Online learning makes knowledge replicable

The accidental path to online education

Muzamil opens by establishing Amir’s background. “You are a popular personality,” he says. “But for the sake of the audience, which probably doesn’t follow the content. Aamir Bhai, he’s an expert animator and editor.” Amir learned animation through formal education but found that a degree alone did not translate to work. Instead, he taught himself by doing, combining practical projects with self-directed learning. That foundation led him to teaching others.

The shift to online courses happened by accident. Amir organized meetups in Karachi and Lahore where students would learn video production and editing in person. During one trip, he noticed something: students were eager to learn, and there was no structured way for them to access this knowledge remotely. He began exploring what existed online. “There are many things, but none of them was in Urdu,” Amir says. Platforms like Udemy and Skillshare dominated the English-language space, but content for Urdu speakers barely existed.

Launching with no tech background

Amir had no website-building skills and no plan to become an entrepreneur. He simply decided to sell a course. His first approach was bare-bones: he recorded a course on video basics, posted it on a simple platform, and offered it at 1,500 rupees with a 50 percent discount during launch. He sent buyers Dropbox links and WhatsApp codes. Remarkably, he sold fifteen to twenty copies on the first day.

The demand validated the idea. Amir then moved to Shopify to build a more professional platform. He began expanding his course library, now hosting around fifteen to sixteen courses covering animation, design, video production, and specialized techniques.

Why online beats the classroom

Muzamil asks Amir how he sees the difference between online and conventional teaching. Amir responds by describing the efficiency gap. “You can see it ten times and understand it,” he says of pre-recorded content. “Alternatively, conventional is very simplistic, but it is inefficient.” A classroom teacher gives the same lecture to thirty students, moving at a fixed pace. Some students lag. Others get bored. The structure cannot adapt.

Online learning solves that. A student watching a recorded course can pause, rewind, and rewatch the parts they struggle with. The course itself does not change. Only the student’s pace changes. For practical fields like video production and animation, where techniques require practice and repetition, this matters deeply.

There is another advantage: economics. A two-week in-person training course taught to thirty students at 50,000 rupees per student generates income tied to the room, the time, and Amir’s availability. But if that course is recorded once and sold online to a thousand students at a lower price, the total revenue grows while Amir’s effort stays fixed. “If I’m giving a course for two weeks, then I charge 50,000 rupees per course. But if my worth is one million rupees and now I can target a big audience, then suddenly I will decrease the cost, so many people can participate,” Amir explains.

The infrastructure barrier

Amir’s biggest frustration is not customer demand or competition. It is Pakistan’s digital infrastructure. Shopify does not accept Pakistani credit cards or rupee payments. PayPal never launched in Pakistan. Google Payments does not work here either. To accept international card payments, Amir routes money through a cousin’s account in the UK, who then pays his bills to Adobe, Dropbox, and Shopify on his behalf. He is essentially operating through a workaround that adds friction and tax complications.

This is not a minor inconvenience. Amir says forty-two percent of his course sales come from credit cards, yet he cannot access that revenue directly. The system forces him to choose: operate through an overseas intermediary or accept only cash-on-delivery payments, which limits his reach and customer base.

The creator cost of visibility

COVID accelerated demand for online content and courses, but it also intensified pressure on creators. Muzamil and Amir discuss the mental toll. Young creators with hundreds of thousands of subscribers face relentless expectations. A child with five hundred thousand followers experiences celebrity status without the maturity or support systems. Audiences dehumanize creators, leaving aggressive comments and making demands while watching only the highlight reel of a creator’s life.

Amir observes that the industry lacks protective structures. “We need to make new job roles: mentorship, talent management, therapy,” he says. “A child who has 500,000 followers on YouTube. If someone tells them they will be set, what does the child know what he is going through?”

The pandemic made this worse. Creators who relied on travel, events, and outdoor content suddenly could not leave their homes. Those who survived were the ones who innovated, but innovation is draining. Many creators grew depressed or gave up.

A fragmented industry

Amir notes a larger shift happening. Sponsorship models on Instagram now mean every third post is a paid promotion. This saturation will eventually turn audiences away. When it does, creator revenue will collapse. Affiliate marketing, nano-influencers, and micro-influencers will likely replace the big names.

For working creators, this is terrifying. They have rent to pay, equipment to maintain, and teams to support. Their content is not a hobby. It is their livelihood. When the model breaks, so do they.

Amir’s advice is diversification. He runs a design practice alongside his teaching platform. If online education stalls, he has consulting work. If video work dries up, he has multiple income streams. Those betting everything on YouTube are betting on an algorithm they do not control.

What comes next

Muzamil wraps by asking what is coming for the industry. Amir is cautiously optimistic about online education. It proved itself during the pandemic. Universities that resisted online programs now offer them globally, and they are charging less than in-person programs while reaching more students. That is the shape of education’s future.

For creators more broadly, Amir expects consolidation and a reset. The easy growth phase is over. The next phase requires deeper audience connection, genuine expertise, and the ability to survive when trends shift.