearning classrooms, it has brought on the rise of the edupreneur, a new type of entrepreneur with potential of earning 5-figures per month.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

eLearning is the future of learning and edupreneur are the people who will transform the education industry.

Edupreneur is an education entrepreneur who build and scale their business in the education sector, providing training and courses using learning platforms.
Becoming an edupreneur includes finding your niche and develop a business plan where you can grow with the help of marketing strategies and technology.

Successful edupreneurs are people on a career path of providing education to the masses. The steps to become a successful edupreneur will involve:

Understanding more about edupreneurship.
Establishing your passion.
Developing a sound business model.

Before getting into the steps to become an edupreneur, you should know exactly what it is, what the prospects are and what you can potentially expect.

This way, you can determine if this is something that’s going to be right for you and your career goals.

What Is An “Edupreneur”?

An edupreneur is someone who starting a business in the education sector. Edupreneur are educators who take up edupreneurship, setting up business models and systems that enables them to scale their education business and provide world-class education to the public worldwide.

Edupreneur is an entrepreneur who push the boundaries of education and business. These educators take risks that most teachers are unable to engage in.

In order for an edupreneurs to become successful, they need to understand the student’s learning goals and use technology to help offer online education and training for the public.

Today, eLearning platforms like LearnWorlds, Thinkific, and Podia are some of the best online course platforms that is needed to get started as an edupreneur.

How Is Edupreneur Different From A Traditional Educator and Entrepreneur?

Edupreneurs start their business by taking their skill sets and advertise them to individual students as well as colleges, universities, primary schools and other such organizations. These business are education focus while aims to become profitable through different ways of monetization strategies.

Entrepreneur on the other hand are business focus, they are interested in financial aspect of the business regardless of which industry it falls into.

While traditional educators are expert in their field focusing solely in the aspect of education. They often conduct their courses or classes in physical classes, while edupreneurs today create and sell their courses mainly online.

Here is a quick comparison table comparing the difference between an edupreneur, entrepreneur and a traditional educator.

Aspect	Edupreneur	Entrepreneur	Traditional Educator
Role and Purpose	Education + Entrepreneurship	Purely Entrepreneurial	Purely Educational
Business Orientation	Education-centered	Profit-centered	Education-centered
Innovation and Creativity	Innovative teaching methods	Innovative business solutions	Innovative teaching methods
Curriculum Design	Market-driven curriculum	N/A	Standardized curriculum
Autonomy	Decision-making flexibility	Full autonomy	Institutional constraints
Risk and Uncertainty	Assumes financial and operational risk	Assumes financial and operational risk	N/A
Business Management	Education-focused business with management skills	General business with management skills	Pedagogical focus
Networking	Education industry connections	Broad industry connections	Professional networks
Scalability	Scaling education initiatives	Scaling business ventures	N/A
Goal Setting	Financial success + Impact	Financial success	Educational outcomes

Difference Between Edupreneur vs. Entrepreneur vs. Traditional Educator

With the growth of online education, edupreneurship have become a very profitable business while helping to transform the education industry.

Who Are The Edupreneurs?

Edupreneurs are education entrepreneurs who build a business in the education industry. These people are the expert in the field who like to educate students by sharing their knowledge to a wide audience. The different types of edupreneurs includes people such as:

Coaches and consultants (Life, business, health, strategic development, career, etc.)
Online course creators and instructors
Influencers such as YouTubers, bloggers, TikTokers etc.

Social media content creators
Podcasters
Public speakers and strategists

Authors and many others…

Edupreneur is like a combination of both Entrepreneur and Educator, taking the best of both worlds of entrepreneurship and education, an edupreneur is special.

As an edupreneur, you don’t only need to be interesting in providing quality education, but you’ll need to be equipped with a very different set of skills that allow you to build a business within the education sector.

While edupreneurs do not need to be good at teaching, they need to be good in the business side of things in order to become a successful edupreneur.

The skills required to sell your knowledge online includes the ability to design, develop and creating digital products, services and programs engineered to educate people on a specific topic or subject.

In a nutshell, edupreneurs are educators who takes up entrepreneurship in the field of education.

They combined education and business, these people are the educators with an entrepreneurial mindset and in the business of selling skills and knowledge to students who want to learn.

How To Become An Edupreneur

Whatever your edupreneurial goals, you must understand this is not going to be a overnight venture. It’s going to take time, patience and a willingness to change. It means developing a keen sense of business acumen while staying focused with your goals.

The following is a loose outline of how to go about getting started as an edupreneur.

You can change or adjust the steps as you need to accommodate your goals and vision.
You can add in steps as you think it may help you reach your edupreneur goals.
You may not remove steps as listed as these are the foundation on how you can become a successful edupreneur.

Having said that, to become a successful edupreneur, you’ll need time and patience. Chances are, this isn’t going to be easy but if you’re up to the challenge, consider the following steps below.

1. Determine Your Niche And Your Passion

While you may already teach classes online, determining your niche and passion is particularly poignant. You must love what you do so much that there’s nothing left but to expand on it. So, you want to sit down and flesh out all your ideas.

This means determining who the target audience is going to be and acquiring other instructors you who teach related subjects you don’t. Think about age and gender demographics along with students’ location and their lifestyles. Do you want to attract children, young mothers or retirees, for example?

Also, understand you can’t be everything to everyone. So, for instance, if you teach herbalism, you may only have skill at foraging wild plants, like mushrooms. Other instructors may have additional knowledge such as gardening, medicinal preparations, making skincare products and etc.

2. Develop an Overarching Business Plan

Once you have determined a niche based on your passion, you must create a solid business plan. But, you want this to be all-encompassing and overarching. So, start by jotting down one or two sentences that sum up your purpose, passion and goals. It should be concise and simple to the point.

Then, find competitors, related and unrelated to your industry. See how successful they are and do a bit of background market research on them. Look at student reviews, instructor feedback, the platform(s) they use and etc. Get a solid grasp on what they do, how they execute their business model and how you can go above and beyond.

Your business plan should include your goals for the next five years, the kinds of students you hope to attract, the type of education you wish to offer and the instructors you want to join your team. Make this into a slideshow or other form of online presentation to attract these target people.

3. Sharpen Business Skills

As you begin implementing your eLearning strategies, begin sharpening your business skills. This means you could take an online class on business and go to the library. Research and learn all you can about what it means to be a good businessperson in your specific line of work.

This will include methods of marketing, acquiring funds and networking with others. You also want to consider revenue generation, contract negotiations and other aspects of your edupreneurial business that require a refined sense of knowhow.

Finding a Mentor

You can also find someone you respect in your industry or another professional from a different field going on the track you wish you take. See if these people will let you shadow them for a day or if they can offer you some sort of mentorship.

Also, study famous businesspeople and entrepreneurs, dead and alive. Look at their track records, follow their history and find out where they started. These stories aren’t just inspiring, they’re very informative and provide an education on what to or not to do.

4. Stay Abreast of Technological Advancements

Since we live in an intense technological age, advancements are coming out all the time along with vast developments in the virtual experience. Therefore, staying abreast of these consistent updates will keep your education goals on the edge of the latest fads and trends.

However, this means understanding the implications and consequences of these advancements. Then, compare that to your initial edupreneurship goals. Having a sense of wisdom about these things will only lend credibility to your expertise.

An Example

For instance, Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has wonderful potential to make our lives easier and more efficient with things like writing, calculations, website design and other such matters. But, if AI can teach itself this knowledge, then it’s possible AI will make human writers, mathematicians and webmasters obsolete.

Does this sort of thing support or go against your edupreneurial goals? What are the implications for the future of humanity and the planet? Asking such questions will allow you to draw your focus even further while giving credence to your desired goals.

5. Partnerships And Team Building

A very important part of your edupreneurship will be building partnerships along with a team of instructors. Sometimes this means finding them online through social media outlets and the platform you use to teach others. In other cases, it will be joining up with a educational institution, like a college or university.

Networking in this way will not only attract more students to your classes, but it will also create a viral buzz about the industry online and in real life. This will draw more people to your project while creating a wider community of likeminded people.

So, you may want to teach your courses over several platforms or automate your classes in some way. This will give you wider access to more people in your field or topic along with additional students and other career growth opportunities.

6. Establish Solid Marketing Strategies

Marketing and advertising are going to be your greatest keys to success. This means using traditional and typical methods along with thinking outside the box. Promote your classes, partnerships, joint ventures and big-picture goals with email campaigns, social media posts, public event calendars and discount offers.

However, you also want to attend real-life events, conventions, conferences, meet ups and seminars related to your field and the subject matter you teach. This means keeping business cards, flyers and other promotional materials on hand. These will help illustrate your goals and display your sincerity about them when at these shindigs.

If you want to amass many educational facilities and organizations, develop a media package that you snail mail to these institutions. Sitting down and devising a strategy should go beyond what you listed in your business plan. Putting out free classes once a month or having no-obligation contests/competitions are some examples.

7. Create Content And eLearning Programs

Naturally, content and programs will be the pinnacle of your edupreneurial endeavors. But this spans varying levels of the educational process. Of course, there will be your individual courses you most likely already offer. However, you may create eLearning programs for established universities or develop content as a joint venture with other instructors.

If you don’t have it already, make sure you have a healthy library of content for students to peruse. This can encompass having some videos on a free social media platform like YouTube or Odyssey. It could mean having an index of available classes, itemizing everything you have available through your teaching platform or blog.

Also, develop ideas for eLearning programs and survey their desirability from students and educational organizations alike. Do some background research on your ideas, see what’s already out there and come up with a survey or social media post asking for people’s opinions. Classes and programs should engage and attract.

8. Stay Open, Flexible And Focused

Like any entrepreneurial endeavor, eduprenurship is a risk. Therefore, you’re assuming that risk along with all the ups and downs that come with it. So, understand that climbing the ladder of edupreneurial success will not go viral overnight.

Sure, there’s a chance it could, but be real with yourself and know this is going to take at least a year, if not much longer, to see a return on your investment. Therefore, you must remain positive while staying open, flexible and focused on your goal.

Change And Adjust Accordingly

This means listening to both criticism and praise with equal treatment, adjusting your goals and purpose as the need arises. For instance, if many students from varying classes complain about your material delivery, then you should change the format. Likewise, if people love your goofy mnemonic devices, then don’t change a thing.

Also, field your program, class and project titles with friends and family. Gauge reactions from other people and see what they have to say about them.

Staying Focused

Additionally, no matter what happens, stay the course of your purpose and goals. This is essentially the reason for keeping your statement of purpose in a business plan simple. Whenever you start feeling down or doubtful, repeat this statement to yourself.

If it doesn’t ring true, if you’re unable to achieve it per your initial vision, then it might be time to change. But, don’t back down because people aren’t as attracted to it as you thought or there just isn’t enough buzz around it. Simply reconfigure your marketing and business plan until you devise a formula that works.

What Is The Goals As An Edupreneur

The goal as an edupreneur is to provide a positive value shift of the education system by providing quality education that reach a wide audience to meet the needs of the students and help the students to reach their full potential.

And to meet this goal, an edupreneur need to see education as a business where you can expand your reach through starting your online business and entrepreneurship with the right tools. With the right tools, technology can help you journey to becoming a successful educational entrepreneur.

Starting an online course business using the best online learning platform can help you build the foundation you’ll need to grow your business that is able to sell online courses that can help students meet their learning goals.

Some edupreneur who found success in their niche may want to branch out and try to teach all aspect in that field, providing a complete education experience for the students.

Future Of Edupreneur

Traditionally, education are taught in classes at a school, university or other learning institution. But nowadays, education is transforming, and more people are learning new skills or taking up new courses online.

Since the SARS-COV-2 lockdowns, eLearning has become a huge industry. Many edupreneurs have taken steps to turn challenges into opportunities.

In 2021, online learning was worth $315 billion. By 2025, that’s expected to jump to as much as $325 billion with a huge leap to $465.47 billion by 2028.

Now is the best time to create a career path you want in the education sector, and utilizing the technology available such as all-in-one online course learning platforms is one of the best way to start.

Sell your expertise and using education as a means of entrepreneurship and getting onto the edupreneurship bandwagon now can help you create an online business that can have major implications for you and your future.

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Antony C.

Founder & Financial Writer at Income Buddies | Website | Posts by Author

Antony C. is a dividend investor with over 15+ years of investing experience. He’s also the book author of “Start Small, Dream Big“, certified PMP® holder and founder of IncomeBuddies.com (IB). At IB, he share his personal journey and expertise on growing passive income through dividend investing and building online business. Antony has been featured in global news outlet including Yahoo Finance, Nasdaq and Non Fiction Author Association (NFAA).

How To Become A Successful Edupreneur (Ultimate Guide)