lukasluke

Here's an API guide for alpaca if you're keen: https://algotrading101.com/learn/alpaca-trading-api-guide/

Disclaimer: One of my writers wrote it for my blog

I didn't list my trading records online. I worked at a trading firm and a hedge fund so that performance is confidential. Mostly dealt with bond futures. We did decent, nothing too fancy. After which I trade my own money. Turned 5-digits to 7-digits in 2+ years. Take that with a pinch of salt because a lot of the returns came from cryptocurrencies.

80% my own site and 20% Udemy.

If you want to succeed on Udemy, you need multiple courses and cross-selling. It will be good to partner a current Udemy instructor for your first course and build on top of his audience.

Revenue from Udemy is generally on the decline. But nonetheless, you can always start on Udemy and branch out to your own site later. I did that.

1. At the start, I do feel it. But over time as I receive good feedback from students, it goes away. The key is to deliver (or rather, over-deliver) value to your students.

Many online teachers think they are not good enough because they compare themselves to the top 1% in the field. But even if they are far behind the top 1%, they are far ahead of the bottom 50% and their teaching is still valuable.

Sometimes, they turn out to be better teachers than the top 1% because they are nearer to their students level and can empathise and hence teach in a more effective manner.

2. Rarely. Some students ask for my trading background and performance. I'll tell them the truth. Don't be afraid they will think you are under-qualified. If they do feel that way, they won't enroll and move on. There are plenty of people who will enroll in your course regardless of your qualification (I only realised this after I started teaching).

3. Yes.

4. I did an interview piece, you can find more info on how I started there: https://hackernoon.com/founder-interviews-lucas-liew-of-algo...

Started an online course on algorithmic trading at https://algotrading101.com and some Udemy courses 4 years ago.

Revenue peaked at $20k/month 2 years ago and is less than half of that now. That's probably because my SEO rankings plummeted this year, and that people seem less and less eager to pay for online courses. Maintaining the course is quite passive (answering students' questions by email) but growing revenue is an active process.

I’ve set up a course on Udemy last October. I have not tried the rest so I’ll just talk about Udemy.

The key thing about Udemy is that it does all the sales for you, which is a HUGE deal if you are just starting out and have little credentials/followings in the MOOC space.

Udemy works on a flash sales model. They regularly give large discounts (90%, 95% etc), especially to their existing student pool. Students pay a one-off fee per course for lifetime access. There are a lot of cross-course selling going on. This model will be favourable for you if your course has a broad target audience. You should expect low revenue per student + high student count.

If you want to build specialised course and charge high fees per student, Udemy is not the place for you. You can try to host your own course on platforms such as usefedora.com (startupclass.co is hosted here!) or patience.io.

Many of the top courses on Udemy have a common theme. They either directly or indirectly teach students to make money. Two styles seem to work best: 1) A course that teaches many skills/topics (eg. Web dev course that teaches HTML, CSS, PHP, JS etc) 2) A course that goes in depth into one skill/topic (eg. Swift, Amazon E-commerce).

Top earners in Udemy can make 50k to 100k a month. Doubt you can earn that from platforms that run on a student subscription model.

I created a videotutorial course to teach people how to design and code trading robots - udemy.com/build-your-trading-robot.

It's doing about 1.5k/mth. Launched it 2 months ago. Took me 6 months to create it. Still adding content to it though, will probably take about 1 year more before I complete it.

The site that hosted the course did most of the marketing for me so I just focused on the product. Startup cost was about $150. Spent it on microphone and digital writing pad.