Welcome to my Skillshare Review!
Is Skillshare a scam? This question is the lean meat of our post today. In the previous days, we’ve been discussing a lot of massive open online courses (MOOC) for the sake of those students, who are curious if these kinds of programs really work or not.
Given, let’s go through the #1 recommended business opportunity you can do online while you’re up for learning a new skill.
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You’re here for running a business, right?
You want to make a steady passive income this year.
You want to make use of your skills to attract wealth and gain financial independence.
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Now, we’re all set. Let’s dive into the post. Shall we?
Skillshare Review - Quick Summary
Name: Skillshare
Founded: 2011
Founders: Michael Karnjanaprakor and Malcolm Ong
Type: Online Learning Community
Price: Free to $15 per month / per; could go up to $99 depending on the course
Best for: Skillshare, like most MOOCs out there, is best for people who love to learn and will continue to learn new things regardless of the reasons they have in mind. Most of the students turn their attention to this platform for the sake of upgrading their skills to make an income for it or get hired by companies they want.
Summary: Skillshare has a different target niche in comparison to other massive open online courses existing today. In 2010, the 2 creative pals, Michael and Malcolm created a platform for creative people to share their skills with others teaching them the craft they’re good at. Tattooing and designing are one of those courses they feature.
Is Skillshare Recommended? No, I'll tell you the details in a while.
More...
What Is Skillshare?
Established in 2011, Michael Karnjanaprakor and Malcolm Ong both had quite an experience as a product team and a product manager in Facebook and OMGPop respectively, resulting in investing a lot of time to create an online platform for creative people like them.
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In the same year, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital invested in their program worth $10 million in staggered collection within 3 years.
From there, they began collaborating with folks and spoke to different conferences to promote Skillshare to fellow creators like Zach Simms of Codecademy.
In 2013, 2 years after its foundation, there are around 250 creators uploaded their lessons in the platform. To date, there are 27,000 premium classes with 2,000 free classes available this year alone.
How Does Skillshare Work?
Unlike Udacity and Codecademy as well as other MOOCs existing, Skillshare opens the platform for creative individuals who can teach design and related areas. The popular courses they do have are the following:
- Seth Godin (entrepreneurship)
- Jessica Hische (lettering)
- Young Guru (audio mixing and recording)
- Marc Ecko (entrepreneurship and brand creation)
- Gary Vaynerchuk (social media strategy)
- Guy Kawasaki (entrepreneurship)
- Barbara Corcoran (entrepreneurship)
Some of the featured courses on Skillshare
As you see, they didn’t concentrate on the technical side of the business but the creative side of it. For example, entrepreneurship may be entrepreneurship. It’s business, we all know that.
But as a creative individual, you have to create specific and unconventional tactics to market a certain type of program or service to many people. To your target niche.
One of the prolific individuals I know, who is known for this is Gary Vaynerchuk. He used YouTube to promote his winery and used the strength of social media to teach odd means to market a business. No buts, no ifs.
You have to sign up either of the options to see the entire Skillshare courses.
To make this work for you, you have options to enroll for premium classes or free classes. Either of which brings a great opportunity for you and your business.
You simply choose which of the courses are free and are premium and determine if this is apt for your needs.
Once you do, you simply pay (if the course belongs to premium) and enroll. You get into the class and that’s it. No drama.
How to Make Money with Skillshare?
In order to make money with Skillshare, you must have the mindset of a wealthy businessman. You either take advantage of what this platform brings to yourself and your business or you apply for its programs to become one of its affiliates.
If you opt to do the second option, Skillshare provides the chance to apply for an affiliate program through their affiliate page. You simply go there and apply and wait for your application approval.
Skillshare benefits for affiliates, maximizing the potential
Once you do, you’re entitled to receive $10 per referred user in your account. You can do that via social media marketing or your blog per se.
It doesn’t matter if the referred user will get a free or premium course as long as you were the channel directing him to Skillshare and register.
The payout is scheduled every 16th of the month and is redeemable as soon as it reaches the threshold amount.
Skillshare [UGLY] Truths Revealed!
1. Continuous Charge After Membership Cancellation
One of the dissatisfied students named Mary wrote on the forum about Skillshare stealing money from her account.
"After I canceled my premium membership, they still charged me for a few months without my knowledge, illegally using my credit card information," she wrote.
2. Non-Refundable Canceled Memberships
In addition to the rant, Skillshare refuses to refund the students after they decided to leave the program whatever reasons they may have.
"I have contacted [Skillshare] for a refund for an unauthorized charge. Apparently, [Skillshare] charged my bank account even if I have canceled my subscription," a former student named Kate stated.
3. No Typical Classroom Structure
This is intended for those students who wish to be evaluated whether their skills are good enough or passable after learning the lessons on Skillshare.
This isn't possible because the platform itself isn't structured for a typical classroom. That means there are no quizzes or any sets of measurements to consider for evaluating the skills learned.
4. Unclear Course Access
Based on Best Company findings, Skillshare doesn't have direct instructor-lead training, unlike Udemy and EdX platforms.
5. No Certifications
For those students who want to get a certification of completion from Skillshare, this isn't also possible.
The platform doesn't have this option at all, unlike EdX that's issuing a verifiable certificate to show to potential clients for hiring purposes.
6. Free Courses Limit Learning
You are forced to get the premium access to get the most of the course. "Venturing beyond the free classes page can be frustrating since most of the classes require the premium membership to access the entire course," Best Company stated.
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7. Lowest Rating On BBB
This is by far the lowest rating I have seen for a platform aside from NR. Skillshare received an F rating aside from failing to get an accreditation status from the Better Business Bureau. Out of 5 stars, the platform has only 1.
8. Lots Of Complaints Filed Against Them
Within 3 years alone, the BBB recorded 33 complaints from dissatisfied students and only 26 of them were considered resolved in the last 12 months.
According to one complainant, they have experienced an authorized charging from the bank account albeit the membership cancelation they did. Skillshare shares a similar situation as Coursera.
Skillshare got the lowest rating on the BBB records aside from no accreditation status given to them.
What I Like About Skillshare?
1. Best Alternative To Colleges
According to a student named Allison, she considered Skillshare as the best option for entering college. "It makes learning easy and interesting," she wrote.
2. Easy To Follow Courses
Just like Udemy, Skillshare implements easy to learn courses in which a student named Joy agree to the claim.
"The courses are easy to complete. I like that I can get my assignments done in less than a week, and fulfill my enrichment needs," she stated.
3. Affordable Learning Platform
For Jerry, Skillshare is an affordable platform with a few dollars per month compared to Udacity in which you have to spend $2,000 per year for a 10-month course.
"I think Skillshare is simply an astonishing technological invention! It's a great and cost-effective way to promote global equity and social justice through enhancement of knowledge," he mentioned.
4. Diverse Learning Opportunities
With over 27,000 premium courses available this year on Skillshare, you have a lot to choose that's necessary for your business and your own skill set.
John, one of the satisfied students, agree to the claim. He said that Skillshare is a one-stop shop for all technical training needs.
5. Worth The Money
Although Skillshare doesn't concentrate mainly on design and related courses, there are many students who commended the platform capacity to share the business concepts well in such a way they will ingest all the information they learn from experts at best.
"It gives you deep knowledge which gives you the capability to know language deeply and does stuff quicker," a student named Donald stated on the forum.
Skillshare Review - What Others Say?
Skillshare doesn’t follow the conventional learning methodology at all. Hence, everything is self-paced and your progress relies on how well you implement self-discipline and productivity. That’s because this platform, unlike the others existing today, doesn’t have a direct teacher-student interaction.
"Great resource with hundreds of useful classes on all sorts of topics. The lessons are very clear, useful and have feedback from the teachers. Highly recommended!" a student wrote on TrustPilot. In fact, 83% of the readers rated Skillshare with 5 out of 5 stars.
TrustPilot readers recommend and trust Skillshare when it comes to learning with 83% trust rate
There are more positive reviews from many students, who completed the courses, and the majority of them mentioned similar things. One of those is the detailed information Skillshare shares to them as learners.
On the contrary, there are many dissatisfied learners who complained about the unauthorized charges from their respective bank accounts although they already canceled their membership a long time ago.
“I got a message from their support 2 weeks ago saying my account would be renewing... I emailed back right away to cancel my subscription. I asked for assistance in doing this and went ahead and canceled my account. Then, today they charged me $99 on my card!” Hannah, one of the frustrated Skillshare students, ranted on the BBB page.
Aside from these types of concerns, content-wise, there is no one in the online community showed dissatisfaction.
Hence, Skillshare did a great job on that. The only thing they have to resolve is the continued charging to canceled accounts.
Is Skillshare A Scam?
I don’t think it’s fair for Skillshare to be labeled as a scam with a single problem, the subscription charges. If you see it in a bird’s eye view, the platform by itself is real.
They have a legitimate platform wherein the most influential course creators like Seth Godin, the founder of Squidoo, Gary Vaynerchuk, the founder of VaynerMedia, among others are there.
That, in itself, is proof that Skillshare is a trusted online learning platform for students, who don’t want to stop learning after graduating in college. Personally, that’s a great enthusiasm leading to attracting wealth in the long run.
Skillshare explains why students trust the platform.
No program is perfect and it does have a lot of concerns. Skillshare is not an exemption to that. No matter how Michael and Malcolm create a seamless platform for its creative learners, they will still face troubles such as subscription charges.
Nonetheless, Skillshare is a legitimate online learning platform with a big mission to the world, to share the knowledge to learners through using the internet as a means to spread it.
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If you notice from the series of posts I reviewed in the past few days about the massive open online courses (MOOC), everything boils down to one thing, lessons.
There are students who simply enjoy the beauty of the platform regardless if it’s a bit slow or tedious. There are also some who rather stick with learning the hard way process.
Learning by itself is subjective and it doesn’t stick with morals, the right and wrong. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with that.
The important thing is that the person’s enthusiasm to continue learning apart from what was learned back in school is the crucial part.
Learning through MOOCs relies on self-discipline and diligence to work until a strength becomes a means to attract wealth. (Photo credits to NEW DATA SERVICES on Unsplash
We think of extending the learning process as another form of wasted investment. It’s not. Rather, we take ourselves to the next level to pave the way to wealth.
Even Dan Lok, a Chinese-Canadian magnate recognizes that fact. Robert Kiyosaki pushes that to annoy people, who resist learning new things.
Given, I challenge you to take another step to upgrade your strengths and transform them into a high-income skill set to start making an income. Not just on a monthly basis but a steady, passive income.
Roope “Robert” Kiuttu has mastered that resulting in earning $3,000 in a day recently. If you want to replicate that success as an online affiliate marketer, check this #1 recommended online business opportunity and click the green button below to get you started.
Are you ready to get serious with making money this year? Do it now. It’s now or never, my friend.
Now that I shared my thoughts in my “Is Skillshare a scam?” post, it’s time to turn the table and ask about your experience, in general.
What kinds of experiences do you have with Skillshare? Is it worth your time, money, and effort?
Do you prefer to begin earning your first passive income through affiliate marketing or you rather invest your time, money, and effort to income-generating opportunities like this?
Let me know in the comments below! 🙂
If you need any help to get started making money online, don't hesitate to ask in the comments below and we'll be happy to help you out!
