Is it possible to make money on Udemy if you want launch your first course?
Hello,
I am new and I want to create a new course but I don't know if it is worth it. I know that I am going to get a lot of new experience and find new connections but still money is an important factor. Maybe you have any advice, experience, and stories on how you started on Udemy and would like to share it?
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Hi,
It depends on the subject, demand and whether the market is saturated. If you're planning to release a course that is already well covered then you're going to need to do something special in order to compete with the established competition.
One thing that people often overlook is the amount of time required to answer questions. Students will often raise a number of questions during your course via the QA section. I try to answer within 24 hours but expect high volumes if your course is technical (i.e. coding).
Is it all worth it? Sure, especially if money is not your only motivation. I get pleasure in helping people learn new stuff but I also need to make money to live, so it's nice to see a course suceed.
Curretly each of my courses takes me around 6 months or so to plan/design/create and edit. It's a lot of work but it's required in order to suceed.
You need to look at yourself as a brand. If you establish a brand by creating good quality content, you will find you create a following and students will also enrol in your future courses.
Hope this helps!
Gianni
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Hi,
I had similar thoughts before starting my first course but in the end I can tell you that it is worth it. But I didn't look that much on the money thing. I wanted to create a course and I wanted to get a little "side" income. When I finally decided to make a course i thought "if i earn 100$ all in all i am happy" and i earned 100$ in only 1 month so I was totally impressed and i am looking forward to make my next course
You can do it!
Btw. making my first course cost me about 90h of work and 140$ and I have never done videos before, so i had 0 experience in that.
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am showing the graph of my earnings since I began on Udemy. It will be five years this coming May. I am sharing this not to say "look how much I am making." I am sharing it to say "Look at the first two years! And, how it gradually built to the point where I make a comfortable living."
You need to have a "business perspective", in other words developing your skills, developing your product, developing your brand, and eventually the revenue grows. If you want immediate profits, you will almost surely be disappointed.
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Thank you for the tips and explanation I think they are both really useful for people that want to start on Udemy. 👍
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Hello Patrick, thank you for the reply. I have the same first milestone to earn at least 100$. I also want to create a Youtube chanel what would be in english and I think what Udemy could be a really good practise to train on creating videos in english. Btw good luck with your course.
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Thank you for sharing this information. I haven’t thought about that until now. It really helps to know that it is still possible to have a career on udemy.
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thank you for sharing. Very motivating, indeed!
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Would like to share another thought to it.
Putting up your content on Udemy is also another way of gaining credibility.
Getting positive reviews from real people is not a small thing. These testimonials will be a great marketing tool for you in the future if you want to expand your venture in online businesses.
I think many long time instrcutors here will tell how much important that is in the long run in "Brand building" .
If you self host your course, students cant really judge whether the testimonials are true or fake but here they can be assured that the overall rating cannot be faked, so if its good rated content that means content is actually good which bascially leads to a much faster decision making process for the students and they enrol much sooner than if they were to take a self hosted course from someone they dont know.
The quality control on Udemy is in place and students are assured much more by reading many reviews than they are by taking courses on other platforms.
Apart from that ofcourse Udemy gives you the massive reach.
There are thousands of "eyeballs" on your courses once you hit publish and it grows.
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hi patrick,
thats a motivational and inspiring voce from your side. but my question is how it cost 140 $ as a investment?
does it costs to make a video or getting help for a video?
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Hi, the 140$ was for the equipment, which is not 100% necessary in my case. I had to buy a better microphone (one for the screen cast and one for the "free speaking" in front of the camera). I also bought a tripod for the camera and a green screen.
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Hi @ZygimantasK
,You never know how a venture will pan out until you have tried it. If someone thinks about it as a get-rich quick scheme and they want to just quickly create a course, upload it and make money the chances are they will be disappointed. Many businesses take a while to find their feet.
I would recommend treating it like any other business venture, creating your plan of things like what courses will you make, what will you do to get those first few paying students to your first course, what other ways will you continue to drive traffic to your course and other courses in the future and to build your reputation around the topic you teach, what subsequent courses will you teach, will you have these complimentary to each other so that you can cross promote your courses to students in other courses of yours. What will you do to stand out and to get organic sales (thinking about things like search engine optimisation and copywriting etc), what is your plan around production of your course, how will you make the course(s), do you need new equipment/location to film etc.
I would be treating it like a business to give myself the best chance of success. This is what I did when I became jobless and had to make a living from Udemy. I took Udemy's own courses and courses by others on these various topics.
They say it takes about three years for a business to start making a profit. I don't think that is the case on Udemy, I think you can start making a profit much sooner, how soon will depend on how you work things out and what you need to purchase to make your first course. I don't recommend using a built in microphone of a phone or webcam or computer or camera etc, so it is likely you will get some kind of external microphone. If you will be video recording yourself you need suitable lighting. If you can get the lighting right then the HD camera on most modern mobile phones can get a good enough video image quality, or decent HD webcam, so you don't necessarily need to invest in a top camera or video camera. If you don't have a clear space to record yourself that has an acceptible background I would recommend getting a green screen, and if you did this you might need to get some different video editing software that can do chromakey. All of this can be purchased for just a few hundred dollars and you may not need it all, so investment is minimal. If you take into consideration the time it takes you to make your course and work out how much this would cost if you paid yourself for it then you could say that that and other expenses mentioned are what you would want the course to make to make it so that it has at least covered costs. Beyond that you would have an idea of what you need to make per month to make a living.
As an example, my first course took me perhaps 60 hours to make (through to having the course live on Udemy) it was a course with a couple of face to camera videos but mainly slides and voiceover, so nothing too technical or time consuming to make. I already had a camera and external microphone and editing software, so I didn't buy anything new (I have done since!). So for the course to breakeven including covering my time I had to cover what I would value those 60 hours at. Say I valued those 60 hours at about $15 per hour, I needed the course to make $900 for me to feel I didn't lose anything by doing Udemy. I passed this in my third month on Udemy, the first month nearly all my sales were my own promotions, sharing discounted access to my course with friends and family and asking them to share it and to a small Facebook audience (I would recommend starting as early as possible creating an audience of people who like what knowledge you have to share so that when you release your first course you have people to tell about it, rather than making the course, then starting to market it and create an audience). To date that one course has made the equivalent of about $1000 per hour of time I spent making the course. I have to respond to student questions and do things to drive traffic to the course and I occasionally do updates to the course, but if I worked out what time I spend specifically on that one course, it probably works out about an hour or less per week of time on average.
It is unlikely the first course will be the one that makes it. Obviously this happens for people from time to time, but more likely is that you will release future courses which are related so that they are all getting students, all being promoted on Udemy and by you and all being cross-promoted so that students in one course can go on to take other courses of yours.
My experience is the more time I put in to Udemy the more I get out of Udemy. Once I lost my job and put full-time hours into my Udemy business I quickly started getting a full-time income out of my Udemy business. Obviously ideally I wouldn't suggest quitting a job and taking that risk, but rather gradually building your business and reputation and over the course of a few years reaching a point of noticing perhaps your Udemy income is matching or exceeding your full-time income and taking up far less of your time than your full-time job, and then would decide to perhaps quit the job and focus on fully developing an online business.
Here is my sales chart since I started on Udemy
All the bestDan
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