Business ideas, I am always in pursuit of sharing these with you. This is because I want to make available a large pool of possibilities for your consideration. In this article, I want to deal with a business idea that you probably might have never thought of. Funnily some of you have even been subjected to others already doing this business but never thought you could do it yourself. This business idea is about masterclasses; you can make quite a lot of money from this.
Approaches
How to roll out a master class is laden with infinite possibilities. By the way, let me start by briefly going over what a masterclass is. According to the Oxford dictionary, a masterclass is a class, especially in music, given by an expert to highly talented students. I have to break down some things here so that you do not get misled by that definition.
The concept of a masterclass has evolved over the years to a point where it is now given by an expert to any interested student, talented or not. It can be on any topic, subject, area, and so on. It can be delivered through numerous possible ways and platforms. Another thing, you need not necessarily be an expert to do masterclasses – you can be the facilitator or moderator. This would mean you arrange everything and simply invite experts to do the actual teaching. What I am doing here is opening up your mind to how broad and diverse the approaches can be.
Let Us Explore A Zimbabwean Example…
Before I do that let me highlight that usual masterclass is delivered through websites. Thus you will find live or pre-recorded video sessions, accessible only upon once-off payment or subscriptions, being done on certain topics e.g. cooking skills, screenwriting, and acting, just to mention a few. That does not mean you cannot think outside the box; in fact, you should think outside the box. That is what brings me to this example I want to detail to you.
Last year in May, the whole month, I enrolled for a Digital Marketing Masterclass. This was a masterclass organized by Tofara Lindsay Chokera. It was exclusively done on WhatsApp using text-based messages, voice notes, images, slides, and pre-recorded short clips. Do you see what I mean by thinking outside the box? Students even received certificates after completion of the masterclass. Let me now draw your attention to how she monetized everything and how lucrative this business can be.
Apparently, she offers these masterclasses every month. At the time I enrolled the fee for the masterclass was US$5 or equivalent. The last time I checked it is now US$10 or equivalent. When I enrolled I recall that active groups were undertaking that May masterclass. By groups I am referring to full WhatsApp groups – think of the revenue there. That was roughly 1000 or so students enrolled for a single masterclass; US$5000 or so in gross revenue. See how she can consistently make money every single month of the year? – All this from the comfort of her home or office; without having to rent any physical location.
Takeaways From This Example
She strategically chose a subject area that is highly sought after nowadays. She wittily came up with an unconventional approach of exclusively using WhatsApp to conduct her masterclasses. Well, literally everyone is on WhatsApp so that was ingenious! You might also want to know that it was basically two people conducting the masterclass, herself and an assistant. All in all, it is a team of 4 people herself, an administrator, a business development manager, and a finance manager. What does all this show you? That she carefully eliminated or minimized any costs by all means possible. You can also start your own masterclasses given the area you are an expert in. You can adopt her approach or you can come up with your own strategies.
You now get the gist of what masterclasses are all about and how you can make money through them. I am sure the example I detailed in this article will inspire you to start something of your own. To learn more about Tofara Chokera’s initiatives kindly check out one of her websites here. You can also check out MasterClass, probably the leading player in this industry globally. They offer online classes for students of all skill levels. There is also Mindvalley which is yet another global notable example worth exploring. You can always start small but those two examples will give you a glimpse of what the epitome of a masterclass business would look like.
