College Student Hacks Into $40,000/Month Side Hustle

Notes from Chris

Episode 373

For college student and self-described ethical hacker Zaid Al-Quraishi, everything seemed to be going according to plan. His website teaching Arabic speakers how to ethically hack was making decent money. He was doing well in class and even had some cash left over to buy himself a nice car. But then he encountered a challenge.

Driving to college one morning, the engine of his car blew out and left him with no way to get to college for the coming months. This, topped off with a few other financial commitments, left Zaid in dire need of $4000. Not exactly money a college kid has lying around in their dorm room.

To help solve the problem, a close friend recommend that Zaid take a look at the website Udemy. They had thousands of people looking for courses like Zaid’s, and he could reach many more people than with his current website.

Zaid thought this was a great idea. He’d already created all of the material for his ethical hacking courses and just needed to translate the audio to English. He dubbed over it, kind of like a Hollywood movie, using the free iMovie editor that came preinstalled on his laptop.

I should point out that Zaid doesn’t make his money teaching people to “hack” like the bad-guys you see on the news. Instead, Zaid is teaching something called ethical hacking, which he describes like a martial art.

If you were to learn Kung Fu, you could use it to either defend yourself or to go out and hurt people. “Black hat” hackers would use their Kung Fu skills to steal your identity while you’re using the free wifi at Starbucks. But “white hat” hackers like Zaid use their skills to hack pre-approved security systems and help them improve their online defenses.

Zaid made more courses, now 8 in total on Udemy, which retail between $50 and $200. What does all of this add up? First of all, Zaid has more than 87,000 students—and these are not free students!

To date, he’s averaging around $40,000 per month in total course sales. He’s also stopped selling his Arabic courses and focuses full time on an English speaking audience.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Zaid.com: Learn more about Zaid on his blog, and check out his online ethical hacking courses
• Udemy: The educational platform that Zaid used to launch his ethical hacking courses
• iSecur1ty: The internet security company that Zaid launched with the profits from his side hustle to serve the Arabic speaking community

SEE ALSO:

• Getting Started—How do I Create my Udemy Course?: If selling courses online sounds like your kind of side hustle, check out this step-by-step guide from Udemy!
• Published Author Adds Income Source; Makes Additional $21,000 Her First Year: A successful novelist teaches an online course about productivity for writers, reaching 3,700 students in year one
• Woman on Food Stamps Earns $86,000 Teaching People to Bake Bread: In the face of adversity, a woman creates a series of online courses teaching the art of baking sourdough bread. Stop loafing around! If she can do it, you can too

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,