Meet Studyopedia: A One-stop Destination for Online Courses

Are you looking to start your online course, or maybe open an entire e-learning platform, but don’t know how? Maybe you’re not even sure if your idea is the right one?

Then you should read this talk between Website Planet and Amit Diwan, a self-made Entrepreneur who founded Studyopedia, a learning website with over 21,000 students, and Amit Thinks, his tech YouTube channel with 1,18,000 subscribers on YouTube.

You will learn how a successful digital entrepreneur has started his online business, how he made it unique, and what makes his e-learning business thrive against the competition.

What inspired you to start Studyopedia, and how did you validate the business potential and feasibility of your idea?

E-learning is projected to reach $500 billion this decade. Therefore, the need for e-learning platforms with certified courses will expand daily. Especially the COVID wave highlighted the need to never stop learning.

Looking at this, I got inspired and wanted to create and upload courses that include a complete package of both text tutorials and video courses for programming languages and web development technologies. Therefore, I decided to add the notes, i.e., the text tutorials, on the website Studyopedia and the videos for free on my tech YouTube channel, Amit Thinks.

Studyopedia has been live since 2018, but we were occupied with getting clients for web development and end-to-end course creation. However, the COVID wave proved to be a blessing in disguise, and the focus shifted to creating video courses on our YouTube channel, Amit Thinks.

Even before starting Studyopedia, I was able to make a name for myself as a freelancer, with top e-learning websites as clients. At the age of 23, my freelancing clients included India’s and Australia’s top e-learning websites, Tutorialspoint and Sitepoint, respectively.

I have till now worked on, created, and published text and video tutorials in 30+ technologies, including programming languages, databases, CMS, etc. Till now, I have written/published more than 70k articles, posts, codes, blogs, and videos on e-learning for students, engineers, and professionals. These posts/blogs/videos have received millions of views.

After getting experience from all these reputed government offices and private companies through full-time jobs and freelancing, including, IIT Delhi, IASRI Delhi, the University of Delhi, and C# Corner, I decided to begin my own work as an entrepreneur. I launched my own startup, studyopedia.com, and the Amit Thinks YouTube Channel. Programming and web development courses are provided on my channel and website. I was also recognised with the Excellence in Education Award in the year 2022 by the Indian Achievers Award.

Prior to founding Studyopedia, I developed an Android app, Learnofy, for kids facing difficulty learning, but the app was discontinued the same year itself. That phase taught me a lot to understand the need of the users.

What are some of the key challenges you have faced while building and growing Studyopedia, and how did you overcome them?

Providing free education in the form of online courses is not easy for any start-up. We realised it immediately and focused more on our quality videos to run our YouTube channel. If the content is good, it would surely work on YouTube, and Google AdSense would love it.

The Google algorithm loves quality content, white-hat SEO, and that worked for us. More good content reaches the suggested videos section of YouTube, thereby providing more organic views with a higher reach rate and engagement.

Not to miss, funds and manpower management. If you know how to crack people management, you can begin the entrepreneurial journey with fewer funds. A lot of times, the hurdles related to funds and competition came in between, but I never gave up.

What courses and subjects are currently available on Studyopedia?

We have provided video courses on Python, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, HTML, Bootstrap, etc. However, we have free study material, i.e., completed end-to-end text tutorials on more than 30 technologies, including Java, Python, C#, C, C++, HTML, jQuery, JavaScript, CSS, etc.

With that, our courses are loved by top EdTech companies that have collaborated with us, including, TutorialsPoint, SkillShare, GeekforGeeks, Packt, O-Reilly, Reed, SkillSuccess, Simplilearn, etc.

What pain points lead your students to look for online courses, or a new e-learning platform?

Well, what I believe is that a lot of websites provide vast courses in the name of courses for beginners. This is what I felt, and our team decided to create short tutorials, i.e., 2–5 hours. We focus mostly on examples, quizzes, and content with self-explanatory illustrations. To explain this further, let us take an example from our live Python tutorial.

Our Python tutorial has 200 live-running examples, and this has been loved by the audience on TutorialsPoint, Packt, O-Reilly, etc. We have followed the same strategy for all the courses.

What makes the website Studyopedia and Amit Thinks YouTube Channel stand out from other e-learning platforms?

Our 2- to 5-hour short tutorials are loved by more than 25,000 students. The example-based tutorials have a higher reach, and we do not focus on just ranking our videos or study material. We do not stuff keywords because it hampers the site’s rankings. We keep it simple and only add relevant content, examples, and illustrations.

This is why the UK- and US based platforms Packt and O’Reilly have also uploaded our courses. Top EdTechs like TutorialsPoint and GeekforGeeks also loved our courses and made them live on their platforms. We earn 50%–80% on each course sold on these platforms.

The same goes for our YouTube channel. Our focus is on that single user who is interested in even a single topic in programming. This strategy worked for us, and our channel, Amit Thinks, has received a lot of views, watch time, and engagements from a global audience in the last 2 years. Not even college students, but experienced IT professionals trust us and request video tutorials on our platform. The support of our unique viewers, which are over 1 million each month, has helped in achieving this milestone in such a short period of time.

The videos have gotten more than 34 million (3.4 crore) views on YouTube (as of June 2023). Subscribers reached 118,000. The monthly views have crossed 1.8 million. More than 1 million unique viewers visit the YouTube channel every month. The total number of impressions has crossed 180 million. The watch time has reached 1.2 million hours, i.e., around 7 crore minutes.

P.S. We have also surpassed the official YouTube channel of GeeksforGeeks in terms of monthly views!

In your opinion, what role will e-learning play in the future of education, and how do you see AI contributing to this vision?

The global e-learning market will reach $457.8 billion by 2026. This proves that the EdTech revolution is not a temporary adjustment but a permanent solution. I think this revolution would also see educational YouTube channels and websites join the EdTech ecosystem. Also, everyone has some knowledge that he or she can share. Sharing is caring, and this one quote helped me a lot in providing free notes and videos for students, engineers, and professionals.

AI would eventually help ease the work of humans, not only in the fields of medicine, infrastructure, etc., but expect a growth in e-learning with the tools being developed on a daily basis. This includes ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, as well.

Lastly, what’s in the roadmap for Studyopedia, and what goals do you hope to achieve in the coming years?

We are planning to provide a certificate of completion for any course completed on our website. Students need to pay a minimal amount to get a certificate. This brings us to a paid model. We are also planning to upload courses on more technologies, primarily targeting AI, Machine Learning, Data Science, Python, etc.

With our YouTube channel, Amit Thinks, we are targeting 1 million subscribers.